Mind, religion and health, with an appreciation of the Emmanuel movement; how its principles can be applied in promoting health and in the enriching of our daily life

Front matter

Mind, Reugion ©Health

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RT MACDONALD h

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For the good that I would do, I do not, out the evil which I would not, that I do. — New Testament Scriptures.

I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly. — New Testament Scriptures.

Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character.

Happy is he who acts as the Columbus of his own soul.

— Sir J. Stephen.

One world is away and by far the largest to me and that is myself.

— Walt Whitman.

II

Psychology's revelation of the mind's comprehensive realm — Instances of the latest power of the subconscious — Our new physician, Dr. V. M. N.— How Christianity helps out — The nearness of the individual subconscious to the universal life — How men can block up or open the health channels.

A thought is not only a fact, but a very serious fact. It has literal value in every possible and in all unforeseen ways. It is the most substantial thing with which our life has anything to do. There is no such thing as an idle thought. Every thought is an active, positive, influential something that creates commotion within the mind, good or ill, blessing or curse without. Few know of the tremendous power exerted by their thoughts. If we did, we would think them more carefully, express them more precisely, cultivate them more diligently, and use them more remedially. The within is always superior to the without. The one is the formative, the other the incidental. The external should be what the internal decrees. The circumstantial — what the personal ordains. It is a sad perversion of the divine order when environment dominates the man. All education, culture, religion, are that the person, the living soul, becomes strong enough to dominate his fate.

Viewpoint is everything. A gloomy mind means a gloomy world, however brightly the sun shines. A cheery mind fashions a cheery universe, tho the day be dark and dreary. A weak and troubled mind postulates an impossible resting-place. A strong mind demands a helpful rather than a hindering environment and empowers both hand and foot to sweep obstacles out of the way.

Dr. Matthews' helpful little book on "How to Keep Well" exclaims: "There are mental as well as physical causes of disease to be considered. Your thoughts are of vast importance. A large proportion of all diseases are due directly or indirectly to thoughts. You think, then you act. An effect follows your act, which is good or bad. Thoughts are always first. Acts are always second. Ef-

THE POWER OP THE SUBCONSCIOUS SELF

fects are always third. Thoughts can produce disease as readily as germs. A man thinks he must have certain things to drink. He acts by taking them. He gets congestion of the membrane which lines the kidneys as an effect. In time the congestion reaches a state of inflammation, and then the kidney tissue breaks down and wastes away. This is kidney disease produced from thoughts. This illustration applies to a long list of diseases, as real and fatal as those produced by physical causes. Wrong thinking produces wrong acting, and wrong acting produces disease in a multitude of ways."

Why not say, then, that the mental attitude we take toward everything determines its effects upon us ?

But what is the self that is well or ill. Who can say? It is as mysterious as is God. The Bible exclaims, " Great is the mystery of godliness.'' But it declares also that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. The majority of men make the self synonymous with the body. When we go home we will say to our friend, "I was at church to-night." Perhaps we were. Or, we may have been a thousand miles away, visiting friends in a distant city, engaged in far-away occupations, or anticipating joys and sorrows we may never share tho a body called by our name, and that resembled us, sat in one of these pews, I thought I saw you here. But I saw only an intelligent-looking body. I must see your motives, your disposition, your loves and hates, your aspirations and longings and hopes before I can say I see you.

How tall are you? How much do you weigh ? Six feet tall, you say, and weigh a hundred and fifty pounds ? Both of us are wrong. You can't measure the self by a foot rule, nor weigh it in iron scales. Every time you aspire, and hope, and love you escape the body and live in the heights and distances. To estimate you aright I must gather up all your hopes and aspirations and faiths and loves; and if you have been wise enough to reach up and lay hold of the Eternal I must weigh and measure the Eternal in order to estimate you.

Others identify the self with the soul, but the problem is not simplified. The psychol-

THE POWER OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS SELE

ogist brings in mind to estimate aright. But how deepens the mystery, for the mind is no longer the man's consciousness only. Its seat is no longer in the brain alone. It inhabits the entire body and has other residence besides. All psychologic discovery includes in the term mind all possible mental states. Its domain is extended into all psychic action. It includes the conscious, and because consciousness is an infinitesimal part of its content it stretches forth unto all subconscious depths beside.

