3 1822027299247
 
 3 1822027299247
 
 ^ 
 
 u5^\ 
 
 THE 
 
 9 
 
 PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE, 
 
 THE NATUKE AND POWEE OP FAITH; 
 
 OB, 
 
 ELEMENTARY LESSONS IN CHEISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 AND TRANSCENDENTAL MEDICINE. 
 
 BT 
 
 W. F. EVANS, 
 
 AtTTHOB OF "CELESTIAL DAWN," "MENTAL CUBE," "MENTAL MEDICINE, 1 ' 
 "SOUL AND BODT," AND "DIVINE LAW OF CUBE." 
 
 " To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom 
 of the heavens." (MAT. xiii : 11.) 
 
 FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 H. H. CARTER & KARRICK, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 3 BEACON STREET. 
 
 1885.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by 
 
 W. F. EVANS, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 J. S. GUSHING & Co., PRINTERS, 115 HIGH STREET, BOSTON.
 
 PEEFAOE. 
 
 THIS volume is designed to contribute something toward 
 supplying the demand in the public for further light on the 
 subject upon which it treats, the cure of disease in our- 
 selves and others by mental and spiritual agencies. The 
 - first work of the author having a relation to the subject, 
 was published over twenty-two, years ago. It was fol- 
 f "lowed, at intervals of different length, by four other vol- 
 umes, which have had an extensive circulation in every 
 part of the country, and to some extent in Europe. It is 
 not an incredible supposition that they have had an influ- 
 ence, more or less, towards generating in the public mind 
 the widely-spread and growing belief of the mental origin 
 of disease, and of the relation of the mind to its cure. 
 The work is intended to take the reader up where the last 
 volume of the author, " The Divine Law of Cure," leaves 
 him, and conduct him still further along the same path of 
 inquiry. It does not claim to have exhausted the subject, 
 or to have said all that might be said ; for the subject is 
 one too vast to be crowded into so limited a compass, 
 which would be like condensing the ocean into the dimen- 
 sions of a lake. But it is to be hoped that enough has 
 been said to vindicate the propriety of the title, that of
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 "Elementary Lessons in Christian Philosophy and Transcen- 
 dental Medicine." It was our aim to furnish the teach- 
 ers and pupils of the spiritual philosophy of healing, with 
 a text-book which should elevate the subject into the 
 dignity of a science. The themes discussed are occasion- 
 ally of an abstruse nature, but have been expressed in 
 the clearest language at our command. It is not intended 
 y to wholly supplant the living teacher, but rather to aid 
 his work by suggesting many things it does not say. The 
 work is written also in the interest of self-healing, and 
 contains the essential features of the instruction which the 
 author has given to numerous persons during the last 
 twenty years. There is a large number of people in the 
 world whose life has been a perpetual straggle with dis- 
 ease, and who have been able to discover no pathway of 
 light that unerringly conducts them out of their troubles. 
 The various systems of materialistic medication have been 
 successively tried, and all have failed. To them the vol- 
 ume is sincerely commended and respectfully dedicated, 
 with the hope that they may find in it somewhere the sav- 
 ing power of the right word at the right time. There is 
 I in the minds of men, at the present day, an inward thirst, 
 ' an unsatisfied craving for spiritual light. "We wish it was 
 in our power to fully meet this heart-felt want. But we 
 can only promise, in the following pages, to bring to you, 
 /*' in the name of a disciple," a single cup of water, while 
 nwe point you to the inexhaustible fountain whence all 
 I living, saving truth flows, the universal Christ, the bound- 
 less, everywhere-present realm of pure spirit. Standing 
 by this fountain and well of living water, on which God
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 has never placed a seal, nor stationed around it an armed 
 guard, we would say, in the language of the sublimest of 
 the old prophets, " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye 
 to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy 
 and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money 
 and without price." (Isa. lv:l.) 
 
 For, surely, spiritual truth ought not to be classed 
 among the luxuries which a poor man cannot afford to 
 buy, but rather among the commonest necessaries of life, 
 as air and water, which the Supreme Goodness has scat- 
 tered, with amazing and beneficent profusion, all over 
 the world, and placed within the reach of all. Of the 
 true water of life, the old symbol of spiritual truth, God 
 has opened a fountain in the inmost region of our own 
 being, and which springs up into everlasting life, if we 
 only knew it. To convince the reader of this will be one 
 of the aims of the present volume. If we succeed in 
 doing this, the book itself will no longer be needed. For 
 when we find the Christ within, "in whom are hid all 
 the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," we have access 
 to more of life and light than all the libraries of the world 
 can give us. When the reader shall have made the 
 grandest discovery ever made in our earthly existence, 
 the finding of his true self, and has identified it with the 
 Christ, of whom it is but a personal limitation, we will 
 gladly step down from the platform of the teacher, and 
 take our place by your side as a fellow-disciple or pupil. 
 "We will no longer open our mouth to speak, but open 
 the inner ear to receive the deep and calm revealing. The 
 education of the future will be a system more in harmony
 
