The Text - Section 19
Belief in Another World
BU 22:9, LC 6:157
[orig. untitled]
Suppose every person could disbelieve in another world as it is called. What
would be the effect on each individual? Let everyone put the question to himself.
Reader, do you suppose that if you could disbelieve in another world that it would
put you out of existence as long as you could believe? For as long as you
believed, you would be in existence. Now imagine the heavens and the earth and
all that in them is, can you doubt that there must be a something that knows
more than you do? Then the next question comes up. Where is it? You cannot
say in heaven, for you have denied this place. Jesus answered this question of
where heaven is by saying it is in you, even in your thoughts. So the kingdom of
heaven was in their minds. Now this is my belief. So it is with the other world; it is
all in the mind. Now get it out so that the mind does not contain it, then what
exists? You exist and that you know if you know anything. You know that you are
always learning something new, this you know. You know that matter and mind
are always changing. You know that science is progression, and that its truths
always have existed and always must. Even if all the people were swept from the
earth, still the truth of science would exist. Science in you teaches you that you
are a child of science and therefore your identity cannot be lost. So to be a child
of science you cannot leave the father and go into a belief of what you can show
is nothing but an opinion.
Now where does science look for the God that it worships? In the clouds? No.
Does it call it up from the vast deep? No. Then where does it seek it? It looks at
the evils of the world and says, How long shall man wander in darkness looking
for wisdom when it is in himself and he does not know it? It is the higher principle
of our nature. Now let this higher principle rise with me above all the opinions of
men about another world, and come up hither and sit on the clouds made by the
superstition and look and survey one last space where perfect light and harmony
exist. Now turn your eyes to the earth and see men's eyes turned upward to see
this world and listen to their stories about it. See them down on their knees
begging an unknown God to guide them to this world. So the superstition in
regard to it is that the spirits of all those that they have created and believed in
come from this vast place, where men never come, nor ever will come till he
breaks the fetters of idolatry, and by the buoyancy of his wisdom, rises by his
own wisdom, unfettered by superstitions into the glorious light of science.
1864
The Cause of Man's Troubles
BU 26:2, LC 6:56
Do man's troubles arise from his errors? I say that they do, but this is merely an
opinion unless I can show more proof than my base assertion. I will try and give
some proof of what I say. All will admit that if a person believes he is acting
rightly to himself, he is. But if his acts are condemned by the world, he must
suffer the penalty of them. This is true of every act in man's life. It is true also of
the sick in every stage of disease from a lame ankle to a confirmed cripple. Their
belief is the cause of their trouble. Man never acted at all unless his acts were a
combination of these two same laws. Sometimes they are separate and
sometimes they are not and when they are not, then comes in the mystery as the
interposition of God. Now if man knew what he was composed of, that is the
identity called man, then his wisdom would put a different construction on his
acts. Man is a combination of ideas and opinions and beliefs arranged into a form
called man. The owner is not seen except by the representative which acts
outside the real man. The true scientific man is not known by either of the other
two. The scientific man is the one that deals out to the natural man and he moves
the figure or machinery called the natural man. Now the figure or machine is the
thing to be studied for it is the facsimile of the owner. And if the owner owns his
body or machine independently, then all will go well and he will be happy. But if
some one has a mortgage or claim on the body, then he shows it by complaining.
If consumption gets a claim on a person, it will not let him off till it saps the very
foundation of the vineyard. For the body is like a vineyard and the owner is
responsible to himself for his acts. If he buys anything, he must pay for it and
there is no escaping from it. It is like buying an article that we do not want merely
because some person will trust us for it. But the pay day will come and if we
cannot pay, we shall have to be cast into prison till the debt is paid. As Christ or
Science is the Saviour, when he comes and explains his truth, it pays the debt
and sets the debtor free and he tells him to beware how he gets into debt again.
Now every person knows that there are thousands of ways of getting a person's
money for some trifling object which is of no use whatever. So that if a person is
not on his guard, he is liable to spend more than his income. This is only the
emblem of the spiritual man. His spiritual body is the vineyard; his errors are his
debts; his wisdom is his riches. The world is the merchandise and the peddlers
and traders are the ideas that are asked to be bought or believed.
Now every person is thrown into the community where all these hawkers and
peddlers are. And their ideas are the articles of the world which every one wishes
to buy, for they think they cannot get along without them. The doctor brings out
his sign and puts in a card of what he keeps on hand. All kinds of diseases are
hung out for sale. Here is a pattern: a thin face, sunken eyes, poor skeleton, all
ragged like an automaton. Speak to it and you will see that it coughs and throws
itself into a variety of forms. This you are asked to purchase and your curiosity is
excited so that you pay the proprietor to explain how it is made. He begins to say
that the first thing is to go out into the cold till you begin to shiver. He explains,
and the image represents the feelings till you get so worked up that you buy the
idea and give your note or belief and return home, with the assurance that if you
manufacture any more or let it to your children, you must pay for the patent. So
you give a claim to the disease and home you go, and now you have sold
yourself for life.
1864
Concerning the Use of Medicine
BU 120:1, LC 10:88
I am frequently asked if I am opposed to the use of medicine. To this question I
answer that as the people are now educated, they believe a lie as a truth and
therefore to tell such persons the truth would be to them like telling lies. So I
would not destroy the law but fulfill it and wisdom is the end of the law to all who
believe. To those who believe in disease there is, according to their belief,
neither forgiveness nor cure except through the medium of medicine. But to
those who have been born again or who have learned that disease is the result
of a belief, disease has no power, and consequently medicine is useless. "Seek
ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you." That is,
seek first the science of health which is wisdom, and then all things will appear
plain to your understanding. To take a person who believes in disease to cure the
sick is like taking the hair of a dog to cure the dog's wounds or like punishing a
crime by a penalty similar to the offense, which barbaric custom is still kept up
and sustained as much as the medical faculty. All remedies are based on the law
of health. The doctors admit health to be the standard and a deviation from it a
crime, deserving punishment. So if you have any complaint, you are examined by
the doctors; and if found guilty, a blister, emetic or some other proper punishment
is administered till you repent. And then if life enough remains in you and you are
not found guilty of other offenses, you recover. And if not, you are found guilty of
another offense.
Now if by explanation simply, a person can be cleared from the charges brought
against him without the use of any remedies and be thereby convinced of his
error and can learn to do good, which is to understand; then he is born again and
ready to enter the kingdom of heaven or science. He can then enter this world of
opinions and plead the cause of the sick and rescue them from the hands of their
enemies without paying any great penalty. Perhaps if the criminal believes he
must take a little cathartic to pay the debt that he has contracted, he may be
allowed to take it, not because the person rescuing him believes it to be
necessary or because the criminal is liable but because it gratifies the patient,
who believes there is honor even among thieves. His protector only yields to an
old prejudice which still clings to him.
When Paul converted a person or performed a cure and the patient wished to be
baptized, he complied, not because he believed there was any creative
properties in the water, but simply to gratify the convert. There are a class of
ideas or persons who are never satisfied until they cause the poor to suffer for
their sins. Man is a government of himself and some have certain animal
propensities which cause them to torment themselves and such feel happier to
be punished, like the man in the days of the Salem Witchcraft who, believing
himself to be possessed of a witch, was not content till he was beaten almost to
death in order to show that the witch might be cast out. The sick at the present
day are not satisfied till they have been purged and blistered almost to death in
order to kill the disease or witch which possesses them. When the reformation
came, reason took the place of the stake and whip; so when science shall come,
wisdom will take the place of the drugs of the physicians and the tormenting hell
fire of the priests. Men will be guided by the star of science which points the way
to wisdom. But medicine will be administered to the sick till the time when
science shall step in and make a sacrifice of all these errors and then will come
the end.
Jesus, seeing the folly of the world's belief, offered himself or his opinions as a
willing sacrifice to the world in order to show man a higher and better way to
salvation or the recovery of one's health. And then he rose from the natural world
into the scientific world, there to appear in heaven or science for us. Once for all
he laid down his life or belief and put his trust in science, believing it is able to
cure the sick and save man from his sins or errors. The priests and doctors are
still offering up sacrifices in the form of opinions, prayers and blisters, etc., none
of which can take away the sins or errors of the world. When science comes, it
makes an end to all these deceptions and introduces a new mode of reasoning to
all who will receive it. The new heaven is this new mode of reasoning and to
enter into it is to be baptized in the blood or belief of Jesus which is Christ or
Science and which will wash away all opinions. I baptize with water, but when the
real truth rises out of your opinions, then you will be baptized with fire or wisdom
and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is Science or the explanation of the Father
which is Wisdom.
All persons who come to the truth must be born again or baptized. And it is not
strange, as in the case of the disciples, if some persons should cling to the old
ideas; and therefore we must sometimes yield to their superstition. If they believe
themselves ill with a bilious disease and cannot consent to go through the fire of
truth but wish to be baptized of their old ideas, then we must administer some
simple medicine, not that it possesses any curative qualities but simply as an
offering to their ignorance which they imagine must be made; otherwise they
cannot recover or be pardoned of their sins. Medicine contains nothing to me
except as an effect and if a patient believes he must use it, I sometimes allow
him to do so, but I always tell him the cure is in himself or in his belief and not in
the medicine. If schools were established where persons could be taught to
correct the errors of the sick in regard to disease, then they could approach the
sick, armed with science, and the opinions of the sick would melt away before
their reasoning, as darkness before the light of the sun. Disease is a cowardly
belief and he who knows it is to the sick as a teacher to his pupil. The errors of
the pupil can be destroyed by the wisdom of the teacher. The passengers on
board the steamer can be enlightened by the wisdom of the Captain. But if he is
as ignorant as they, and the ship, encountering a gale, succeeds in coming out
safely, it is not by the skill of the captain but by a universal wisdom that
sometimes guides man through the darkness unknown to all. A person outside of
all those beliefs in disease is to the sick a saviour, whether the sick are aware of
it or not, but if they know it of themselves, they become their own pilots.
It may appear strange at first thought that belief can cure us, but it is readily
admitted that belief can make us sick. Now I affirm that the belief is the very thing
that I wish to destroy. If there was nothing to believe, we should have no belief.