All vital experience is lodged in subconsciousness. The conscious experience is limited to the present. The sum total of experience stretching over the ranges of the years is safely stored away in subconsciousness, but not beyond recall. In fact, it is this reserve force on which we draw for guidance that constitutes the worth of life. The real of our existence is never what we experience daily, hourly ; it is rather the residue constantly filtering through consciousness into the depths of being, making us the men and women that we are. All the little and great events of life are stored away in subconsciousness beyond the reach of will, beyond the play of the desires, beyond the incidents and accidents of time. They are not influenced by consciousness, and will, and desire, but they constantly guide us, correct us, dominate us, lead us joyously in the paths of righteousness, else sorrowfully in the ways of sin.

How discouraging that we can not retain the whole of the book we read yesterday. By to-morrow nine-tenths of it has escaped us. Yes, escaped us, but only passed down into the subconscious part, as influence, to strengthen instinct, to prompt intuition, to form habit, to determine character.

So of our contact with the world or with truth. The passing conscious moment is trivial compared to what has passed through and down into reserve force to make strong for good or ill, to incite, prompt, decree, control, inspire, or impede.

We congratulate ourselves upon being rea sonable beings, upon thinking before we speak, reflecting before we act, investigating before we affirm. But that's exactly what we do not do. The wisest part of life is lived by instinct. AVe reach conclusions by intuition:

we are ruled by habit. Character holds the helm and steers the ship. To say all this is to affirm that in the subconscious self resides the power, else we would have no power at all. Had a man only the cash he is conscious of in his pockets, he is weak indeed. It is his stored-away investments and the amount in the banks he can draw on in emergency that determine how rich he is.

Herein is the power of habit. Sometimes it carries us our way; sometimes its way. Much of the excuse we offer for evil doing is that habit led us there. We had no power of inhibition. The horse ran away, and we sat in the carriage helpless and let him run. When the horse is running our way, let him go. The faster the better! But we should always hold the reins, and so firmly that he is never allowed to take the bit in his teeth. Habit's way should be our way, else it should be pulled up with a round turn. That sounds like the recommending of sudden volitional action, an experiment that will not always work, especially when we want it to. Better to keep correcting habit in the forming, little by little, and then it will express the real and true self so accurately that our actions can be reckoned on in advance.

Conscious action is always weak action and hampered. Unconscious action is strong and free. If in leaving your home to-morrow for your work you say I will improve my walk, thus consciously place your feet this way and that, you will not walk at all. The walking that spells advancement and carries you along must be unconscious to be strong, sure and swift. Your unconscious life must direct you. Your instincts rather than your reason must force your steps.

The same with you, ladies, at the piano. Consciousness of notes and fingers kills the harmonies and prevents ail freedom of action. Unconscious acting is the soul speaking through keys and notes and fingers guided by intuition, and regulated by habit.

We ministers know what a troublesome handicap consciousness is. One of the very simplest acts of his Sabbath ministrations is a witness. It is the repeating of that most simple, most beautiful, most familiar of all prayers, the Lord's Prayer. Many a minister will not repeat it. He is afraid to do so. He fears he will not say it right. Some have been known to write it out and read it, lest to shut out the world with the closed eyes is to shut out the precious words as well. Clergymen have been known to repeat certain clauses of it, to leave out others, to get twisted generally, and end in confusion, to the dismay of their worshipful congregations, who can't imagine what's up. What is up? His sermon runs along smoothly enough. His own prayer is consistent, accurate, logical, helpful. In the other exercises he gives no evidence of paresis. Only this is up. Through fear of saying the Lord's Prayer wrongly he intrudes his consciousness. He won't let it say itself. He won't let subconsciousness caper. He is so anxious to say it right that he says it wrong.

But alas! In the subconsciousness is the power of evil as well as the power of good. The apostle gives us some startling autobiography just here. He would do the good, but evil creeps up into consciousness and holds him back. Instinctively his old dead nature that he thought himself rid of, that his Christianized reason abhors, obtrudes itself, and he finds conscious mind and volition, hands and feet, doing the very thing his reason condemns. Are we not all influenced as was he? Often it is the very height of our ideals, and in contrast the consciousness of a nature dominated by sense impressions and the lusts of the flesh that inspires the sad confession.

You never catch the Divine Master speaking thus. He is never conscious of unrealized ideals, of struggling from the depths to the heights, of striving to attain and of being thwarted in the pursuit. His consciousness and subconsciousness were always at one. There was no trail of the serpent in His life. Thus could He safely challenge His enemies to accuse Him if they dare of sin. "Who shall deliver me?" cries Paul. "Who accuseth Me?" cries Jesus. Christ's consciousness of God was so complete that it was perfect. Well may He be called the Perfect Man. Paul is with us on the plains. Jesus was with God on the heights. You may question the Virgin birth. You may ask the how and the where of the incarnation. But there He was, imperial, supreme. Account for Him who can. The consciousness of Jesus is the satisfactory solution of the problem that our dogmatism failed to reach.