 Vl PREFACE. 
 
 with the true meaning of the word, an educing or guid- 
 ing out of what is already in us in a state of latency. 
 Spiritual and saving truth is not a foreign exotic which 
 has to be imported from abroad, but is a divine plant, 
 with both flower and fruit, which exists as in its native 
 habitat, in the inmost soul of every man. The signs of 
 the times point unerringly to the coming of a fuller 
 recognition of this ancient truth, and it is the faint light 
 in the east, indicating the approach of a better day for 
 humanity. There are, within the enclosure of our inner 
 being, certain dormant, because unused, spiritual energies 
 and potencies that can save the soul and heal the body of 
 its maladies. To guide these out into conscious and intel- 
 ligent action, is the end we shall keep steadily in view 
 in these elementary lessons in transcendental philosophy. 
 We have endeavored to restore the ancient doctrine of 
 faith to its primitive meaning, as a saving, healing power. 
 How far we have succeeded, we must leave the reader to 
 judge. 
 
 3 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, Deo. 25, 1884.
 
 CO^TEJSTTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 PASS 
 
 What are Ideas, and What is Idealism? ..... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Application of the Idealistic Philosophy to the Cure of 
 
 Mental and Bodily Maladies 10 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Triune Constitution of man and the Discovery of the True 
 
 Self, 18 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Saving Power of the Spirit of Man, 29 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Happiness and Health, and Where they are to be found, . 39 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Real and the Apparent in Thought, or the Impossible and 
 
 Contradictory to Sense is True to the Spirit, ... 47
 
 V1U CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Disease Exists only in the Mind on the Plane of Sense, which is 
 
 the Region of Deceptive Appearances, .... 65 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Deepest Reality of Disease is a Morbid Idea and Belief, . 63 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Science of Oblivescence, or the Art of Forgetting a Malady, 71 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Incipient Idea of Recovery and Whence Does it Come? . 79 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 What is it to be Spiritual, and, How may we Become so? . 90 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Spiritual Truth the Best Remedy for Disease, .... 100 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 On the Triune Nature of Man, and the Freeing the Soul from 
 
 the Body, , 109 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Executing Judgment upon Ourselves, or in Thought Separating 
 
 Disease from the Real Self, 117
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Creative Power of the Ideal, or the Externalization of 
 
 Thought, 123 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Nature and Right Use of the Will, 129 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Universal Life-Principle, and its Occult Properties and Uses, 136 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Universal Ether of Science, and the ^Ether of the Hermetic 
 
 Philosophy, 142 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Mother-Principle of Things, and its Use hi Self-Healing, . 148 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Kabalistic and Messianic Method of Healing, and the One 
 
 Practised by Jesus the Christ, 157 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The Summit of Christian Knowledge, or the Mystery of the 
 
 Christ, and its Saving Influence, 165 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 The Relation of Jesus to the Christ and to Man, . . . 176
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXHL 
 
 FAGS 
 
 The Kabalistic Justice and Paul's Righteousness of Faith. Ap- 
 pendix. The Prayer of Faith that Saves the Sick, or the 
 Healing Power of Spiritual Truth, 183 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Psychological Telegraphy, or the Transference of Thought and 
 
 Idea from one Mind to Another, 199 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Resurrection from the Body, or the Liberty of the Sons of God, 209
 
 THE PEIMITIVE MIND-CUKE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT ARE IDEAS? AND WHAT IS IDEALISM? 
 
 As idealism in opposition to materialism constitutes the 
 philosophic basis on which the psychological or phrenopathic 
 system of cure rests, it is necessary at the outset of our in- 
 quiries to form a clear conception of what is meant by that 
 term. Its principles are unanswerably set forth in the work 
 of Bishop Berkeley, entitled The Principles of Human Knowl- 
 edge, published in the year 1710. The doctrines taught by 
 Berkeley were subsequently presented under modifications 
 by a succession of German philosophers, among whom we 
 prominently name Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopen- 
 hauer. 
 
 According to Lossius, " Idealism is the assertion that 
 matter ( and consequently the human body) is only a sensu- 
 ous seeming, and that spiritual essences are the only real 
 things in the world." This doctrine was taught by Plato, / 
 who derived it from Pythagoras and the occult philosophy of / 
 Egypt, Chaldea, and India. It is as old as the human race. ) 
 From the remotest antiquity, it was taught in the Vedas and 
 in all the Oriental philosophies. Says Krug: "Idealism is 
 that system of philosophy which considers the existent or 
 actual as a mere ideal." The definition of Brockhaus is 
 to the same effect: "Idealism, in antithesis to realism, is * 
 that philosophical system which maintains not only that the 
 spiritual or ideal is the original, but that it is the sole ac
 
 2 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 tuality ; so that we can concede to the objects of the senses 
 no more than the character of a phenomenal (or apparent) 
 world, educed by ideal activities." (Real Encyclopaedic., 
 Eleventh Ed., 1866.) In another place, he defines idealism 
 to be " that philosophical view which regards what is thought 
 as alone the actually existent." This is the best definition, 
 and accords perfectly with the teaching of the true idealists 
 of all ages and countries. " Thought," says the Kabala, 
 " is the source of all that is." It is the first Sephira or 
 emanation from God. It is the first begotten, the first-born 
 from the " Unknown." It is the 7 Am, the highest manifes- 
 tation of God in man, and the most real tiling in the uni- 
 verse, that from which everything springs, and to which 
 in its last analysis it can be reduced. 
 
