Spiritual health and healing

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Preface

Interest in spiritual healing has reached a point where it is no longer necessary to dwell on such elementary matters as the influence of fear and worry, the power of suggestion and the utilizing of the subconscious. These considerations are now taken for granted by those who believe that inner healing is more than mental. Suggestion is not regarded as decisive except by those who would ignore the spiritual life and limit healing to the sphere of psychology. For those of us who believe that the spiritual life is inseparable from true spiritual healing, the question of mental influences and mental methods is forever secondary. It ought rather to be a question of cultivating the mode of life which produces spiritual health. All our efforts should be constructive. Our clues should be drawn from the ideal, not through study of conditions w^hich produce disease.

To be normal, to live in spiritual health is to be in accord with the universe: to think, will, live by the Divine order. Spiritual health is the standard set for man by God's purpose in bringing him into being. It is man's birthright

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Preface as heir of the heavenly kingdom. It is inherent in his nature as created in the Divine image and likeness. Jesus came among us to disclose that standard in its fulness, and establish it in the minds and hearts of men by inspiring works and words. He promised greater works when it should become a social ideal. He taught that wisdom which should become man's guide in living the life which produces health and freedom. A spiritual science was implied in those teachings. A spiritual art was exemplified by those works and words of healing. Those who would be true followers ought to give this science first place, taking the clue from Christ as archetype.

Interest in spiritual health begins from above and works down, from within and works out. Ordinary healing is from below and is concerned with measures of relief and the improvement of man's material environment. Christ bids man so live that health shall always radiate from him as virtue radiates from one whose religion is "to do good." Thus health is made a secondary consideration in comparison with that larger, more splendid life which manifests health as one of the signs of its beauty. Health is to be a result of the abundant life. It will come as a consequence, just as our tastes change, our manners become more gentle, our affections

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more constant, our faces more radiant through the inner touch of the Spirit.

In the following pages this philosophy of the Christ is taken for granted. Many writers have taught it in their favorite ways, since the time of P. P. Quimby, who was the first healer in our day to plead for a "Science of the Christ." This philosophy includes the idea of the Divine indwelling as the guiding principle of the inner life, of the spiritual world as the nearby source of real power ; the idea that there is a heavenly purpose in our strivings, that the natural world is a theatre for the development of the soul. If different writers would express these introductory matters in various ways, all would agree that the endeavor to live by this higher wisdom is the great consideration.

The chief need at present is for a clearer statement of the ideas which lead beyond mental to spiritual healing. Some teachers would put the whole matter in the present tense, affirming the ideal as realized now, making light of the natural world with its opportunities, and passing by the ages of philosophic thought. Hence they would identify man in his real selfhood with "the Christ within" and end the matter with ever-varying affirmations turning upon one idea. Others would maintain that we make no headway except through acknowledgment of viii Preface

"the light of Christ in the soul" as leading us on to greater and greater attainments. While they would agree that man in spirit already exists in the Divine image and likeness, they would find reality and meaning in his progress from stage to stage in the natural world. It would seem clear that the truth of the Christ is too great and too wonderful to be apprehended except as man looks up to the Master, admitting that he has more and more to learn. It is this view which we plead for. A new statement of this ideal is called for because the trend of thought among people interested in inner healing is too much the other way. We hope to show that this philosophy of upliftment toward the Christ is the true view of spiritual healing.

A word seems to be called for concerning "A History of the New Thought Movement," 1919. Some reviewers have complained because I did not indulge in adverse criticisms. But I had supposed a historian should be impartial. I was telling a story, not commenting on its reality or truth. In other volumes, especially "A Handbook of the New Thought," 1917, I had made critical estimates enough; pointing out that the psychology of the New Thought is one-sided, that some leaders tend to exalt the human self so as to make it a god, thereby advocating ego-

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tism instead of spiritual healing. My interest in the movement was to call attention afresh to its beginnings, in order to emphasize the fact that the therapeutic movement had not realized its spiritual standard. Since 1919, the remaining branches of the movement, save one, have been united in an effort to make the Christ the cardinal principle. It is now a question of looking forward to see what the movement will make of the Christ as its ideal.