Herein is the secret of his all-powerful influence that there seems to have been no break between His consciousness and His subconsciousness. That is why His influence has come down through all these centuries of time under the name of Christianity. We think of Christianity as a teaching of the Bible, as a moral code, as a bundle of heavenly precepts, or as a high and happy state of civilization. Why not call it what it is? Christ's influence coming down through the years. That unique unity between what He was conscious of possessing and what He actually had stored away in the subliminal depth of his life was the atonement behind whatever atonement He afterward achieved. There was no break between His conscious and His unconscious life. Paul felt the contrast. We are martyrs to the contradiction. Upon this matter of influence, as upon that of evil and good, we can exclaim, "The good I would I do not; the evil I would not that I do."

We recognize the obligation to influence a person for good. It may be in the home among the children. It may be in our industrial or social life. So we begin a repression of ourselves all along the line. We weigh our words, count our acts, are careful of our thoughts. We pose, and are stilted and quite unnatural in that person's presence. And we wonder why he is not influenced when we've tried so hard. That's the trouble; we have tried so hard, and the harder we tried the weaker the influence. Conscious action is necessarily limited and weak. Self-consciousness is about the nearest thing to spiritual death that anywhere exists. Another reason for our failure is, doubtless, that the full force of our subconscious life was influencing the other way. Not only was our artificial self defeating our purpose, but our real self was defeating that purpose too. When shall we see that from the subconscious self all influence radiates, because there it is stored? Thus it is that in spite of us it is our unconscious influence that counts — the thing we do off guard. Our nature is always expressing itself. Influences steal out from it as do light-beams from the sun.

All such reflection is merely illustrative of the power of the subconscious. It dominates situations. It corrects ills. It goes far as a remedial agency in preventing and curing disease.

Dr. Schofield startles us by the statement that every doctor is in the presence of another and greater physician, "Dr. V. M. N.," a doctor trained in no human school, but divinely gifted to heal all varieties of disease and to repair every species of injury — the vis medicatrix naturae — in other words, the unconscious mind.

"Every thoughtful practitioner," states Dr. Wilkinson, "will acknowledge that when his therapeutic reserves are exhausted, by far the most reliable consultant is the vis medicatrix naturce. To ignore the fact that he has been in charge of the case for days, when we first approach with our mixtures and tabloids, is at least a mistake in medical ethics." In another place, Dr. Schofield exclaims,

"The truth is that nervous diseases require far more careful, well-devised, and elaborately carried-out treatment than any other ailment, because here Dr. V. M. N., himself is ill, and can not cooperate as in other diseases with the physician."

But the curative power of the subconscious is enhanced mightily by Christianity. Hear Dr. Matthews again state, in his recommendation of right thinking as necessary to right acts and results : ' ' Christianity is the greatest teacher of right thinking, and its wonderful power to prevent disease is just beginning to be realized. That it is the greatest power in the world to prevent disease no doctor who has had practise and experience enough to know doubts. No one can realize better than a doctor what an amazingly large percentage of diseases result from immorality, dissipation, and weak will-power, from ignorance, from unclean thinking and unclean living — in short, from leading lives the Bible condemns on every page. Perhaps fifty per cent of all diseases is due directly or indirectly to these causes. Can Christianity prevent fifty per cent of the sickness that now prevails? I believe it can. But it must be directed to that end. Electricity is a great power. Applied one way it produces heat; in another way, light; in another it moves machinery; in another it transmits messages. So Christianity applied in one way civilizes and lifts up; in another way it purifies the heart ; in another it prevents disease. There will be a great awakening throughout the world when people realize that Christianity prevents disease and adds years to human life. It pays to be a Christian right here in this world, without any reference to a future wo rid.' '

Now we are prepared to catch the strong, rich word of Christ: "I am come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly." Back of all Christ's saving power is His unique ability as a revealer. He was the light of the world. He illumined the dark problems and cleared up the strange mysteries relating to God, eternity, man, and man's destiny. He showed our accessibility to the Infinite Power, the eternal life of God. He revealed eternal life's adaptability to us as a buoyant, uplifting divine force.

Even materialists recognize the presence of omnipotent power. Herbert Spencer asserts that "we are in the presence of an Infinite Power which forms all things." Everything, even every atom of force in the universe, represents God's power. The stars shine by it. The flowers bloom by it. The tiny grass-blade grows by it. In nature it is a natural power, but no less divine. In mind it is a mental power, but no less divine. In the soul it is spiritual, there universally recognized as divine. It takes the name of the sphere and life to which we apply it.

