Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Religion and disease are synonymous.

 


Feeling it a duty I owe myself and others to define my position as a man and a doctor so that I may not be misrepresented, I take this method to lay before the public my ideas so that they, being my judges, can decide the merits of my claim. For three years, I have been in this city attending to the duties of my practice without interfering in any way with the world outside of my business. I have given my whole attention to the sick, believing that my method of healing is entirely new and unknown to the world, and my object is to reduce it to a science so that it can be practiced by everyone for his own good. This is the sole reason why I remain here. I seek no favors of any one. I do not write this to get patients, for I have as many as I can attend to, but to separate myself from all others who see fit to assign me a place among the humbugs of the day.
It is in my wisdom that I differ from all others. The world puts the wisdom in the body and when that dies, the soul jumps out, if there is any, and it goes just where their wisdom admits it. You may not understand just where I am, so I will make an illustration to show how I am equal to God as people say and how I am equal to Christ. Suppose the reader is sitting in a parlor; of course all that he sees comes within his wisdom, so he sees himself. If I should be sitting with you, you would see me and you would allow that I could see as much as you see yourself. Now am I not in your wisdom with every other article in the room and are not you in my wisdom as much as all the other articles? So you see I am in you and you in me. You will not say that the great wisdom of all is less wise than me, so is he not in you and you and I in him? And are you not equal to me in what you know and am I not equal to you in the same? And are not both of us equal to the wisdom that knows all things, as far as we know? When I make any remark in regard to God, it is in this way.
As to death, I do not believe in it, for wisdom cannot die; but if my wisdom is in my body and a part of it, then I die according to my belief; but my wisdom is not in my body, my body is my wisdom. Now disease is in the wisdom of the patient and of course his wisdom is in his body. So he puts his disease in his body according to his own belief. The doctors' opinion is their belief and I being in my wisdom see the sick or their opinions. To destroy these, I make them wiser and their wisdom breaks their opinion and sets them free. To make it clearer, I will show you how to make a disease and how a person gets into it, like a prison, and how I get them out. Tell a person he has the heart disease. At first you cannot get him into that belief or prison, but at length he acknowledges it and then he is in this disease. So far as he believes, he leads himself in this disease. As my wisdom is not an opinion of disease, that is in my wisdom like any other opinion that I know is false, so my wisdom can see through his opinion, and when I convince him that his suffering arises from his own belief, the truth decomposes his opinions and the separation is the cure.
All I want to show is that I do not belong to any sect or creed. As I used to mesmerize, some think my mode of treatment is mesmeric, but my mode is not in the least like those who claim to be mesmerized subjects or spiritual mediums. I have nothing to say in regard to persons curing by the spirits. I know all about that way of curing. Neither have I anything to say about mesmeric treatment; I know all about that. I have been over twenty years investigating the subject. And if I had no other aim than dollars and cents, I would close my eyes, go into a trance, tell the patient how he felt and call some Indian to prescribe by making out the patient sick of scrofula or cancerous humor or of some other foolish disease and impress upon the patient the necessity of having medicine ordered by the spirits of my own getting up to the value of several dollars of which I should receive for my own benefit or they never would get well. If I should do this, I should do what I know to be wrong; and if anyone in a trance or mesmeric state, making it his profession to cure diseases first tells the patient that he is ignorant of what he says and that he recommends a medicine of his own invention, he deceives the patient.
I have had a clairvoyant subject long enough to know that when a person is unconscious of what he says, that he has no selfish motives, anymore than a person in a dream. A person is either asleep or awake and if asleep, he will never recommend medicine for his own advantage. If awake, he should be honest and let the patient know it. I sit down awake and tell the feelings and have confidence in my wisdom to cure without medicine. But people are superstitious and if any person purports to come from another world, it has a great deal to do with his cure. His cure is in the belief of the patient's confidence in the spirits that recommend medicine. I ask no aid from any source outside of that wisdom which is given to all men in all branches of science. Wisdom never acts in that way. If the spirit was wise, it could cure without medicine and if not wise, it is not of God. Portland, March 1862~ The Separation of Myself from All Others Who Treat Disease