Critics of New Thought and Christian Science in its various forms have pointed out that we are not "parts" of God, because God is one and indivisible; that man is not "life in itself," for God only is life in itself; that man is not "one with God," but may be conjoined with Him through responsiveness: hence that man's recipiency of life is measured by his love, not by his affirmation or thought. These discriminations point the way beyond mysticism and pantheism in all its forms, beyond self-centredness and mere thought to the ideal of constancy of love for God and man in frank recognition of our sonship. The whole outlook changes with the adoption of this higher point of view. We realize that the spiritual life has hardly begun, since it is rather a gift of the Spirit in us than the work of our efforts at self-control and efficiency in the use of thought. It changes too bex Preface

cause we adopt the idea of a spiritual incoming of power, touching the inmost being first, then quickening the understanding, spreading through mental life as a whole. The ideal is no longer a mere settling down into self in poise and composure, as if we had nothing to acknowledge and nothing to overcome; it is the attainment of inner openness to the Spirit, that the Divine life may freely course through all channels. It means that regeneration is still essential, hence that we need to make ready by purifying our desires, living on simpler food, keeping closer to nature, and avoiding anything like drugs and stimulants which clog and impede. Right thinking assumes its proper place at last as instrumental to right living. The life is a test in a far deeper way than we had realized. There is something better than being either healed or cured. We need a nobler prevailing love. We need practical Christianity in all its fulness. We need the inner or spiritual Word. We need the living Christ, the glorified Lord. This is the great truth of the New Age. Interest in spiritual healing is one of the tendencies of life today which point to this truth. We have not begun to interpret it aright until we regard the healing movement in this its relation to the new time. We may therefore pass beyond the crudities and extravagant claims in quest of the

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really spiritual element. The discerning reader will find in these pages a very different way of stating the whole matter, and will proceed to test it by direct reference to life, in contrast with the mere criticism of theories.

The best way, in fact, to overcome the limitations of those who have not grasped the full idea of spiritual healing is to look back to the prophetic teachings of the New Age. For some this will mean deeper study of the writings of Swedenborg. For others it will mean profounder knowledge of Dr. Quimby's philosophy. In writing this volume I have had both of these interests in mind. Some of the chapters are concerned with Swedenborg's theory of the Divine influx. In others I have tried to make a clearer statement of the ideas and methods which Dr. Quimby sets forth in his manuscripts. This book may then be regarded as an estimate of the Quimby method of healing. It is not written in Quimby's terms. I have not assumed that Quimby's view is in every way superior to ideas now passing current. But it was the original view, it contained the spiritual impetus which gave rise to the modern therapeutic movement, it was the result of many years of pioneer work in this field, and it is still the view by which we may most directly test our own ideas and methods. My parents were patients under Quimxii Preface by's care in Portland, Maine, and from Dr. Quimby they learned the method of silent healing which is here advocated. I have felt it a duty I owed to humanity both to publish the manuscripts and to make my own statement of the ideas and methods which have come down to us from Quimby. I began to put this work in final form with the publication of ''The Power of Silence," Boston, 1895. The present volume completes this work, as the prime result of a later study of Quimby's writings.

Contents

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I. The Power of the Spirit 1

II. The Priceless Possession 13

II

Despite the impressiveness of such a transition in the spiritual life as the one we have considered in the foregoing, onlookers have not as yet been persuaded to follow as far as one could wish. The reasons for this conservatism are worth noting before we turn to a restatement of the central principles.

To the average observer this new interest has meant little more than discovery of the power of thought and the hitherto concealed functions of the subconscious mind. We have all heard about suggestion by this time and have learned to make use of it in dealing with our fellow men. We know about the subconscious mind, and we take it into account when explaining experiences once attributed to mysterious forces outside the human personality. Whatever may be thought about mental healing as a specific for all illnesses, w r e all acknowledge that our power over life has increased by the addition of this new interest. Here, however, the matter often ends, and the therapeutic movement is regarded as one more new cult assigned to its proper place.

The advocates of mental healing have been partly responsible for this. For much has been said and written about the utility of thought as a more direct way of securing success, as if success in material things were the chief end of life. Hence there has been a tendency to concentrate upon the psychology of success. The new interest could hardly mean more than this to people who had no genuine desire to alter their mode of life, who wanted to find a quicker way of being relieved of their ills while retaining most of their pleasures, habits and social occupations.