When you see a person you know to be your friend, you do not fear he will hurt
you; but to have a belief that he might injure you, you might have some cause for
your belief. Whether real or imaginary, to you it is real. Now if you were aware
that your suspicions were wrong, the belief that he would injure you would
vanish. So with disease, the error is the same. The cause was invented by the
superstition of the world, and the people have been so imposed upon through
their ignorance by the priests that the idea disease has taken a living form and
now is to man as real as his existence, and yet in reality it is as false as the
religion. The time of the foundations of the Mohammedan religion can be
ascertained, but now it is a living reality with as much life as the Catholic or
Protestant Church and contains as much truth as either of these.
The medical faculty has exercised more power over men's minds than the
priests, for all men believe in disease if they do not in religion. To me, both are
alike. One tree produced both. The popular belief in religion as explained by the
clergy of the present day is as absurd as the belief in disease. Yet every person
believes more or less of each. Some persons appear and profess to disbelieve in
religion and also in medicine but they still cherish a belief in both, and at the least
approach of danger, they fly to one. The opinions of the priests have as little
influence on me as do the doctors. They only strengthen my conviction that if
honest, they are deceived and ignorant, and if not honest, they are hypocritical.
And to those I can only hope that they will repent and turn aside from their
wickedness ere it is too late.
1864
Curing Without Medicine
BU 23:22
The idea of curing disease without medicine is a new idea and requires quite a
stretch of the imagination to believe it, and to me it was as strange as to any
person; but having had twenty-five years of experience, I have found out that all
our evils are the result of our education and that we imbibe ideas that contain the
evils that we complain of. Ideas are like food, and every person knows that in
almost everything we eat and drink, there is some idea attached. So ideas are
food for the mind, and every idea has its effect on mankind. Now seeing how
ideas affect the mind, I find that when I correct the ideas, I cure the sick. For
instance, the idea liver disease produces such and such a feeling, and heart
disease certain kinds of symptoms. I might go on for hours giving the names and
symptoms of diseases. Now if the people have all these diseases, for I know they
have the feelings, then how can they be cured without the use of medicine? I
contend they have all the symptoms that they say they have, but about the
causes of them I shall differ with the world.
The doctors say they have this disease or that disease according to the
symptoms that they say they have and therefore they must take some medicine.
This false doctrine has taken possession of the people's mind and they believe it
as firmly as the South believes that slavery is right. We see how the belief in
slavery affected the masses; it took possession of their lives and it became a part
of their identity, and it gave to them a peculiar character different from the people
of the North. The North believed slavery was wrong and their belief gave to them
a character and I leave the people to judge what is the most Christian-like belief.
It is impossible to make man act different from his belief unless he feels a sort of
condemnation; therefore, a northern man to believe in slavery must be more
depraved than a southern man; for one believes it right, and if the northern man
believes it right, he is reasoning against all his early religious education. So I
cannot believe him honest for I cannot admit he is so ignorant as not to be
affected by the influences around him. His party has blinded him into an
admission of what he does not believe. So parties are formed and every person
belongs to some one or another and their lives are made up of the ideas. Every
form of religion has its advocates and persons are affected just according to their
belief. The body suffers exactly as the mind is affected. Any belief that binds
burdens on another binds them on ourselves. Therefore to do unto others as we
would have others do unto us is the fulfilling of the law.
Now I have been so connected with man's beliefs and seen how they affect the
body that I am sure that three-fourths of the misery can be stopped by explaining
the causes. This I know I can do in public. When I first commenced operating on
the mind I put persons into a mesmeric sleep, but this soon lost its effect for I
could see no good results, only to gratify my curiosity. At last I found I could
make my subjects read my thoughts and here was a new discovery.
1864
Death
BU 90:27, LC 6:164
I will now say a few words in regard to the state called death. As this error is so
well established that it is folly to deny it, I must explain my grounds for denying
what everyone believes. Let us see what man loses by the change called death.
If you make a man admit that his happiness is in this state of error or opinions,
then to get out would be death. But convince every person that he might sit down
and fall into a state in which he might go where he pleased and enjoy the society
of those he did in his waking state, and be responsible for his acts the same as
though awake, and if his ability and genius and good character earn for him the
sympathy of some friend that would like to have him accompany him to some
foreign country, and he should go and see all the beauties and enjoy all the
privileges of a guest and then wake up, don't you suppose he would like to take
another trip?
Now destroy all ideas of death and that would destroy disease. Then man would
labor for wisdom, and when he grew rich he would say to himself, "I am rich
enough, so I will lie down and rest and enjoy my friends and listen to the world's
talk." So he gives up his cares and lies down and like a man that has got rich
rides around and enjoys himself. One is a figure of the other; but one is real, and
the other is a shadow. The man who is rich in this world's goods to the exclusion
of some scientific captial cannot travel in the world of science with his money. To
have money and no wisdom is to be like the rich man in the Bible spoken of by
Jesus. He had been to work and got rich, and his crops were so large that he
said to himself: "I will tear down my old house and barn and build me a more
expensive establishment; or I will dress up and go into more educated society
among the literary world and enjoy myself." But science says to him, This night
shalt thou be satisfied that all thy riches will not make thee a man of science.
So you must lose all that foolish pride that impells the rulers of the world, for
when science comes, riches take to themselves wings and fly away into the
wilderness of darkness. When these two characters lie down together, they are
received into society just according to their worth or talent. For money is not
wisdom. So the rich man of this world may be the beggar of the scientific, while
this beggar or man of small means with scientific riches will be as far removed
from this neighbor as Dives from Lazarus. One must die to become the other.
See the man that is made of money and knows nothing but his money and see
him when he is past making it. He is feverish and all he thinks of is his money.
This is his happiness and someone is all the time getting it away; so he is in
trouble, while the man of science is investigating all the improvements of the age
and becoming acquainted with all the scientific secrets. Now they both lie down
to enjoy their riches. The miser is all the time nervous and frightened about his
money, while the scientific man is traveling on the interest of his capital. And if an
expedition is fitted out for some great discovery where his science is wanted, he
receives an invitation and goes and enjoys himself, while the miser is prowling
around to buy some second-hand lock to put on his door to keep out the robbers.
These two characters may go on for hundreds of years, for time is nothing in
eternity.
So we see every day figures of change. How many persons are there in this city
who get up in the morning and pass the day without gaining enough wisdom to
last them till nine o'clock? But you will see them up in the morning before day
looking around to find some hole to creep into to get a drop of water or a
substitute to moisten their tongue, for they are tormented by an appetite for this
world's goods. So their life is one continual state of excitement, always opposing
everything that enlightens men's minds and elevates their character.
Such a man is dead to the world of science, whether he is on top of the ground or
underneath; while the man of science is alive whether on the earth or in it. They
both lie down in their own sepulcher. If one is made of opinions, he must take it.
If the other is science, he will be in it. So while one is progressing, the other is
looking on. They are both rewarded for their acts.
1864
Disease and Its Cause
BU 90:12, LC 6:147
Disease is as old as man's existence, but the causes of it have never been
explained. Various causes have been given. The ancients admitted disease and
then tried to show that it arose from the people's habits of living. The Epicurian
philosophers tried to show that man by his own acts caused his disease.
Lucretius, one of the pupils of Epicurus, contended that man is the cause of his
own misery by his own belief. He does not use these words, but I shall show that
that was what he meant. And being misrepresented, his ideas have never found
their way into the minds of the Christians of our day because he showed that the
religion of his day was the cause of all the disease and trouble that men suffered.
To show this was his labor in his poem that has never been understood. The
reader will see, by going back one-hundred years before Jesus, how the people
were excited by the religion of that time. To see what Lucretius had to contend
with is to know what the people believed in. The effect of religion on the people,
Lucretius showed in his poem. I will give some extracts.
He says, "Indeed mankind in wretched bondage held and lay groveling on the
ground, galled by the yoke of what is called religion. From the sky, this tyrant
showed her head and with grim looks hung over us poor mortals here below until
a man of Greece with steady eye dared look her in the face and first oppose her
power. Here not the fear of Gods nor thunderous roar kept back, nor threatening
tumults of the sky, but still the more they roused the active virtue of his aspiring
soul as he pressed forward to break through nature's scanty bounds, his mind's
quick force prevailed. And so he passed by far the flaming portals of this world
and wandered with his comprehensive soul o'er all the mighty space. From
thence returned triumphant, told us what things may have a being and what may
not and how a finite power is fixed to each a bond it cannot break. And so religion
which we feared before, by him subdued, we tread upon in turn. His conquest
makes us equal to the Gods."
It is generally believed that the writers of the Epicurian philosophy were men that
opposed everything that was good, but they are misrepresented. They opposed
the errors and superstitions of their day and to do this was to show that the
heathen mythology was based on nothing but a belief. So he shows the absurdity
of their religion. The Pythagoreans held to the transmigration of souls. A poet
who lived about a hundred years before Lucretius affirmed that the "soul of
Homer was in his body; but that he might not injure Pluto, he bequeathed to the
infernal mansion not the soul nor the body but the ghost which the ancients held
to be a third nature of which together with the body and soul the whole man
consisted." Speaking of this class of philosophers, Lucretius says, "And yet the
nature of the soul we know not, whether formed with the body or at the birth
infused and then by death cut off she perishes 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 as our great Ennius sang, who first
a crown of laurels ever grew brought down from Helicon, describes the stately
places of Acheron where neither our souls nor bodies ever come, but certain
spectres strange and wondrous pale." But then he goes on to say that he shall
search into the soul what her nature is and what meets our wakeful eyes and
frights the mind, and how by sickness and by sleep oppressed, we think we see
or hear the voice of these who died long since, whose moldering bones rot in the
cold embrace of the grave. "These terrors of the mind, this darkness, these not
the sun's beams nor the light ray of day can we dispel, but nature's light and
reason whose first principles shall be my guide." This taught him that nothing was
by nothing made, therefore could not produce something and every effect had a
cause. Now these strange ghosts and spirits are all the inventions of man not of
God. Yet to man they are something. But ask where they come from and how
they got here, then comes the mystery. Now Lucretius shows that man is matter
dissolved and like all other matter passed into space, and the matter was seen
by those who believed in spirits. Here was where he failed. He proved that every
effect had a cause and as these spirits are nothing, they have no cause or
beginning.
