The Text - Section 16
On Public Opinion
BU 17:13
[orig. untitled]
Are we as individuals governed by any one belief? My answer is, we are not; yet
I once thought otherwise and my practice proved the folly of such a belief. Man is
the embodiment of public opinion and science is the embodiment of God's
wisdom. Each embodiment comes to the world or man's senses through a
medium and the medium being man, we give to him the praise. Here is a great
mistake, for we are liable to get into trouble by this error. The wisdom of the
world is like an ocean surrounded by inlets, harbors and false lights to decoy the
traveller into the land of the priests who come and give an account of their
pretended country, and men believe their story. The question is, is it his own
eloquence that affects us, or does the effect come from some other source? I say
it comes from some other source and he is the medium of evil to destroy man's
happiness and when we listen, we listen to public opinion in regard to the truth of
what he says. So it is with science. The man who talks the science or truth is one
thing and the truth is another, and if the man was out of existence, the truth
would be the same, but the science would not be known. It is so with every belief.
Now what I say to the sick is not mine as a man's, but as a man, I speak the truth
that I have received, not from man's opinion but from those who have been
deceived by man's opinion and carried away captive into slavery or bondage,
unable to escape. Their groans, sighs and trouble are their language and their
misery is the penalty of their belief. Being misled by false theories they believe a
lie thinking it true. This belief makes one hemisphere and science the other. So
man is only an agent or servant to one or the other, and his pay is what he can
get from the masses.
There have always been men, like missionaries, trying to get the people to go to
each place. The idea body is the medium or earth upon which they work. So
belief or opinion is one man, wisdom and science is the other. The body or idea
called man is the medium of both. The man of belief puts his knowledge in the
earth or body; the man of science puts his belief in God or wisdom and as he
reduces his wisdom to practice it is called science. So that neither of the two is
seen, only in their works. The man of opinion is seen through mediums
pretending to be wise; the man of wisdom is seen correcting the errors of the
man of opinion. One's labor is to make mischief and trouble; the other's is to
establish God's kingdom or truth in the earth or natural man, thus driving out the
old man of opinion and introducing the new man of science. This was the mission
of Jesus and all those that make war with opinions by the introduction of science.
This is my whole aim and what I am laboring for. So I speak not as a man of
opinions but from what I know.
September 1862
On Sitting with Patients
BU 17:15
[orig. untitled]
Various ideas come up sitting with patients. I am often asked questions by my
patients in regard to children and idiots, because I say disease is all in the mind,
having told them many times that mind is the medium or material used by
wisdom to bring about a result. Then they will say, I had no mind about it. That is
just like a man who has made a pair of boots and someone says to him, you
must have given a great deal of thought or mind to come to the knowledge of
making a pair of boots. No, says the shoemaker, I never had any mind about it. I
merely took up the leather and knife and immediately the boots were all cut out.
While I was talking about their wear, I looked and the boots were all made and I
never had any mind about it. To me, one is as plain as the other. The man's mind
and thought were one and the leather and material, the other. Now he would
reason that the boots made themselves. Every one can see the folly of this kind
of reasoning in everything but disease, from the fact that the people have been
made to reason from a false basis.
Men of opinions have led the world, when the fact is that they are only a
stumbling block to science. Man who reasons is in the dark or he would not
reason, for if he knows a thing, he can prove it. Some one says, I believe there is
such a place as London, yet I never saw it. His belief is based on some one's
wisdom. To those who have seen London it is a fact based on sight. You may
have a thousand proofs like the former, yet it is an opinion, and opinion always
admits a doubt, if it is ever so small. This doubt is the very thing to overcome. It is
like a dead point in a steam engine. Get rid of this and you have perpetual
motion. It is so with the mind. Lift the curtain that hides you from an object and it
is present. This is where man fails; his wisdom is in his sight; that of the wise is in
their wisdom. So to be wise is to see by the eye of wisdom; then you do not have
to ask. When my patients cannot understand, they think I do not know myself. It
is hard to convince by talk a blind man who was born blind that you can see what
he cannot. The blind man must admit what he cannot see before he can have his
spiritual eyes or wisdom open; so it is with my patients; they must admit what
they cannot understand as in all sciences. There never was nor ever can be a
science without a phenomenon. My theory is like all the others; no theory was
ever established on nothing; even the theory of religion has its phenomena.
September 1862
Outlines of a New Theory for Curing Disease
BU 7:1, LC 8:120
All medical practitioners claim that their mode of treatment is the best; yet no one
has even hinted or dares to risk his reputation on the ground that disease is an
invention of man and ought to be treated as an error or deception forced upon
mankind by ignorance and superstition in the same way that slavery has been
forced upon this country, and with all the attendant evils. Dr. Quimby's theory is
that all phenomena called disease are the result of false beliefs originating in the
darkness of Egyptian superstition and the effect of certain beliefs is called
disease.
African slavery is a disease of ignorance and superstition and is the cause of the
present misery in this country; but it is merely the figure of white slavery which
has riveted its fetters on the minds of men, while the world of mind lies crushed
and humbled by this tyrant of old superstition. Disease is what follows a belief
and a belief is like an atmosphere so universal that every one is liable to be
affected by it as one would be by chilly winds. God never made the wind to injure
any person, nor has He put any intelligence into it by which man should be afraid
of it, but man does not "see it in this light." How often we hear this remark, "Don't
expose yourself to the damp, cold air." This belief that God made the air an
enemy to man is a part of the clouds that rise in the mind of every person, and
when this cloud is seen and felt, all persons, old and young, are affected, for the
fear is the punishment of the belief, and it is no excuse that the ignorant have no
belief as they must suffer for the sins of their parents. Science is the sun that
burns up the clouds or changes the beliefs of man, and a little ray of intelligence
springs up and the cloud of superstition vanishes as the true God appears. The
people will hail the truth, as the peak of Teneriffe hails the rising sun long before
it is seen by the horizon of the common mind.
I will bring some cases to show that phenomena that were once produced can
never be produced again. This fact holds good in the vegetable as well as in the
mental world. Take a primeval forest, cut down the old growth and another will
spring up, not like the first, but a more solid, thicker growth. So it is with error; like
an old growth, error is tall and porous with a great show. Science is denser and
more substantial. Error is the natural growth of man; it is a wilderness filled with
all kinds of superstition and every one is liable to be caught by a native of this
land. It is inhabited by every variety of creature: consumption and liver complaint,
etc. Science is the axe in the hands of Wisdom to hew down this wilderness and
destroy its inhabitants and introduce a better state of society. Like all superstition,
error is very religious. Religion and slavery always go hand in hand. Freedom
and science also go together and are the same. So religion is in its acts and the
other is the same, only when one binds his fellow man, the other liberates him.
Where science goes civilization is the purest, but science is not always known.
Science in religion has not made much progress except as an indirect result of
some other development. Astronomy has destroyed some of the hideous
features of religion and introduced a happier state of society, but it was not the
design of astronomy to destroy religion. Still it is the natural result of science to
destroy error and prejudice. It sometimes comes in contact with the most
enlightened state of intelligence, for that is cursed with the shackles of religion of
dark ages. You will see religion in its purest state under the most despotic form of
government, and you will always find disease under some despotic power of
religion; and those who undertake to rid the world of this evil are like
demagogues in a despotism. Such is the essence of hypocrisy intended to keep
the masses weak so they can be ruled. Starve the masses and you destroy their
energy and make them desperate; then the more enlightened will submit to the
leaders for their own safety. This keeps in power those demagogues.
So it is with disease. Religion is despotism in politics and disease. The misery of
the sick is the torment of their belief. With politics the misery of the South is their
religion. The North has more science and less religion. Yet the North has enough
to sympathize with the South and bring misery in our midst. Religion makes no
compromise; it is rule or ruin. It sometimes takes to itself the name of reform,
giving every man the liberty of free speech, and then it subjects everyone to its
laws. Just so with the poor slave or sick, for the sick are merely slaves of
superstition made so by the sins of our parents. So they, like the African slave,
think slavery or disease is of divine origin and the doctor is our teacher. Jesus
came out against all this and lost his life. So with every reformer. Let him speak
the truth of the church, the medical faculty and political parties or his life is in
danger.
September 1862
A Short Chapter on Disease
LC 8:133
What is disease? It is the punishment of our acts or belief. Can it ever be blotted
out of the mind of man? I answer, When man acknowledges that happiness is
the greatest aim of the human soul, and everything that goes to mar our
happiness is wrong or evil. When man learns that his misery is in his belief and
his happiness is in his wisdom, then he will cease from doing evil and believing in
what he has no proof of and learn to do well or act rightly. Man must understand
that mind is matter, that thought, reason and argument are all the same and are
all a belief, and that the reality of them is that it is true that we all do believe it.
But wisdom is not in any of the above. A man, body and mind is like the earth
and the skies. The earth could not bring forth anything without air; so when the
air is affected, the earth is likewise affected. So the body of itself is like the earth.
Every sensation in the body is first made in the mind and this is thought, which is
of the earth or body called mind. And all disease of the earth originated in the
mind or clouds.
September 1862
Concerning the Dying
BU 34:1, LC 8:171
PART 2
[orig. SCENES FROM THE BELIEF IN DEATH AND THE BELIEF IN LIFE-
CONTINUED]
I was called to see a young lady who was dying, as it is called. She was seated
in a rocking chair, and after sitting by her a few moments, I knew she was about
to leave the body and just as I was going to ask her if I should not lift her on to
the bed, she said to me, "Shall I now lay you on the bed?" I said, Yes, and took
her in my arms and laid her on the bed. She then said, "Now I will place your
head so you will be easy." I placed her head on the pillow and she said, "Now I
will cover you up." I did as she said, and she then remarked, "I will now sit down
by you and make you quiet, so you can go to sleep." So I took my chair and sat
down by her, and in less than five minutes she had ceased to breathe. This
young lady was as much detached from her body as I was and she grieved for
me instead of herself. She believed that I was sick, so her happiness was in
helping me. But her life was in her wisdom, for she knew she was alive and was
trying to comfort me, since I felt grieved to see her leave, as I had then the same
idea which the world has. This is one of the many cases I might mention to show
that when persons are leaving the body, they have all their senses, but to those
who are looking on the person appears insane.