Then, too, there has been a tendency to regard the new spiritual science as a kind of absolutism admitting of no appeal. To make this claim in behalf of the authority of a text-book is of course to miss the whole point, that each soul has power to draw upon immanent divine sources according to need. Thus people have turned aside in favor of an organization which might have pressed forward to the new revelation of Christianity.

In all movements this is likely to be the case for a time. Only a few adopt a new master's teaching with adequate seriousness. We have had leaders and visions enough in the history of our race to make us children of light. What the majority want is to be free from pain and misery due to their excesses, that they may be a little more prudent, and retain their old life as fully as possible. Consequently, when any one comes forward with assurance that we can become unselfish friends of man and worthy sons of God we turn away as did the rich young man, mindful of our luxuries. Creatures of habit, imitative, conservative and envious, we refuse to adopt a plan of action which will reach to the uttermost confines of our social kingdom and summon us to be noblemen of the Spirit.

The simple truth is that all our illnesses, woes and vices are intimately related, and that really to be rid of one is to overcome all. It is not a question of gaining enough insight into the power of the human spirit to overcome a few maladies, and then disregard material things and laws as if they did not exist. The power of the spirit is not a half-way measure. It is not disclosed that we may do as we like. The real test of our spiritual faith is given us when we carry the spiritual life into every sphere of our natural and social interests. The power of our human spirit was given us to live by the Spirit. This Spirit has become manifest in this splendid world of space and time, objective in bodies and things, and the Spirit's manifestations are not to be ignored.

Life is surrounded by conditions intended to call the human spirit into power. Our souls need to be tested to the full, and the tests are distributed along the line of life that we may meet them one by one, through divine guidance, and gradually grow into supremacy. The conditions we face and must conquer are from the self-same Spirit which gives us power to become victors. But these conditions seen in the divine light prove to be friendly. Life is indeed friendly through and through. There is no offsetting Power whose forces we must conquer in order to live the spiritual life. In our ignorance we have mistaken friends for foes, and acted toward nature as if matter were the product of some alien Energy striving to circumvent us, instead of a vehicle for the manifestation of Spirit. This is the whole problem of life as the new therapeutism regards it: to convert apparent enemies to friends and learn to live with nature in our well-ordered bodies as true children of Spirit.

The pioneers in this field were no more favored than other mortals. They had to work their way along year by year and prove the spiritual law for themselves. They did not come by their exceptional wisdom through "revelation." Indeed the word revelation is illusory if we mean wisdom put into our minds apart from the spiritual growth which discloses and proves it. Human experience as a whole is a revelation to him who has eyes. Christianity came as the culminating clue to this experience which we all know. Its newness consisted not so much in its ideas as in the transfiguring life and works of the Master through whose service for humanity God became manifest in fulness.

We may say in brief that the one great reason why the world has not whole-heartedly adopted this new version of Christianity is found in the fact that this preliminary period was needed to bring us back to the Gospel. The pioneers cleared the way. They planted the new seed. Its fruitage was judged by appearances. Now we are learning that what seemed to be a mental device for winning people was in reality a call "to live the life." The requisite change of thought from the old order to the new was only a beginning. The psychology of success was merely an aspect of spiritual truths including the whole of life. Behind it all there was a priceless possession which the few caught sight of and have been cherishing. What was that priceless possession? Can we put it into words?

It was the truth of the Inward Presence once more made known to men. It was the rediscovery, made ever and again in human history, that there is in man a God-sense or power of direct communion with heavenly realities, such that experience is the test and verification of all spiritual wisdom. In a practical way this means that any man at any time, whatever his need, may lift his problem into heavenly light and see it transfigured by the guidance he needs. It means further that this light may be admitted into our whole nature, that there is guidance for every need whatsoever. And the application of this guidance to healing was the special phase which this wisdom brought us at first, because this truth needed to be restored to the world. This truth brought back, it became possible to regard the Gospel in its fulness anew. Thus the way to "live the life" again opened before men as they had not seen it for ages.

