Health and the Inner Life

Horatio Dresser wrote about healing and Quimby in his 1906 book Health and the Inner Life

It was by restoring himself to health that P. P. Quimby, the parent mental healer in this country, discovered the central principles of the whole doctrine. The first mental-healing author, W. F. Evans, was a patient of Mr. Quimby before he began to write upon the subject. The same is true of the author of Science and Health.

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Experiences in Healing, Spiritualism and Mesmerism.

I have been affected by persons to that degree as not to be able to stand it for a short time. I was attending a person who was subject to fits. At the time of one of my visits she was in convulsions. As soon as these ceased I felt a singular sensation in my head and to all intents and purposes was about to have a fit, myself. A lady took me by the arm and sat me in a chair and then sent for my son. He rubbed my head and in short time I felt better. He carried me to my house and for four or five hours I was not able to leave my bed and did not get over the shock for all day. This person after waking from sleep would often have a fit and therefore had been afraid to go to sleep. The shock was such as to change the fluids of my system so as to affect my mind to that extent that I was almost afraid to go to sleep for fear I should have a fit, and I have since declined to attend persons subject to them.

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I will now proceed to state how I came by this belief and how I was led along to it. In the first of my attempting to mesmerize, I was very skeptical in regard to many things: such as seeing without eyes, tasting without having anything in the mouth, hearing without ears, etc. I had no confidence in any experiment which it was possible for the subject to have any foreknowledge of what was to be done. When I had my subject in a mesmeric sleep, if any person should speak out and ask me to make him move his hand or anything of that description, I would not do so, for it seemed so much like deception on the part of the subject. And as my subject was one who liked to play off his jokes upon people, I was determined that he should not do so at my expense. Although he was with me some four years, I never saw the slightest cause for believing but what he was perfectly ignorant of what he was doing while asleep. Therefore, at the outset, I adopted this resolve, never to let the subject know what I wanted, except mentally. All my experiments were carried on in this way: if I wished him to give me his hand, I would ask him mentally; and by practicing with him I could send him to any part of the room for anything I wished, and he would always get it, without my speaking a word. He got no knowledge from me in any other way than by my own thought. When he walked, and I wished to tell him to stop, I did it mentally. I then began to create things within my own mind, such as snakes, etc., and he would be frightened at them. On telling him that I had imagined them, he could not understand it, for the things created in my mind were as real as life to him. I could drive the things away so he could not see them and bring them back again. This led me to believe that man had the power of creation and that ideas took form. The next question which arose was. What were ideas composed of? They must be something, or else they could not be seen by even spiritual eyes. This led me to inquire if knowledge was ideas. I found that if I thought of principles, he had no way of describing them, for there was nothing to see; but if I thought of anything that had form, I could make him see it. To bring this about required a great deal of labor, I had to think of the thing so long and intently.

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Mental Healing (I)

The earliest Mental-healer of this period of whom we have authentic record is Phineas Parkhurst Quimby.[1] Born at Lebanon, New Hampshire, on February 16, 1802, he removed with his parents as a young child to Belfast, Maine, where the greater part of his life was spent. Quimby's father was a poor blacksmith, and the boy himself had but little schooling. In his youth he was apprenticed to a clockmaker, and proved himself a successful and ingenious craftsman. He appears to have been a thoughtful and observant man ; an inventor, moreover, and always open to new knowledge. In 1838 he was present at a lecture on Mesmerism by Charles Poyen. He was much struck by what he saw and heard, made the acquaintance of the lecturer, and finally began to experiment in the new science on his own account. He was fortunate enough to find an admirable subject, one Lucius Burkmar, a youth of seventeen, and soon threw up his trade and became a professional Mesmerist, giving popular demonstrations and treating disease by clairvoyance.

"How can I live according to the principles of spiritual healing among people who have no sympathy with the new principles ?"

One may easily describe the general conditions of healing, the experience of becoming open to spiritual power, of directing this power to the patient through concentration or suggestion, as well as the physiological process accompanying the mental change. But are we not a bit hasty when, neglecting the real point at issue, we confidently affirm that one factor in particular has wrought the cure ? This favorite factor of ours,—faith, auto-suggestion, telepathy, the prayer of silence, or what not, —like a drug heralded as a great specific, may have been but the last in a long chain of helpful causes which played only the culminating part.