His theory was that matter, like seeds, dissolves and each seed retains the
elements of the whole lump. This reasoning he carried into man, so that man like
all nature dissolves and passes into space and each particle or seed contains the
whole of man's life. This was the cause of their strange spectres being seen that
the people called spirits and ghosts. Their fear produced it by their imagination.
This was his theory, and as far as he reasoned, his theory cannot be refuted. His
starting point was light and reason. This taught that nothing cannot produce
something, for if a thing could spring from nothing, what need is there for bodies
to grow. And if nothing could produce something, then man might spring up out
of the ground, grain from the sea and fish live on the land. But everything shows
that all things have their causes and all phenomena must come from something.
This shows that imagination is either something or nothing. And if a person
imagines a thing and the thing appears, it shows that it has a cause outside of
the thing seen. Now all these things have been seen and thousands more and
there is proof to show that spirits, ghosts, spectres and strange delusions are
matter moved without the aid of the natural man. And all these phenomena are
so well attested to that it is folly in any one to deny the last. Among the strange
phenomena are diseases, for disease is one of the great proofs that these things
are among the things believed.
The ancient philosophers were promulgating certain truths as they thought and to
live up to them was their religion. They did not have creeds as the people of our
day do but a sort of philosophy that governed their lives according to the science
of philosophy. The Pythian philosophy consisted of searching into the laws of
mathematics. This would teach them causes and effects, so all their acts were
governed by their wisdom and their happiness was the fruit of their religious
philosophy. Plato believed in one great cause and matter in an invisible state,
subject to a power. Here he, like all the rest of the philosophers, loses man. Now
according to my own experience, matter is a substance to the one that believes
it, but to suppose that matter exists independent of wisdom is not in the power of
man to prove. So if matter is an idea, it is very easy to see that it is entirely under
the control either of our belief or our wisdom. Now here are the two powers: one
wisdom and the other belief. Now belief admits matter as a substance, wisdom
admits it as a belief. Wisdom speaks it into existence and to belief it is a reality. I
will now show how a belief can create matter and yet to wisdom it is nothing. To
do this, I must assume to know what I am going to do. So if I can make a person
believe a thing, I impart to him a sort of wisdom (I call it wisdom because it is the
highest he has and he thinks it wisdom but I know it is not wisdom but an error).
Now to the person, it is wisdom after I convince him of its truth, so I must prove it
to the person to establish the fact.
I will take a person and perform a mesmeric experiment and satisfy the person
that it is performed. Now he knows that I have done it. This to him is true, but he
believes he cannot do it. I tell him he can do the same. So he tries and I produce
the phenomenon myself, but he thinks he does it. In this way, he gets confidence
and does it himself. Now he, in his belief, does the very thing I do. Now I am in
his belief and he knows it not and thinks it is himself. So now he uses the wisdom
he gets from me to perform his experiments. Suppose I tell him that the spirits
can make him move a table. This he does not believe. By my arguments, I affect
his belief till it is sufficient to move the table. Now his belief will not give me the
credit but gives it to the spirits showing that my wisdom is a spirit to him. Now this
wisdom that I impart can see the spirits and he creates them under this belief and
to him they are spirits. But to me they are the spirits of his own make. Now to him
this is matter, so he can be made to believe that bodies can be moved, but to
wisdom it is not matter.
Matter supposes distance between like our senses, that is, one chair must be not
as another chair, so our senses are divided into five. Now with wisdom, there is
no division only as wisdom makes it. Senses are swallowed up in wisdom and
there can be no space. So everything is present. The difference between wisdom
and belief is this: wisdom is never deceived; belief is never certain but always
changes. Man is like a town. The inhabitants are the intelligence and the identity
of the town is the same. The locality is the same always although the intelligence
is always changing. Yet, every person admits the identity of the town. But its
inhabitants or intelligence are always changing and improvements are going on
showing the growth of the intelligence, not of the town or the ground on which the
town is built.
So God makes the ground or identity called body and gives it an identity called
man. This is under the wisdom of man until it is able to act of itself, when man's
body like a city or town is governed by the inhabitants or wisdom of the town. As
a town is made up of different talent, so man is made up of different ideas and
sometimes one set rules and sometimes another. Man is not a unit but is
governed by a city or nation and is liable to be deceived by false ideas into a
belief that gets up a sort of rebellion. All this is the working of matter. So diseases
and revolutions take place and sometimes the inhabitants flee from their
enemies, but this is the working of matter. There seems to be a sort of
inconsistency in regard to God. If God knows and rules all things, how could
there be another power that seems to be contradictory to what we call God's
wisdom?
Now according to my theory that mind is matter, it looks very plain to me that
there should be a conflict going on in man as in nations. For there is a regular
grade of matter from the mineral to the animal creation. And there is a regular
grade of intelligence that corresponds to the matter. Now as the matter of
vegetables and animals are connected, it is not strange that every person should
partake of the elements of each. Yet we all admit that the mineral and vegetable
life acts just as it was intended by God; but when man steps in, he reasons that
God is not quite up to the intelligence of man and we try to reconcile God to man,
not man to God. This is natural as our breath. Man wants to rule his fellow man
and even dictate to God what is best for mankind.
Now look at man's mind, partaking of all the elements of knowledge of the lower
animal creation acting in man, warring against the higher intelligence of matter or
mind. Then you will see that man is the center or land of all the intellect of the
brute creation, as the United States is the house of refuge for the scapegoats of
all nations. So these elements in man as well as in nations are warring against
themselves. So as man's body is the bounds of his identity as a man, his
knowledge has its bounds as an intellectual man. So when we speak of a man,
we embrace his body and his knowledge as one, just as we speak of a city. For
instance, if we speak of Portland, we speak of it as a city of intelligence
according to our ideas of wisdom, so we confound the city with the intelligence.
Every citizen of Portland will admit there are parties and sects that come in
conflict with each other and sometimes one party rules and sometimes another.
Now the dominant party reasons that it is right and the other wrong. Then
perhaps the next season the tables are turned; "the outs" are in and "the ins" are
out. So no person will deny but there is a difference in regard to the intelligence
of parties, yet every one will say that his party is right. Now there are certain facts
admitted by every person that can't be disputed that shows there is a difference
between what is called intelligence.
For instance, the brute is not blamed for being a brute nor is God blamed
because he made man superior to the brute in this, that the man when developed
can produce what the brute cannot. Not that man in his original state is above the
brute, but man like the earth is capable of being cultivated beyond the brute, but
the wisdom that develops man is not of man. But the earth brought forth all living
things that hath life, but wisdom or science never came from the earthly man. So
as life is out of the earth or animal matter, there is a natural grade so that every
person can tell his place in society if he only has the wit to acknowledge it, and if
he won't, the intelligence of the world will place him where he belongs. I will
illustrate what I have said to show that there is a standard to test the plane of
man's intellect. No person will call two dogs fighting with each other equal to two
human beings, yet, they don't find fault with God but look upon the dogs as a
lower development of matter or mind. Now suppose a being in the shape of a
man should be found fighting with a dog, would any person place him on the
same grade with a man of higher intelligence? Would not such a person place
him with the dog, and if he is on a level with the dog, then God is not to blame for
his acts any more than he is for the dog. But the higher intelligence ought to look
upon him as a being that makes a link between the dog and a higher
development.
So if you trace the working of the mind in man, you will find that man is now
largely identified with the brute and is not to be condemned for his brutal feeling.
Once admitted as such, you don't keep a dog that growls at you and even would
like to bite you, but you don't expect anything better. Now that intellect which is
nearly on a level with the brute shows itself opposing everything that goes to
restrain its acts, but at the same time shows its brutal instinct by fighting down
everything that will not bow to its own will, showing no wisdom of doing to
another as you would have another do to you. This is the point where the man
ceases or breaks the link between the brute and the human species. This step
taken opens the door for reason, which the brutal man never does. His reason is
all on one side, that he is the lord and his will is law and if he can't have his own
way he goes for destroying them. With man and beast, it is rule or ruin. Now this
is all as God intended and man, as I said, is like a new country unexplored, full of
every kind of ideas that is embraced in the world.
1864
Disease-White Swelling
BU 42:14, LC 11:215
Dr. Franklin when asked how he accounted for the fact that a fish weighed
nothing in a pail of water said, "I never saw the experiment tried." There are
many such fish stories. We take such an one for truth when there is not the
slightest evidence of its truth. It stands only on an opinion. In this way we
become superstitious, conceited and bigoted. All religion is based on such fish
stories that cannot stand the test of science. Disease is one of this kind of fish, all
swimming in the ocean of thought. This was the ocean that Jesus walked on. The
water was their beliefs. This ocean was where Paul's barque lay, and this was
where Jesus' disciples fished when Jesus walked by the seashore or public
opinion and seeing Peter and Simon fishing for ideas or converts to the Jewish
religion said, "Follow me," that is, learn the truth. So to teach the gospel of
science, you became fishers or teachers of science instead of opinions. Into this
sea of opinions Jesus told Peter to cast his hook and catch an idea or fish and he
would find a piece of silver or find a truth in this idea which was worth saving.
Every idea contains a truth and the error is the dross. Now if men would learn
enough to separate the truth from the error, then they might throw nets into the
sea and draw them up and separate the good from the bad. But as it is now they
have no standard by which to tell what is true and what is false, for the people
are living in darkness and choose darkness rather than light, for their acts are
evil. Let men apply this test to the medical and religious leaders. What proof have
you of what you assume to be true, only what you have heard, and you are met
with this answer: the Bible. Now the Bible does not speak at all, only as someone
interprets it, and this interpretation is an opinion, for it is not tested by any
scientific act.
If a teacher in mathematics makes an assertion, he proves it so there is no doubt
about it. But the priest gives his opinion and we must take it for a truth. This is
also true of the medical faculty. They give you an opinion for a truth. Man
believes it and here is where he gets himself into trouble. Now apply Franklin's
test. Don't believe in what is told you without proof nor attempt to account for it.