The experience of the first pioneer in this rediscovery shows that any one might make the same discovery — guided by the Spirit. For the heavenly light is always shining. What was needed to bring men to knowledge of it through quest for healing was a method of meditation or silent realization. This method was acquired by our pioneers through the prior discovery that man has inner senses or intuitive power enabling him to discern spiritual reality. All men have evidences of such inward power, but only a few put the evidences together to see that our spiritual nature is adapted for manifold use when we need power in any field. What is needed is an experience sufficiently absorbing so that we will follow it through and find the Spirit within the human spirit, the Lord of life presiding over our human life.

Many of us arrive naturally enough at the point where prayer spontaneously takes expression on our lips, and we realize that the power of prayer has never reached its limits with us. There are many believers in the inward light as the direct witness of the Spirit, the true reason for worship. Every earnest Christian has some experience of inward piety akin to divine love. We all believe that "the pure in heart" shall see God. But there is a further step which seems almost as new, as if no one had the habit of prayer, none believed in the inward light or purity of heart. This step is into knowledge of the Inward Presence as power. It shows one how to enter into quickening Life through vivid realization of the love and the wisdom that are ours. It shows the way to a dynamic experience passing beyond mere meditation or worship. Realization is more detailed than prayer as most men know prayer. It enlists ideals made vivid and held before the mind. It is concerned with specific needs, with the conviction that the life made concrete through concentration will begin at once to take effect.

Such realization becomes possible when the mind gives itself to the belief that our human spirit is rightfully an instrument of God, heir to divine wisdom, an immediate participant in the Inward Presence.

Such realization also differs from prayer because it implies an experienced contrast between the inner mind and the outer, between one plane of consciousness and another. We are all familiar with the contrast between the two voices or natures. Many of us know what it is to feel free or to feel conditioned. We know that there is a difference between an ideal and a mere process. In a way each of us has his two worlds of thought. But we have not all learned to bring these ideas together so that our inner world is a meeting-point between the spirit and a higher activity which can be utilized when there is need. We have not learned to break away from externalizing consciousness at will. We have no definite idea what the activity is within us which makes the change. We have not learned to be alone with God's ideal.

It is fairly easy to acquire merely psychological knowledge of this contrast. Some effort is required to pass beyond all mental devices, penetrating behind all mental appearances to spiritual reality. The priceless possession is intimacy of relation through spiritual experience

The Pkiceless Possession 21

in which the Inward Presence becomes an immediate source of guidance and power. This experience means more than the coming of a vision or mystical ecstasy which the participant neither understands nor is able to recover. It may be the same in kind as the better sort of mystical experience, while calling for a much more intelligible interpretation.

This experience of the Inward Presence is recoverable through understanding of the conditions. Such understanding is accessible to every one who is willing to entertain the idea of immediate experience of the presence of God in contrast with the tradition in the churches that only through zealously guarded authority can man approach God. It becomes possible when we take seriously the idea that man is spirit and is recipient of Life ready to make him in fulness a child of God in image and likeness.

This inward quest might lead to self-centeredness if it were not for the experienced contrast between the inner mind and the outer. To enter more deeply into one's mere self is not to find the inner mind at all. The priceless possession is awareness of the Inward Presence by being in the sanctuary of the Spirit where a higher light is shining. The kingdom is "at hand/' it is "within," it comes "without observation," bearing its own evidences, summoning man to seek it first and last. The particular self making the quest is secondary. The essential is the great gift made to the self seeking the Presence in all sincerity and devotion.

According to the old order of thought life was a warfare. Hence the Gospel was put in negative form. It seemed necessary to begin by condemning and resisting, as if one were struggling with an alien Power. In the new order we find that a different attitude transforms the same forces once deemed hostile. The alleged enemy disappears in the divine light shining from above. There is only friendliness and peace, with a Life ever present that is working for health and freedom. Even the world seems to have faded for the moment. To have the world given back is to have it bestowed as God's world.

To rise to the level of this higher light is to find oneself in a measure a spokesman of the Spirit speaking to the spirit in other men. Such speech is given us through pure disinterestedness, when love touches the heart and the human self interposes no obstacle. That is why one may venture to call this the voice of the living Christ, the healing Christ summoning others to come into the same communion with the Father. Not until the self thus becomes an instrument have we seen what the universal reign of the Gospel on earth might be. It is we who have been chosen, not that we attained the end by mere self -consciousness. Our part is to prepare the way as best we can for this consecration, with the hope that we may be chosen disciples of the living Lord.

