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.