GREEN ACRE

The Vedas say, "Those who think on Me, with love and devotion in their hearts, find all that they need at their very door, brought by myself" [literally, on my shoulders]. Did you ever fully realize what it means to be God's "shoulders" to the saint who trusts to His providing care; or to be the hands by which He leads home some wandering child; or to be His feet to carry to those who know Him not the gospel of peace? If not, go home to the silence of your own room. Enter the closet of your own soul, and pray to the Father to reveal Himself in you. Prayer is the ladder by which we climb to heights of conscious being where our prayer is answered before it is uttered. "Only in meditation the Mystery speaks to us." THE ABUNDANT LIFE By Sarah J. Farmer

“It is not your opinion about the world that is of consequence, but the actual truth of your existence in the world which Wisdom has created.”

IT is plain that to take the theory of spiritual healing seriously one must first apply it in actual practice, either with the sick or in self-help. It is not a doctrine to be theoretically accepted or rejected. It contains tenets which can only be tested experimentally. The experiences of no two people are alike. Hence in the end each man develops his own methods and states the doctrine according to the considerations which his own work has emphasized.

Fully one-half of Mr. Quimby's manuscripts abound in references to religious problems and to the Bible. The reason is not far to seek. Mr. Quimby found that the fears, emotions, and beliefs which were factors in producing the patient's disease were intimately connected with religious creeds and experiences. He sometimes traced a nervous disorder to the emotional excitement attendant upon religious conversion. To explain the genesis of the disease also meant to explain the effect of religious emotion upon health, and to indicate a wiser way of becoming religious. The close connection between health and religion in such cases led Mr. Quimby to investigate the subject more and more. The result was, for Mr. Quimby and for many of his patients, new light upon the cures wrought by Jesus, and hence new conclusions in regard to the mission of Jesus, the nature of sin, and the significance of the atonement.
Relation to Psychology. — Obviously, this theory of mental life is in sharp contrast with present-day physiological psychology.
Relation to Hypnotism. — Hypnotism is the inducing of sleep for purposes of scientific experiment, medical practice, or suggestive therapeutics. The principle of hypnotic after-effects is suggestion. In this respect there is a slight connection with the phenomena, but not with the methods, of mental healing.
Relation to Faith Cure. — Cures by faith are usually wrought by naive religious belief, or through superstitious credulity in a sacred relic or something of the sort.
Relation to “ Christian Science." — The term "Christian Science" was used, in an entirely different connection, in a poem by Abram Cowles, published about 1840. Mr. Quimby used the term to signify the exact principles implied in the life and teachings of Jesus, and also exemplified in his own work among the sick.
Relation to “Mental Science." — This term was used, for a time after 1880, to designate all mind-cure doctrines other than "Christian Science." … Later, the term was revived by a different type of mind-cure people, hence it became identified with a radically individualistic, commercial doctrine, in the South and West, and is no longer applicable to the Quimby theory. Relation to “Metaphysical Healing." — This term, which for a time took the place of "Mental Science," has usually been employed to designate any mind-cure theory founded on mental principles, and sometimes with reference to belief in " mental pictures" as the "causes" of disease. The term "metaphysics" is always used in a practical sense. The theory of "mental pictures" is a late development of a principle which Mr. Quimby very early recognised. Relation to the “New Thought'' — This is the latest of mind-cure terms and at present the most popular. It came into vogue in 1895, and was used as the title of a little magazine published for a time in Melrose, Massachusetts. The term was apparently a convenient designation, inasmuch as for its devotees it was literally a "new thought" about life. But critics soon assailed it on the ground that the doctrine was not new, and in England the term "Higher Thought" was substituted. Like "Mental Science," the term once had a nobler significance, but has often been identified with the most commercial, extravagant, and individualistic tendencies in the mind-cure world. It now means any kind of mind cure theory, from the most mystical pantheism to the sort of individualism that can not even be harmoniously organised for purposes of a general convention.