I was sitting by a patient whom I had put to sleep that she might have a needle
extracted from her arm and while the surgeon was performing the operation, she
said to me, "Does it now hurt you?" I replied, "No." She said, "I should think it
would." Here was a person awake to all that was going on, who at the same time
took my body and arm for the one in which the needle was. When I mesmerized
my subject, if his nose itched he would say to me, "I wish you would scratch your
nose," and if I did, it would satisfy him. I know that every person like the gold
exists in the solution with all his life qualities of wisdom and opinion and is happy
or miserable according to his life.
I will now say a word to those persons who are so anxious to have their friends
know they are dying. To me this is horrible, and if they only knew what I know,
they would never forgive themselves for the misery they inflict on those who
would like to stay with them. There is no worse punishment I can inflict on a
mesmerized subject than to mentally carry him away and leave him among
strangers. Everyone who has ever mesmerized knows this fact. Now see how the
dying like to embrace their friends. The army nurses will tell you that the dying
man will get as near you as possible, and that they like to have you soothe them
till they are separate from our belief of life, for that is what torments them. I have
seen a great many when their friends cut the cord that held them to their belief of
life and I know how it acts upon them. According to the Christian belief, it is
necessary to prepare the dying to go to heaven. So the minister comes to create
a heaven in his own mind, far off, and to impress the dying man of it; and as he
grows nervous, he creates one according to his own belief and starts for it under
the direction of his pious friend.
The scene is as trying as it is to tear a child from its mother and lodge it in some
dungeon and then say good night. Both are as full of grief as they can be, but the
dying get to that pitch which grief cannot reach; then they become as marble,
and their friends console themselves by saying they are calm. I have seen all this
many times. This is what I want to impress on the friends. If you want the
satisfaction of having your friends with you, never even hint that they are going
away, for you will drive them from you, but sit by them just as though you were all
together and you will see a scene that you will always greatly remember, for you
will always feel this life of your friend or child mingling with yours, not to be
separated by a belief. These are the proofs of that wisdom which teaches me
that my life, senses, and everything near and dear to me in this world of solution,
which is God, and in it we all live and move, although by our belief we all live
without God and in bondage through fear of death, and the knowledge of this
wisdom is the new birth. Disease is a departure from this wisdom which will
dissolve the error that holds the life in bondage and set them free from death. To
be free and know it is to know this great truth and put it into practice. Therefore to
cure disease as I do, it is necessary to believe this, not as a blind belief but as a
wisdom which is a light that sees through the error of man's belief.
October 1862
Religion of Jesus
BU 7:37, LC 8:159
[orig. untitled]
Was the religion of Jesus a belief or was it a truth? Who is to say? Must the
answer come from a professional believer or from the works of someone?
Suppose a man should discover the truth in regard to a certain fact and should
render his wisdom practicable, we should call that a science, should we not? The
world who saw the effect and knew not the science or cause must acknowledge it
a mystery. This class would talk about it, but the author would not talk about it,
but would put it in practice. Here are two kinds of wisdom, one reduced to a
science and the other an opinion about it. Jesus put his wisdom into his works.
The world talked and preached about Jesus and this was religion but it amounts
to nothing for it contained no wisdom.
The religion of Jesus was to put his wisdom into practice and it is what the world
knew not of. It was the light that lighteth everyone that cometh into the world of
wisdom; therefore to be a follower of Christ is to break from your errors and learn
to understand the truth. This truth weighs all things. It balances every act and
rewards everyone according to his act. Its labor is to convince man of his errors
for his happiness, not to browbeat him into a belief, but to teach him that all men
were born free and that error has bound them. Religion upholds slavery, science
destroys it. The religion of Jesus, which was Christ, destroys slavery and
convinces man that a slave is an emblem of his error. Wisdom is the master, so
when the servant or error is above the master, evil reigns. Here are two separate
identities. Error had religion to oppose the scientific man and stifle progression.
Science also has a religion which liberates the prisoner. The religion of the
priests was to bind the masses and keep them in subjection. Both of these
characters, science and religion, are in every man, and it is hard to separate
them, for the error will often assume the form of an angel.
October 1862
The Trinity of Opinions and the Trinity of God or Wisdom
BU 7:13, LC 8:133
Man as we see him combines two trinities, although he is ignorant of it. I will try
to condense one into a personal identity. Error is the father, belief is the son or
body, wisdom is the Holy Ghost or reason. To make it clear, I must take a person
where the trinity is the plainest. I will take a sick man for his is the plainest one.
The error is the tyrant, the belief is the son or offspring of the father. The error
wants to hold the truth in subjection, for the truth is the wisdom of God in man,
not developed. So error disturbs the mind and a belief is formed. This belief
contains the penalties and these beget fear. Here you have opinion, the father,
the belief, fear or punishment, the son and the knowledge of all, the Holy Ghost.
This is the world's trinity.
The trinity of God is wisdom or God, the father; health, science or wisdom in
practice the son; and the explanation of the two, the Holy Ghost. These three are
one and the same in power and wisdom. And to be born of the spirit of wisdom is
to break from your wickedness or opinions and turn to the truth. The new birth is
to put off the old man, that is error, with all his belief and put on the new man or
Christ. It is to destroy all the old superstition of the old world and enter into the
world of science where opinion and belief never come. In this world there is no
more death or sighing, for the old things are explained away. Death and hell and
he that hath the power of death called error is cast into the lake of fire or science
that will burn up all the chaff or error, and the new Jerusalem shall be established
in the hearts of men. Then the sun or wisdom will light up his new world; there
will be no more night or ignorance, and all will bow down before the throne of
wisdom and sing the song of everlasting life. The error has its creeds and
religious worship, for it worships this great truth in a mystery; so it reasons about
the other state or world because it does not know what it reasons about.
Therefore it makes to itself a God just according to its knowledge. It lays down its
articles of belief for opinions have now become a belief. Truth or wisdom is not in
its creeds, but a firm belief in the error.
The first article is to believe in a First Cause. Not knowing what it is, it calls it God
and believes that the man Jesus is his son, and the Holy Ghost is the power that
God gave his son Jesus. So in their blindness, they pray to this unknown God, to
whom they have attributed all the faculties of man. They believe that he requires
certain duties of man for his own special benefit and if they will fulfill those laws
that he has given them, they will be received into his kingdom and if not, they will
be cast off. You see there is not the first word of wisdom in all the foregoing but a
simple belief founded on someone's opinion. Long before all this belief, people
were religious but their religion had no heaven nor hell, and in fact they nearly all
disbelieved in anything after what they call death. There were a few who believed
in a resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. Therefore the other world
had but little effect on people's lives for they did not believe that God would
reward them after death. If they did wrong, however, they were punished by
some plague or evils that would affect the body such as leprosy, scrofula, etc.
Their religion consisted in forms and ceremonies, temples and altars, etc. all of
which could never explain away their superstition.
But the tide of progression rolled on, and wave after wave swept away some of
the old landmarks of superstition and the people were carried off on the waters of
science, flowing from the great ocean of truth. Yet they were like fog tossed
about by the winds of superstition, not knowing where to fly. In this ocean of
progression, the voice of John was heard crying in the wilderness of error, for he
had kept up with the current but was not carried into the sea like something. So
he broke the silence by the voice of his reason and exposed the hypocrisy of the
priest. Now Jesus being posted up on all the theology of the day went to hear
John.
As I have said, the idea of a science to test man's goodness was never dreamed
of by the wise men of his age. The truth had made its way along in every branch
of the sciences except goodness and goodness being what follows our acts, to
know how to have it and to attach the wisdom to our acts is a science. So religion
is the nursery of disease. The belief made men sick and unhappy but the idea of
another world had no hold on the people.
October 1862
Experience of a Patient with Dr. Quimby
BU 7:19, LC 8:139
For many years I was very sick, and finding no benefit resulting from the various
modes of cure that I had exmployed, I thought of visiting Dr. Quimby. So I
inquired of some friends in regard to his treatment. Some said he was a
spiritualist and others that he was a mesmerizer, and others said he made war
on all religious beliefs. And as I could not see what my belief had to do with my
disease, I gave up the idea of going to see him. But finally I was brought to the
subject again through utter hopelessness and despair of recovery, so I went to
see him.
In my first interview I asked him if he could cure the spinal disease. He answered
that he never wished a patient to tell him his feelings. "Very well" said I, "what do
you want me to do?" "Nothing," said he, "but listen to what I say." I then asked
him if he gave medicine. "No." "Do you employ any agent from the world of
spirits?" "No," said he. "Then," said I, "it must be mesmerism." He replied, "that
may be your opinion but it is not the truth." "Then will you please to tell me what
you call your way of curing?" He said he had no name. "Well," said I, "is it original
with you?" He said he never knew anyone who cured as he did. "Can you give
me some idea how you cure?" He said, "it would be very hard to convince a
person how he felt unless I feel myself." "Yes," I said, "it would be hard for you to
tell my feelings."
"Well," said he, "if I tell you how you feel will you admit it?" "Certainly, but how do
you cure?" He answered, "I will illustrate one thing. Do you believe the Bible?"
"Certainly," I said. "When Jesus said to his disciples `a little while I am with you,
then I go my way and you shall seek me. Where I go you cannot come.' What did
He mean by the passage?" "I suppose he spoke of the crucifixion." "Then you
think," said he, "that Jesus alluded to another world when he said `If you loved
me you would rejoice that I go to the Father..... Again, he said, `I go to prepare a
place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and
receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.' In another place
he says, `If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart I
will send him to you.' Now I suppose you think all this refers to another world?" I
said, "Yes."
"Well," said he, "now I will sit down and see if I can tell your feelings." He then sat
down and took my hand and soon passed his hand on one of the vertebrae of my
spine and said, "You have a very sharp pain in the vertebrae at this time." I said I
had. Then he placed his hand on the left temple and said, "You have a very bad
pain here and it affects the sight of your left eye." I then told him he was right. I
asked him if one eye was affected more than the other. He said, Yes, he felt no
pain in the right eye. I then told him he was right. "Now," said he, "I will explain
how I cure."