 But it is necessary to inquire into the nature of ideas, 
 and their relation to external things, and all the objects of 
 the sense-world. Says Thomas Taylor, in the introduction 
 to the Parmenides of Plato: "To the question, what kind 
 of things, or beings, ideas are, we may answer with Zenoc- 
 rates, according to the relation of Proclus, that they are tlie 
 exemplary causes of things which perpetually subsist according 
 to nature. They are exemplars (or the living patterns or 
 models of things) indeed, because the final cause, or the good 
 (the supreme God), is superior to them, and that which is 
 properly the efficient cause, or the demiurgic intellect, is of 
 an inferior ordination. But they are the "exemplars of tilings 
 according to nature, because there are no ideas of things un- 
 natural or artificial ; and of such natural things as are per- 
 petual, because there are no ideas of mutable particulars." 
 (Taylor's Translation of Plato, p. 254.) This is a compre- 
 hensive statement of the nature of the Platonic ideas. Ac- 
 cording to this view, the ideal is the causal, as the ideal 
 picture in the mind of the artist is the necessary cause of the 
 picture on the canvas. The latter, though only a resem- 
 blance, could not exist without the former, because there can
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 3 
 
 be no resemblance that is not the resemblance of something ; 
 no appearance that is not the appearance of something, f^i'lie 
 architect constructs his house in imitation of a preexisting 
 model or idea, and, without that idea, it might be anything 
 else, as well as a house. So the tabernacle of Moses was 
 to be built after the pattern shown to him in the Mount. So 
 of every object of nature, and of all that endless variety of 
 things, which belongs to the world of sense, they owe their 
 existence to antecedent ideas, which they represent on a lower 
 plane of being. As ideas are the causes of the existence of J 
 all material entities, so they sustain a causal relation to the ) 
 human body, and all its states of health and disease. If I 
 would be perfectly well in bod}", I must first form the true 
 idea of myself, such as I really am in spirit (or as Paul 
 would say, in Christ). For Plato teaches that the highest 
 soul of man, the pneuma of the New Testament, the Buddhi 
 of the Sanscrit, is the idea or living image of God. If I( 
 come to the knowledge of this, my real and immortal self, 
 it will act as a cause, and adjust the lower animal soul, 
 and the body in harmony with it. And " our earthly house 
 of this tabernacle" will be constructed after the pattern 
 shown to us in the Mount. 
 
 All creation is first in idea, and is essentially a generating 
 or begetting. Ideas are conceptions ; that is, they are the 
 union of pure intellect, which was viewed in the Hermetic 
 philosophy as masculine, with that spiritual and feminine 
 principle, which may be designated by the general term, 
 feeling. This union is life whenever and wherever it is 
 effected. It is represented symbolically by the cross, and is 
 the Kabalistic balance, and they express one of the most 
 comprehensive and far-reaching truths in the whole realm of 
 thought. " There is in everything," says Swedenborg, " the 
 marriage of truth and good," or the conjunction of intellect 
 and feeling. This extends through the universe. It is said 
 in the Sohar, the Book of Splendor, or the teaching of the
 
 4 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 shining ones (Dan. xii: 3), " When the Most Holy Elder, 
 (or the Ancient of days) , hidden in all occultatious, willed 
 to create, lie made all things in the form of husband and wife. 
 (Idra Suta [or Smaller Assembly] , sec. 218.) ''All things 
 appear, therefore, in the form of husband and wife; were it 
 otherwise, nothing whatever could subsist." (Idra Suta, sec. 
 223.) (fit is an immutable and eternal truth, and one that is 
 fundamental and universal, that nothing exists or can exist, 
 except by the union of intellectual thought with its corres- 
 ponding feeling, or their correlatives. And ideas are the 
 only " truly existing things," as they are denominated by 
 Plato. They are the generation or creation of the masculine 
 Intelligence (Nous), in union with the feminine Wisdom 
 (Sophia) , and they are living, enduring, and divine realities. 
 They result from the union of the intellect and feeling on the 
 higher plane of being, and descending to the lower animal 
 soul plane, they are perceived as what are called external 
 objects. ) 
 
 The union of the intellect and feeling, in order to the ex- 
 istence of a living entity, is a truth with which the ancient 
 wisdom-religion was familiar, but has long since been forgot- 
 ten. "When I think of a triangle, or a circle, the thought 
 conjoins itself with the universal principle of feeling, the 
 mother principle, and an idea is formed or perceived in the 
 mind. This is a living and immortal thing. 
 
