Mesmerism, Magnetism, Hypnotism, Psychology and Astral Bodies?

In a typical warning to her students against fears that “mesmerism, magnetism, hypnotism, psychology,” or “astral bodies” could hurt them, Emma Curtis Hopkins said:

“There is no power of any man or woman or child whereby they may communicate with any other one in or out of the body. It is pure delusion. I propose to you to mind your business and keep away from astral bodies, elementals and threats of evil. They are totally unscientific!” ~ 1891

1. What does it mean to take no thought of what we shall eat or drink, when Jesus himself fasted forty days, and the wise men of Scripture fasted oft and dieted to suit occasions?
2. How is the science consistent when in one breath it tells us we can have nothing to ourselves, and in the next breath tells us we can have the desire of our hearts?
3. When we do not know exactly what course to pursue, how can we be sure it is the true or false self that urges us into doing a certain way?
These are very good questions and cover a great deal of ground.
First.-What does it mean to take no thought, etc.? The apparently contradictory nature of word and action here is the divinest harmony to the true scientist. You certainly must not take the least bit of care about what you eat, drink or wear, and yet you are to eat, drink and dress always properly.
Cast all your care-that is, let his Friend so close by you take the care on His own shoulders. Go you about healing in His name, teaching the truth as far as you know it; preaching silently or audibly, as judgment dictates, all about the glory and beauty and blessedness of Spiritual Reality.
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added." That is, if you are dealing with spiritual doctrines, the material movements and things will set themselves right. You are not to set the material things and movements right in order to be spiritual, but you are to be spiritual in order to set material things right.
If you are spiritually minded you will often fast many days and not realize it. You do not fast in order to be spiritual, but fast because you are spiritual. Fasting in order to be spiriual, weakens you. It is a taking thought for the body that is forbidden. But fasting that you do when you are already spiritual, strengthens and invigorates you.
You have meat to eat during those hours that the world knows of. Jesus fasted because he became spiritual as a reward for preaching and teaching Truth. So did the wise men. Then ate again after the fast. He took no care about it. The Law worked its own way through him and with him.
We must be spiritual by thinking and telling spiritual Truth, Then we shall find food, raiment and shelter provided and suited for us.
Second.-- You ask how the science is consistent which tells us we can have nothing, and then says we can have all things? I find that I must scream, vehemently shout, or whisper mysteriously, or whatever way will impress upon you that nothing, nothing, worse than nothing, belongs to mortality. But all things belong to the spiritual, or truly minded.
Some are hounding me as if I originated the statement of Scripture that the fulfillment of the desire of the heart belongs by right to everyone of us. But I only read out of the Law, I do not originate. I did not discover it, Here is the text again which is the key to the whole question: "Seek ye first the kingdom...and all these things shall be added." Renounce the world the flesh and the devil. That is, deny their reality. Then spiritual powers and spiritual faculties, and spiritual supplies make you a new creature. Think what is orderly, true, divine. Speak of these things, teach them; then you will say the mountains of sorrow, Be gone! and sorrows shall flee away. You shall say to desolation, "I am not desolate," and true companionship will come to you. You shall have more abundantly than you can ask or even think after you have become truly spiritual. Not till then. To the materially-minded nothing is promised. To the spiritually-minded all things are promised.
The desire you have this moment deep down in your heart you ought to have fulfilled. Being your own it ought to come to you.

"Rise the hills,
And swim the sea,
And like thy shadow
Fall on thee."

But it wont come till you are scientific-speak Truth.
It is very strange how our desires change when we become truthful. We set out denying all the obstacles that keep us from getting our wishes. Barrier after barrier is removed by our denials. Then suddenly we take a new outlook. We would not have the thing we first asked for now. Our wishes lie along quite another channel. We see things from a more sensible standpoint. We finally get just what we desire. Not what we first asked for, but just what we have come to want. The first desire was a good thing to start off with. The last one to end up with. "We shall be changed."
Third.-- You ask how to tell the true monition from the false one? Easy enough. Do that which seems just right, or what you seem driven to do and trust your choice. Trust that the Best, the Divine, guided you. Never mind how far away from the Right it seems. Trust that it is Right. Oh! how "you" do like to be trusted! That is, the "you" likes to be trusted by what seems to be you. Trust the Leading. It is the Divine of you. Fear not. Trust. Trust. Trust. Each hour of trusting "yourself" brings you out clearer and clearer as the off-spring of Wisdom. If I were as afraid as so many seem to be, I should be quite swamped, because so many condemn me for the bold moves I make. But I jump to a Leading, and let my best beloved cry out against it. Nobody is quite so wise concerning your own matters as yourself. Whatever you do while trying to do the best you can, you have a right to believe in doing. I know this by experience. I know it by Law. I know it by inspiration.