The "New Thought" at its best developed directly out of the teachings we have been considering, notably from the works of Dr. Evans, to whom Henry Wood and other recent writers have been greatly indebted. Of late there have been admixtures of "Christian Science" and other elements, differing more radically from the parent teaching in respects where that teaching had the advantage.

To all those who "build their own world from within" Mr. Quimby would have said : “It is not your opinion about the world that is of consequence, but the actual truth of your existence in the world which Wisdom has created.”

HEALTH AND THE INNER LIFE An Analytical and Historical Study of Spiritual Healing Theories, with an Account of the Life and Teachings of P. P. Quimby BY HORATIO W. DRESSER 1906


A History of The New Thought Movement by Horatio. W. Dresser – 1919
Gave a much more elaborate history and discussed the creation of the various churches.

The Quimby Manuscripts by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby Edited by Horatio W. Dresser [1921]
For reasons known only to himself George Quimby refused to release the Quimby material prior to MEB’s death.

I believe that I can heal as you do.

As early as 1857, fairly intelligent accounts of Mr. Quimby's theory and practice began to appear in the newspapers of Maine. The first follower to publish a book on the subject was Rev. W. F. Evans (1817-1889), one of the four exponents of the original theory who have done most to spread the doctrine.

Mental Healing

To be told in one's youth about "the Christ within," to be taught to seek the guidances of the inner world in every moment of need, is an inestimable privilege in more senses than one. One then grows up not only with the thought of health rather than the fear of disease, the thought of life in place of the dread of death, but with an empirical religious basis free from the encumbrances of dogmatic theology. The philosophy of the immanent God then appeals to the mind, in later life, as a natural consequence of what has already been an experience.
HEALTH AND THE INNER LIFE
An Analytical and Historical Study of Spiritual Healing Theories, with an Account of the Life and Teachings of P. P. Quimby
BY HORATIO W. DRESSER
1906
Twenty-five years ago, when the mental-healing movement was first publicly discussed, it was lightly put aside as ''the Boston craze," and an early death was prophesied for it. Consequently no attempt was made to sift the wheat from the chaff, no record was kept of instances of cure. Since that time, the movement has attained large proportions, and has repeatedly divided and subdivided. At one time there were three so-called international societies holding independent conventions for the discussion of mental-healing theories. More them one hundred publications have been issued for brief periods, sixty of which were in existence at one time. The output of books has run into the hundreds, and while the majority contain repetitions of a few ideas many have had a large sale. Little "centres of truth," independent churches, and metaphysical clubs have been established here and there throughout the English speaking world. The practice of mental healing has grown steadily, and both physicians and clergymen have felt the results of widespread adherence to mind-cure doctrines. The tendency has been to make a religion of the cult, to substitute it both for current forms of worship and for medical practice. Entirely aside from the hold which its most radical form has had upon the community, many people have now come to the conclusion that the general doctrine has come to stay and must be reckoned with.
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Mental-healing writers as a rule take little interest in facts. As opposed to this general tendency, the mind-cure theory of the future will be reared on facts. If dispassionate inquiry shall some time take the place of exaggerated assertion, the future history of the doctrine will be strikingly in harmony with its pioneer stages.
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In India, where science has not been distinguished from superstition as we would discriminate, the age of belief in unusual powers has been practically continuous. The literature of Buddhism is particularly rich in doctrines which the mind-cure devotee of to-day has restated. In the Dhammapada, Buddha gives utterance to a sentence which might well stand for the modern theory oddly denominated the “New Thought. “ Buddha says : "All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts."
Every student of the Vedas and Upanishads knows that these Hindu sacred books abound in statements which are almost identical with recent mind-cure sayings. In the Maitrayana Upanishad it is said that "thoughts cause the round of a new birth and a new death. . . . What a man thinks, that he is: this is the old secret."
In the least-known and speculatively less important Atharva-Veda there are suggestions and affirmations for the cure of disease which rival in minuteness and number any modern mind-cure scheme. There are special charms to cure fever, headache, cough, jaundice, colic, heart disease, paralysis, hereditary disease, leprosy, scrofula, ophthalmia, and dozens of other diseases. There are affirmations to overcome the effect of poison, to procure easy childbirth, to conquer jealousy, to control the kind of offspring, even to obtain a husband or secure a wife. The modern devotees of "claims" for success have been anticipated by the authors of this Veda, who also point out how one may “attract" prosperity. Even the charm for obtaining long life is given. Again, the principle is recognised that people who have little faith must eke out their faith by the use of material means.
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Again, in the teachings of the Epicureans, the Stoics, and Sceptics, there are ideas and methods which remind one of current doctrines.
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Through the middle ages there were outcroppings of doctrines and practices which still more closely resemble recent teachings. Instances of remarkable healing were more common than in earlier periods.
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When all has been said, however, it is beyond dispute that it remained (or a man who knew almost nothing about the teachings of the past to make the investigations which in due course led to the development of what we now know as mental healing.
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It is but fair, however, to acknowledge the work which really made the mind-cure movement possible, and, if any credit is given, assign it to the one who really deserves it. The movement sprang, directly or indirectly, from the work of half a dozen persons, all of whom were healed by the pioneer mental therapeutist of America. Many have enjoyed the after-benefits who have never heard of this pioneer. But that does not alter the fact that in a peculiar way their beliefs are bound up with the history of the movement.