Common opinion would answer that there is, and according to my opinion there is, but it is all owing to the patient's belief, and to perfect wisdom there is no curative virtue in medicine.
I will relate one case out of a hundred to show how medicine proves itself according to the patient's belief or the direction of some other person. I was attending a gentleman who was sick and he thought he had consumption but was not fully settled in his own mind; so of course he was very nervous. Under this nervousness, the glands around the throat were excited and kept him hacking and raising a white frothy substance and also kept him heated, which heat would he thrown off in a perspiration. After I had told him the cause of his trouble, the explanation so far as he understood it relieved him; he breathed more easily and was improving. One day he read in a paper an advertisement of a medicine which would cure the catarrh and prevent the discharges from the head. Thinking it might cure him, he bought a bottle and commenced taking it; but instead of lessening the secretion, it grew worse and he ran down very fast.
My theory explains the fact in this way. His belief admitted that his head was diseased and in the condition of a sore and that the medicine would cure it. Under this belief the glands of the nose were excited and the medicine then proved his belief that the matter was in his head, for it was taken to make the head discharge. His belief did this by exciting the glands and the medicine was taken to throw it off; so when the matter and even blood commenced running, it showed that the medicine was doing what it agreed to do. But another belief came up that I had given him, for I had exposed the absurdity of medicine; and after he saw the effect, he remembered what I had told him. And abandoning his medicine he returned to me again, and in a few days recovered what he had lost.
This is how the disease worked. His own wisdom or knowledge produced the phenomenon; his knowledge gave the medicine the praise or blame just as people give God the praise for their own acts while the devil has to take the blame for their troubles. I have observed the effect of medicine and have found that there is more virtue or misery in the advertisement than in the medicine.
Everyone knows how the mouth will water by a desire for something that the person wants and how the mouth and throat will become parched by fear of detection in crime. This was known by the ancients and magicians, and from the fact that the mind could be changed by fear so that criminals could be detected, those who understood it took advantage of it to detect a thief. The magicians made a paste that would dissolve when laid on the tongue of a person in a perfectly calm state of mind; but in case of unusual warmth or feverish thirst, it would not dissolve. So when a theft was committed by the servants, all the people were collected in one room and the magician was sent for. Believing in his power, their minds of course were controlled by their knowledge; and if the thief were present, he knew it and being sure of detection grew nervous. This would prevent the glands from acting and thus bring out his guilt. The others feeling innocent were safe, for if they were nervous it did not produce the state of mind to prevent the past from dissolving. So the mind was the medium to detect the thief and out of his own mouth he was condemned. People put extravagant confidence in medicine supposing that it contains curative qualities. Frequently Indian doctors appear who have discovered an herb or root to cure some disease that man is afflicted with, as though God had made both the disease and its cure. The same class of people say that God has made a remedy for every disease, showing that their superstision is woven into a belief that God made all diseases and made medicines to cure them. This is the belief of mankind and it is not strange that man has gone out of the way. Now I disbelieve in diseases and remedies as understood by the world and know that diseases and all their remedies are man's invention and the whole effect is brought about by their own belief. Here is my belief in regard to the way diseases are brought about. If you tell a lie or a truth to a person and the person believes it, the effect on the person is the disease. To cure him is to expose the falsehood to his senses. To do this I use my reason for medicine and it acts as a stimulant or alternative as the case may be, while the doctors apply their remedies in the form of medicine.
The opinion that God has provided a remedy for every disease gives rise to a belief that there are certain roots and herbs intended by the Creator to cure all diseases. Absurd as this seems, it is the belief of ninety-nine out of a hundred; and this being the case, a door is open to quackery, for new discoveries will come up every day. Dr. Herrick's pills, Ayers' sarsaparilla, and countless others are advertised as the cure-all, being the result of long acquaintance with vegetable medicines and their curative qualities. Then follow certificates of cures and of recommendations from some M.D., and these give the medicines a run. Next a man comes who exhibits the effect of laughing gas and also states that it will cure neuralgia and rheumatism, and the sick rush to him for a time. After he goes, a learned M.D. arrives with flaring advertisements announcing free lectures on anatomy and the digestive organs. He explains the action of these organs and dwells upon the danger of getting sick by over-eating and drinking, receives some fifty dollars from the poor sick and leaves. Among the throng of humbugs, when all seems dark and despairing, an announcement is whispered in the ear of the sick that God has opened a way for their recovery and sent an angel of mercy who has discovered a flower that will cure everything that can be cured. So here is introduced an imposter who will give Lobelia emetics till they cease to affect the patient, pretending that all diseases must yield to it. This has its day and another comes up. All this goes to show that the mind of man is like an old fiddle played on by every kind of quackery relating to roots and herbs. Now I know all about these things. With my wisdom I understand them all as Job said to Zophar, "What ye know the same do I know also; I am not inferior unto you." I use nothing, yet I could easily use all kinds of drugs. Then Job said "Ye are forgers of lies, ye all physicians of no value. Oh, that ye would altogether hold your peace and it should be your wisdom." This expresses the opinion of Job about the classes I have mentioned.
He said at another time "No doubt that ye are the people and wisdom shall die with you." He saw that these wise men and philosophers were an injury to the progress of science. His God was a God of wisdom and proved all things by his science. Therefore he knew all they knew and saw it was only an opinion. So he said their wisdom would die with them, but he know that his wisdom would not, for his life was in his wisdom and that was his science. He could see that all they said amounted to nothing. Job believed in a God but had not really attached his own senses to his wisdom as a progressive being.
I have seen the working of popular belief and know that diseases and remedies are the invention of man, and the very proof which is brought to establish their wisdom goes to substantiate what I say. For instance, an emetic everyone thinks is to clean out the stomach. So when people have eaten too much, they can take a Lobelia emetic; also if they think their lungs are diseased, take a Lobelia emetic, and if they have the dropsy, take the same. Now I will call your attention to what this belief amounts to carried out toward God. What kind of a God is it that made the earth to bring forth trees, herbs and everything that hath life? All this was before man was created; therefore did He make these medicines and the codfish with a liver to cure consumption before the disease was made? This belief would certainly suppose that God made the remedies before the disease, and if He made all the remedies these quacks say He did, He certainly is the greatest enemy to mankind. Absurd as this sounds, we believe it and are affected by our beliefs, and this makes man the most dependent of all God's creatures. He is merely a target to be fired at by every person's opinion. I can show by facts that every person will admit that no kind of medicine has any more effect of itself than almost any kind of food or drink that we use daily, but our ignorance placed some kind of virtue in them as we place wisdom in some one's opinion. The truth which places all disease in the mind can explain the operation of remedies. God is Wisdom and man is opinion; therefore man cannot live in Wisdom and be diseased. But the child of wisdom reduced to science is held in bondage by opinions, and to show that there are diseases according to the belief of man is to show that they are made by circumstances which cannot be controlled except by correcting the error that brought them about, while ignorance would prescribe some medicine that God had made from the foundation of the world. October 1862