 Thought and feeling are correlative opposites, like the two 
 poles of a magnet. Each implies the other, and they mu- 
 tually balance each other, and there is an affinitive attration 
 between thecn, and a spontaneous tendency to a conjunction 
 and a state of equi-libration. When I think that I am well 
 (which is true of my real being) , or form an intellectual con- 
 ception of any mental or bodily condition, the thought will 
 seek to unite itself with the principle of feeling on the inter- 
 < mediate plane of my mental being, and then it becomes faith, 
 and a living inward reality, and the substance or subsistence
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CURE. 5 
 
 of things hoped for. And it will tend to translate itself into /A 
 a corporeal expression. 
 
 We are to bear in mind, that as there is a world of phe- 
 nomena or of material things which are only appearances, so ) 
 there is a world of ideas which sustains a constant creative l\ 
 relation to the world of sense, and without which the latter 
 could not exist any more than there could be a shadow with- 
 out a substance. This realm of ideas is the subjective and 
 real world. It is the "intelligible world" of Plato, and 
 "the kingdom of the heavens" of which Jesus speaks. 
 Wherever there is a material thing, there is back of it, as its 
 soul and life and cause, an idea. All things in the natural 
 world are but representations of things in the realm of ideas. 
 This is the old Hermetic doctrine of correspondence which 
 has been reproduced by Swedenborg. Says the Jewish 
 Kabala, "The lower world is made after the pattern of the 
 upper (or inner) world ; everything which exists in the 
 upper world is to be found as it were in a copy upon earth ; 
 still the whole is one." (SoJiar, II., 20, a.) This is a 
 fundamental principle in our transcendental philosophy, and 
 must be fully apprehended before we can go any farther. 
 It is the key note of our theosophical system. Just as the 
 soul of man, rather than the body, is the real man, so the 
 world of ideas is the really existing world. The external 
 Cosmos is but a resemblance, a representation, an appear- 
 ance of the higher world to the sensuous mind. The world 
 of ideas is that which was called in the ancient philosophy 
 the macrocosm, or greater world ; and the material world, 
 including the human body, which belongs to it and is an 
 image of it, was denominated the microcosm, or lesser 
 world. 
 
 Owing to the importance of the subject in its relation to 
 our transcendental science of medicine, or science of mental- 
 cure, and the necessity of starting right, on the principle of 
 the maxim of Pythagoras, that "a good beginning is half
 
 6 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 way to the end," we pursue our inquiry still further into the 
 nature of ideas. 
 
 Ideas are the only objects of vision. In this both Berkeley 
 and Locke, and even Gondillac agree. But what is the idea 
 of a thing which is the object of vision? It is the spiritual 
 form and reality, of which the so-called external object is 
 the correspondent or appearance. Says a distinguished 
 writer, u Let us suppose a man to look for the first time 
 upon some work of art, as, for example, upon a clock, and 
 having sufficiently viewed it, at length to depart. "Would he 
 not retain, when absent, an idea of what he had seen? And 
 what is it to retain such an idea ? It is to have a form internal 
 correspondent to the external." (Hermes, by James Harris, 
 p. 375.) But this internal form is all that the man ever 
 saw, and is all that we ever see in any case. The word 
 form comes from a Greek word (opa/j.a) , meaning that which 
 is seen. The same is true of the terra idea. In vision, if 
 there is no idea in the mind, we are blind to the object how- 
 ever perfect may be our organs of sight. If there be an 
 idea of a thing in our mind, there is a vision of it propor- 
 tioned in intensity to the vividness of the idea. If the 
 internal form reaches a certain degree of clearness, it be- 
 comes what we call a sensation. The perception of the 
 form, idea, type, pattern, exemplar, species (or whatever 
 we are pleased to call it), of a thing, is necessary to the 
 vision of it. It is the essential thing in every act of vision. 
 And the external eye is not absolutely necessary to it. We see 
 things which have all the marks of reality in dreams, and 
 in states of mental abstraction. This mental form, image, 
 or idea expresses not merely the material shape, but the 
 spiritual nature, essence, and reality of a thing. It is this, 
 and this only, that the mind sees, and of which the soul is 
 cognizant in every act or state of visual perception. It is 
 not a mere symbol, a picture, a mental copy, a representa- 
 tion of the thing, but the ding an sich, as Kant would say,
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 7 
 
 the thing itself in its inmost reality, the really existing 
 thing, to use a Platonic expression, of which the so-called 
 material exhibition is only its manifestation on a lower and 
 more imperfect plane of thought. The idea is the living 
 soul of the thing ; the material phenomenon is the imper- 
 fect copy. Ideas are not only the only objects of vision, 
 but as they are the essential reality of things, they are the 
 only objects of knowledge or true science, as was long ago 
 taught by Plato. 
 