"Will you admit that Jesus took upon himself our infirmities?" I said, "yes." "Have I
not taken your pain in the spine, also in the temples and eyes?" "Yes," I said. "I
will now explain those passages which I have mentioned. My theory is that
disease is the invention of man, a burden bound on the people, laid on their
shoulders, grievous to be borne; that man has been deceived, led away and is
unable to get back to health and happiness; that Jesus' mission was to break the
bands that bound the sick and restore them to health and happiness. In order to
do this he had to find them, for they had wandered away like sheep without a
shepherd. So he took their aches and pains to show them he was with them and
knew how they felt and said, `Come unto me all you who are heavy laden and I
will give you rest.' "
I said, "You seem to talk a great deal about the Bible. I came here to be cured
and not to have my religion destroyed." He answered, "Have I said anything
about religion?" "No, but I cannot see why you quote the Bible." "I will tell you,"
said he. "You admit I took your feelings?" "Yes." "Well, I want to convince that
when I take your feelings I am with you, not myself as a man, but this great truth
which I call Christ or God." "What do you mean by that? That you are equal with
Christ?" "What do you mean by Christ?" he asked. "I mean Jesus." "Then Jesus
and Christ are one?" "Yes." "Then," said he, "how is Jesus God?" "God manifest
in the flesh," I replied. He asked, "What do you mean by God manifest in the
flesh?" "That God took upon Himself flesh and blood to convince man of His
power and save man from an endless eternity of misery." "Can God exist outside
of matter?" he asked. I answered "Yes." "Is there anything of man that exists
when God is out of him?" "Yes," said I, "flesh and blood." "Then flesh and blood
is something of itself?" "Yes." "What do you call that, the natural man?" "Yes."
"This Jesus would be the natural man of flesh and blood and Christ the God
manifested in the man Jesus?" I said, "Yes, I think so." "Well," said he, "that is
just what I want to prove to you, that the Christ is the God in us all. Do you deny
that you have a particle of God in you?" "No, I believe it," I said.
"Then we do not disagree in this. I want to make you understand that this Christ
or God in us is the same that is in Jesus, only in a greater degree in him-like this:
You teach music?" "Yes," I said. "Do your pupils know as much about the
science of music as you do?" "No, if they did I could not teach them." "Then you
have the science more than they?" "Yes." "They have some?" "Yes." "What they
know is science? Is it not equal to the same amount in you?" "Yes," I said. "Then
if one of your pupils should say I understand the science of music, it is to be
understood that he is equal to you?" "No." "Well, so it is with me," said he. "When
I say that by this great truth I cast out error, or in other words correct your opinion
and free you from that curse of all evils, disease, I do not mean to say that P. P.
Quimby is equal to the man Jesus or equal to his wisdom or Christ, but merely
admit that I recognize the great principle in man of God as a separate and
distinct person.
"While I am explaining this Christ I will give you the trinity that I believe in, that is
P. P. Quimby's trinity, not that P.P.Q. is the trinity but that P.P.Q. believes it. He
believes in one living and true wisdom called God, in Jesus (flesh and blood) a
medium of this truth, and in the Holy Ghost or explanation of God to man. Here is
my trinity and the Holy Ghost is the Science that will lead you into all truth. It will
break the band of error and triumph over the opinion of the world. This Holy
Ghost is what is with your Christ that your fleshly man knows not of; this is the
Christ in you that has been cast into prison since you were first sick; it is the
Christ that Jesus speaks of that preached to the prisoners long before the flood.
This same Christ was crucified at the death of Jesus and laid in the tomb of
Joseph's new doctrines, not with the body of Jesus. The Jews crucified Christ by
their false religion and the masses crucified the man Jesus, so Christ in the tomb
of every true disciple had the Christ lying in his breast crucified to the world of
opinions. This Christ is the one that Jesus spoke of, not of the flesh and blood
that the people saw by their natural eyes. So all the truth that came through the
man Jesus was Christ and it was the garment of Jesus, so Jesus was clothed
with the gospel or wisdom of God. When the error murdered the man Jesus, they
stole the body of Christ and parted his garments of wisdom among them, while
the people believed that the flesh and blood that was laid in the tomb was the
one that they heard, when it was nothing but the medium of the one whom they
never saw, only as a mystery. This same Christ rose again and is still in the world
of matter reconciling the world of error to the science of God.
"I will now commence anew to preach Christ to you to cure you of your errors or
disease and bring you into this living truth that will set you free from the evils of
man's opinions that bind burdens upon you in the form of disease. So when I say
I am with you, I mean this Christ or truth, not P. P. Quimby as a man. I have
acknowledged it as my leader and master. So when I speak of it, I speak of it as
a wisdom superior to P.P.Q.'s, and you have the same Christ in you confined by
the errors of this world. So I will now sit down by you again and listen to your
groans, for I feel the pain of the bands that bind you across the chest." Do you
feel the pains I have in my chest? I asked. "Yes," said he. "Now this that feels is
not P. P. Quimby but the Christ, and that which complains is not Mrs. P. but the
Christ in Mrs. P. struggling to roll the stone from the sepulchre of her tomb, to
rise from the dead or error into the living God or Wisdom. You see that I, that is,
this Wisdom, makes a sick man two, a man beside himself and the servant
above his master. When the master is acknowledged, the servant is not known,
no more than an error is known when the truth comes. I will show my meaning by
an illustration. If you believe your lungs are diseased, the servant or belief is the
master, and Wisdom, the true master, becomes the servant; but when the Lord of
the vineyard comes, then the wicked servant is cast out and another is put in his
place that will render to his Lord his dues. So when I, this truth, shall convince
the error of its wrong, it cannot stand the fire of truth, so it will submit to Wisdom;
then truth will resume its sway and health and happiness will be the result. Your
disease is the result of your belief and to change your belief is to convince you of
an error that binds you and the pains and depleted state of mind are the natural
results of your punishment. Truth never binds or separates one truth from
another, and all belief that has a tendency to separate us is error and makes
unhappiness. Error always tries to separate one from another.
"I will illustrate. Suppose you are my child and you become sick as you are now;
according to the religious belief, we must separate and perhaps at some future
time we shall meet again in that world whence no traveller ever returned. The
chances according to your own and your friends' belief are that you are bound for
that world of spirits. Suppose I believe, as you and the rest of the religious world,
what must be my feelings when I see you hastening to that world whence no
traveller returns and how must you feel, knowing that you are about to be
snatched from the bosom of your friends to enter that dark and dismal grave, with
only the hope of a resurrection from the dead and that based on a belief. Is not
that enough to rock the very foundation of your building and make the walls of
your belief tremble even to the foundation? To me this is a horrid belief.
"Now this is your true state, standing trembling between hope and fear, holding
back through fear and clinging to your friends, while the nearest and dearest of
them are trying to drive you off through their blind faith. Suppose you are a
parent and your only son should be pressed into the army. And your neighbors
who have sons should come round and console you by saying he would be
better off for going even if he should die fighting for his country, should you feel
happy to part with him? Must not the separation be almost enough to break your
heart? Then your husband is called upon and now your cup is filled to
overflowing. Can all this happen without a sunken eye, a pale and hollow cheek
with hectic flush, a purple lip, and nervous cough? In all this the chances are not
one out of fifty that they will not both return to cheer you up in your last moments
when your life is almost run out. In all this your spirits mingle as though you were
only separated like other friends, but when they die, according to our belief, the
thread that binds us is severed by the knife that cuts our life and our souls launch
into the world of our belief. Which is worse? To go through either is bad enough,
but I believe the religious belief is worse. The religious belief prepares the mind
for the medical belief; one is based on old superstitions; this gets the mind
worked up like mortar; then the potter or doctor molds the mind into disease. I
have no sympathy with either. Science knows no such beliefs; Science never
separates, it is from everlasting to everlasting, it has no beginning nor end. The
man of science is the child of God and error is its servant. So in every person
these two characters are shown.
"I will now return to you again as my child to convince you that although your
eyes are sunken and your cheek hectic, your pains and trouble are all in your
false ideas of yourself. We are all a part and parcel of each other, that is, in our
wisdom or that life eternal which cannot be severed, but our beliefs may hold it in
bondage. Now as you sit and listen, suppose you grow quiet and pass into that
happy state of mind where you meet your husband and son, talk with them about
the war and learn from them that they find it rather a hard life, but they will not
return till the rebellion is crushed. On the whole you are satisfied that they are
better off so far as their situation is concerned than you thought for. Would you
not feel relieved? I know you would. While you are in this state, suppose you
believed you were dying and your friends were weeping around you for the last
time and you could not speak. Which do you think would have the most reviving
effect on you when you awoke? You need not answer. Now, my belief is this:
Wisdom never separates you from me but makes us a part of each other in
Wisdom, for what I feel I know, and what I do not know I cannot feel. To believe
my child is separate and apart from me is a horrid belief to us both, but to know
God cannot be divided is to know that we cannot be separated from our
Heavenly Father. The error is only held together by opinions that can deceive,
but Science is eternal life. This is in all mankind and is progression; it knows no
death nor separation. To know this is more than the religious world ever had.
This was the doctrine of Jesus. Christ is the child of this wisdom and this is what I
am trying to get into your mind like the little leaven that leaveneth the whole
lump. If this is infidel doctrine, then P. P. Quimby is an infidel; but I would rather
part with everything on earth than part with this Truth which is my shepherd that
leadeth me through the dark valley of the shadow of death, and lodges me where
no belief or opinion can give me one drop of water to cool my tongue when
tormented by religious belief."
October 1862
Is There Any Curative Quality in Medicine?
BU 7:32, LC 8:153
[orig. untitled]
Common opinion would answer that there is, and according to my opinion there
is, but it is all owing to the patient's belief, and to perfect wisdom there is no
curative virtue in medicine.