Liberal religion has destroyed the devil as a being and located him in man's evil thoughts and acts. And we are taught that to get rid of him is to keep ourselves free from mischief and learn to do good. 1863~ Disease I

Now if disease is not the invention of the whites, why does the savage not have the disease in the same locality in which he lived before he ever knew the whites? Take the Indian tribes. When they lived separate from the whites and had no communication with them, they were healthy. But as soon as the whites settled near them and they began to enter into their beliefs, then the savages became frightened and disease took hold to them. Now if disease is a thing that goes around and attacks man, why does it not attack those that never had anything to do with civilized life? The fact is religion and disease are synonymous. Both are the invention of man for the special benefit of a few, but disease has become so settled in the minds of man that it amounts to a solid fact and is believed in as having a being independent of man and is an enemy to his happiness. It is believed by every person therefore that to correct this belief and restore a person to health is a mystery. But when a man can see that his belief can make him sick, he won't require much reasoning to see also that to correct his belief will make him well. 1863~ Disease I

Patriotism is the feeling which prompts man to respect the right of his fellow man,
also his obligation to his country and to his God.


So as the Constitution is a spiritual truth in the heart of every patriot, sanctioned by the blood of our fathers, never let our earthly passions become wedded to harlots or opinions that will rob us of the blessing that wisdom has bequeathed to us.
August 1861~ Patriotism

Liberating the slave is not the  destruction of the idea. The people must be educated up to the standard of Liberty.
1863~ Liberty and Equality