The central principle is that there is but one Wisdom and all spiritual truth comes from this source, that there is guidance for each need, a wisdom which sees the state of the soul as it truly is. Our part is to lift the Spirit to the level of that Wisdom, that its guidance may become our light on the path, its leading the one we follow through every vicissitude. Otherwise put, there is one Love and all genuine devotion on our part is a sharing of its compassion, its tenderness and power to do good. There is love for each heart. Love is the great healing power, touching the soul, quickening, opening, stirring into strength, and making the soul a radiating centre.

No words can adequately tell what knowledge of this priceless possession means for the individual. He who would gain it must first entertain the idea of such unison with Life, then see what leadings come, what there is in the self and in daily life to impede. It is not the idea but experience itself which gives the reality, when there is a need which opens the spirit to seek and find, to receive and give. What the printed word may do is to suggest the way. There is no formula that will unlock the inner secrets. The way of the heart is more interior. But affirmation will help us toward purity of heart and the guidance which leads into "the way." If we had kept the open vision the way would immediately disclose itself. Experience is given us that we may regain this vision, learning anew to see things as they are, as the Spirit illuminates them.

There are moments when the Spirit seems to possess us, to imbue us with power and cast over our being its soft radiance. Cherishing these beatific moments when they come, never trying to control them, we find that the way is disclosed to the next experience. That way followed, the succeeding moments will appear, and all experience will seem in truth a divine revelation. Outward life as it unfolds from moment to moment will then assume its proper place as means of expression and means of testing what the Spirit has disclosed. It is everything to know that the real work is that of the Spirit in us, whatever part man appears to play. The human spirit is akin to the divine and can conform to the Spirit's leadings. It is also within man's power to be led into freedom in detail and at large, out of every anxiety, fear, friction, inertia, rebellion, or whatever the state may be that impedes. Spirit is ready to set us free when we say the word.

To see what this priceless possession means for those who believe in spiritual healing as a consequence of the spiritual life, we need to reconsider the Gospel in the light of the distinction widely accepted among disciples of this method, the distinction between Jesus and the Christ. This distinction meant everything to the pioneers, since the whole method of healing turned upon recognition of "the Christ within." The contrast grew up around the idea of the inner self as immediately open to the Inward Presence which experience itself revealed. It was not a theoretical contrast. It is not meant to be a basis for theology or for creeds. Consequently one is asked to set doctrinal matters aside for the time being and turn to the Gospels with this clue from inner experience. There need be no loss in so doing, for a person may freely return to the idea of the Lord which has proved its value in the spiritual life. One is simply asked to follow where the living Christ may lead today, that the glorious message of the Comforter may be fully given to men. Those who have caught the new vision believe they have a priceless possession because they find it disclosing love, wisdom and power unknown even to those who accept the Gospel in full as a historical and doctrinal message, as the foundation of the Church. For they have caught a vision of the Church Universal over and above all sects and creeds. And in catching this vision they have found the test of its reality in "the life."

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"And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." — John xx, 30, 31.

Two sharply contrasted views concerning Christ have prevailed, the one that Jesus was the unique Son of God from eternity, wholly perfect and entirely divine; the other that he as a man attained the wisdom and power indicated in the Gospels as any one might strive to realize a spiritual ideal. The one errs by over-emphasis on the divine, leaves no room for temptations and victories as we know them. The other assigns such importance to the human self that it fails to account for the universal wisdom and the far-reaching love of the Christ. Nor is the situation improved when we try to adopt one of those elusive midway positions which stand, now for the divine, and now for the human, but which afford no clear idea of the divine as manifested in the human according to a universal ideal. We seem to be imposing our own limitations on the Christ when we conceive of the wisdom and love displayed by Jesus as results of merely finite endeavor. What we need is an approach which does not intrude upon the infinite but yields the conviction that through the incarnation the divine love and wisdom dwelt with men in a human self not too far removed from the imperfections which we know.