I will relate one case out of a hundred to show how medicine proves itself
according to the patient's belief or the direction of some other person. I was
attending a gentleman who was sick and he thought he had consumption but
was not fully settled in his own mind; so of course he was very nervous. Under
this nervousness, the glands around the throat were excited and kept him
hacking and raising a white frothy substance and also kept him heated, which
heat would he thrown off in a perspiration. After I had told him the cause of his
trouble, the explanation so far as he understood it relieved him; he breathed
more easily and was improving. One day he read in a paper an advertisement of
a medicine which would cure the catarrh and prevent the discharges from the
head. Thinking it might cure him, he bought a bottle and commenced taking it;
but instead of lessening the secretion, it grew worse and he ran down very fast.
My theory explains the fact in this way. His belief admitted that his head was
diseased and in the condition of a sore and that the medicine would cure it.
Under this belief the glands of the nose were excited and the medicine then
proved his belief that the matter was in his head, for it was taken to make the
head discharge. His belief did this by exciting the glands and the medicine was
taken to throw it off; so when the matter and even blood commenced running, it
showed that the medicine was doing what it agreed to do. But another belief
came up that I had given him, for I had exposed the absurdity of medicine; and
after he saw the effect, he remembered what I had told him. And abandoning his
medicine he returned to me again, and in a few days recovered what he had lost.
This is how the disease worked. His own wisdom or knowledge produced the
phenomenon; his knowledge gave the medicine the praise or blame just as
people give God the praise for their own acts while the devil has to take the
blame for their troubles. I have observed the effect of medicine and have found
that there is more virtue or misery in the advertisement than in the medicine.
Everyone knows how the mouth will water by a desire for something that the
person wants and how the mouth and throat will become parched by fear of
detection in crime. This was known by the ancients and magicians, and from the
fact that the mind could be changed by fear so that criminals could be detected,
those who understood it took advantage of it to detect a thief. The magicians
made a paste that would dissolve when laid on the tongue of a person in a
perfectly calm state of mind; but in case of unusual warmth or feverish thirst, it
would not dissolve. So when a theft was committed by the servants, all the
people were collected in one room and the magician was sent for. Believing in
his power, their minds of course were controlled by their knowledge; and if the
thief were present, he knew it and being sure of detection grew nervous. This
would prevent the glands from acting and thus bring out his guilt. The others
feeling innocent were safe, for if they were nervous it did not produce the state of
mind to prevent the past from dissolving. So the mind was the medium to detect
the thief and out of his own mouth he was condemned. People put extravagant
confidence in medicine supposing that it contains curative qualities. Frequently
Indian doctors appear who have discovered an herb or root to cure some disease
that man is afflicted with, as though God had made both the disease and its cure.
The same class of people say that God has made a remedy for every disease,
showing that their superstision is woven into a belief that God made all diseases
and made medicines to cure them. This is the belief of mankind and it is not
strange that man has gone out of the way.
Now I disbelieve in diseases and remedies as understood by the world and know
that diseases and all their remedies are man's invention and the whole effect is
brought about by their own belief. Here is my belief in regard to the way diseases
are brought about. If you tell a lie or a truth to a person and the person believes
it, the effect on the person is the disease. To cure him is to expose the falsehood
to his senses. To do this I use my reason for medicine and it acts as a stimulant
or alternative as the case may be, while the doctors apply their remedies in the
form of medicine.
The opinion that God has provided a remedy for every disease gives rise to a
belief that there are certain roots and herbs intended by the Creator to cure all
diseases. Absurd as this seems, it is the belief of ninety-nine out of a hundred;
and this being the case, a door is open to quackery, for new discoveries will
come up every day. Dr. Herrick's pills, Ayers' sarsaparilla, and countless others
are advertised as the cure-all, being the result of long acquaintance with
vegetable medicines and their curative qualities. Then follow certificates of cures
and of recommendations from some M.D., and these give the medicines a run.
Next a man comes who exhibits the effect of laughing gas and also states that it
will cure neuralgia and rheumatism, and the sick rush to him for a time. After he
goes, a learned M.D. arrives with flaring advertisements announcing free lectures
on anatomy and the digestive organs. He explains the action of these organs and
dwells upon the danger of getting sick by over-eating and drinking, receives
some fifty dollars from the poor sick and leaves.
Among the throng of humbugs, when all seems dark and despairing, an
announcement is whispered in the ear of the sick that God has opened a way for
their recovery and sent an angel of mercy who has discovered a flower that will
cure everything that can be cured. So here is introduced an imposter who will
give Lobelia emetics till they cease to affect the patient, pretending that all
diseases must yield to it. This has its day and another comes up. All this goes to
show that the mind of man is like an old fiddle played on by every kind of
quackery relating to roots and herbs. Now I know all about these things. With my
wisdom I understand them all as Job said to Zophar, "What ye know the same do
I know also; I am not inferior unto you." I use nothing, yet I could easily use all
kinds of drugs. Then Job said "Ye are forgers of lies, ye all physicians of no
value. Oh, that ye would altogether hold your peace and it should be your
wisdom." This expresses the opinion of Job about the classes I have mentioned.
He said at another time "No doubt that ye are the people and wisdom shall die
with you." He saw that these wise men and philosophers were an injury to the
progress of science. His God was a God of wisdom and proved all things by his
science. Therefore he knew all they knew and saw it was only an opinion. So he
said their wisdom would die with them, but he know that his wisdom would not,
for his life was in his wisdom and that was his science. He could see that all they
said amounted to nothing. Job believed in a God but had not really attached his
own senses to his wisdom as a progressive being.
I have seen the working of popular belief and know that diseases and remedies
are the invention of man, and the very proof which is brought to establish their
wisdom goes to substantiate what I say. For instance, an emetic everyone thinks
is to clean out the stomach. So when people have eaten too much, they can take
a Lobelia emetic; also if they think their lungs are diseased, take a Lobelia
emetic, and if they have the dropsy, take the same. Now I will call your attention
to what this belief amounts to carried out toward God. What kind of a God is it
that made the earth to bring forth trees, herbs and everything that hath life? All
this was before man was created; therefore did He make these medicines and
the codfish with a liver to cure consumption before the disease was made? This
belief would certainly suppose that God made the remedies before the disease,
and if He made all the remedies these quacks say He did, He certainly is the
greatest enemy to mankind. Absurd as this sounds, we believe it and are
affected by our beliefs, and this makes man the most dependent of all God's
creatures. He is merely a target to be fired at by every person's opinion. I can
show by facts that every person will admit that no kind of medicine has any more
effect of itself than almost any kind of food or drink that we use daily, but our
ignorance placed some kind of virtue in them as we place wisdom in some one's
opinion. The truth which places all disease in the mind can explain the operation
of remedies. God is Wisdom and man is opinion; therefore man cannot live in
Wisdom and be diseased. But the child of wisdom reduced to science is held in
bondage by opinions, and to show that there are diseases according to the belief
of man is to show that they are made by circumstances which cannot be
controlled except by correcting the error that brought them about, while
ignorance would prescribe some medicine that God had made from the
foundation of the world.
October 1862
The Relation of This Truth to the Sick
BU 7:39, LC 8:161
What course of argument must be used to make the masses understand this
truth by which I correct the errors that make man sick? What relation has this
truth to any one and how does it stand to the sick? It is the sick man's friend, and
those who can understand it are related to those who do not understand as a
teacher who wishes to make his pupil understand the principles of mathematics.
He is not to teach mathematics but to explain what the rules mean, so the pupil is
not to copy a mathematical work because that gives him no wisdom in regard to
the truth; the disciple is not to be above the science, nor the teacher above the
truth, but the latter is to explain the science by the words of the truth.
To illustrate, I stand to this Science as the teacher or expounder of it, not as the
Truth itself. So when the Truth says through me that all disease is in the mind,
you want me to explain what it means. You ask the question because you do not
understand what is meant by the mind. It is this: all opinion, belief, reason and
everything that can be changed originating in man-all these are included in the
word mind. Thought is a seed or an effect of this great ocean of mind. The word
mind covers all man's reasoning as the word wood covers all vegetable
substances. A chair is made of wood but it is an idea made out of wood. In the
same way mind is the material and disease is a manufacture made of the
material, but the wisdom that forms the idea is called something else. Here you
see that mind embraces every part of man but his wisdom, and here is the
distinction which the world makes only in a different sense. The world calls the
parts mind and matter. I call them wisdom and matter. Therefore when I use
"mind," I use it as matter containing no intelligence, but it is like sound connected
with something to which we attach intelligence.
October 1862
Illustrating the Word Mind
BU 34:7, LC 8:177
[orig. untitled]
I will illustrate the mind. Mind and matter are like the soil and the earth. The body
is the earth and the mind the soil. The earth is the foundation of the soil which
cannot be seen by the earth. The soil receives its life from the atmosphere;
therefore, that is the real intelligence of man, for the minds of individuals mingle
like the atmosphere and every person's identity exists in this atmosphere. For
wisdom or belief of every man is the soil as the rose bush is in the earth, but its
odor is in the atmosphere. So it is with man. We see him as a tree and his brain
as the fruit of the tree. This is his mind or odor which ascends from the earth and
contains all the passions and feelings of the tree or natural man. This is as far as
philosophy has analyzed man to trace him to earth and there leave him in
mystery. David says, "As for man his days are as grass, as a flower of the field,
so he flourisheth." Ps. 103:15. Job says, "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is
he? As the waters fall from the sea, and the flood decayeth and dryeth up; so
man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake,
nor be raised out of their sleep." Job 14: 10, 11, 12. Here is where Job ended
man, yet he had a vague hope that there might be something after this state. He
believed there was a God and he hoped he might see him at the end of the
world.
Lucretius, one of the wisest and most learned of philosophers of the Pagan
school says, "The nature of the soul we know not, whether formed at the body or
at the birth infused and then by death cut off, she flourishes as bodies do, or
whether she descends to the dark caves and dreadful lakes of hell or after death,
inspired with heavenly instinct, she returns into the brutes." In another place, he
says, "If men were once convinced that death is the sure end of all their pains,
they might with reason then resist the force of all religion and condemn the
threats of poets." Ennius used to say that Homer's ghost appeared to him from
hell and bitterly weeping discovered to him the nature of things. Others believed
that the souls of ancient poets took possession of some living man, which is the
same belief as that of modern spiritualists. All this shows that the soul, which is
now called the spirit and was at the time of Jesus called the same, is one and the
same thing. I see no difference between the Christian and Pagan in this respect.