 We remark still further, that ideas are not mere abstract 
 thoughts, but living and immortal entities ; material things 
 are their phenomena or appearances, the shadow and not 
 the substance. This is directly the opposite of the popular 
 conception and belief. Ideas are the living kernel of things ; 
 the material organization is the rough shell. When we think 
 of anything, as of Bunker Hill monument, the thought takes 
 form in an idea. This is the thing itself, and more real 
 than the granite rock. It is the only visible entity. Ideas 
 may be denned to be the living and fixed forms assumed by 
 thought. All things which exist have had a previous exist- 
 ence in the unseen and real world of light, the world of ideas, 
 and after their dissolution they return to that world. When 
 you burn a rose, as the ancient Magi, or Wise Men, affirmed, 
 it is not destroyed or annihilated, but has only passed from 
 the world of sense to the unseen and real world whence it 
 came. This doctrine of preexistence applies to minerals, 
 plants, animals, and men. They have existed as ideas 
 before they had a material manifestation. This is the doc- 
 trine of Plato, and the teaching of all the philosophies of the 
 East. It is expressed in unmistakable language in the first 
 chapters of Genesis. "These are the generations of the 
 heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day 
 when Jehovah God made the earth and the heavens, and 
 every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every 
 herb of the field before it grew." (Gen. ii : 4, 5.) All
 
 8 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUJRE. 
 
 things were created in idea and in reality before they were 
 in the earth. Their generation, or incarnation, or descent 
 into matter is to be viewed in the light of a degradation, but 
 one that has its reward, for here they touch the bottom in 
 the descending line of evolution, and begin to rebound on 
 the home stretch, or upward side of the cycle, the ascending 
 and shining way to the blest abodes. Jesus had a glory 
 with the Father before the world was (to him), that is, 
 before his descent into material conditions. So perhaps 
 had we, and all other men, which is one of the oldest 
 doctrines of philosophy, and when properly understood, one 
 of the most rational. Whatever is true of Jesus in that 
 respect, is true of man. 
 
 Ideas are but poorly expressed in the deceptive and illu- 
 sory world of sense. The objects of nature are not truly 
 existing things, but are only in a state of becoming, that is, 
 they exhibit an effort to realize the ideal plan of their being. 
 In illustration of this, take the geometrical figures, as a line, 
 a triangle, a circle. There is not a perfect circle in the 
 whole material universe. There can be only a resemblance 
 of one. But there is a circle, real, perfect, and eternal in 
 the world of ideas, which lies above and within this world. 
 So there is in every one of us an ideal and immortal man. 
 This is not the dream of a disordered fancy, but a divine 
 reality. There is in us an instinctive striving to climb up to 
 its full realization. To find this ideal man as a fact of con- 
 sciousness, and recognize it as the living image of God in 
 us and as our real self, is the aim we have in view. To 
 release this inward and real self from the bondage of matter, 
 and free it from all material conditions and restraints, is the 
 goal toward which the path on which we now enter conducts 
 our willing feet. Then we axe glorified with the glory which 
 we had before the world had an existence in us and for us. 
 
 This is not a new doctrine, but belongs to the Platonic 
 philosophy, and is well stated by Plotinus. "May we not
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 9 
 
 say that prior to this subsistence in a state of becoming, we 
 had a subsistence as men in true being, though different men 
 from what we now are, and possessing a deiform nature? 
 We were likewise pure souls and intellects conjoined with 
 universal essence, being parts of the intelligible (world) ; 
 not disjoined or separated from it, but pertaining to the 
 whole of it. For neither are we now cut off from it. For 
 even now the man that is here wishing to be another man, 
 accedes (or approaches in thought) to the man that is there, 
 and which, finding us (for we are not external to the uni- 
 verse), surrounds us with himself, and conjoins himself to 
 that man which each of us then was. Just as if one voice 
 and one discourse existing, some one from a different place 
 applying his ears should hear and receive what was said, and 
 should become in energy a certain hearing, in consequence 
 of having that which energizes present with itself. After 
 the same manner we become both the mab which is in the 
 intelligible (or ideal world) and the man which is here." 
 ( Translations from the Greek of some Treatises of Plotinus, 
 by Thomas Taylor, p. 41.) 
 
 This is only the soul or psychical man, uniting itself to the 
 inward divine pneuma or spirit. The two extreme links of 
 the chain of our being are brought together in a circle, and 
 man in the discrete degrees of his existence is made a com- 
 pleted unity. The ideal and immortal man, which is latent 
 in most, becomes the actual and conscious man. This is 
 salvation in the Pauline and true Christian sense, but is a 
 conception which belongs to a spiritual philosophy that had 
 an existence in ages long anterior to the advent of Chris- 
 tianity.
 
 10 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 THE APPLICATION OP THE IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY TO THB 
 CURE OF MENTAL AND BODILY MALADIES. 
 