No one will deny that a sensation can be made on a person. Now this sensation
is one thing and the proof is another. I will show you how these two ideas affect
man. A physician called on me who was lame with what he called a white
swelling on his knee. It was true the knee was swollen, so to deny that the
disease was on his knee would be to him absurd. To admit it to myself was as
absurd as it would be to him to say the disease was in his mind.
Now here was a fair difference of opinion. To cure him was to change his mind or
destroy his disease. The swelling we both admitted, but the cause was the thing
in dispute. Now his belief in the white swelling was a part of his identity or
wisdom. It was a reality that man could have a white swelling or a disease called
by that name. Now I knew that God never made a disease or idea outside of
man. I knew that man could invent ideas and condense his belief into a
phenomenon that the world would call disease after man's belief. To me the
belief was the disease and as I have no belief about my identity in regard to a
white swelling, I could see that he was laboring under a false idea. This made the
trouble. So then a controversy must come between the physician and myself
before I could destroy his belief or disease. So now I must introduce the
physician to let you know what he has to say in his own behalf. For his belief was
in danger, and his disease being his belief and his belief being his life, to destroy
his life or disease was to change his mind. Thus he could lose his belief and find
his life in the truth that sets him free.
I will give the substance of my first visit. My ideas to him were like his ideas to
me. He thought I was arguing to change his belief to mine, but I was reasoning
with him, while he was arguing with me. Now the doctor at first believed that what
I was going to talk about was nothing but a desire to have my way, not that I
believed that what I said had anything to do with his trouble. You see that the
point that separated us was this. What had I to cure? Was it the knee or his
belief? To him it was the knee, but to me it was his belief. Now if I addressed
myself to him and not to his knee, but to him, he wished me to address myself to
his knee as the person. Yet he would not allow that his knee was intelligent,
though at the same time he would tell how it felt, what trouble it made him, etc.
So, of course, I commenced by telling him how he felt. I directed my conversation
to him, not to his knee. He admitted that I told him how he felt, but he put all the
feeling in his knee. I put his feeling in his senses and not in his knee. So here
was where we differed.
To cure him was to detach his senses from his belief and then his wisdom would
be the cure. So I said, Your disease is in the mind. (Dr.) I put it in my knee.
(Quimby) Does your knee feel? (Dr.) No. (Q) Then it is you that feels and not
your knee. (Dr.) You are too deep for me, I do not see the point you are at. I
know my knee is swollen and it hurts me to lay any weight upon it. (Q) Then you
admit that you can bear weight on your knee so as to hurt you. (Dr.) Yes. (Q)
Then the one that bears the weight is the one that feels the pain. Now is there
any pain in the weight? (Dr.) No. (Q) Then the one that bears the weight is not
the weight, and the part that the weight bears on is not the one that bears. So
that there must be some intelligence outside of the weight and the thing borne on
or the knee. Now this something that knows all this that I have said is not matter,
it is yourself, your senses and all that makes up the man. Now the weight or body
is matter under the direction of the intelligence. So if the intelligence of this
world's belief guides you, then your wisdom is enslaved by your opinion and your
opinion is the keeper of your body. Your opinion and body is matter or mind and
as your senses are in your belief or opinion, you speak of yourself as matter and
of course you are in your knee, as much as a criminal is in his prison, who is
confined for some crime. Your knee is your prison and your belief embraces your
senses and you are in your belief as a criminal, and when you address me, you
speak from your prison and you speak like all men who believe in disease. You
speak the truth to yourself but to me you speak a lie and the devil is its father and
he was a liar from the beginning.
Now when you learn that mind is matter and your belief is matter, then you will
see that whatever you believe you can create and whatever you create takes
form just according to your idea. Now you believe in the idea white swelling, so
that any sensation in the knee that would draw your attention to it will suggest the
idea and a phenomenon is created according to your belief. Then you bring the
phenomenon as proof to show you were right in your first impression, when you
really created the idea yourself. The trouble is in the way we express ourselves.
The doctor said his knee felt badly, therefore the bad was in his knee. "My knee
makes me feel badly" -he would have separated himself from his knee. Then he
would have answered right, and then I should have asked him, What do you think
produced this swelling that makes you feel so badly? He of course could not say,
only give an opinion.
Now I told him I would tell him what made the swelling in his knee. So I said, You
must have had a sudden shock that affected your mind. This shock contained no
disease or opinion. For instance, suppose you should be thrown from a carriage
onto the ground. The shock given to you disturbed your mind. This disturbance
you located in the hip and here was where you first complained. All this
contained nothing but a fright on you. But being frightened lest you had injured
the hip, you would favor it the same as if it was injured. So to favor it, you kept
the leg stiff from the knee to the foot and moved the upper portion of the body,
letting the body bend from the hip. So you would bring the weight on the well leg
by keeping the lame one stiff. This kept the ankle stiff, so that when the body
swung forward, the ankle being stiff, it strained the muscles in the back part of
the leg from the hip to the knee. This sensation in the knee that you made for
fear of injuring the hip frightened you, and you began to locate your trouble in the
knee. This caused the knee to swell and the swelling you called a white swelling.
So to favor this, you kept your ankle stiff. This made more pain, and at last the
knee was pronounced to have a white swelling. This was a disease, after the
opinion of the medical faculty.
1864
Do We Know All We Write or Say?
BU 1:61, LC 6:87
[orig. DO WE ALWAYS KNOW ALL WE WRITE OR SAY?]
It is a common remark that if Jesus should appear on earth and could hear the
explanations given to the remarks which He made eighteen hundred years ago,
He never would imagine that He was in any way alluded to. This may be true.
Jesus was as any other man, but Christ was Science or God which Jesus tried to
teach. There never was and never can be a man who can express his thoughts
without being governed more or less by the Scientific Man or Christ, and the
masses will receive the ideas as they receive food and will pass judgment upon
them according to their taste.
Different opinions will arise from the fact that often the writer is as ignorant of the
true meaning of his ideas as his readers are. Not but that he knows what he
says, but there is in each person a hidden meaning or truth that he, as a man,
does not know. When one hears or reads anything it awakens in him some new
idea which perchance the author never thought of, yet the author feels as though
he had a similar idea of its meaning. It is the Christ in us that is making itself
known through the senses, and as the senses are the only medium the world
acknowledges, Wisdom uses them to destroy the darkness which prevents us
from knowing ourselves. Thus it is when we read the works of the old authors.
They have been misrepresented, from the fact that the readers' minds have been
so dull that there was not sufficient light to penetrate through. So the dark
explanations which are given become true ones till the world becomes educated
up to a higher point when it shall see that the authors have been misrepresented
and that even some truths may have been conveyed in the writings which the
author himself had no idea of.
Every person is more or less clairvoyant and is in two states of mind at the same
time, and when anyone writes he is not aware that he is dictated by a Wisdom
that he through his natural senses does not know. On this principle rogues bring
their evil deeds to light. Their crimes excite the mind and expose their evils to
view, for by their efforts to conceal their crimes, they betray them to others by
looks, acts or words, though unknown to themselves. This is as it should be and
the better it is understood the more it will bring about the desired effect. . . .
Watch the course of the Rebellion. Almost every act of either side develops
something beside that which was anticipated and still it was just what they might
have expected would follow the act. Yet no one saw it; still it was all right. The
intelligence which is governing the world is as much in the dark to the actors as
the plans of Generals are to the rank and file.
So the wisdom of our rulers is as much in the dark in regard to their own
movements as the soldiers are of their own movements. Both are mediums of a
higher wisdom as much as a mesmeric subject is the medium of the operator.
Anyone who has any intelligent idea of mesmerizing is aware that the subject
thinks he acts on his own responsibility, and so he does in a measure, though he
is also acted upon and controlled by others. The real man is not seen at all, but is
always acting upon matter and never will consent to change his course any more
than the laws of Science, for Science is the real man; and although the natural
man would like to have Science decide in his favor, he ought to know that it
cannot act differently from itself. And if we act wrong, Science will expose us by
making us expose ourselves. Let man understand this and he will be more likely
to act from a higher motive than he does now.
Every act or thought contains the higher Science. The natural man calls it
reaction, but it is wisdom. If you put sufficient wisdom in an act, it will see what
the reaction will be. You can hardly suppose a person so ignorant but what if he
throws a stone into the air, he will know that it will come down again. If you put
the wisdom in the stone, the stone would not know what the reaction would be,
but if you put sufficient wisdom in the act that made the stone go up, that wisdom
will know the stone will come down again with the same force that it went up.
Man's body is just as ignorant as a stone, but there are two motions which act
upon it: one ignorance and the other Science. Give a child a looking glass; before
the child is educated or receives the intellectual element of reason, its acts are
governed by passion or desire, not knowing of reaction, for reaction is the higher
element and when that comes, the child's eyes are opened to the light of wisdom.
Until then it would throw the glass on the floor, but when it sees the reaction, it is
wiser and this wisdom checks it the next time.
In all crimes which man commits, the act embraces the intelligence that is the
reaction which will follow sooner or later, for every act of man's must come to
light. So the person who commits a crime leaves the evidence against him just as
plainly as the thief who steals in open daylight.
The sick expose their ideas of disease, and I know by my feelings what they
know by their senses. The more they try to conceal the fact, the more they
expose it. Now the reason of this is that disease is a disgrace, although people
try to make it fashionable; but they show that they do not believe it so, from the
fact that they try to rid themselves of it as they would any bad habit.
Every person has acquaintances whom they would like to get rid of, yet they will
put up with their company rather than cause them to feel badly. So with those
who use tobacco. You will hear them say, "I know it hurts me and I wish I could
leave off the habit, but I cannot." Their wisdom is not equal to what it should be or
they would leave their friend, as they call it, but which is their enemy in disguise.
Now if their wisdom could destroy a little of the milk of human kindness which
they drink for the traitor who has no respect for their happiness except to gratify
their desire, they would cut their acquaintance as they would drop from their lips
a cup of poison prepared for them by the hand of a pretended friend, and their
sympathy would soon cease.
1864
Do We See That Which We Are Afraid Of?