Now spiritualism, religion, and politics and every kind of phenomenon are brought about upon this one fact that one person acts on another for good or evil. (A) Suppose you are right. How can it be helped? It has always been and always will be. (B) I will admit it always has been and that it always will be until men's true motives are known. (A) Well, neither you nor I can change man. (B) That is a fact, but there is another fact that man is not aware of that is working in the world of man's mind that will bring about the very thing I am talking about. It is not an opinion, so I shall only show the principle and the problem works itself out, not by any supreme wisdom but by a chemical change that is taking place in the minds all the time. So changes must take place. Men's minds will run to and fro and knowledge will increase, but wisdom is not known. Parties and theories spring up, but these are the beginning. Men attach their senses to the change, and their lives being in their senses, principle is not known. To illustrate the change of mind, I will take this rebellion. Before it broke out, the minds of men '-ad been worked up by the leaders to this pitch that the South were set against the administration party. This was brought about by the leading men, North and South, belonging to the democratic party, for sake of the loaves and fishes. To bring this to perfection, the North must set the people to quarreling about slavery and the South would make a handle of their arguments to convince the people that the North wanted to destroy their "peculiar institution"; this would unite the South and divide the North.
Of course, a fire cannot be kindled without some kindling and that was supplied by a few fanatics at the North and South, so the fire burned till all the country or mind was on fire. Meanwhile the democratic party was kept in power by these two elements: a united South, held by the false idea of slavery, and a divided North.
Finally, the North applied reason or water, cooling the flame of the northern masses and Lincoln came in president. Here is the state of the public mind. All the above is past and now the end cometh. Yet in all that has passed there has not been any wisdom and neither will there be in what is to take place, but there is a law of action and reaction and upon this ground I have my belief. So I will predict as the country now stands, it is, so far as observation goes, just where it was when Lincoln was elected, only to the natural eye it looks a little darker. But I see the light and it seems to me it will come in this way. The democratic party will split at the North and assume a new name, perhaps the Union or people's party, and out of this party a child must come which will devour the republican party almost. It will try to hold out the olive of peace to the South, but the republicans won't agree. The South will grow wroth and a hatred will spring up and the democracy will unite with the republicans under a new name. So the North will be united with the exception of a small party, and their word will go forth, Union forever. And if slavery stand in the way it must come down, and it will, for the North in their zeal will employ every means available to accomplish its end. So slavery dies without even a watcher to close its dying eyes, but its death must come through the elements of the democratic party, and if Mr. Lincoln is not the one, then another will rise up. But I think it will sprout from Abraham, for in him and in his seed shall all the earth be blest.
Sept. 4th, 1860~ Spiritual Communications from the Dead

 

What Quimby called wisdom we call consciousness. 

While he was seeing 12000 to 16000 patients in the last years of his life a Civil War had taken place. 

Enlightened people still chop wood and carry water.

What would Jesus do today? Wear a mask, get vaccinated, chop wood and carry water. 

 This truth as taught by Unity is something that can be applied at all times. I have had so many lessons brought to me that I can hardly know what to tell you about. My husband was out in the field at work, and he was stricken with flu at the time that people were going out of the back door of the hospitals as fast as they were coming in the front door. I received a wire that my husband was on the train very ill. I was, of course, quite perturbed, because everyone was frightened to death, and I called the practitioner, and said, take care of my husband that he may be conscious and get home from the station alright. I didn't want him to come in an ambulance, and I didn't want him to be in the atmosphere of sickness. Of course, I worked as well as I could with myself and for him, and when he came home - I didn't know what train he was coming on, or I would have gone to meet him - but when he came up he came in a taxi, and he didn't know what he was at home from four until nine. His temperature was 104 1/2, and he was what the doctors would say a case with pneumonia already developed, and so I simply said, " A thousand shall fall at that side, and 10,000 at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee." I said it with a great deal of realization, knowing that I had to take care of my studio and I would not have sickness. So he was taking care of very immediately. I did what I could to make him comfortable. The next day he had a temperature of 102, and that was the last of the temperature. And then he came under the belief that something happens to them after the flu, and one day I looked at him and he was perfectly white, and I said, "What is the matter?" He said, "I am having a little time with my heart." I said, "How many times if you felt that?" and he said "About three times." So I called the practitioner, and it never occurred again. Well, he lost 15 pounds, but he realized that God was ever present, and he was left with absolutely no ill effects from it.  from https://www.truthunity.net/people/charles-fillmore/sermons/practical-christianity-1922-11-08

 

If…the press could be induced to advertise courage instead of circulating fear, an enormous improvement would be rapidly manifested. The effect of the mere corralling of fear would be inestimable. The greatest service any paper, any doctor, any human being can perform for the human race is to teach it to think aright. Architects of Disease,” The Christian Science Monitor, 13 August 1919, 16.


On the virus of 1918, Fenwick Holmes wrote in “Ernest Holmes, His Life and Times": (The Holmes Family took care of many at their sanitarium in LongBeach).
"Later the work of our Metaphysical Institute went on during the great influenza epidemic in the fall of 1918, which took hundreds of lives in California. Schools, theaters and churches were closed, and people went about the streets with white gauze masks, attempting to shut out the germ or virus and escape the contagion. Workers fell ill at their desks in the business places of the city, returning to their homes or to hospitals and were seen no more. We went about our business as usual, and although we treated many people who came or telephoned for help, we did not have a single failure."

No comments:

Post a Comment