Both destroy man, but the Christian introduces a belief, which would flow from
Job's religion, while the spiritualist would agree with the Pythagorean doctrine.
Jesus taught to man a truth which will destroy their philosophies and give them in
their place wisdom. I will present some of its characteristics as they come to me
in curing disease.
I have said before that man dissolves and passes into space, carrying with him
all his knowledge, but as he never has attached his life to wisdom, he only knows
himself in matter. Therefore he lives in matter, and this is the belief of nine-tenths
of mankind. Jesus tried to introduce a proof that man exists outside of his belief
and I have learned the evidence he had of this truth. It is this. Man including his
senses, sight, taste, etc., and his wisdom is not of matter nor has he the qualities
of matter. Pagan philosophy and religion made them a part of matter and the
belief in the transmigration of souls, which is akin to modern spiritualism,
observed the more intelligent belief in progression.
Jesus contended that he understood what he said and did, but their prejudice
was so strong in favor of his having a power that they could not understand when
he tried to teach them that his acts and words proceeded from a wisdom superior
to their belief and that it could be taught. To question their belief was to make
himself equal with God. In the same way when I say that I know how I cure, this
same class of people say I blaspheme and make myself equal with Christ. They
do not know how I cure and dislike to admit that any one else does; consequently
they strive to make my explanation as objectionable as possible. I will present the
evidence of the faith or truth in me. I know that I can take a person's feelings, and
I also know that if I did not come in contact with another, I should not be certain
that the feelings were theirs and hence a person's body is not a sure sign that
their trouble is in their body or in some other's.
According to my experience, mind or matter in solution is a thing in common
which all admit contains life; each person has his senses in this life or mind as a
globule of water is in the ocean. So if a sensation is made on the water, each
particle is affected and each may locate its trouble in itself. For instance,
consumption is as much an enemy to man as a wolf, and man is afraid of it.
When a sensation is made on this mind or belief which I call matter and the idea
consumption is called up, man's senses see the image in this matter or mind.
Fear comes and the reflection is thrown on his idea body and then he believes
that he has the disease, while the idea of consumption is a lie started by the error
of our own belief and accepted as a truth.
In the same way, when sitting by a patient, I feel the sensation in my mind and
immediately a figure or spirit is made which is reflected as an impression on my
body. Now if I were not aware of the cause, I might think I was the author or
originator of this horrid belief, but knowing that it is only the reflection from my
patient's mind, the idea dies. The wisdom that put me in possession of this truth
is Christ, the wisdom above my patient. Jesus says, "Fear hath torment and
perfect love (or wisdom) casteth out fear." By this wisdom I explain their fears
away and destroy their torment and this process is a science. Is it a sin to know
and teach this for the happiness of mankind and do I make myself equal with
Christ? If I do, then I will submit to the odium willingly.
In writing these pieces, I am often interrupted by patients calling to be examined.
I stopped here to see a patient and I will state the case as a proof of what I have
written. It was a lady whom I had attended frequently but this time her symptoms
were a little changed. She felt as though she had the asthma. When I told her of
this state of things, she said she had been so affected but at this present time,
she could breathe with perfect ease. Still the fear was in her. I said it was fear, for
her body showed no symptoms of it, but I could see her in her mind trying to
make it. She told me that she had been up all night with her father who had been
very sick with asthma, and she had taken it but was better now. Here was a fair
illustration of what I have written. She said I had told her how she felt. I then said
to her, If I did not know more than you, I should have thought I was going to have
the disease, but my knowledge prevented me. If you had known that your father's
fears affected your mind, you would not have had the disease unless you had
believed it catching. But I believe it is nothing but a lie condensed into a belief,
and we having attached our lives to it are afraid. Here you see the body is
nothing, but the trouble is in us, and every man has a body to himself that he
places a value on; he looks after it as he does any other property and if the
expense of repairing it is more than the value, he will abandon it as a Captain
abandons his vessel. He will not lose his life to save his property except to a
certain extent.
November 1862
Language I
BU 34:18, LC 8:188
[original untitled]
In introducing my ideas to the world I labor under the disadvantage as anyone
does who seeks to bring into language what has never been embodied in thought
or words. In early ages, a celebrated Roman presented his philosophy in a poem
and finding great difficulty in making himself understood he thus apologized for
his language:
I know 'tis hard to explain in Latin verse
The dark mystic notions of the Greeks,
(For I have things to say, require new words
Because the tongue is poor, the subject new)
But your virtue and the pleasure I expect
From tender friendship, makes me bear the toil.
And spend the silent night with watchful eyes
Studious of words and numbers I shall use
To open to your mind such scenes of light
Which show the hidden qualities of things unknown.
If he, who commenced with man in matter, reasoned him body and soul out of
matter, dissolved him into space and finally lost him, found language inadequate
to his subject, some sympathy can be had for one who has struggled day and
night to rid himself of the earthly matter and rise triumphant into the world of
Science whence matter is seen moving as though it contained life. Wisdom is a
solid truth and truth cannot be increased or diminished. Therefore, wisdom fills all
space. Let us try to identify man in this wisdom that has no matter. A man's
wisdom contains his memory of events and his identity of himself as a man. He
knows he has a body and this is not matter but wisdom. To make a man lose his
knowledge that he has legs is to deprive him of his wisdom as far as his legs are
concerned. And if his wisdom is his belief, that can be dissolved so that he
cannot have any identity at all; then where is he? An answer in part may be
found in Job 4th Ch. where a spirit passed before the Temanite, showing the
difference between the spiritual and natural man.
For a further illustration, take two rose bushes, one bearing a white rose and the
other a red. Let these represent two children of different complexions. Call the
rose the brain or intellect. From each child flows wisdom, as fragrance comes
from the rose, and at first it is confined to the brain. The idea of an intelligence
outside of the brain is a mystery. But like odors, their intellects mingle, forming a
new combination in the mind and this process goes on till the intellect sees that it
contains all the elements of the brain as the odor contains the substance of the
rose. Finally, the children get to that state where they see and reason that matter
dissolved contains the elements of man and here they stop. For in their reason
they never count themselves but speak as though matter is the only thing that
contains life. Now touch the one who reasons and ask him who it is that talks, the
brain or the intelligence. If the odor or intelligence speaks, then it has language,
but if there is an intelligence in the odor that speaks, then it speaks in and
through the odor and makes itself felt by the rose or brain. I will explain this by
what passes while sitting by a sick person.
Every belief contains matter or ideas which throw off an odor like a rose. The
white and red roses throw off their peculiar odors. The white is white to itself and
the red is red to itself. In like manner, man throws off two odors: one matter and
the other wisdom. As wisdom is in the odor of man, it is disturbed by the matter
or mind which also has an odor that is like a polished mirror and the fear is the
image of the belief. Wisdom sees the image in the mirror, held there by its fear.
My wisdom disturbs the opinion. This affects the belief; this deadens the mirror till
the image or disease is gone; then this is health.
I find that I am not generally understood when I say mind is matter. Words are
not matter but they are the names of something either matter or solid. The word
solid cannot be applied to anything that can be changed. Therefore, it must be
applied to wisdom because that fills all space and cannot be made larger or
denser; it is in and through all matter, which is called solid. I apply the word only
to wisdom. Opinions I call matter, for they can be changed. The word does not
change but the substance does. All names, as I have said, are to represent
something. As this wisdom which fills all space is in all matter, matter seems to
have life of itself. But life is in the knowledge of this change, not in the thing that
changes. So when I say all disease is in the mind, I do not mean in the word, but
in the substance. For instance, all the elements of the rose are in the odor; and if
the word matter is applied to the rose or living bush, the odor would represent its
mind or wisdom, but the wisdom that spoke the rose into existence is not a part
of either; yet it holds it in all its different combinations.
The word wisdom embraces science, for that is the name of wisdom reduced to
practice. There is no science or wisdom in opinions or belief so they are
embraced in the word mind, for mind embraces all that can be seen of man. I do
not believe that because man has invented words to destroy himself, he is
destroyed; but that being ignorant of himself he supposes he is something apart
from wisdom; and that when he knows himself he will see that the very wisdom
that speaks, speaks through the very mind or matter. To illustrate that the eternal
principle of wisdom, which is in matter, is not a part of it, but outside of it, as
much as a man's sight is outside his spectacles, I once put a lady into a
mesmeric state, that the doctor might extract a needle from her arm. I was
seated by her. She had every sense and faculty as perfect as in her waking
state, but she contained no matter except as an idea. Therefore pain was an idea
and she had sympathy according to her wisdom. And being in sympathy with me,
she took her arm for mine. According to her belief, to cut my arm must pain me,
so she said, Does it not hurt you? I said, No, and she replied, I should think it
would.
Here were two persons: one coming within my senses, as a being of mind, the
other I was not aware of. This unknown person still lived with all the faculties and
wisdom of herself, while the earthly body was as lifeless and unfeeling as marble.
This unseen person is the real person and to deceive her is to make her grieve,
not for herself but for the man of matter. Every sensation is a disturbance of this
mind and every idea is made of this matter. And matter is constantly throwing off
particles each of which contains the elements of the idea. Ideas are as separate
as living seeds. An apple will not bring forth a pear, neither will the seed or idea
of consumption produce liver complaint. But a pear may be engrafted into an
apple tree and so can spinal disease be engrafted into consumption. Each
disease throws from itself particles which contain the elements of the original
idea. This atmosphere or odor is like a mirror and the idea is in it. This is seen by
the other life or identity which I call wisdom, which becomes disturbed from
sympathy with the person in this odor or belief. To make my meaning plain, I
must represent two men, one sick and the other in health; one, a man of opinions
and the other a man of wisdom. Wisdom is not science but truth, which reduced
to practice is called science. To know that you exist is a truth; to prove that you
always will exist is a science, because man has not the wisdom to understand
himself. It is a truth that we have a body called matter and it is a truth that we
believe it will die, but it is not a truth that it will live again, for this is merely an
opinion and must admit a doubt. Wisdom does not admit a doubt, and whether
we are of wisdom or of matter is the problem to solve. Here is where man had
arrived at the time that Jesus came before the world. Philosophy had reasoned
and proved that all which constitute man must change and therefore must be
matter. But the religious community believed that this matter was reunited at the
end of the world and took its identity.