 THE philosophy of idealism as presented in the preceding 
 lesson is to be applied to the cure of disease, as it was by 
 Jesus the Christ. All disease, so far as it has a material or 
 bodily expression, must have had a preexistence in us as a 
 fixed mode of thought, that is, as an idea. To expunge 
 from the mind and obliterate from our soul-life the idea of it, 
 is to remove the cause of it, and hence to cure the malady. 
 How best to accomplish this is the problem to be solved by 
 our transcendental medical science and practical metaphysics. 
 To its solution we will now devote our best energies. 
 
 It is our aim to reproduce the system of cure practiced by 
 Jesus, and adapt it to modern modes of thought and expres- 
 sion. Now Jesus was the prince of idealists, as Keshub 
 Chunder Sen has said, and his religion is supreme idealism. 
 (Oriental Christ, by P. C. Mozoomdar, p. 34.) "Without a 
 knowledge of the philosophy of idealism it is impossible to 
 comprehend the profound truths of Christianity or any of the 
 Oriental religions. With Jesus, as with Gautama the 
 Buddha, ideal things, existing in a sphere of being interior 
 to the world of sense, were the only real and enduring things. 
 All else was evanescent and ever changing. 
 
 "We have endeavored to find in the realm of mind certain 
 fixed principles as fundamental, immutably true, and trust- 
 worthy as the principles of geometry, by which the mariner 
 guides his course upon the pathless deep. In the New Tes- 
 tament doctrine of faith, as it was viewed by Jesus, and
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 11 
 
 Paul, and even Plato, we affirm that we have such a principle 
 in its application to the cure of the diseases of the soul and 
 the bod}". "When properly understood we see why, as Jesus 
 declared, it is ever unto us according to our faith (Matt. 
 tx : 29) . This is a principle as certain in the laws of mind, 
 and as reliable as that a straight line is the shortest distance 
 between two given points, or the dem nstrated theorem that 
 in every right-angled triangle the square of the hypothenuse 
 is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. 
 Faith may be defined to be the power of perceiving spir-f 
 ^itual realities that lie above and beyond the range of the) 
 l^jsenses, and a confidence in those higher truths. This is' 
 essentially the definition of it given by the unknown Kabal- 
 istic author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. xi : 1) . 
 
 Faith is the source of all spiritual power. The end and 
 purpose of all education is, and will be of our present 
 studies, the achievement of spiritual development and the 
 attainment of a truly spiritual mode and habit of thought. 
 In other words, our aim should be expressed in the compre- 
 hensive prayer, " Lord, increase our faith" (Luke xvii: 5). 
 This implies that we already have faith in a degree, which 
 only needs to be augmented and turned in the right direc- 
 tion. On this subject Mr. A. P. Sinnett very justly remarks : 
 "One may illustrate this point by reference to a very 
 common-place! physical exercise. Every man living, having 
 the ordinary use of his limbs, is qualified to swim. But put 
 those who cannot swim, as the common phrase goes, into 
 deep water, and they will struggle and be drowned. The 
 mere way to move the limbs is no mystery ; but unless the 
 swimmer in moving them has a full belief that such move- 
 ment will produce the required result, the required result is \ 
 not produced. In this case we are dealing with mechanical 
 forces merely, but the same principle runs up into dealings 
 with subtler forces." Of the power which resides in faith, he 
 gives as instances the marvels wrought by the genuine
 
 12 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 Oriental adepts. Their training is designed to develop the 
 principle of faith. (Esoteric Buddhism, p. 12.) Read also 
 on the same subject the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews. But every one will ask, " How may we get 
 this faith ? " In this case the questioner is like the man who 
 is anxiously hunting around the house to find his spectacles, 
 but all the time has them on and is looking through them. 
 We already have faith, and are perpetually acting under its 
 influence and guidance, but have not learned its higher appli- 
 cations and uses. Faith is only that intuitive intellectual 
 perception that lies above the range of the sensuous plane 
 of the mind's action, and which we call into exercise every 
 time we correct the illusions of our senses, and judge and 
 act contrary to their deceptive appearances. Whenever -we 
 judge, not according to appearance, but judge righteously or 
 according to a divine rectitude of thought, we exercise faith. 
 When I perceive that the reflected image from a mirror is 
 not a solid object behind the mirror, or that the earth turns 
 on its axis, and that the sun does not rise and set, it is that 
 higher form of knowledge which is called faith. 
 /" According to the idealistic philosophy, thought and exist- 
 ence are absolutely identical and inseparable. This is a prin- 
 ciple as universally true as that two straight lines which are 
 parallel will never meet, however far they may be extended, 
 or the proposition that the whole of a thing is equal to the 
 sum of all its parts. Bishop Berkeley, after remarking that 
 time is nothing abstracted from the succession of ideas in 
 our minds, and that the duration of any finite existence 
 must be estimated by the number of ideas, or actions, suc- 
 ceeding each other in that individual spirit or mind, says : 
 "Hence, it is a plain consequence that the soul alwaj^s 
 thinks ; and, in truth, whoever shall go about to divide in 
 his thoughts, or abstract the existence of a spirit from its 
 cogitation, will, I believe, find it no easy task." (Principles 
 of Human Knowledge, sec. 98.)
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 13 
 