BU 9:1, LC 10:71
Do we see that which we are afraid of? Never, I answer. We see the medium of
our own fears through the medium of our own belief and call it danger. We
connect ourselves with some idea which we think or know exists and we attach
our fears to it. We then express fear, thinking the danger is in the thing we see or
think we see. Suppose you are on a railroad track and you see the engine
coming. Now what are you afraid of? Is the fear in the engine or in you? I say it is
in you. Now suppose that you do not see the engine till you are crushed under
the wheels. Is the fear crushed or that to which the fear is attached? The fear
cannot be seen or touched; therefore it cannot be run over. But the body is not
that which is afraid; it is the senses.
Again, suppose you see a bear lying down. As you approach him he rises and
you do not know but that he is loose. You are afraid. If your senses are
frightened, the fear must contain reason, for matter never reasons. A superior
wisdom acts upon what we call animal matter or life, and if wisdom directs the
action, then nothing is seen but the matter acting. Here is the error. We associate
intelligence with matter and call both one, just as we put fear in the bear and call
him dangerous. Now separate the fear from the thing feared and then it contains
no life or danger but is simply matter.
Our beliefs have made us fear death, which is the king of terrors. To destroy this
is to destroy the foundation of man's misery. The wise man has said the fear of
death is the beginning of wisdom. Let us examine his existence and discover his
habitation, if he is in this world or the world to come. It cannot be in this world, for
it cannot be seen, although we say men are killed, are shot dead. Now is death in
the bullet or in you? Of course it is in you. Then the word death must apply to
something we admit has life.
Man has admitted that the body has life; consequently it has death also. Can the
death be seen? It cannot. Therefore we are afraid of that which cannot be seen.
Perfect wisdom casteth out fear, for fear hath torment. And as we learn wisdom
we destroy death and the fear of death; then we live in wisdom, for science hath
plucked the sting from death and robbed the grave of victory. Death, like
darkness, is the absence of light or wisdom. So everyone who is in the dark is
dead. Fear dispels the darkness and introduces ideas which are as terrible as
anything in nature and affect man's senses. Disease is one of these, and this is a
danger which we never see but through the medium. Through the fear of some
invisible danger we create our own troubles. The fear takes form and it is called
disease. Death is the real danger or disease, and the belief that it is coming, or
has come, creates the fear. The senses being in the fear which is attached to the
matter, the matter is so acted upon that a phenomenon is produced. This is
called disease or death. If the fear is separated from the phenomenon, it would
then be like a wild animal that you are afraid of. The real danger is not in the
phenomenon that can be seen but in the invisible idea that you have of it, and in
such lies all danger.
Everything connected with death we are afraid of. Man is made up of life and
death. If life is destroyed, then all is dead, but if death is destroyed, there is no
more death. Jesus came to destroy death and to bring life and immortality to
light. The Christians teach that man must die. Life and death make the man. One
is destroyed by man and the other Jesus destroys. Then where is man? Jesus
illustrates man by various figures. To him life was a reality and death a condition.
The natural man makes himself a combination of life and death, and when his life
gives out, he is dead. Jesus makes man of light and darkness; his light is his
wisdom, and his darkness is death; and as he destroys darkness, his light
shines. He puts no life in error and his resurrection is from death, while the
Christian's is of death. In all his teaching, he always strove to destroy sin, and he
separated it from the truth by giving them various names as righteous and
unrighteous, etc. These two characters are included in one man as night and day
are included in one day. The word `nan likewise includes light and darkness, or
science and ignorance. Error is like twilight. It excites the darkness and the light
bursts in. For when the light of truth burst in upon the Jews through the preaching
of Jesus, those who were in darkness or dead in ignorance could not see the
light, but it was seen by those in error or agitated by doubts and fears. In this
twilight of error, man becomes superstitious. This is the condition in which he
creates all the evils which a nervous state of mind can conceive. He must pass
through it before he can shake off the body of death or ignorance. This is death.
Jesus entered this state and preached to those confined herein before the flood
of light. Here were many sleeping in the dust of ignorance who should awake to
the truth and come forth. In the Old Testament, the people believed then as they
do now that man as you speak of him means all there is of him, what he knows
or what he thinks he knows, and that he dies wholly, and at the last day, his flesh
and bones and all there is of him will rise. Jesus divided man into two individuals:
one was in life and the other was in death, and in the end death was to be
swallowed up in truth. These identities were kept as separate as night and day.
Both were spoken of but they never meant one. Man's ignorance has
compounded the two together and he now tries to convert error into a truth and
therefore he calls on error to repent. Here is a kingdom divided against itself, for
error is life and health is also life, and by destroying error, life is destroyed. Jesus
had no sympathy with this character of error. He came to destroy it, for it is the
prison or grave of man. Man cannot see these two characters because he has
never known himself, and he never will see them till he learns that wisdom which
is developed through the medium of science is the true man, and that the
diseased or sick man is error.
What we wish to destroy is the man who torments our senses, and he is the man
of error-the man who tells what he believes but can explain nothing, one who can
give the opinions of others but can prove nothing. This character cannot be seen
except by science. If you felt a pain in the region of the hip joint, error would say
that you had the hip disease. Suppose you believe this; you are then affected by
your belief.
The idea that cures are made misleads the mind. A mathematician cannot say
that he has cured a very sick person whose disease was that he believed water
would run up hill and he had been studying how to do it.
Every person in error is sick, if there is such a thing as sickness. But if disease is
an error, the misery that follows is the effect of that error. This is a basis of
operation for establishing a science based upon philosophical principles of
reasoning. Then man can be reasoned out of his error which the world calls
disease, the same as he can be reasoned out of any other error. Religion is the
basis of man's false reasoning and it produces disease. The doctors undertake to
cure the effect by admitting the cause. This will never destroy the evil, for while
the causes exist, the evil will follow. Now correct the evil and the cause will
cease. Here I admit an evil before a cause. I will explain. A lie is nothing, neither
is the belief, but the belief produces action which, being seen and felt, sets man
to reasoning. The lie is not seen; that is in the dark. The evil therefore is not
admitted in the making up of cause and effect. A physician in giving a diagnosis
of disease never goes back of living matter. He never puts the first cause in an
evil that he admits is truth. He admits the idea disease, while I deny it. He does
not admit the evil he is trying to cure, otherwise his kingdom would be divided
against itself. He believes the lie to be a truth, and when the fruits of his belief are
shown, he takes the fruit as a disease, never knowing that his own belief is the
cause. This is why man is kept in ignorance of himself.
A philosophy that will correct the first evil being established will destroy the
opinions of the priest and physician and place man on a better basis of reasoning
where he will look out for causes instead of remedies, for the true remedy is in
knowing the cause. Suppose you believe you have the hip disease. Now to admit
the cause anything but a disease is wrong, for if you do, you make a belief
something; then something will follow, and that which follows you call disease. If
this first admission were corrected the effect would never be. Man is not
developed enough to produce the idea that words have an effect on mind just in
proportion to their definition. Ideas are made of words and words to the one who
understands them are something. True they cannot be seen, yet everyone will
admit they will affect the mind, and if they can affect, how do they do it? First the
mind is not the intellect. It is the medium. Then words being sounds must contain
something or nothing. If the person who speaks a word knows what it means, it
contains his knowledge; but if he does not know how to impress it upon the
person he addresses, to that person it is an empty sound and it produces no
effect. The truth when it is known will develop this fact that the causes of the
phenomenon exist in words.
Here I differ from the world. I put the cause in words that convey fear to the
senses or in some sensation, never in the phenomenon. The world puts disease
in the phenomenon and guesses at the cause. They have never been taught that
words are the basis of man's trouble. Words affect every person, yet you will hear
people say, "it makes no difference to me what a person says, it does not affect
me." But this is not the case. It is just as impossible for words to fall harmless on
man's senses and not injure him as it is for stones to fall on his body without
hurting him. Yet the world, ignorant of this fact, are constantly stoning the sick
with their opinions and advice. Every word affects us as much as the one we
speak to, even our thoughts affect us, and we are responsible for them as well as
our acts. If this truth were known, man would conduct himself so that his thoughts
would take a right direction. Then he will cease to do evil and learn to do good.
Consider the influence that the physician has over his patient. Weigh his words
by the standard of truth and see the misery he creates; then the mystery of
disease will be explained. Look at the effect his own words have. If any virtue is
attributed to his wisdom, it is attributed to his medicine and is accompanied by
words of sympathy or fear.
I will explain how words affect people. There is nothing so annoying to a doctor
as to have somebody give their opinion of his treatment, expressing a preference
for some other physician. If opinions have no effect on people, why find fault, and
if they have an effect, how do they affect and what do they affect? Is that which
they affect so imaginary that it has an existence outside of the senses? Certainly
not. The medical men want a monopoly of man's senses to impose their ideas
upon them, and if they are interfered with by another, they accuse him of working
upon the imagination of the sick. They never deceive the sick! It is their
neighbors! They are blind guides and hypocrites and have imposed on the
people's senses their false ideas, till the world has received them as true. And
now these imposters with a brazen face accuse others of deceiving the people
through their imagination. This shows that they believe it can be done, but at the
same time, they know that the people think that education is necessary to cure
the sick. So they institute diplomas, and if one appears without a diploma, they
call him a deceiver, operating on the imagination. To me, each acts in the same
medium, call it what you please. The deceived is honest but the deceiver feels
that he can impose on the subject and take the advantage. He tells the patient a
lie and if he believes it, this is acting upon the imagination. Of this word more
hereafter.
1864
Experiments in Detaching the Senses from the Body
BU 90:39, LC 9:40
I will now give some experiments to show how a person's senses may be
detached from the body and yet be as active as ever. I have said that mind is
matter and our senses are not matter. As ideas are matter, the idea man is
matter in a certain form and our senses being attached to the matter they
become one. This is called man, or the inner and outer man. Now the connection
to man is a mystery, yet experiments show that they can be separated and both
have an existence. This is shown in mesmeric experiments, and often in fevers,
etc. The body can be in one place and the senses can be in another. This
connection of the two is the mystery to solve.
My experiments for the last twenty years or more have carried me through the
idea matter till I have landed beyond the influence of this narrow sphere and
risen into that state where matter is created. I know how it is spoken into
existence and I can return to the earthly man who thinks his body and senses are
one and the same and show him what is real and what is false and how the idea
man is attached to the idea matter.