November 1862
My Ignorance of English
BU 34:16, LC 8:186
Some persons naturally suppose from my remarks to them that I am ignorant of
the English language. To the charge, I plead guilty, so far as education goes, and
I ask the indulgence that any person requires who tried to explain to another
what that person is ignorant of. There never has been and never will be a
language by which an editor can be made to understand a scientific fact. Men are
all more or less bigoted, superstitious, and conceited, and these qualities are not
modified by any kind of literary attainments. On the contrary, education magnifies
them in some persons, while if instead of reading and studying from books they
had mingled with the world and learned a little of human nature, they might have
been more intelligent and liberal.
For myself and my mode of curing, all the language I really need is words to
explain to the patient his feelings and the causes. It does not follow that a pilot
should know Greek or Latin, or even how to read, provided he knows where he
is. If the Captain has all the language at his command and can talk like an orator
and is ignorant of the place he is in, it profiteth him nothing. I stand to the sick like
a pilot and if the patient places wisdom in the understanding of language, he is
ignorant of himself. My wisdom consists in what I know beyond my patient, and if
I make issue on language while we are disputing the point, the ship may go to
the bottom or on to the rocks. Every person is a book of himself and in most
instances a sealed book whose title page the owner has never read and about
whose author nothing is known. So when I sit by a patient, I open the book and
read the life of the author and sometimes the first impression is so weak that the
patient winces, but it is the reflection of his own self, and if it does not please, the
fact is not diminished.
Diseases are the effect of disobeying some article of our belief; for instance, we
believe that it is a sin to steal, hence stealing is a disgrace, and no one wants to
be twitted of it. So it is with every disease not accounted for by some deception
or from being made to believe a lie. When with the sick, I come in contact with
the life of I he patient and expose their hypocrisy which they do not like to have
done, so they try to get up a false issue by attacking my learning, assuming that
they know more than I do about my beliefs, thus talking about what they know
nothing. They suppose wisdom is in words, when these are only sounds. A man
may have the w hole of the Webster's dictionary at his tongue's end and not
know a single fact as he ought to know it. Such a person thinks that he must be
wise for he has language, but I test a man's wisdom by what I say when I sit by
him, for then I have no opinion but am like an instrument upon which the patient
plays his own tune. And if it sounds silly to them, it is their own folly, for I do
nothing but listen. But when it is over and each is left alone, then comes the
reaction, and if they are as disagreeable to themselves as they are to me, I do
not blame them for wishing themselves out of the world. I should wish them the
same, if I had no more charity for them than they have for themselves.
November 1862
Resurrection I
BU 34:12, LC 8:181
[orig. untitled]
I have written much to try to show that the principal error in man's belief that
Jesus sought to destroy was the heathen idea of the resurrection of the dead.
Many facts prove that this was the case and among the following is strong
evidence; those who held to that doctrine were the very ones who murdered
Jesus. Consequently Jesus must have opposed their popular religious opinions,
and he silenced even the Sadducees in regard to the resurrection. Jesus denied
the resurrection of the body but he taught the resurrection of the science of life
from the opinion of error. The belief that man lies in the ground till the last day or
till time shall be no more was absurd, as it led men into all sorts of wickedness,
and caused the thinking classes to disbelieve in any God whatever.
The Pagan philosophers were the only men who had any real idea of a wisdom
that governed all things. They believed in one Great First Cause, and they
reasoned that life was attached to matter, which decomposed and returned to its
original elements, and that the soul escaped and entered some living form.
Popular superstition contained the ideas of heaven and hell and many believed
that at the end of the world, the particles of the body would be united and the
soul would take possession. Lucretius describes the popular religious belief,
which was too grossly absurd for wise men to accept; therefore such looked
forward with delight to the change, for under their theories man had no hope after
the body was dead. It was not strange therefore that as age advanced, they
should like to fall asleep. The Christian was not reconciled to giving any peace to
the man of sorrow, so he believed that man was again united with a body and
sent to some place to be punished. This made some insane, while some killed
themselves from despair.
As time rolled on and science progressed, these ideas looked more t absurd, but
as persons were afraid to investigate, they were nervous when their ideas were
disturbed. Yet reformers came up changing the ideas of death, till at the time of
Jesus the world had almost become believers in the supernatural and
spiritualism was quite general. These beliefs showed that the people's minds had
been exercised with the idea of man's existence after death and that they were
ready to receive a truth that would explain it. Jesus sought to bring them out of
their beliefs in harmony with his wisdom. Herod showed his belief in spiritualism
when told that Jesus was performing miracles, by saying that it was John the
Baptist, when he knew that both the persons had been alive at the same time.
Jesus had this belief against him. His idea of spirits was different from that of the
world. The latter arose from ignorance, while their belief produced the
phenomena as is done in our days. The wisdom of Jesus, being of a higher
order, showed him that the people's wisdom was based on a belief that could be
destroyed; therefore in communicating to them he spiritualized all their ideas and
only handled their beliefs to illustrate his wisdom which was of the First Cause,
and could consequently control all phenomena and explain all beliefs.
The people, in their ignorance, would produce phenomena to all appearance the
same as Jesus did, and they accounted for it on the doctrine of the agency of
departed spirits. He knew that to apply his wisdom to the healing of the nation
and the individual was a science, while the miracles they wrought were from a
belief in a power that neither the person who operated or the one who was cured
could explain. Under this error, the world was kept in ignorance of themselves,
and all their life subject to disease and death. Those who made a difference
between the cures of Jesus and those of the people, when they bring no proof to
substantiate or explain it, make a distinction without a difference.
My object is to show that Jesus denied any difference in the cure; it was the
same whether performed by him or them, but he did make a difference between
the two modes of cure. The world received wisdom from the cures of Jesus, else
he differed not from the magicians. The idea that Jesus derived his power from
the spirits or from the devil or from any agency independent of wisdom was an
error so strongly planted in the popular mind that the people would not receive
his explanation. I will illustrate the trouble by my own case. I perform cures and
so do others and the people admit both, and seeing no difference in them, judge
me by others. Consequently, I am made as ignorant as they are, for they do not
pretend to explain their cures but attribute them to the spirits. Now I know there is
a difference and I can explain to the sick that it exists in the wisdom of the
operator. It is the same in music. A person may play on an instrument by rote as
well as another who plays scientifically and the world in its ignorance cannot see
any difference, yet there are those who can see a difference, who may not be
able to explain it, and whose attempted explanation may lead the people still
further into error.
This was the difficulty with Jesus, and he told whom he cured to show
themselves to the High Priest and rulers but say nothing. The blind man followed
his counsel and merely said, "Whereas I was blind, now I see." Jesus saw a truth
that led man out of matter into wisdom, and when this wisdom was reduced to
practice, it became a science and the necessity of performing cures was the field
for this science. As man's opinion made the people sick, his wisdom could
explain the error and change the mind and out of this change the cures came.
This wisdom put man into possession of a truth by which the mind becomes
subject to it. Man's wisdom being in his mind, which to truth is matter,
consequently dies with the matter. Job says, "Ye are the people, and wisdom
shall die with you." So at death man dies with all his wisdom. Jesus' life was not
in man's wisdom but in God's wisdom. Therefore to him, their wisdom was
matter. This matter I call mind, which is matter under control of this wisdom or
Christ.
When Jesus said this Christ should rise, he meant that this wisdom should rise
from the errors of mankind and should subject mind to this truth. According to
Jesus, mind could not cover the word wisdom, for wisdom is wisdom and nothing
else. John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God." So this was the name of something that could not be
changed. All matter is changing and subject to death, for death is the change of
matter from one state to another. Mind, matter, soul and life apply to these
various changes. In the days of Jesus, people had begun to reason about a
resurrection. There had been some glimmering of the soul's immortality, but the
idea that the body rose was not held by heathen religion, so the people had to
reason out this belief. Job says, 19:26, "And though after my skin worms destroy
this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." Still the doctrine of the resurrection
was unknown to the wisest heathen; it was peculiar to the Gospel or disciples of
Jesus. Still as they had some idea of immortality, they had begun to reason on
the subject. The Sadducees asked Jesus whose wife should the woman who had
seven husbands be in the resurrection. If the scriptures had taught a resurrection
of the dead, this was a fair question, but Jesus knew that it was not taught by any
writer of the Old Testament.
November 1862
What Is Happiness and Misery?
BU 34:5, LC 8:175
We are told that religion makes happiness. Let us see what it is. There cannot be
such an element as happiness of itself nor such a state outside of man's wisdom.
Then happiness must be the result of either our wisdom or our belief. If it is from
wisdom it becomes a part of ourselves but if it is from belief it becomes adopted
and we may lose it. We often hear a person say that religion makes him happy.
Now if religion is anything outside of ourselves then it contains neither happiness
nor misery, but if we seek this something we call religion we are happy when we
get it. Can any person define what they get that makes them happy except that it
is a belief and that belief which will make one person happy will make another
miserable.
Look at any religious society and you will find that the individuals cannot all agree
in belief. So those who do agree are slaves to those whose authority they admit
as their rulers.
A church has its pastor, its deacons and other officers, also its forms to which its
members must subscribe, and they, being numerous and each having an opinion
of themselves, are either led or ruled into submission by the pastor. This
sometimes makes the yoke grievous to be borne for the burdens are heavy,
while they who bind them are happy for they rule and their power is their
happiness.
The poor soldier who fights for the leaders sinks under the burden bound upon
him. To keep up his courage the officers hold out the idea that he is fighting for a
great and good cause, and a crown of glory in heaven awaits those who die upon
the battlefield. This is all the happiness the privates get. So they fight to keep
society from ruin while their reward is the satisfaction of fighting the devil and
supporting the officers, and their happiness is what follows their belief.
Reverse the tables, making the priest the laborer or soldier, and tax him to pay
the former soldier for his instructions, then it would be shown how well their
principle of action, which they preach to others, applies to themselves.