 Pure thought is the summit of our being. It is the Kabal 
 istic Crown, and is spirit ; and, by divine appointment, gov- 
 erns and controls all below it. It is the point where our 
 individual existence flows out from the " Unknown." Tho 
 attainment of the power to think spiritually and spontane- I 
 ously, in contradistinction from the possession of a set of ' 
 borrowed opinions, is the "crown of life." Since to think 
 and to exist are one and the same, a man in whatsoever con- 
 dition he is, whether in health or disease, whether happy or 
 the opposite, is only the expression or external translation of j 
 his thoughts and ideas. He is the perpetual creation of his 
 fixed mode of thought. The world and all the things it con- 
 tains, including the bod}' of man, having no thought in them- 
 selves, do not exist in and for themselves, but exist only in 
 us, and as Schopenhaur has truly said, are to us only what 
 we think and believe them to be. As thought and existence 
 are identical, a change of thought must necessarily modify 
 our existence. To think a change in our bodily condition, 
 and not merely to think about it x will determine all the living 
 forces toward that result, as certainly as a stream issuing I 
 from a fountain will flow in another direction when we change 
 the direction of its channel. 
 
 If thought is the first act of our individual spiritual exist- 
 ence, and a perpetual concomitant of it, and is the primal 
 force and most subtle energ} 7 in the universe, the question 
 will arise, is thought free and subject to no law above itself? 
 Can we think when and what we please ? In disease, can I 
 think that I am well? In pain, can I think that I have no 
 pain ? I answer unhesitatingly, I can. All things are pos- 
 sible to thought. I can think that five plus four is twelve, 
 but may not be able to believe it until the thought is joined 
 with feeling in some degree. A man may think that his 
 dwelling is on fire when it is not, and he is affected by 
 it ; or he may think that his\ house is not on fire when it is, 
 and in the latter case he feels no alarm. In both cases
 
 14 THE PUIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 his thought modifies his existence. A man may think he is 
 dying when he is not ; or, when he is passing through what 
 the world calls death, he may both think and feel that it is 
 only a higher form of life, and that there is no death. In 
 sickness, it is possible to think, and even believe, that the 
 disease does not belong to the class of truly existing things, 
 but is only a phenomenon or appearance, a false seeming, 
 an illusion. This thought maintained will vindicate its 
 right to be called the Crown by transforming all below it 
 into its expression. Thought may be subject to certain 
 laws or fixed rules of action, as may be predicated of the 
 Divine nature itself, but is absolutely free ; for the laws of 
 
 iits activity arise from its own essence. It knows no higher 
 law than itself. Pure thought is the first emanation from 
 God, as is seen in the Kabalistic scheme of the Ten Sephi- 
 
 I roth. It is not a mere attribute or faculty of spirit ; it is 
 spirit itself. We cannot abstract thought from spirit any 
 more than a smile can be separated from a human face, and 
 left as an entity in empty space ; and the spirit as the first 
 
 \ emanation from God, as the Kabala affirms, is the Son of 
 God. And as the Father has life in himself, so he has given 
 to the Son (or the spirit) to have life in himself ; and he 
 gave him authority also to execute judgment because he is 
 also the son of man. (John v : 26, 27.) The essential 
 characteristic of spirit, and which inheres in its very essence, 
 as Hegel has said, is freedom and spontaneity. It originates 
 action or motion, as Plato teaches. The essential property 
 of matter is passivity or fatality. Thought is not like the 
 vane on the church tower, turning in every direction from 
 the action of a force existing outside of itself. But the 
 spirit is a wind or breath of God that bloweth where it 
 listeth. (John iii : 8.) It chooses its own direction in 
 which to act. There is nothing above it but the " Un- 
 known God," out of whom it perpetually springs. As the 
 sun is never separated from any of his rays, but acts as one
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 15 
 
 with each and all of them, so the " Father of spirits " always 
 approves and sanctions the action of pure spiritual thought. 
 For pure thought is the Protogonos, the first begotten, the 
 son and perpetual offspring of God, and from him it is never 
 sundered. If thought and existence are identical, then it 
 follows that to think rightly is to be well and happy. All 
 matter including the human body exists only in mind, which 
 is the only substance. It exists from thought and in thought. 
 Hence, the bod} 7 is to me, and for me, what I think it to be. 
 This is an absolute and irrepealable law of our being, as 
 much so as that all right-angled triangles are equal to each 
 other, or that every circle, great or small, contains three hun- 
 dred and sixty degrees. How soon a change of thought and 
 feeling, as in passing from melancholy to cheerfulness, trans- 
 lates itself into a bodily expression ! So when doubt and 
 despair give place to hope and the full assurance of faith, 
 the change expresses itself immediately in the face, which 
 is the index of our interior states of mind and body. Be- 
 hold in this the creative omnipotence of thought and feeling. 
 Thought and feeling are the Elohim, the Dii Potentes, the 
 creative potencies in our microcosm or lesser world, as they 
 are in the macrocosm or greater world of ideas, and they are 
 continually saying in us, " Let us make the body after our I 
 image and likeness." In the above short sentence, as in a 
 casket, lies the golden key which unlocks the mysteries of 
 health and disease. 
 
