Part 2

It is known only too well today by those who seek to know, that back of all such physical conditions as nervousness, prostration, temporary insanity, nervous disorders, pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous system and mind.

New Thought declares that all diseases, except accidental wounds and fractures begin in the psychic or "thought body" as energy and then are registered in the physical cells as organic or functional disease.

We might follow this farther in order to satisfy science, but suffice it to go this far, and then seek the value of knowing this: We can see that the only thing that naturally follows is, the healer and patient must be taught how to restore the lost equilibrium of the centers and again poise the life in a creative thought vibration. This is done simply and surely by teaching everyone the correct use of the idea centers of the human brain and through this he is taught to form such thoughts and produce such ideas as will allow a normal amount of energy to register on both planes, and not permit the psychical mind to drive the human engine on to destruction in a wild waste and explosion of physical, mental or psychical energy.

This is not a long or wearisome task for in the cortex of every brain there are distinct idea centers whose business it is to take up ideas built from thoughts, and will must follow the idea, and by constantly selecting the thoughts which will produce harmonious vibrations within the psychic and physical selves, we join with the great creative energy of the universe and it flows through us, healing and harmonizing every atom of our body.

The very first step toward healing is to teach the patient to build for himself a health consciousness, and this is done by giving him the positive ideas of health instead of the negative ones of disease. We build for him the idea of health, hold it firmly in our minds, and project it into his idea centers until it registers in his psychic mind; then this is followed by his own increased power of willing, and finally this passes into action and is registered in form.

Ideation, willing and doing is the great health trinity, and when this is produced, healing must follow. This is the law and there is no appeal from it.

When we first meet a diseased person we find his field of consciousness full of all kinds of negative thoughts of disease, worry, fear and anxiety--these have been persisted in so long that they have weakened both the idea centers and the power of willing. We at once create for him the positive idea motor-form, and if his conscious mind is too weak to receive the impulse, we project it into his psychic mind, helping him hold on to the new idea until his own mind is able to grasp it, and it becomes registered for him.

After he has learned the truth of the abundance of health energy within and without to be aroused into action by the simple law of his own thoughts and feelings, he sets to work to regenerate himself, and he finds that he can really breathe the breath of life into his own nostrils.

After we have seen the scientific side of the real power of healing, then if we want to get health and keep it, we set about studying how to live our life so as to be able to generate thoughts and feelings, at all times, which shall always move us at a creative health vibration. The very next thing for anyone seeking health is to get easy in his everyday life; no one can ever be well and live with every nerve on a tension. We need to know the higher law of life that teaches us that no one put us anywhere but ourselves; that no one is to blame but ourselves for what we have or have not; we get and have in this world just what we have the power to relate with and will get free from the thing we do not like in just the hour that we build something better for ourselves. All we need to do is to cease resisting conditions and agree with our adversary quickly. Freedom, liberty and happiness are not things of the external world; they come from within and we are sad or happy, bound or free, sick or well, not by our external but by our internal conditions.

The sick, nervous, peevish, worrying mind sees everything as positive to itself and must be taught that there is nothing in all the world that has any power over us except that with which we endow it, and it must begin to live under this idea rather than the old foolish one of being controlled by every external condition.

"God hath not given us a spirit of fear but of love and of power and of a sound mind," and with persistent thought culture we can soon form a habit of thought and feeling that will build us away from our old consciousness of disease and pain into a higher law of health and strength.

Good, positive, strong health thoughts are a certain preventive and cure for every kind of disease. Disease and health have absolutely no relation with each other; disease is the expression of a faltering, undeveloped soul life, while health is the expression of a consciousness that has not broken its law of universal recognition.

There are very good people who are sick and very many so-called bad folks who are well; health is not bestowed as a reward of merit, it simply is by the natural universal law, and it exists for those who know how to fulfill the law within their own being. There are many so-called wicked people who live in greater harmony with their wickedness than some so-called Christians can ever do with their religion and goodness. Wholeness or holiness means simply harmony, and harmony inside and outside gives health. Anyone who has health has earned it by obeying the laws that produce it.

Another great factor active in producing inharmonious vibrations and registering destructive energy, is the old thought habit of living under the laws of opposites, thinking thought of health today and of disease tomorrow; to be passing daily between hope and despair. This is sowing mixed thought seeds and cannot help bringing mixed vibrations.

The path to a health consciousness is to get the strong, positive idea of UNITY and live under the law of similars. To begin at once to affirm UNION with all the health and strength of the universe and stick to it in the face of all the opposing negative thought vibrations generated within ourselves, or thrown into our minds by others. This can be done by resolutely substituting a health thought for a diseased one; no matter how fast negative thoughts crowd in upon the mind, they can be antidoted by the strong positive affirmation of HEALTH.

In order to register health vibrations we must think, feel and be health in mind. The words of health, peace, power and strength do not unfold into radiant flesh and dwell among us through a faltering idea of fear, or vague "perhaps," or "I do hope I shall be well," or "I want to get well," but it demands the eternal I AM HEALTH NOW.

Courage, zeal and consecration to the laws of health and freedom from the law of death are not kindled by the halting consciousness full of the law of opposites, but they are the results of knowing and abiding. When we can in very truth and full of believing say to health, "Thy kingdom come," it will come.

Our daily thoughts then become the wires over which there passes into form a finer substance, and our body is rebuilt and fashioned from the indestructible substance of the Universe.

The mortal body as we know it in the old thought world, is a thing of earth and lives and suffers earth's calamities, but through the understanding of this New Thought union it can be made to become a portion of the cause as indestructible as life itself, and live and glory in omnipotence.

We are then in the resurrection of the life, and the word that was with God and was God, is made flesh to dwell among us in glory and full of grace and truth; then we know what Jesus meant when he said, "I tell you of a truth, there be those standing among you who shall not taste of death till they see the Kingdom of God."

The Risen Self

"And entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sitting on the right side clothed in a long white garment, and he saith unto them, be not affrighted, ye seek Jesus of Nazareth--He is risen! He is not here!"

When we read the Bible with its story of human lives and their great, wonderful mysteries, we find among them, the greatest of all--the marvellous one of the Christ birth and death, and as we read we are amazed at the many confusing ideas of Jesus and His teachings. His disciples themselves did not understand Him, though He sought always to clearly interpret Himself; often when He spoke metaphysically they interpreted Him physically.

There was throughout all the Christ history something so great, so holy, so inclusive that it was too large for them to comprehend, and for all eternal ages, the developing minds of men will be the same. They will keep busy with their attempts at explanation of His life and His words.

Jesus quitted the world in benediction, and He left to those who followed Him and His precepts, a great inextinguishable hope.

It matters little to those who really understand Truth, whether Jesus the Christ lived, or whether He was only a symbol worked out by the imagination of men and priests; be the origin what it may, Christianity still stands; and Religion still holds sway after centuries of ridicule and generations of secular and scientific analysis. Something unknown and uninterpreted beats and surges in the hearts of men, and brings into expression in every age the clinging to a great mysterious, wonderful, unseen agency that somehow works its way along the silent avenues of the human soul.

The man Jesus may or may not have lived. Humanity may keep its birthright of contradiction forever on this point, but higher than the limited understanding of the few there lives the Truth of the great Christ spirit which the name Jesus embodied, and which for centuries gone, and centuries to be, will wax strong and flourish in the consciousness of men, as they pass one by one into recognition of it.

Great and sacred was the day of Jesus' birth, and great and sacred was the day of his death, for both revealed the stages of our human selfhood, and both point our minds to deeper meanings of existence.