Our finite life is a part of the Infinite. It is ever correcting, expanding, and lifting us above our limitations. As the author of ' ' Festus ' ' says :

We live in deeds, not words.

In thoughts, not breaths.

In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs.

He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Ealph Waldo Trine exclaims: "In the degree that you realize your oneness with this Infinite Spirit of Life and thus actualize your latent possibilities and powers, you will exchange disease for ease, inharmony for harmony, suffering and pain for abounding health and strength. And in the degree you realize this wholeness, this abounding health and strength in yourself will you be able to carry it to all with whom you come in contact, for health is contagious as well as disease.' ' The Eternal is the divine power in which time and all time's interests are set, as is the island in the sea; and if there be any little creeks and bays and inlets there, however far up into the interior of the land they reach, the cleansing, health-producing flow of the ocean runs up into those indentures, giving them beauty and usefulness. We are in the Church; are we any the less in Brooklyn? We live in the city; live we any less truly in the State, the nation, the world? So are we in the midst of time; are we any the less in the midst of the eternal? As Paul said: "In Him we live and move and have our being." The eternal arms are underneath, not only holding us up, but the whole world besides. And oh! the joy of resting, not only upon the solid foundations of nature, but upon that which is more solid still, and making the foundations of nature strong enough to support.

Open then, friend, to the inflow of the Eternal. Don't dam up the channels. Bays and inlets human, as bays and inlets natural, become ill-smelling, miasmic, and an offense if we do.

Men block the channels through doubt, gloom, and despair. Men keep out the inflow through fear, worry, and anger. Men lose sight of the rising tide through reliance on the senses. The majority of men lose the blessings of health, rest, and ease through self-reliance, self -consciousness, and a positive tho unconscious determination not to let God in. But if all these human conditions shut out the inrush of the Eternal waters that bring cleansing, happiness, and life, thank God men can dig new channels of faith, hope, and love! And these are the most awarding endeavors, the most substantial and fruitful exertions man ever undertakes. Our curse is our reliance upon things, our identification with circumstances our consciousness of self and self's poor ability.

Our blessing is in reliance upon the Eternal. And it is the subconscious self that is splendidly susceptible to the surrounding, near-by remedial power of God. That realm of the self not being under the rule and sway of the finite consciousness is in close touch with the invigorating purity of the Infinite Life. Let the precious God power in. Then is our natural effectiveness enhanced a hundredfold. If consciousness must assert itself that you know yourself to be a man, let it be encouraged in attachment to the Christ. Then it is that you willingly, cheerfully, unreservedly make connections with the abundant life of God. And all the precious depths of life become rich in spiritual reserve which buoys you up in emergency, makes the earth life a glad, sweet song and at the last floats the little boat of existence with its precious freight of experience, and with you, its lone but by no means lonely occupant, out of the inlet and bay across the bar, where Tennyson was to greet his pilot, into the harbor that is radiant with the nearer light of His face.

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Jesus said , Get thee hence, Satan Then the

devil leaveth him; and behold, angels came and ministered to him. — New Testament Scriptures.

We may become gods, walking above the flesh.

— Athanasius.

The soul is form and doth the body make.

— Edmund Spenser.

Build thee more stately mansions, my soul! As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted post!

Let each new temple nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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Evil and sickness, as well as all possible good and health in the subconscious — The curative value of suggestion — The part reason plays — Superstition — Deceptive health-resort cures — The power of suggestion in heredity, environment, advertisement, political and social leadership — The natural hypnosis of sleep — Curing your child of fears and evil habits — Pre-natal suggestion — The world's greatest battle-field one where suggestions are weapons.

If good only were stowed away in the depths of the subconscious self, all would be well; our instincts would be true, our intuitions unerring, our habits correct, our entire life abounding in health and blessing. But, alas, evil is stored there, too, and consciousness of weakness and thoughts of sickness and pictures of obstacles and of all conceivable ills. The old-world disorder has wrought havoc with us. It caught us on its own plane and holds us prisoner, pounding us with blows, vexing us with friction, depressing us with gloom, beguiling us with deceits, and binding us with entanglements.

We had no right to be there tampering with forbidden things. But we wanted experience and we got it — got it bad. We craved the fruit of all the trees save the tree of life, and they turned to apples of Sodom in our clutch. We touched and tasted and handled the pleasing things along all the avenues of sense-gratification, and received sorrow for our pains and dissatisfaction for our reward.