Few men have begun and carried on an investigation in a more humble and quiet way than Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, February 16, 1802, and died in Belfast, Maine, January 16, 1866.

Troward and Behrend: Healing

HEALING Now the only conception you can have of yourself in the absolute, or unconditioned, is as purely living Spirit, not hampered by conditions of any sort, and therefore not subject to illness; and when this idea is firmly impressed on the sub-conscious mind, it will externalize it. The reason why this process is not always successful at the first attempt is that all our life we have been holding the false belief in sickness as a substantial entity in itself and thus being a primary cause, instead of being merely a negative condition resulting from the absence of a primary cause; and a belief which has become ingrained from childhood cannot be eradicated at a moment's notice. We often find, therefore, that for some time after a treatment there is an improvement in the patient's health, and then the old symptoms return. This is because the new belief in his own creative faculty has not yet had time to penetrate down to the innermost depths of the subconscious mind, but has only partially entered it. Each succeeding treatment strengthens the subconscious mind in its hold of the new belief until at last a permanent cure is effected. This is the method of self-treatment based on the patient's own knowledge of the law of his being.

Our ordinary conception of ourselves is that of an individual personality which ends where another personality begins, in other words that the two personalities are entirely separate. This is an error. There is no such hard and fast line of demarcation between personalities, and the boundaries between one and another can be increased or reduced in rigidity according to will, in fact they may be temporarily removed so completely that, for the time being, the two personalities become merged into one.

THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE
THOMAS TROWARD
(1909)


The practitioner should have firmly fixed in mind the fact that there is but one mind and but one expression of this one mind although it fills all space with its numberless manifestations. This awareness removes the line of demarcation between patient and healer.

If one hopes to be of any help to a patient one must not give treatment for disease. That would surely intensify the disease! In giving a spiritual treatment the practitioner should utterly dismiss all thoughts of disease and of personality from the mind. To hold the thought on disease would mean MORE disease. Rather the healer should mentally see Life whole, free, at peace and in harmony through the power of the Radiant Christ within.

... Thought is unbelievably fast in its transmission and can span the earth instantly; and it does not lose any of its power in the transmission! In giving an absent treatment the healer should be positive that the thought sent forth reaches the recipient now and with infinite power.