I shall take some patient that I have cured, to prove my assertion. I will take a
captain that had lost the use of his limbs. He had been in the army, and being
under great excitement, when he would lie down to rest, the anxiety that he felt
by the danger that surrounded him kept his mind excited, and the fear of being
aroused at any moment kept his mind in constant action like a steam engine, all
ready to move at any time. His senses being attached to his belief and his belief
being matter and containing all the elements of war, he would fight in his sleep.
This would create dangers and he would have his company out to prepare for the
fight. So he kept his senses attached to a body that he had made with his
company and detached his senses from the body that lay sleeping on the
ground. So he became like a person mesmerized. His senses had become
detached from his body and his body was like a person's body in a sound sleep
or dead. So when I sat by him I found his senses were away from his body. I
could hear persons walking so far off that it would be impossible for a person in a
normal condition to hear them. Every sound started me and this was the way with
the young man, and his body was as lifeless as a dead man's. He had no pain in
it, but it was perfectly useless. The doctors pronounced him past cure and so he
was to all medical treatment. Now to cure this man was to put his senses or self
in communication with his natural body, for he had a spiritual body, and when he
was asleep he to himself was awake and then his mind was as active as any
person's, and he would drill his company and give off his orders as though he
was in the field.
Now how could this cure be brought about? Not by medicine, but by a science
which I felt I knew. So I sat down and let my senses follow his, and this brought
me away from my body. So after being under his influence, I attached my senses
to his body and addressed myself to that. At last I made him see his new body,
like waking a person from a sleep till he could balance his arm, till it rested on his
elbow and use a little power to direct it. This excited him and a warm perspiration
started. That aroused him and his sense of hearing became less sensitive and
then his senses came nearer to his body and as quiteness was darkness, he
could not find the company, so his fear decreased and his anxiety left and he
began to improve from that very hour, and in a few weeks, he began to walk and
finally got well.
Now the science was in putting the theory in practice, like a man putting the
theory of navigation into practice. He may teach the theory; this is one of the
Godhead. The vessel is another. Now to attach his theory is to embrace the holy
ghost or application, and when that is done, this is wisdom. This is what is meant
when Jesus said, Go ye into Jerusalem and tarry till the holy ghost shall direct
you. Jerusalem was the theory or learning of the world. So the theory of
navigation is Jerusalem and the person must go into that in a vessel and stay till
the holy ghost or application teaches him how to apply it.
Now man like a vessel is under a captain and his voyages are sometimes along
shore. Most men make the voyages along shore without the least knowledge of
navigation and the pilots or doctors are of that class of persons that can teach
the points of compass and how to take the sun, but when the storm of life begins
and it is necessary to know where you are, then the cloud thickens and darkness
sets in, the lightning flashes and thunder rolls and the wind whistles through your
ears and the whole body is in a trembling condition and your mast or legs spring
and everyone is working and the cry is, Breakers ahead! Then you call on the
Holy Ghost or that third power, practice, not theory. This is the state of the sick.
The doctors are very good fairweather pilots but when your vessel is in danger
they are of little account; you will do as well to clew up your sails and heave to
and lash your helm and lay still till the storm is over. And if you are lucky, you will
come out all right. So don't put your trust in man's theory but try the theories and
see if they will stand the test in the day of trouble.
I have said that all disease is in the mind. I will try to explain it more clearly. I will
separate the mind from the senses and the senses from the thing called disease.
Now to cure a trouble is to know how it is made. As men reason, they reason
upon mathematical principles, but as they stand on a false basis, they will land
sooner or later in trouble. Diseases is the effect of one kind of reason. The cure
is the opposite kind of reason. One is based on science and the other on belief or
opinion. To give the reader an idea of my manner, I will take the case of a lady
that came to see me. I will show how I changed the mind and how the cure was
affected. I sat down by the lady and she affected me in this way. I felt a heat in
the back of my neck accompanied with pain. This affected my shoulders and the
pit of my stomach. Now all this pain or heat of itself contained no wisdom, only
the state of mind. This is mind and out of this everything grows or is made. This
was the condition of the lady.
Now she had a belief that she had a cancerous tumor and in fact thought she
had one coming. The belief was in this heat for the heat was the mind or soil to
have the cancer. Now her beliefs contained the elements of a cancer to her, so
she received the belief, and this made the disturbance in the mind. Now who was
it that made the disturbance? Not wisdom but the devil or error. Now the
sensation made her inquire what it was, and some error or ignorant physician
gives his opinion that it is a cancer. So she believed this opinion, and went to
work to make the phenomenon. So now I had to change her mind and destroy
her belief. This set her senses free from the error and this was the cure. As my
reasoning is from what I consider a false report taken for a truth, I have to make
the change by illustrations. So I said, Your disease is all in your mind. You think
you have a cancerous tumor. This she said was a fact and not in the mind, so I
went on to prove my theory and put it into practice.
So I began by a parable. Suppose I ask you if you ever saw a quince and you
say, I don't think I have. I said, will you tell me how it looks, how it smells and
how it tastes? This you cannot do so you admit your ignorance. Then I
commence to explain how it grows on a tree like a small pear tree and I describe
it to the best of my ability. You listen. Now all the time your mind is going through
a chemical change and you really create a quince after my description. Now this
quince is a spiritual one but it has a real name, so you start up excited to find a
quince, and as fruit is known by names, you approach a fruit store and look at the
various kinds of fruit. At last your eye strikes on the kind you think is a quince, so
you buy one and come and show it to me and say, I have found a quince. I say
are you sure? You say pretty sure. Have you not a doubt? Why, I cannot say
certainly, but I am as sure as I can be without being certain. So I say to you, It is
a quince. Now this is wisdom, but in the quince there was no life nor wisdom, and
in the name, there was no life nor wisdom to you. But when I put your senses
and the name to the thing called quince, then out of this came life or a truth. This
is wisdom.
Now for the application to you to cure your idea cancer, for that is what you are
afraid of. But first I will say that all reason contains three elements of the trinity.
Wisdom contains them all and so does man's opinion and science the same.
Now man's trinity is the word, the flesh and the opinion. Science is the word, the
flesh is the thing, and the theory is applying the thing to the thing named. Now I
shall speak of man's trinity that creates diseases. When you heard the name of
tumor or felt the sensation of heat, of course being a little excited and your
curiosity awakened, you went to find the cause of your trouble so your senses
would enquire of everyone what it was. At last you got the idea of cancerous
tumor. Now of course you would look for it the same as you looked for the
quince, so your senses would look all over the body, and of course you would be
very anxious to find where it generally located itself or stopped. At last you settle
that you have found it by the direction you have had from me so you come to me
and say, I have found it. I ask you where, you say in the stomach. I ask you when
you got it and how it came there. This you can't tell, only that it came without your
knowing it. So I say you have made it yourself by listening to the devil or error in
the opinion of the medical faculty or public opinion. This you can't believe, so I
then commence to explain the trinity of disease.
As I have already said, the belief is a lie, the effect and the explanation. I shall
give the elements of error, or the three principles. One is a lie or an old
superstition or belief in a disease. This is the idea called the devil. He was a liar
from the beginning and he is the father of all disease. So he tells a lie out of his
own self and explains it on some scientific principles according to his belief. Now
as he is very pious and religious, he has introduced every kind of fashionable
ideas and being very unassuming he has now the good wishes of all the people.
So much so that his word is now the law of the land, and all that do not bow
down to his will, he will smite with some disease of his own make. So his
kingdom is of this world of opinion and if you will just look, you will see that every
idea of his is in his heaven. Not one thing he ever said is true, but all say he is
the author of death and hell and heaven. He created angels, made spirits and
witches, and made a great throne up in the heavens and invented all kinds of
disease and every sort of misery that can be imagined. So his kingdom is a
kingdom of darkness.
Now if every person should cease to exist, his kingdom must fall, for it is all built
in the air, yet he is reverenced and prayed to and the people kneel down and ask
him to have mercy on them. His laws are the laws of the land; in fact he is the
God of the world and his opinion is law. So when you disobey his opinions you
disobey a law. Now see where the God of science stands outside of all this
deception, and see that all this sort of worship is all idolatry and superstition. But
as science never acts but for good, its kingdom is not of this world, for to be good
is to be wise and this goodness is health and happiness and is the destruction of
error and disease. Now wisdom knows from the beginning that everything that is
comes from his wisdom. So man's wisdom can make the distinction between the
wisdom of God and the wisdom of the devil or opinion. God created the earth and
every living creature that is in or on it, and he created the skies but he never
inhabited them except as birds inhabit.
The devil's kingdom is in the air or out of sight and all its inhabitants are spirits of
those that had an existence in or on the earth. It has all kinds of physicians and
all kinds of diseases and they are both spirits, prowling around seeking whom
they may devour, and they have their agents through whom they communicate
their will. So in any trouble in this world that affects the human family, the spirits
of this devil are ready to administer to their wants. So as they, through their
mediums, invent all kinds of evils, they give the evil to the people by a sort of
description or illustration. For instance, this devil wishes to destroy you by one of
his evils. He commences by telling you about some idea that exists in the world
or mind, for the mind is where the prince of darkness dwells.
I will stop here and say a word or two about a young man that first called to see
me. I sat down and found him very much frightened and nervous from a little
sensation of suffocation. He thought he had the heart disease, and when I told
him what it was and all it amounted to, he was all right. Now if it was not for this
evil in the mind, there would not have been any cause of alarm, and if I had not
explained, he might have died at almost any time, for he said it would wake him
up two or three times in the night. Now I say that science calls these evils lies,
and the sick have been made to believe that the very things or evils that they
bring on themselves by their own acts are something that has come upon them
without any of their action, when in reality they are the author of their own
existence.
The word cancer is a lie, and the devil or error is the father of it, and it originates
in his brain and this residence is in man's mind. His kingdom is in the opinions of
man. Now to get a description of his lie, he gives the symptoms so that the
symptoms are accompanied with language that will illustrate the evil in such vivid
terms that it is almost impossible to deny its existence. So then you begin to have
your curiosity excited to know all about it, as the young would sit down by the
chimney corner and listen to some ghost story till the ghost would haunt them all
night, and they would wake up in the morning all exhausted by some foolish story
that never had any existence outside of the mind.