What shall be the remedy for the abounding evil and the spreading sickness there? Thank God, there is a remedy at our hand, so simple, so strong, so rich that its curative force is difficult to realize and incredible to believe. It is the power of suggestion. How vague and unsubstantial the term sounds. But it is one of the most potent forces, so exclaims the psychologist, in existence. It will pull down evil and build up good within the soul more speedily and surely than all the remedial punishments of earth. It will transform character more effectively than could the thundering of Sinai. It will change the course of fate more suddenly and violently than could all the shocks of doom.

Yes, it is mysterious and subtle, but very powerful withal, even tho it is only a hint to the soul as a stimulant, an incentive to action.

Poor soul, cramped, crowded, supprest, impoverished, sick. It needs all the encouragement it can get. Beside the evil instincts, wrong habits, sickening realizations that have sprouted there and drawn their nourishment from its precious soil, are now implanted rich, strong, pure thoughts, righteous tendencies, inducements to health, encouragements to victory. And the mysterious thing about it all is that these will take root there when patiently and persistently introduced, and will spring up and choke out the weeds.

Whether or not the remedial suggestions are successful depends upon whether we can get them into the life. Eeason is always there on guard. It is given us by God to guard the life from outside interference. It both keeps our emotions from running away with us and holds outside inducements in check. An external force must show itself reasonable to be admitted. All new ideas, all strange suggestions, must be in keeping with reason's preconceived beliefs of right and good. In short, reason must be respected. The only alternative is to ignore it and demand that its hold upon the citadel be weakened. This is achieved if the person needing the help trusts the one offering the suggestion. If not, reason must be beguiled, and self-consciousness side-tracked.

Such is achieved through hypnosis. There we have uttered the word that awakens criticism because so poorly understood. Its remedy is purely negative. It simply prepares the conditions for what follows. It cures not. It only removes restrictions. It makes the man irrational and unconscious, and relaxed and receptive enough for the putting into the deep-reaching inward parts the needed suggestion. But of the few difficult cases I have been instrumental in helping through the introduction of these remedial principles, I have not seen one where hypnosis was needed had I the ability or desire to wield so powerful a force. Distrest souls are only too glad to will reason to step aside, that the curative suggestion may come in. They relax cheerfully. Self-consciousness is laid by for the time being. The subconscious depths are presumably laid bare to receive the invigorating thoughts. Natural sleep, however, is one of the most promising conditions for the introduction of suggestion.

So far we have spoken as tho suggestion were a rare force, and employed always remedially, and by the trained dispenser of health and good cheer. But the fact of the matter is that it is the most present, commonplace truth in existence. Everything that exists of any influence generates suggestion. Look at the mysteries by which we are surrounded. Whatever the mind can not comprehend and attribute intelligible cause to exerts more suggestive force than the understood. The incomprehensible is a potent suggestive force over the average mind. We are all more or less sensitive to the mysterious. Imagination is aroused, fancy stirred, credulity stimulated : Cartright truly exclaims :

Fancy can save or kill; it hath closed up Wounds when the balsam could not, and without The aid of salves — to think hath been a cure.

The understood, the solved, soon lose interest for us. The charm of life is in the new of Me. Distance lends enchantment. Familiarity breeds contempt. Conceal your limitations from the vulgar throng if you would hold their respect. Eeveal them only to those who love you. They only can be trusted not to throw you down. It is because the world's plumb-lines are not long enough to sound your depths that you have any influence over the world. So, too, has the world's mystery influence over its curious, questioning children. The so-called worldly man is he whom the world has filled to the brim with suggestions. Its mystery awakens his curiosity and fascinates his soul, as do painted circus clowns make children laugh.

Think of the superstitions the power of mystery awakens. In Egypt, flies by the scores and hundreds feast on the children's faces that are never washed, as do the dogs upon the refuse in the streets of Constantinople, which are never cleaned. These flies are allowed to eat out the children's eyes, inducing sores and blindness, because of superstition that if they were brushed away the child would die. Why single out Egypt? Every country has many superstitions for its stock in trade. Every civilization, as well as every religion, holds its devotees through manifold customs and sanctions and traditions that are grounded in mystery, and through which the light of reason never shines. Lessing says we are swayed by our superstitions even after we understand them.

Now, it is this superstition that an age-long suggestion produces, that accounts for innumerable cures at certain world centers, such as Lourdes, with its shrines, and altars, and charms, and numerous bones of saints, where ailing pilgrims leave a million and a half dollars every year. And what of cures by relics and idols in India, China, Africa, and in the cases of multitudes who touch the holy coat of Treves? And there are you, carrying a chestnut in your pocket or wearing a metal ring on a certain finger to ward off rheumatism. Have they virtue? Yes, just as much as your belief endows them with.