He created the "Silent Treatment" and set the example for all types of mental and New Thought healers.

That a person may grow simply and naturally into knowledge and use of psychical power is shown in the case of P. P. Quimby, pioneer of the spiritual healing movement in America. We may consider his experience quite apart from any interest in his teachings or any objections to them. The example would serve as well if he had taken up any other form of spiritual work on an original basis. For the significant consideration is that he had an open mind, no beliefs that kept him from investigations for truth's sake, and no attitude towards life which closed the door to inner guidance so far as any of us know who have had acquaintance with his relatives and his followers. Again his experience is interesting because he was not in any sense a spiritist, and apparently had no reason for attributing any of his experiences or guidances to angels or spirits. He did not seek to cultivate psychical power for its own sake and the problems of psychical research did not exist for him. Such power as he acquired came in the course of investigations with purely practical interests in view.

Because of a strong personal desire for light on his own health, Mr. Quimby experimented for a time, beginning in 1838, with the phenomena now known as hypnotism but then called mesmerism. He found a responsive subject whom he calls Lucius in his manuscripts, a peculiarly sensitive subject who became very clairvoyant when under mesmeric sleep or hypnosis. This subject when thus clairvoyant would sometimes describe the interior states of people suffering from disease in such a way as to lead Mr. Quimby to believe that man possesses a deeper or interior mind whose contents throw more light on the real nature of a person's attitude toward life, his beliefs, and fears, than any study of man's mere consciousness. In fact, Quimby concluded that not until the inner mind is known can we be truly said to know the man, or be able to help him out of his spiritual troubles. For the inner mind was plainly more open to what we now call "suggestion." It also had a more direct influence upon the physical organism. This was Quimby's original way of discovering what we now call the subconscious mind.

Having found and followed this clue for a while, Quimby discovered to his surprise that by sitting silently by a person, intuitively receptive to the inner mind, he too possessed clairvoyant power and could not only discern interior spiritual states but also conditions within the bodily organism not obvious to sight and not taken into account by the physician's diagnosis. This for Quimby was an epoch-making discovery, for it was no longer necessary to make use of the sensitive as an intermediary. It was unnecessary to put a person into a mesmeric sleep. This was undesirable and abnormal. But the clairvoyant or intuitive power which Quimby found himself in possession of was entirely normal. Nor need one have recourse to spirits or have anything to do with mediumship, since this intuitive power was found to be resident within the individual. What was important was to press forward in developing and using intuition. This Mr. Quimby did without trying to cultivate psychical power as such, because his discoveries had opened up a new world of helpfulness for people in spiritual need.

The process known as "silent treatment" operates directly through the subconsciousness of the patient, and the changes made disclose themselves in the mental atmosphere. The healer is thus able to see what his work is accomplishing and to perceive the forthcoming changes long before the patient becomes aware of them. An atmosphere or sphere can be discerned at a distance, also, and so the therapeutic process may be carried on absently.

Quimby does not seem to have regarded this discovery as remarkable, nor did he hold that the influence of mental atmosphere is at all abnormal or unusual. He was not acquiring super-normal knowledge of the human individual, but merely finding out what is partly true of all of us and especially true of the sensitively organized, namely, that through the world of our mental atmospheres or spiritual spheres we are intimately "members one of another." He held that we all influence one another far more than we know, for we ordinarily judge by surfaces; we fail to take the inner mind into account. Quimby's great step was the one which took him beyond the realm of psychical influences on the plane where atmospheres meet and mingle to find a way to conquer such influences in so far as they prove undesirable.

Quimby had come to the conclusion that the real man or self behind the atmosphere and what we now call the subconscious mind is spirit, is of finer quality and greater power than any mental atmosphere.

His writings do not tell us by what steps he arrived at the conclusion that the spirit is inwardly open to the divine presence and is subject to guidance.

He learned from actual experience that clairvoyant intuition is not merely a mental or human power, but that spiritual light illuminating the human spirit discloses what is divine and what is true. Moreover, Quimby was not, so those friends assure us who knew him best, a man who naturally attributed power to himself. He seems to have grown quite naturally into the belief, then the conviction, that the human spirit is interiorly open to the divine wisdom and that by giving heed to the signs and conditions of this openness the spirit can become more receptive and be more truly guided.

In Quimby's view of the matter the efficiency lies in the divine power or wisdom, not in the mere process of picturing the ideal. The process is a means to an end.

Quimby did not stop with the conclusion that the inner mind is the clue to the nature of disease and its cure. Having seen that the inner or spiritual man is the real man, and that man as a spirit possesses "spiritual senses," as he called them, of which clairvoyance is one, he went further and concluded that spiritual life is real life, that man is a spirit living in the spiritual world now. He looked upon death as relatively external and incidental. He spoke of death in fact as no more of a change inwardly than would occur if he should move from his home in Belfast across Penobscot Bay to Castine, that is, a change within the same world, the real world in which we always live.

At the time of his own death his spirit was partly separated from the flesh for a brief period and when he regained consciousness for an even briefer period he told a member of the family that he had proved his theory of death. This was his last message to the world:

“I am more than ever convinced of the truth of my theory. I am perfectly willing for the change myself, but I know you all will feel badly, and think I am dead; but I know that I shall be right here with you, just the same as I always have been. I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip to Philadelphia.”

Quimby's view coincides with the belief prevailing among the Society of Friends or Quakers that the inward guidance is "the light of Christ within the soul."

His mind did not lead him into the consideration of "auras" and "planes," besetting spirits and deterrent forces, because he was directly and steadily interested in the welfare of the sick. He did not dwell on or cultivate psychical power as such, because he was absorbed in using it for spiritual ends. His experience did not lead him into psychical bye-paths, because life was too full of opportunities to help people spiritually. Nevertheless, he was all the while using his own psychical powers or senses and growing in awareness of them. The views he adopted are deeply suggestive, because they indicate a straight way through the difficulties.

Into the spiritual light within our souls we may lift every need and every problem. In that clear light we may come to see what is human, what divine; what is merely mental, what spiritual; what from without, what from within. The essential is that each man should seek it and be tested by it for himself. This was the practical spiritual result Mr. Quimby was led to by merely following his own guidance wherever it led, but also, as some of us would add, because the time had come for the return to the inner vision. His experience shows that one may push through to that vision without in any way becoming involved in spiritism. It suggests that we need above all else to grow in intuition or inner spiritual perception. Granted this, we may be able to turn to the Bible, as did Quimby when his experiences and insights afforded the clue, as the open book of man's spiritual progress on earth. Mr. Quimby's teaching is also interesting and suggestive in view of the fact that his use of spiritual power without mediumship or spiritism, set the example for all types of mental and New Thought healers.

Excerpted from:
THE OPEN VISION
BY
HORATIO W. DRESSER, Ph.D.
1920