I will give you the symptoms of a patient
whom I just examined. He was a man about fifty years old and
his symptoms affected me in this way. I felt a trembling sensation that went
down to my head and a tightness across my chest with a tendency
to sigh. This made me melancholy; then my thoughts left my body and I seemed to
be in space creating places and attaching my senses to the ideas I created, while my happiness and misery was in the scenes of my
own creation. I could see a sort of another world like the city of New York and
it seemed so plain that I really felt the difference in the
society of the city. This amazed me for it was a disease and although the man's
thoughts had different localities, they affected me like a
disease located in the body. Here I could see how we are affected by our
opinions. His mind or belief was in matter of this world and was as plain to be
seen by me as my thoughts are to a mesmerized subject. To him
they were spiritual and although they were the imitation of some other's ideas,
they were real truth to him. He attached his senses to the
things or places he had made and in them was his happiness and misery. All the
above was matter except the happiness and misery-this is
always what follows a belief. All the rest I say was matter and belonged to the
wisdom of this world.
By the spiritualist it
would be called spiritualism; so it is, but it is of this world and confined to
matter. That wisdom from above is not in this but can see through it and is not seen by the wisdom of this world at all. Now as I was
out of his wisdom or this world and in the essence that flows from the higher
wisdom, I was in a clairvoyant
state, with my senses attached to an identity in this essence. This essence
is light and is capable of penetrating this matter or mind, so that to it matter is annihilated. If a person's senses are in this light he
sees all ideas as matter in the dark to those who are in them. One state is thought-reading or the wisdom
of matter or spiritualism and the other is clairvoyance
or the wisdom held in solution in this ocean of essence. The wisdom of this
world is spiritual like an odor that arises from the earthly
man. In this odor, all sorts of forms are made of a spiritual nature, governed
by the same laws as their father. Thus the spiritual world is
the son of its father. Jesus called it the devil, and its believers the children
of their father, and as he was of matter he must be destroyed. Now the kingdom of God was not of matter but wisdom, so God called it
father; as God is the son of wisdom, wisdom made man out of this essence or
life. So that when he formed man out of the dust of this
earth and breathed into him this breath of life, he then became a living
progressive wisdom or man.
This life is the light or clairvoyant state that sees no matter
independent of itself or mind and all matter is subject to this essence.
Disease is the offspring of error or the devil, and wisdom in
this essence acting through man can break the bars of death or error and set
life free. For death is the name of something that error wants
to destroy and this something is life. So the warfare is between life and death.
Life cannot be destroyed but death can. The senses are attached to the identity of our belief and we are affected according to the fear
that we associate with our senses. Death and disease are matter and when the
senses or essence are attached to this body, it becomes
subject to the laws of matter, and as mind is matter, it makes laws for
strangers; as life is a stranger, it looks upon it as an enemy
to death. All the happiness which death has is trying to destroy life, so for this
effect it invents all sorts of diseases. This death is the king of terrors and
is the worst enemy life has to contend with. Now man is the
battlefield of these two powers: life and death.
… a person may feel
another's pain; this comes with the sense of feeling, but this feeling contains
no wisdom. This is the case of mesmerism. One subject feels the aches and pains of another; this
is called thought-reading. Another
sees the deranged state of the body; this is called sight, but
sight is not knowledge. All this is called the wisdom of the dead. So it is,
but it is not the living, for it is confined to the wisdom of error or this
world. The senses may be in this light, so far as to see and
describe all that is asked, but that is from the father or God. His wisdom sees
the effect, feels the aches and pains, sees the cause and
sees the senses imprisoned in matter, steps forward and runs the risk of being
imprisoned for the sake of his friends. He sees all the causes,
stands and pleads their cases, gets the verdict and sets the captive free. This
is the difference in the two. One is a power without knowledge. The other is knowledge applied to an idea that it can break up and scatter to
the four winds of heaven. …
PPQ “About Patients” November 1860
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