Mental Pictures, Distant Healing, Absent Healing --- Health and the Inner Life

To this day, so the anthropologists assure us, there are savage peoples who believe that distant members of the tribe may be telepathically influenced. The principle that "like affects like" is common to both ancient and modern mind cure. For example, an act performed upon a certain part of the body is supposed by some savage peoples to produce a corresponding effect upon an absent individual. In some tribes it has been the custom for the wives of the distant warriors to gather round the fire at home and put themselves through the operations which their liege lords were supposed just then to be going through, and hence to aid them to conquer. There is scarcely a tenet in the mind-cure faith of to-day that cannot be paralleled by a corresponding belief in ancient or savage times. In all ages and among various peoples there have been periods when belief in unusual powers have been prevalent.

Nothing is new in this new age. We’re re-cycling old stuff.

Many would set these down as outbreaks of credulity. Others would say that the race will be subject to such attacks until their law is understood, their meaning and truth assimilated. At any rate, these strange upheavals of all that is occult and weird are of peculiar interest to the mind-cure devotee, for they show that there has been a very general yearning after the knowledge which our age, at last, is likely to discover. Now that societies for psychical research exist, and scientific hypotheses concerning the subliminal region have been proposed, we are likely to assimilate the truth and discard the superstition. If our age has witnessed a more violent outbreak than the attacks of superstition which have visited other times, the meaning probably is that we now have the scientific weapons wherewith to meet it. In the future there will perhaps be no need of special sects for the promulgation of such beliefs, for there will be a science of all such phenomena. The notion that there is forbidden knowledge or hidden knowledge is a bit of misnomer. Nothing is forbidden, nothing is hidden and no one has access to knowledge that you can’t access yourself. But YOU have to look with for the HIGHER WISDOM.

In many cases the desire to be healed is a factor so favourable that the patient can well afford to take advantage of the advice given by the healer in regard to receptivity and mental co-operation. Occasionally the patient's faith is sufficient to accomplish a large part of the work. Sometimes a patient will write for "absent help" at a time when the therapeutist is unable to meet the appointment, but so familiar is the patient with the requirements that the right conditions will be observed and relief will come without aid from any other source. Again, former patients will ask leave to come occasionally to sit in the chair where they have received treatment, as they then found it easier to become self-helpful. Ideally speaking, to become as receptive as a little child is to be ready to be healed of any trouble. Again, the recipient of spiritual help ought to be able to respond as readily to spiritual truth as the injured animal to the healing power of nature, the hypnotic subject to the suggestions of the operator, or the credulous person to the therapeutic assertions of the abstract mental healer. As matter of fact, however, the conditions become more complex as we ascend the scale of intelligence. Receptivity is by no means the determining factor in the majority of cases. There is no reason for the assumption sometimes made that all healing is really self-healing.

The principle of "absent treatment" is the same as that of the silent treatment when the patient is present. Conscientious healers are not likely to give such treatment to persons whom they have not seen, although sometimes it is possible to establish communication by means of a letter. The treatment is, of course, given at an appointed hour, and it lasts the usual length of time, that is, about fifteen or twenty minutes. When a person has received present treatment from a healer, it is ordinarily not difficult to establish communication at a distance. The healer recognises the patient by discovery of the mental atmosphere, already known through previous sittings when the patient was present. Oftentimes absent healing is very effective, — occasionally more successful than present treatment.

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. The healing power is invoked by those who still believe in mysterious providences, divine dispensations, and other miraculous events. If a cure results from such invocations the former sufferer is no wiser. Spiritual healing is educational, and is based on intimate acquaintance with higher laws. The relation of faith to this process is explained by Dr. Evans, The Divine Law of Cure, Part II., chapter vii.

“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.

With some teachers of mental healing the first procedure is to inquire into the patient's past life to learn what haunting "mental picture" is the cause. Here is an instance which seems to confirm this theory of disease : A mental therapeutist once received as a patient a young woman who had been an invalid for a number of years and who was suffering from nervous convulsions, during the more violent of which she became unconscious. One of the severer attacks came on during the first sitting with the healer. Inquiry brought out the fact that these attacks had been thus severe ever since the sufferer had been frightened by the sudden and threatening approach of a pair of runaway horses. Thereupon the healer proceeded to "blot out" the mental picture of these horses. But there seemed to be a deeper cause.

This was found to be the unexpected discharge of a cannon which frightened the patient when a child. Once more the picture was blotted out, and ultimately the convulsions ceased. In such a case the process of therapeutic thought pursued is intended to establish the right retrospective relation to the accidents which occasioned the disease. The regular physician would say that the physical shock was the cause. The mental picture would be regarded as inconsequential. If the mental therapeutist invariably cured by blotting out mental pictures, the evidence would be strongly in favour of this theory. But the results show that the theory is inadequate. On the whole, however, this theory is a valuable development of the general doctrine. Know your therapist or practitioner!

Horatio Willis Dresser

(1866–1954)

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)

New Thought ---  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.

“Mental Science." — This term was used, for a time after 1880, to designate all mind-cure doctrines other than "Christian Science." … In those days the term was used even by followers of Quimby and Evans. 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.