In the Absolute the ONLY time there is the eternal now. To it there is no past; nor is there any future. To it there is only the present. if the practitioner holds the thought that the patient "will be all right," it will always be "will be" for the patient because the healer is postponing the healing until some future time, and there is no future known to the Spirit, as I have said. Did Jesus ever say to any of those who were healed by Him: "You will be healed. Arise and go"? No, not ever. Always He spoke to them in the present tense; always He told them something to this effect: "You ARE WHOLE! Go in Peace!"
HOW TO LIVE LIFE AND LOVE IT
Genevieve Behrend

Julia Anderson Root: "A TREATISE ON MIND-CURE"

" Mental healing," " mind-cure," " metaphysical science," or by whatever name it may be known, is not a new system. In all ages of the world there have been persons who have cured diseases that learned medical practitioners have pronounced incurable. These cases have been effected by the power of mind, and we are confident from our own experience, that the more this invisible agent is brought to bear upon the human system, the less sickness and suffering we shall have in the world. We expect the aid and co-operation of our churches, irrespective of sect, and, in fact, of good and intelligent people everywhere, in our efforts to lessen the sum of human misery and woe. It is sad to see the lives of so many of God's children embittered by disease, when the remedy lies in their own hands. Each and all can do something towards remedying this state of things. Our efforts we feel will be crowned with at least as much success in the future as they have been in the past.
JULIA ANDERSON ROOT.
San Francisco,
August 1st, 1884.
A TREATISE ON MIND-CURE, WITH ORIGINAL VIEWS ON THE SUBJECT, AND COMPLETE INSTRUCTIONS FOR PRACTICE, AND SELF-TREATMENT. JULIA ANDERSON ROOT. 1884.

The blind have been made to see, the halt to walk; lifelong invalids have had their health restored....
One hears of the "Gospel of Relaxation,"
of the "Don't Worry Movement,"
of people who repeat to themselves, "Youth, health, vigor!"...
William James
The Varieties of Religious Experience,
1902

Mental Healing: Thomas Parker Boyd: "The Voice Eternal (1914)"

The way to self-mastery is so plain that the wayfaring man, though a fool need not err therein. The following formula is a workable statement of the forces that bring things to pass. Its parallel with the spiritual philosophy of life is perfect. You need not spend years of time and money for lessons. Just take hold of the handles of this mental battery and hold until its full power gets into operation. Something will happen. You will learn how to help yourself. There are four factors in the formula:

I. The IDEAL. It matters not whether it would be perfect health, or personal influence and power among men, or prosperity in your material affairs. Just fill out the picture mentally. Imagine yourself as in position of this ideal. Picture yourself as being surrounded by every feature of your ideal. Don't affirm that you are when as yet you are not, but build an air castle as complete as your imagination can finish it, and then go in and take mental possession of it. Do this seven times a day.

II. The DESIRE. Earnestly desire the reality of your ideal. Wishing a thing to be true is the first step to believing it can be true, and the next step is willing that it shall be true. Earnestly desires it for your own comfort and success. Wish it to be real for the good you may be able to do unto others. Long for it that may fully express the divine life in you, and so honor the God “whose you are and whom you serve.” And in another word this is prayer, for “Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, uttered the or unexpressed.”

III. The BELIEF. Earnestly believe in the “power that is within both to will and to do.” take that power into your confidence. You trust it to keep your heart beating, your blood circulating, the digestive and assimilative processes going, and in fact you leave to it in perfect confidence all the metabolism or changes to be made in the body without a doubt as to the outcome. You lie down to sleep at night without a question that it will keep your heart beating. If you had an idea that it would stop during the night you wouldn't sleep a wink that night. Now if you can put so much confidence in this hidden intelligent force inside you, just pull out one more stop, and believe that it will do these things just as you want them done. Intelligently direct it to do things just as you want them done, instead of some haphazard way, and you will find that it will keep the confidence inviolable. “According to your faith it shall be done unto you.”

IV. The WILL. This is the directing agent. It comes next in order, for, “Faith laughs at impossibilities, and cries, 'it shall be done.' ” Every force in your life and outside of it pivots finally on your will. “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt” makes “all power in heaven and in earth,” subject to that will. You can be anything you believe you can be and that you will to be. It takes the unseen things and makes them appear to the eyes or other senses. It takes your ideals and erects them into realities.

Follow then this formula, and it will bring
strength out of weakness,
ease out of disease,
plenty out of penuary, and
personal power out of impotence.

The Voice Eternal: A Spiritual Philosophy of the Fine Art of Being Well (1914)
Dr. Thomas Parker Boyd (1864-1936)