Now as mind is matter, this direction becomes attached to the senses. Then the
senses are under the direction of this blind guide and he commences to create in
the mind an image after the one the doctors set up. So in their ignorance they
watch the growth of the seed sown in the mind. While asleep or ignorant, it grows
and is nourished by the person till the proof begins to appear in the form of
symptoms; then the fears are further excited and the doctor is called, and after
he hears the story or description, he says he thinks you have a cancer. Now of
course you are excited to fight the evil and get rid of it. So you inquire where the
locality is, and the doctor asks where he seems to dwell the most to you. You say
sometimes in the head and sometimes in the shoulder and in the side and over
all the chest and in the stomach and runs up to the throat and feels hot. Then
says the doctor, that is he, it is a cancer in your stomach; so now you are
directed to that locality. This makes you nervous and the next thing a new
disease, and so on, till you use up all your mind creating the evils the devil has
invented. So your senses being attached to them, you reason that you and your
belief and your senses are all one. So this makes up the devil's trinity: the word,
the flesh, and the devil. The devil is the author of his own words and the flesh is
the phenomenon. So that when he speaks a lie, he speaks of himself for he is a
liar and abideth in it. To cure is to show the Father is in the belief.
1864
A Fragment
BU 42:21, LC 9:74
Does man in his reasoning separate the soul from the body? I answer he does
not in practice yet he does in theory. He makes a distinction, but he makes a
distinction without a difference. He calls the mind the earthly house or tenement,
for he says when his house shall be dissolved, he has a house not made with
hands. Now his house is his ideas or belief and his senses are in the house; so
he reasons the same as a man reasons about a material house. Now if your
house is on fire and you admit you are in it, then you lose your life with the
house. So your mind being the house or body, if you admit your soul is in your
body and disease is destroying the house, you must reason that all must be
destroyed, soul and body, because you admit that you are in your belief or
house. Now this is the reasoning of the wisdom of this world. But the wisdom of
God reasons in this way: that God, the highest wisdom that belongs to man and
just as man knows himself, he knows God, and man knows no God except that
wisdom that governs and directs his acts. We have been taught to believe that
God is a being independent of man. Now this is as absurd as for a child to
believe that he came into existence without a father or mother. All will see the
absurdity of that belief. So to admit that man and God are separate from each
other is as absurd as to believe that the child is no part of its parent, yet the child
has his identity of matter and the parent his.
1864
The Higher Intelligence
BU 22:1, LC 9:131
Ever since the world began to reason, it has been known that there is a state of
intelligence higher than the natural man or brute, but to define it has been the
problem to be solved. It has been separated from the lower state by hundreds of
names but it has never had a separate identity, for instance, the law and the
gospel. Now they put intelligence in the gospel, also right and wrong. Here they
admit two kinds of intelligence, good and bad, both in one person. Action and
reaction, God and the Devil, Science and ignorance etc. etc.
I might go on to the end of the chapter and never arrive at what all have aimed
at. Then what are these two identities that have had so many names, such as
health and disease, happiness and misery, etc.? All refer to this same higher
state and sometimes intelligence. Yet their separation never has been made, so
that the thinking mind can have two identities that they can agree upon. The
religious world have tried to give these two principles an identity so they called
one God and the other the Devil. This for a time answered, but when men began
to reason, these identities merged into one. This has been the case with every
theory. Now I propose to find an element that every man will admit whatever his
religion or political opinions may be if he is scientific. Every scientific man will
admit what is called in mechanics, statics. This includes that class or reason that
sees and knows no third power or what is called velocity. It can't reason from
cause and effect. It embraces the brutes and natural man. It embraces imitation
and cunning, but nothing that relates to dynamics. That embraces a higher
power. It sees the errors of statics and cannot overcome them. It is progression
or the destruction of error.
Statics also embraces destruction but not construction. Dynamics embraces the
destruction of error and the construction of civilization and freedom; both
principles admit destruction. All wars are carried on in these two principles. The
one to destroy the government is statics, the one to destroy the rebellion and
preserve the government is dynamics. This last has to contend with all the
ignorance of the lower mode of reason and also the conservative element, that
class of mind which is neither dynamics or statics, but a little of both, and not
settled in either. They are like sea captains who continue to use a hemp cable
upon the principle that an iron one was not strong enough. This was a
conservative man. So in all things, the two extremes are the only real identities.
Those between are a sort of mongrel that never produce anything but hold back
till the men of statics get out of patience and give up the fight.
The conservative rises and says, You both are wrong, and each partially right.
This conservative principle is actually of importance. It is like the ballast in a ship.
Its weight keeps the ship sometimes from tipping over. But it always acts to
prevent the wise, or if there was no ballast the wise would, from the misfortune,
become wiser by experience. But to save the lives and property, while the
principle is developing, this third element is introduced. Where science is
understood, it is thrown away, for it encumbers the ship of science, being nothing
but weight or pressure that has no power. Velocity destroys it and so science
destroys conservatism. So also freedom destroys slavery and conservatism.
Conservatism shows itself in language. It makes issues where none are needed.
It is all grammar and pays no respect to principles. It is power of imitation of
sounds. It makes issue on what it does not know. For instance, it admits an error
and then sustains it by facts that are used to sustain a true principle. For
instance, in the error of slavery. Statics contends it is right; dynamics denies it.
Conservatism admits it as wrong, and at the same time denies the right to
destroy it and quotes the Constitution to prove that it is right. So conservatism is
a sort of looking glass to both. Each can see their reasoning in it.
Now all trouble commences in this lower element which is matter in motion.
Conservatism is the first element that is produced, for it is that dead matter that is
tossed about by the motion of statics and to get rid of it brings out the higher
element of dynamics to calculate power in motion or calculate causes and
effects. Freedom is wisdom and slavery, ignorance. Statics never sees nor
reflects on the chances, and being ignorant, it comes in that gross matter called
conservatism which wants matter to keep still. But as matter is not under the
control of statics or conservatism, the latter is as much an enemy of statics as to
dynamics.
So the principle if true will keep developing, and dynamics or science will expand
till conservatism is used up. For it is but ignorance and shows itself in every
development of science. Now as disease commences as a way of accounting for
everything upon some false basis, conservatism opposes it. So in every respect
this element is of use in a certain state of progression, but beyond that it is a
dead weight. For instance, to oppose a truth when it can be demonstrated
beyond a doubt is a dead weight to progression. This element is largely
developed in religious and political parties and also in the doctrine of disease.
Statics has invented all sorts of superstition. The African slaves are a very good
example of statics in politics, in religion and in disease. They are famous for their
superstition in regard to the other world and believe in all kinds of evil spirits, so
that if any one should say to them that a disease has legs and would come to
them, they would believe.
Now it is a fact that this false way of reasoning in regard to all these ideas has a
great effect on this still kind of matter called conservatism, and when science
shows itself by the working of this lower element, then you hear from the
conservative. It is dangerous to meddle with the old established truths (or
Constitution) as witchcraft, slavery and all kinds of disease, or the element to
create them. You hear the faculty warning the masses (or statics) not to be
humbugged. You know, say they, that the old way of practice has been handed
down from our fathers who know more than these quacks. Others appeal to the
church to prove that our government was founded in slavery and ignorance.
All this is true but they never dreamt that wisdom had another government that
came down from on high and is establishing itself in the hearts and
understanding of men, founded on the rock of science (called dynamics). This is
the pillar that followed Moses when he was leading the people to the land of
science and this is the rock he smote that discharged the water that they drank.
The rock and water was science. The water was the understanding of it and
those that drank in this truth or water were satisfied. The serpent was the
doctrine of the statics mind. So as Moses held up their superstition and showed
how it acted on the minds and made them sick and gave them pains like the bite
of serpents, then those who listened and received the truth were healed or
convinced. Now all this kind of reasoning applies to the people of these days, for
false science has always existed.
Paul warns the people against these persons teaching science falsely so called.
In curing disease, this element called conservatism is all the help the error gets.
Let those who know nothing of the cause of disease stand aside and let the
medical faculty fight out their own battle and it would be nothing but a mere
somersault and the truth would come out conqueror. But the conservative
element always sticks to the skirts of the faculty like demagogues or dogs to bark
at and hunt the truth and misrepresent everything for the sake of being petted
and fed by the faculty. The bolters that are always shifting in a storm to be on the
right side after the storm is over, when they can say, "I thought so; it has come
out just as I said." . . . of all matter this is the least.
It is like the lawyer who, when the judge told the court that they must be in their
seats when the court began, said, Your honor knows I am the least absent. Yes,
said the judge, and the least present. So to wisdom, the conservative minds are
the least present or absent. They are a sort of necessary evil that in the progress
of truth acts as a stumbling block to science and ignorance. These make up the
element of pressure in mechanics. Like the weight of a vessel on the stocks,
having nothing to do with getting her off. Wisdom has to overcome it and all the
time it says, Let me alone. I was put here and it is against the laws of pressure or
weight to be moved for it may stave all to pieces. Statics says, We will shove it
off by force. Dynamics says, By the principle of mechanics, by the inclined plane,
we get rid of some power or substitute velocity instead. So that if we can start it,
the weight or conservatism will be on our side. The inclined plane is the turning
point to conservatism. So as the ship moves off, conservatism sings out with
science, Here she goes and throws up its cap in triumph, while statics stands in a
maze and calls it a mystery.
This is the way with the sick. The doctor stands and looks at his patient that has
moved off the stocks by the power of science and all conservatism is shouting,
Good. The doctor stands with his thumb in his mouth and when asked if he
understands how it was done replies, It (the disease) might have gone before if it
had a mind to. It puts ignorance in the body or matter and holds it responsible for
their folly. Science has always these errors to overcome. If I could think of a man
who has all these elements well defined, I would describe him; but every man
has them, some more and some less and no man is free from all, who has the
dynamcal intelligence. He who has the conservative element may not have the
three but he must have statics.
Ignorance or statics puts the highest wisdom in the conservative element.