In this war let the officers and politicians become soldiers and laborers and
peace would soon triumph. I will illustrate happiness. Suppose a person is told
that certain food if eaten will produce certain effects. He then eats the food and
the effect is produced; this is proof that the food produced the effect for he
reasons that if he had not eaten it the effect would not have occurred. This he
lays to the food, but that, containing no happiness or misery, is not really the
author of his misery; therefore it must be in himself. Suppose I eat the same kind
of food and feel well; the food does not contain that feeling so that is in me.
Suppose furthermore I say to him, The food is not the cause of your trouble but
the opinion of the person who told you it would hurt you is the author of the
mischief and he had been deceived and believes the food contained something
that was hard to digest. You from sympathy became affected and you were
nervous when you ate the food. You then attached your senses to the fear and
lay your trouble to the food. Here you see misery is what follows a belief, and
happiness is that state that follows our belief or wisdom. If our wisdom can give
us a science that will correct our opinion, this is happiness that the world knows
not of.
November 1862
The Word Life and Its Common Application
BU 34:3, LC 8:173
The word life in all its applications is attached to matter. It begins, grows to
maturity, then decays, and at last dies; this makes life matter of itself, for
anything that grows to a certain stage and then decays is matter. The expression
is often used, Life has its bounds which it cannot pass, and man's life is
considered three score and ten, and the exception proves the rule. The wisdom
which teaches my theory, teaches that life has no matter except as it exists in our
belief. As matter is deposited into various forms, for example, into a tree, man
calls the process a growth and applies the word life to the growth. After it has
reached a certain state it commences to react and decompose and this process
is called death. Then the dust returns to the dust as it were, and the life to man
who placed it in the tree. Still this life is not known, for man cannot believe in life
independent of matter. Man reasons in this way about the body. A child
commences to grow and he calls the growth of the child life; when it has reached
a certain maturity it begins to decompose and die like the tree; then the dust
returns to dust and the life of the body to the belief of the living. No such ideas as
these come from wisdom, for wisdom puts life in the senses, and they having no
matter contain neither life nor death. As life is in the senses if we attach these to
wisdom, our life is in our wisdom and as that never dies, our life does not die.
Happiness is contentment not life nor death; misery is discord, not wisdom but
error and belief. If then you attach your life to an error, like putting life in the body,
your life is unhappy according to the loss or disturbance.
I will explain more clearly. Life comprehends all that man thinks of and his
happiness is in his life and that being attached to ideas called matter, he puts life
or value in the matter. For instance if he should lose his watch, he grieves just
the amount of the value it contains to him, while the value is really in himself, for
he does not grieve as though he had lost a friend. A slave holder owns a slave
who is worth to him one thousand dollars. He feels the loss of the black but
owing to his education he cannot see that the slave is different from any other
piece of property of the same value. He also has a son, who instead of being an
income, is an expense to him, but should he lose him, the value being in his love
for the child, it is not measured by dollars and cents. The love is in him and not in
the boy. The slave has life and so has the son, and just as the father deals out to
each, so shall it be dealt back to him. If the father considers the slave mere
property and the son a loving being capable of enjoyment then his happiness is
the son's and the son's the father's, but the slave receiving no such sympathy of
course cannot return the same, so discord springs up in the slave and the sin of
the father is visited upon the son. Correct this error, the slave becomes a servant
and is contented. It is the same with disease; drive the sin out of the father and a
more healthy atmosphere surrounds him. Truth corrects the evil, for it is an evil.
November 1862
Defense against an Accusation of Making Myself Equal to Christ
BU 29:16, LC 9:18
I am often accused of making myself equal to Christ when attempting to explain
the theory of my cures. Now why should I be accused of what I do not intend to
convey? It is because the people are deceived of themselves.
Christ is the embodiment of that wisdom that sympathizes with the earthly man
and reveals to him the truth that will correct his errors, forgive his sins and heal
his diseases. I make a difference between what I say as a man and what I feel as
a physician. As a man I cannot see or feel a person's feelings, for such is the
natural state of man. But as a physician, I give myself in perfect faith to the
guidance of a higher wisdom than that of man which feels and sympathizes with
the sick. Everyone who becomes aware of this wisdom gives it the praise and
calls it by some name. Jesus called it his Father and the Son of God. Herod,
when told of the marvelous words of Jesus, called it the spirit of John the Baptist.
Peter called it Christ. Therefore people generally believed in some spiritual power
acting on man as they do now. Many persons tell me my power comes from
some spirit and give me more than I ask, but very few are willing to admit that I
know more about my cures than they do. Jesus never said that he, the man, was
God; but he strove to teach the people of the existence of a living principle of
wisdom to which matter was subject, and this truth being fully revealed to his
mind, he called it the son of God, admitting it in every act and never teaching that
the flesh and blood of the natural man was God. The dispute between him and
the people was not whether he, the man Jesus, was God or Christ or John the
Baptist, but whether the man Jesus had any claim to wisdom superior to that of
any wise man or prophet. He contended that he had and, in his words, he
showed a wisdom superior to their own; but they, not understanding how such
works as his could be done intelligently, were deaf to his words of wisdom and
ascribed to him a mysterious power. Therefore they accepted his works as
miracles but failed to receive him as a teacher of truth. So he was a stumbling
block to the Jews' and to the Greeks' foolishness.
When I undertake to say that I know how I cure, I am accused by those as wise
as Greeks or Jews of being a fool and making myself equal with Christ. So far as
Jesus is concerned, I do not put myself on a level with Him any more than I do
with Daniel Webster; but had Daniel Webster, with all his learning, been a
chemist, provided I could produce a chemical experiment according to the
science of chemistry, my works as far as they go are equal to his for both are
under the same law. So with Jesus. Jesus as a good or bad man I have nothing
to say about. But his wisdom which I consider from a higher source than man's
opinion was a truth the understanding and application of which, for the benefit of
the sick, is a science open to all and contains wisdom the world knows not of. I
have no doubt that He wished to communicate that the natural man was error
and the Son of God should arise from matter and that the resurrection from the
dead was to come into this light or wisdom. The Jews believed themselves to be
the chosen people of God and possessed of all truth and they could not admit
anyone wiser than themselves; so they could not believe that Jesus knew any
more about his miracles than the sorcerers and magicians who claimed their
power from departed spirits. When asked by certain men how he did these
things, he answered, The baptism of John, was it of Heaven or of man? They
dared not answer, for if they had said it was Heaven, he would say, Why did ye
not believe? So after communing they answered, We cannot tell. It is easy to see
that if they said that his power came from God or Heaven they would have killed
him. Accordingly, he answered, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these
things. At another time the Sadducees put to him the question Whose wife
should the woman who had seven husbands be in the resurrection? Jesus taught
a resurrection. But according to the belief of the Pharisees who were the only
class that taught the doctrine, but thinking that Jesus held the same ideas that
the Pharisees believed, they stated a case to see if He could answer it. But he
answered, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the
resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels of
Heaven. He taught that man should rise from an error into a truth or from a blind
belief into actual knowledge. Immediately after this a Pharisee lawyer, hearing
that he had silenced the Sadducees asked him a question tempting him, saying,
Master, which is the greatest commandment in the Law, supposing that Jesus
being uneducated could not answer. But Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and the
second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two
commandments hang all the Law and the prophets. Jesus then asked the
Pharisees, What think ye of Christ, whose son is he? They say unto him, The
Son of David. He said, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord-if David then
calls him Lord how is he the son? And no man was able to answer him a word,
neither dared any man from that day forth to ask him any more questions. Now it
cannot be thought that they believed that the man Jesus was David's son,
therefore they must have referred to the power that Jesus called Christ and he,
Jesus, asked them their ideas concerning it. He asked his disciples, Whom do
men say I, the son of man, am? They answered, Some say John the Baptist,
some Elias, etc. He sayeth unto them, Whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter
answered, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus answered
him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this
unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven. Then he told how he should be
persecuted by all men because of the truth, but that the truth should rise from
superstition and take to itself a body to show that man should not die, as was
believed. He wished to communicate this one fact that his wisdom was outside
the man Jesus and that Jesus was only matter used as a medium in the hands of
Wisdom. Then Jesus would be to Christ what gold is to the chemist, a medium
through which he can communicate his wisdom concerning it. He could dissolve
the matter so that the form should decay and disappear, and still he could
construct from matter which it was his wisdom to control, the Christ, or assume a
body which those whom he taught could see. Then death was swallowed up in
science.
November 1862
Belief of Man
BU 34:44, LC 8:216
[orig. untitled]
The word man, according to the world, embraces the two ideas of matter and
spirit. This I think will be admitted by Christians and all who do not believe in
annihilation. The wisest reasoner commences with man in matter and reasons
him into spirit, always keeping him the same man and only changing from a
natural to a spiritual body. The mystery is what to do with the natural senses
belonging to the natural body. Some say they die, and others, that they are lost.
Now if man cannot determine what becomes of the bodily senses or what they
are, how can they tell of what does not come within this knowledge? For they
have never seen a spiritual body; therefore their belief is in what has been
conjured up from some unaccounted phenomena. I will illustrate the explanation
of these two men according to the theory of truth which I practice.
It is a well known fact that the subject can see whatever the mesmerizer
imagines. The latter can make the object move and have life to the subject,
knowing all the while that the life is his own idea. But the subject seeing life, to
him it is a truth and the object has an identity as a living being subject to the
same laws as himself. Like that of every idea, this life is kept in existence till it
begins to act on its own account, according to the laws of life, under the principle
of man's belief. This represents the natural man, put into this form by God, the
first cause. This wisdom animates matter or error and man reasons as though he
was the author of his own being. His knowledge is confined to his senses, and as
they cannot see outside of his belief, he lives in his own wisdom. Job says of
such, "Ye are the wisdom of this world, but your wisdom will die with you." I will
now introduce the scientific man.
He is the Son of God, while the other is the son of man. The latter is merely the
changing of matter to become a medium of a higher development, as a forest is
cut down to prepare for a higher cultivation of the earth. The life of this man is
ignorant of itself, for he knows not what manner of man he is. As matter becomes
freed from error, it is more rarefied, and as man becomes more acquainted with
himself, he will see that he is only the shadow of a wisdom which he never knew;
and although he seemed to have life, he had deceived himself believing that he
was the author of his own being. So he is in a certain sense, in his belief, but that
would only keep him in existence for a certain time.
