Part 23

The same with Christian Science, pure and simple suggestion; for it matters not what the method, so long as the thought is put in action, whether by praying or exhortations (facial expression and tone). The necessary attributes are desire and sincerity on the part of those offering the suggestion. Let there be one insincere person in the party and that one can produce a stronger positive against the others than twenty can counteract.

I have known many cases where the individuality and personality in touch, accompanied by tone, has been so forcible that fever in a child has been allayed within a minute. Personally, I have gone to the bedside of a stranger, and in less than one minute re-established a circulation throughout the entire lower limbs, the patient at the time being what the doctors call delirious.

The snapping, snarling little house dog has never been known to bite a person who would hold his hand still when the dog bit at it. The manner in which you place your hand on an animal, the suggestion of the touch, is the secret of success in handling snakes. When one is afraid of the snake, the touch tells him so; when one is not, he knows.

It is said that if we will stare a lion or a savage dog in the eye he will not bite us. This is wrong. Of course, in most cases if we stare at them we are not afraid, but if we stare at them and are afraid, my experience is, the bull-dog will “go for” us.

Horses and pet animals are “spoiled,” made vicious, et cetera, by the ineffectual attempts to force them to “mind.” Animals are like babies, if we make them comprehend through the proper senses, and are just, little trouble is required to force them to understand.

Mental healing is possible where cerebro-spinal (conscious) memories are associated with sympathetic memories; it will be, or is, through cerebro-spinal (conscious) memories that we arouse sympathetic memories in mental healing. The sympathetic must have a memory of “normal” or healthy action. Sickness is the unhealthy action of the Sympathetic System. After hypnotizing a subject, if we can lock a thought in the “mind” through a word (cerebro-spinal) or a series of words that will arouse the associated action desired in the Sympathetic System, we can produce a cure. Therefore, all diseases having a name (cerebro-spinal), a recognized result (cerebro-spinal), and the unconscious actions of the sympathetic that produces these conditions, become workable the moment they are associated.

Imagination is a word I do not like, inasmuch as what a man imagines he believes, and what he believes, is. If one looks at a color, and is color-blind, one will believe that the color is such as the impression given, notwithstanding what one’s neighbor says. Therefore, I deny imagination as accepted by the general public, and say what a person believes is, so far as he is personally concerned. A man is just as sick as he believes himself to be, and just as well as he believes himself to be; because, if his thought is of health, all the attributes of which he is possessed that makes health are certain to take place. If he believes himself to be sick, the memory actions of that sickness are bound to occur.

I do not believe in the philosophy of absent treatment, yet the so-called absent treatment is successful with many patients. That cures are produced through telepathy and by an operator sitting down every day and thinking of the welfare and good of his patient for an hour, to me is “tommy-rot.” If we can make the patient believe or accept that we are going to “will” him well, and every afternoon or morning he will deliberately take a certain position, sit in a certain place and try to make himself passive, a result can be accomplished. It is only suggestion, however. All is suggestion, and it must come through the senses.

Superstition, the relic of unenlightened (?) days.

If you were a hypnotist, you would wonder when those unenlightened and non-superstitious days ended. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the people who tell us they do not believe in hypnosis are so deathly afraid of it that they will not look the operator in the eye. They are not afraid of what he claims, but of the great big phantom that they, in their ignorance, have built around the art. The moment they succeed in comprehending what I claim, they are of my most ardent followers. Superstitious; who is not? I believe I will have bad luck if I go to the theater without my cane (because on these nights it rains and I take my umbrella). Ben Johnson used to touch every post he passed. People will not re-enter their homes for something they have forgotten. The little superstitions are limitless, the big ones “more limitless.”

The superstition that surrounds medicine and disease is appalling. The superstition and jugglery that permeates the profession of medicine and law, is the Sympathetic System, the Abdominal Brain of their very existence. Remove superstition from these two professions and little is left. Yesterday’s paper states that the board of health of Liberty, Sullivan County, New York, has had passed an ordinance placing consumption in the same class with small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria and other contagious (?) diseases, and prohibiting any hospital or sanitarium for consumptives within the village limits. Violation of the ordinance is punishable by the fine of fifty dollars for the first offense, and for each subsequent offense the penalty is discretionary with the board, but is not to exceed one hundred dollars. Having established the superstition that small-pox (when not preceded by cow-pox, inoculated by a high priest of medicine, who procured his “charm” by mutilating a calf or cow), scarlet fever, et cetera, are “contagious,” to further his mummery, he prohibits the consumptive from living elsewhere than where he dictates, and the non-superstitious (?) public submits to the dictates of these high priests who worship at the shrine of bugs, and start their mummery by taking from a patient a “culture,” then go into a sacred chamber, amid a lot of mysterious paraphernalia, to incant and decant. Returning with a very grave face, they tell you that the bug is there, but they know of a bug that can catch your bug and kill him (and perhaps you); that they will now let loose the bug they have caught by chasing some other bug through a horse, a goat, a dog, a rabbit, a guinea-pig and a monkey. So they “shoot” the bug into your blood; and, behold! if you fail to be impressed (suggested to) through this mummery, you go to some other doctor. Pick up a daily paper—read—why be sick? The advertisements tell you of bugs discovered, a sure cure. If these licensed “doctors” can do as they claim, why so much legislation?

Now, reader, you are not superstitious. Oh! no, you are “scientific.” If you can show any difference between the “science” of to-day and the mummery of the “dark ages” you will enlighten sincere and anxious students who are striving to enlighten their fellow man.

Here, reader, are a few of your superstitions:

That you can comprehend more than three units at one time.

That other than matter is appreciable.

That man is a free agent.

That man is possessed of “will power.”

That man is just.

That law is justice.

That “justice” is achieved by hounding a supposed criminal.

That prosecuting attorneys prosecute criminals from a sense of duty only.

That the verdict of a jury is always just.

That punishment prevents crime.

That legislators represent the people.

That legislation should be invoked against all things not understood.

That newspapers print the truth only.

That a diploma makes a doctor.

That medical statistics are reliable.