Let us unite in silent prayer to set us forevermore free from wrong and evil.
Say with me in the silence, these words:
I am not afraid that my health will fail me.
I am not afraid that my strength will leave me.
I am not afraid that my peace will be disturbed,
from henceforth forevermore.
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." Amen.
July 31, 1888

Hopkins had also explained, that although one might experience a craving for “tobacco, strong drink, or other vicious tastes,” in fact, “No desire for the undesirable has existence.” Such lowly desires were actually “the restless desire for satisfaction seeking a false channel,” and were in fact not for stimulation, but for “peace”. Class Lessons #82

If you have read Genesis and thought about the garden, you are right now in it. The Bible is not a history book, in fact, in Reality ( Reality being GOD) there is no history, for there is no yesterday and no tomorrow. Jesus told us to take no thought about tomorrow. Why? Because there is only ever this one eternal moment right now.
So, you are in Heaven (God) right this instant. So long as you are facing within, you stand face to face with your True Self. That True Self is your ‘other half’ so to speak, the invisible YOU, which can sit right where you are and say, "Once I took a trip to…" and know that the one that took the trip was the little outward ‘self’ you have imagined yourself to be, but the ONE who can say this and see this is the TRUE YOU. If you imagine God as one half of a parenthesis "(" and your True Being, that Infinite One, who can see your little ‘self’ going places and doing things, being the other ")", you can see that when you put them together you have () or O or O-ne. So long as we face ‘outward’ to a world of the visible, making it our main focus, thinking it is the REAL, turning inward only on occasion, if ever, and thinking ourselves something different from God – we can see only as through a glass darkly. But the moment we turn inward and it becomes our true and absolute focus, our immaculate Obsession, continually seeking the Kingdom, we find our self face to face with the Light and know even as we are known.
You do not have to go through hell to get to heaven, although quite often people have to get to the end of their ‘little self’ one way or another, because there must come a realization that, "I can of my own self do nothing".
. . . .
Upon awakening everything, truly begins to change. Time is no more. We seem to be where we are supposed to be when we are supposed to be there, but every day is the same to us and day and night are not as they ever were before. Our ‘ideas’ of God and prayer completely change. Until now we have seen God to be both our ‘gofer and chauffeur’, there to follow our commands, fill our Christmas list of desires, supply our needs, and prop up our little egos. We have expected God to give us the glory, to forgive our sins, to hear our prayers, and if we are good to bless us for being so, while expecting God, which is Love, to kill and destroy those we judged not good. Thus we have, in our imagination, developed our world, the whole scenario from birth to death, even and including our concept of heaven, hell, and earth. We have ruled over our concept, and have been the god of ‘this world’ – our world, the world we have made, judging others and sentencing them according to our concept of right and wrong, good and evil, which we have been making up as we have gone along, based upon our own particular likes and dislikes, sending them to hell if they crossed an invisible line of our own demarcation, never-minding that God so loved the world that he sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. We have been running the show, telling God what to do and how to do it, calling it prayer, and making all kinds of excuses for our little God when he didn’t follow our commands, prayers, and requests, yet using the magic words, ‘not my will, but thine’, while believing sickness, pain, misery, poverty, and even death to be God’s will. We have had our theology all neatly wrapped up in a box, and so long as no one tries to open our box and let in light, we are satisfied with the darkness or ignorance we enjoy. It is time to break the box and allow the Light to shine in, to reach up, to take the Hand that is offered to us, to arise and walk out of the box, and furthermore to recognize that there is no box!
GOD in a Box
Jane Woodward