Dynamics puts no wisdom in either but calls them elements in matter to be
governed by the laws of dynamics. Statics is the natural growth like all other
animal life. Conservatism is the manufactured article. Dynamics is a knowledge
of both. The two first are like the clearing up of a wilderness. Statics is the natural
growth. Dynamics cuts down the trees or obstructions. Conservatism is the
resistance to the power of dynamics. So as cultivation and health come, disease
and ignorance disappear.
1864
The Immortality of the Soul
BU 119:1, LC 9:232
(Question) Do you believe in the immortality of the soul? (Answer) I don't know
what you mean by soul. (Q) I mean that part of man that exists after death. (A)
What proof have you that man exists after death? (Q) The Bible. (A) Is not all you
say a belief? Have you any positive proof of it? (A) The Bible is proof enough for
me. (A) Well, it is no proof to me. (Q) Do you believe man has a soul? (A) I never
saw one, did you? (Q) No, but I have seen a body with a soul attached to it. (A)
That is only your belief about it. (Q) I know it, but do you deny that man has a
soul? (A) Never having seen one, I have no belief about it. (Q) Do you believe in
the death of the body? (A) Do you mean to include anything in the body that
existed before the body had form? (Q) No. (A) Well, I am willing to admit that the
body you spoke of may dissolve and if this is death, I know it and have no belief
about it, but we were not arguing this point. Can you separate the soul from the
body, senses and life? (Q) I don't know as I can. (A) Well, I believe that life,
death, senses and soul all belong to the body and are of this world and have
nothing to do with the real man, only as a medium. (Q) Then, all beliefs in the
Bible to you are false? (A) I have said no such thing, but I do say there is no
wisdom in any of these beliefs which can be shown.
(Q) Have you any belief in regard to death and what is called the future state? (A)
None at all, as we are taught to believe. (Exit Mr. Question and enter Mr.
Atheist.) (Ath.) Please state your ideas in regard to man's future state, as you
understand it according to your theory. (A) Well, I will reason with you with regard
to my theory and if you wish to ask questions, do so. I know that I am here and
that I can exist without the aid of my senses. (Ath.) If you had never had any
senses, would you have known this fact? (A) I cannot say that I should, but would
that prove that I did not exist? (Ath.) No, it would not prove anything. (A) Well,
you must admit that there are certain truths that exist and are known to some
persons but which have never come within your senses. (Ath.) Yes. (A) Then, it
is not the senses which makes the truth but the truth which is shown through the
senses. (Ath.) Yes. (A) You will admit that your natural parents existed before
you. (Ath.) Yes. (A) But can you say that they are any older to perfect wisdom
than you, except by what you know through your natural senses? (Ath.) No. (A)
Then if wisdom is the first cause and matter is subject to it, the body must have
been spoken into existence by wisdom. (Ath.) Yes.
Now, if wisdom gives the body motion and keeps it in motion, it becomes the
child of wisdom. Parents are the father and mother of their child and they give it
an identity though it is really a part of the parents' identity, and their identity
belongs to wisdom and their ages are merely the difference in their development.
For instance, if I tell you a truth that has not been developed through your
senses, it is no younger by your not knowing it; but when you do know it, you
give it birth and it is born to the senses. The child of error takes its identity at its
birth, the same as any other idea, and dates its birth from that time. So does any
belief, but when wisdom comes it separates the truth from the error and shows
that all truths are eternal and that the words life, death, old and young cannot be
applied to it.
Take your own existence and remember back as far as you can and you will find
your parents can remember back further than you, showing that you existed
before you can date your identity yourself. That fact shows that memory is in the
mind and is a part of the senses. Not that the principle remembers, for the events
may be forgotten, and when they are forgotten, it is to the senses as if these
events had never been. This makes man doubt his existence. But when you
understand that life and death are conditions of mind like memory, then you will
see that as long as you can remember anything, to you it exists; but when
forgotten, it is dead to you and I will show why I do not believe in the idea death
as it is taught.
Every new development of truth which comes to the senses scientifically is a new
birth and its life is dated from that time, although it had existed forever. Man's
senses to the mind are like science to the wisdom-to explain whatever comes up
within its reach. And truth uses the same senses to prove its existence and thus
man, as we say, is the medium of truth and error. Every truth that comes to the
senses existed before, while every lie or opinion dates its existence only back to
its author. The separation of the bodily senses from the wisdom is not an easy
task, for one has to prove what cannot be seen but yet exists, and I know it as
well as I know that I have any senses. But to prove it to another is one of the
hardest problems to solve; and yet although thousands have known this fact,
they have never been able to demonstrate it so it has taken a stand of itself. The
existence of a lie or opinion, being begotten in the mind and afterwards
developed through the bodily senses, lives just as long as it is believed to be a
truth. But when the real truth comes and destroys the lie, it dies, and that is the
death of the body.
The body of truth has its natural senses and faculties but you cannot exist in the
natural senses at the same time; for you might as well say that light and
darkness can occupy the same place at the same time. As all diseases are made
manifest through the body, they are treated as though they had their origin in the
body. I know that this higher sphere of existence is the habitation of every living
person, yet the natural man does not know it, so he lives and dies according to
his belief and always will until wisdom burns up his errors by the fire of truth or
science. All religion is confined to the natural senses and although all religious
beliefs admit an overruling power, they cannot bring one particle of proof of it so
as to convince another; therefore their belief is of no use to mankind.
Now man is sick and oppressed and bound down with disease, as it is called,
and yet knows not the cause, and his sufferings are more than he can bear, as
there is no eye but that of the natural senses, and that can only see the effect on
the body. He crawls on the earth, a poor worm of the dust, till his body, mind and
soul all return to their original elements. Sometimes it is called fever and
revolutions take place till the truth will spring out of the senses by the agitation of
the mind and the light will burst in and resume its authority over the natural man's
senses. To establish this truth and benefit the world is my great object, but how
to bring it about is the question. It may be asked, what advantage would it be to
man? It is man himself and to know it is to know himself and be able to keep
clear of the evils which affect his senses. The teaching of this truth to apply it to
man's trouble is the same as we apply the Science of Christianity to correct and
enlighten the world in Science. Disease like all errors must be destroyed by some
wisdom superior to that which belongs to the natural man's senses; for the
senses may be deceived, but the truth cannot, and the wisdom that can show
this fact is above the natural senses.
1864
Language
BU 42:22, LC 6:128
PART 2
It has been generally supposed that language contains some intelligence, but
this is not the case. It is like the raps of a galvanic battery, a conductor of
intelligence, containing nothing of itself. An idea is something and to give it to
another person requires a medium. So words or language are used to convey the
idea. The medium may be used for good or bad purposes like the telegraph.
Opinions and science are the two identities that monopolize language. Language
is an invention and the person who first started the idea of language gave the
first impetus to science, for some sensation, higher than the natural man can
understand, wished to make itself known to another person. Now this was the
Christ or God manifest in the human mind. The desire to impart something to the
world is what has been prophesied. So language is its medium, and every
medium is used for good and bad purposes. So language is the medium of
science as well as of error. There is no way of getting at the truth by language,
for a lie can be clothed in better language than the truth. The least language or
clothing truth has, the better, and the pure naked truth, stripped of all language,
is the most perfect. So language is not to add words to wisdom but to be used by
wisdom to convey itself to another.
Every original idea that has ever developed itself through matter comes to the
world or man through language. So the idea is the Christ and the Holy Ghost is
the Science or language. And when man is filled with the Holy Ghost or by the
wisdom of God or Science, then he speaks not of himself but of wisdom through
the Holy Ghost or Science. When it says that Jesus was begotten of the Holy
Ghost, it does not mean the man or flesh, but that Jesus was a medium for this
great truth to develop itself to the world so that the Holy Ghost was Jesus' father
and the Christ is in Jesus. Then Jesus could say that he, that is Christ, had no
earthly father but God, made known to Jesus by the Holy Ghost or Science. It
required language to communicate this truth to man, but the ignorance of the
world, not knowing or feeling the Christ or truth, applied it to the man Jesus and
called him Christ. Here was one instance of the misconstruction of an idea, not
language. The language was not to blame, for the words were invented long
before the idea was developed. Yet, the truth existed before language was
invented.
To make it plainer, I will suppose a case. Take the word cancer. Now if a person
who does not know the meaning of the word should say to another as ignorant as
himself that he had a cancer, there could be no effect produced because the
word did not contain the idea. But it might convey some idea and this idea be
conveyed to another. Now let one be posted up with regard to the idea cancer;
then if he used the word cancer, something would be conveyed to the other by
language. Now a belief is a chemical change produced in the mind by language
which conveys an idea of an invisible thing that cannot be seen, but described.
The image being created in the mind according to description, the matter is kept
condensing and phenomenon is produced on the body according to the belief.
Now if there never had been any language, the belief never would have been
created and of course no phenomena would have been produced. Every branch
of science is made known to the world through the language of the people and
every error is made known through the same medium. To use language
scientifically is to correct some error that the people believe in that makes them
sick or troubles them. Now through science the error has been destroyed by
wisdom through the same medium and corrected by science. Take the belief in
the revolution of the earth. The idea that the earth was flat was communicated to
the world by language, yet every one knows it is false.
Wisdom through science uses the same language to destroy the false idea and
establish the truth. Take a piano; the same keys that produce discord will
produce harmony. So language like the keys of an instrument is directed by a
wisdom outside the word or keys. Thousands of persons use words without any
meaning. If men knew what they were conveying, their language would be of
some force; but they often convey a wrong impression when they intend to
convey a right one, from the fact that there never has been a science admitted
for the correction of disease. Now let man know that his ills are the effect of his
belief and his belief comes through the medium of language, then he will test the
belief in science and see what foundation it has in truth. Every truth existed
before language was invented. Now can any one say that disease called Cancer
existed before man? Man is not the beginning, there must be some wisdom to
create man. So if we believe that disease was before man, then wisdom must
create it and man must be more exposed to disease than is in the world. It is true
that as the world is at the present time diseases have their identity and are as
well defined as evil spirits or devils were in the Old Testament. But we must go
back to the first cause, language. Does any one suppose that if Moses had not
known language, he could have given an account of the creation. And if he had
not, the world would never have been frightened into the belief that this world
would be destroyed. Now as I said before, there is nothing in language of itself.
The