The beginning of the scientific man is to know that the natural man is nothing but
ideas, like furniture, made from matter, having no value of himself but is merely a
medium for a higher wisdom. The first thing is to make the invisible man wise.
Mesmerism proves that the invisible man is the same man as in the visible state,
with all his senses, faculties, etc. He is like a blind man suddenly receiving his
sight. Imprison a man and educate him in all the branches of science, literature
and philosophy as far as possible; then while asleep transfer him to the light and
he is a spiritual or mesmeric man. How much more does he know out-of-doors
than in his dungeon? Where is the difference? In the light, he sees what he read
of but he is the same being. This is the spiritual man. He is in matter with all his
senses, and those left in the dark look upon him according to their belief. He is
dead to that class of persons who never had an idea of light.
When the wise tell the ignorant that those who are gone come back, they won't
believe and those who have never seen the light except by faith think there must
be a change in those who have left. So even to them it is a mystery. Now here is
a man in the light but still in the dark. Get all men into this light and then men
have taken one step towards wisdom. Then those in the dark are dead to those
in the light. Each man is to himself the same as he was. Suppose he who is in
the light be placed again in the dark. Then he is one risen from the darkness into
the light and who returns to the darkness to instruct those still there. What is the
difference in the man who has returned to the prison from what he was before he
went into the light? He differs in his sight. He has seen what he read and thought
about, so now he is in a different condition, for what to his friends is a mystery is
to him a reality. Suppose one of the prisoners born blind and deaf suddenly
brought to the light, he would not see objects but shadows like clouds. Now as
you associate his sight with your explanation (for I am supposing his eyesight
comes and also his hearing and other faculties), you must teach him like a child.
If he was as ignorant as a child, his sight would be as contracted and as his
knowledge increased, his sight would expand; for wisdom is sight, whether
coming through the eye, ear, taste or smell.
If you know a fact, that is light, but if you think you know anything, that is twilight,
but neither is science. Let all men be in this light; they are then in this world of
matter but purer. The natural man and brute are in matter, like the earth; the error
is out of the earth in mortar. The so-called wise are in liquid, the scientific, in
ether. Each grade sees the one below and admits the one above is a mystery. As
one works out of himself, he becomes the medium of the one above him; he
imparts life to the matter but the same identity continues. The river that runs
down the Kennebec is the same, but the water is changed and that is the
Kennebec and not the banks. So the intellect of man is the man, not the identity
body, for the intellect like the water can make a body or river when it please.
There is still a higher person than those I have spoken of, that is he who can sit
and know that he is in two places at the same time and prove it by others
admitting it. He has passed from death unto life and all below him is either
darkness or twilight.
December 1862
Illustration of the Use and Abuse of Language
BU 34:31, LC 8:201
No one knows the misery which results from misapplying language to ideas
which never had an existence except in man's own brain. Take for instance the
word life. The child learns that life is in what he cannot see; he is made to believe
that God is a living being, so he naturally supposes that there must be other
living beings that he cannot see, for instance the Evil One, who may harm him. In
the country bears and wild animals have been made terrors to children. We are
also told that our food contains life, that it decays and dies and from this
decomposition comes life. This is taught to children and they grow up with these
ideas. Now to the child this life contains intelligence, for when we speak of it, it is
always associated with some matter we call living. This life that is attached to
these invisible forms or ideas which are a terror to mankind is what makes him
superstitious because he believes that some invisible spirit is near him and he
reasons about it as he would about anything visible that he feared.
This superstition has caused the people to believe that God was present in an
invisible form and that sometimes he would talk to Moses and sometimes would
affect the people with disease. This kept them nervous and all the time in fear, for
their ignorance and prejudice put life into every kind of evil invention which could
affect mankind. Hence arose evil spirits which were persons for they could talk
and act and consequently they had life. But as Science progressed the spirits
changed their characters and appeared in the form of diseases. Now to suppose
that a disease could come and attack a person, except it had some wisdom to
guide and direct it, is folly. Therefore every person admits a cause which of
course must be intelligent and contain life like those people who were tormented
by disease which they believed was from the devil. Make life the invention of man
and it will not be difficult to convince him that the invisible beings of his own belief
are of his own invention and their life is also his own. Let man know that his belief
is the cause of his misery and he will cease to embrace evil or beliefs that
contain life and learn wisdom for wisdom is not life but the destruction of life.
There is no life or death with God or wisdom for there is nothing to destroy.
Matter with God is the same as it is considered by man-that substance, which
contains no intelligence, but man, being ignorant, has deceived himself into the
belief that his body contains intelligence. So he is to himself what the Irishman
was to himself when he awoke from a drunken sleep on his cart and found his
oxen gone. He said, "If this is Patrick O'Neil, I have lost my oxen but if it is not,
then I have found a cart." So his happiness depended on his own decision.
Probably, as he came to his senses, he found that he was Patrick and his horror
became his torment. Man reasons about himself precisely in the same way. He
finds himself in a dilemma and he begins to conjure up ideas according to his
belief and puts life into every idea he creates. Finally he finds himself in the same
fix as Patrick and says, If this is myself, I have a disease that will kill me, but if it
is Mr. Imagination, he has got himself into a bad fix. A physician is sent for, who
is puzzled to know which it is, as they both look alike. He talks to the man to
discover if it is he or his imagination and finally concludes that he will give the
man a dose of something which will drive away the imagination, and if it is the
man, then he is mistaken. Now make man responsible for his belief and give him
a rule by which he can detect the imagination from the scientific, then you will
find evil disappear.
December 1862
Is Language Always Applied to Science?
BU 34:23, LC 8:193
PART 1
Everyone must answer, No; then it must sometimes be applied to error.
Language when applied to science is true if it represents the thing it means, but
when applied to error, it contains no real meaning but is merely words used to
represent what the author thinks is true, which he does not pretend to prove but
only states as opinion. This is knowledge; it contains no wisdom but is matter that
can be changed; therefore when a man tries to explain what he knows as a
science, he is not understood by a man of knowledge. Wisdom is eternal truth,
and the language that can explain that cannot be changed, although other words
may be used to explain the same truth. Knowledge is seen represented by
language which contains no wisdom, and as Paul said, words with no meaning.
Take two persons, one with wisdom or science, the other with knowledge. When
the former undertakes to talk with the man of knowledge, he is not understood
but is misrepresented by the latter whose wisdom being in his words contains
opinions only and not science. Such men are always referring to some
celebrated author. For instance, if their knowledge of the Bible is disputed and
the absurdity of their opinions shown, they will fall back on the authority of
someone who, not understanding, gave an opinion to agree with what he
happened to think was right. That will not be admitted by the scientific man who
proceeds to give another explanation of the Bible. Then comes the contradiction
on language. He is accused of ignorantly perverting the meaning of words and
flying into obscurity when the man of knowledge cannot follow him. This last may
be true, for he contains no wisdom and to talk science to such a person is like
casting pearls before swine. If the man of science will labor with the man of
knowledge till he makes him understand his meaning, then the language is
without fault.
I have seen this in my own case. The world has no idea of what I wish to
communicate; so in his ignorance, each one thinks the obscurity lies in my want
of knowledge. While if I excite their muddy brains and create my idea in their
mind, then they can see and understand it and my language is correct. This was
the case with Jesus. The priests and scribes found fault with his education, for
after he had been telling them of this great truth, which they could not
understand, the Jews marvelled saying, How knoweth this man letters having
never learned? Jesus answered, My doctrine is not mine, but from him who sent
me. Here he was accused of being ignorant and he would be now by the same
class were he on earth. Jesus taught not opinions but a truth based on eternal
science that he could practice which was the science of health and happiness.
He called this truth his father, and when it spoke it was not Jesus; therefore he
makes a difference between himself as a natural man and himself as this truth or
science. He says, If any man will do his will (this truth), he shall know of the
doctrines, whether they be of God or whether of man. Again, He that speaketh of
himself speaketh his own glory, but he that speaketh His glory that sent him, the
same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.
Here Jesus shows that his doctrine or wisdom was not of man but from a higher
power which he acknowledged superior to himself. This the people could not
understand for it did not come within their senses, and they said he had a devil;
others said he was ignorant, and others said he made himself equal with God. In
the same spirit when I say that the wisdom that I speak to the sick is superior to
my natural senses and yet I understand if, some say it is all myself. And if I
undertake to explain it and they cannot understand it, some say it is from want of
education on my part and others say that I make myself equal with Christ. While
talking with a Christian, if I contend for my own explanation of the scriptures
which differs from their own, this is to make myself equal with Christ. It is the
same with the medical faculty. They are the truth or Christ, and if I contradict
them and show the absurdity of their theory, then I make myself equal with
Christ. Christ is their standard, and if I refuse their explanation which I know is
false, then I am accused of making myself equal with them or Christ. Jesus
warned the public against false Christs and told the people to test them by their
works. The Christ that he taught healed all manner of diseases, while they who
profess to be followers of Christ in these days cannot do one thing that Jesus did.
Still they assume to be leaders of the true religion which really contains not a
shadow of truth. It is made up of forms and ceremonies and sacrifices and can
never take away sin or disease that man is suffering from. This is the kingdom I
am making war with.
December 1862
Is Language Always Applied to Science?
BU 34:26, LC 8:195
PART 2
[orig. LANGUAGE CONTINUED]
Does language contain any substance? Language is to convey some idea to an
individual. The idea is mind combined into a form which holds the substance of
the image. For instance, the idea horse is in the mind. This is like a nut or casket.
When a person speaks the word horse, it does not follow that he forms the idea
because a child may be taught to speak the word and to him the idea is merely a
shadow so dim that to his senses it contains no substance. Now if he speaks the
word to another child, it contains an empty sound or casket, but if it is spoken to
a person who can understand, he will create the idea of himself for the word
horse will produce a sensation, for sound is something that can act on the mind
and the person becomes accordingly affected. Sound is sensation but not an
idea; therefore it must be attached to something to give it an idea that contains a
substance. To one person certain ideas may be filled with truth or error, for if