 That which we most need is to develop into consciousness 
 our inner and higher life, and to give to it what rightfully .' 
 belongs to it an absolute sovereignty over all below it. 
 It should be our aim to elevate the principle of thought above 
 the plane of the senses, and free it from their distorting 
 influences. " This elevation above sensual things was known 
 to the ancients, and their wise men said that when the mind 
 is withdrawn from sensual things, it comes into an interior 
 light, and, at the same time, into a tranquil state, and into
 
 16 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 / a sort of heavenly blessedness. Man is capable of being 
 
 yet more interiorly elevated ; and the more interiorly he is 
 
 f elevated, into so much the clearer light does he come, and at 
 
 length into the light of heaven, which is nothing else but 
 
 wisdom and intelligence from the Lord." (Arcana Celestia, 
 
 6313.) As thought becomes more internal, or elevated 
 
 J \ above the body and the external senses, it becomes more 
 
 potential. This is the true meaning of healing ourselves or 
 
 others. It is the emancipation of the soul from material 
 
 ' thraldom. And, when the soul is saved from its illusions, 
 
 _j Ithe body can well be left to take care of itself. Says Paul : 
 
 TO ($ (frpovrjfjia, TOV Tn/evjaaros w/7 KOL elprjvr), the thought of the 
 
 spirit is life and peace ; but the thought of the fleshly mind 
 
 (or the habit of thinking on a level with the body) , is death. 
 
 (Rom. viii : 6, 7.) This passage contains, in a small com- 
 
 \ pass, the true philosophy of salvation in the full sense of the 
 
 | word. It will be our work to develop this living germ and 
 
 fruitful seed of truth into a tree whose leaves shall be for 
 
 the healing of the nations. 
 
 We encounter at the outset in our instruction a great evil, 
 and one that has served to hold humanity down and prevent 
 its rising from the plane of sense to the life of faith. I refer 
 to the fact that the church, Catholic and Protestant, has 
 claimed a monopoly of the principle of faith. They have 
 connected it with certain dogmas which are, to many intelli- 
 gent minds, unreasonable, absurd, and incredible. They 
 have enclosed the divine and saving principle of faith in 
 what looks to many as an unseemly wrapper, like the pre- 
 cious goods of the merchant in coarse paper, and they refuse 
 to deliver the merchandise unless you take it in the unsightly 
 wrapper. The invalid or sinner (as the case may be) desires 
 to be healed or saved, and works himself into a willingness 
 to take the standard theological medicine as the less of two 
 evils, but he cannot avoid saying (or at least thinking) with 
 Whittier :
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 17 
 
 " I trace your lines of argument; 
 Your logic linked and strong 
 I weigh as one who dreads dissent, 
 Andfeaxsa doubt_as_wrong. 
 
 But still my human hands are weak 
 
 To hold your iron creeds ; 
 Against the words ye bid me speak 
 
 My heart within me pleads." 
 
 But, at the present time, many people are beginning to 
 feel that they can buy directly of the Christ " gold tried in 
 the fire," and enclose the celestial and enduring good in their 
 own theological envelope. Faith is a philosophical and 
 scientific principle much older than even Plato, and belongs, 
 by just right, as an exclusive property to no one sect, but 
 to all mankind, as much so as the light of the sun. In these 
 lessons we shall try and put you in possession of this "pearl 
 of great price," and leave you to find your own casket. I 
 can but feel that those persons in the various churches who 
 have unselfishly devoted themselves to the practice of the / 
 faith cure, and who include in their number many of the j 
 choicest spirits on earth, would find their success still greater 
 if they could divorce more fully the saving principle of faith 
 from un-Christian and mentally unwholesome theological 
 dogmas. In other words, let us give allopathic prescriptions 
 of pure religion, but infinitesimal doses of the popular 
 theology. It is to be hoped this suggestion will be taken in 
 the spirit in which it is given ; for, as one has beautifully 
 said : 
 
 "A bending staff I would not break, 
 
 A feeble faith I would not shake, 
 
 Nor even rashly pluck away 
 
 The error which some truth may stay, 
 
 Whose loss might leave the soul without 
 
 A shield against the shafts of doubt."
 
 18 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 THE TRIUNE CONSTITUTION OF MAN AND THE DISCOVERT OF 
 THE TRUE SELF. 
 
 IT is the object of these lessons to lead gradually, and by 
 successive steps, to the development of the unexplored, and, 
 in modern times, almost universally unrecognized, but really 
 vast powers for good that belong to a truly religious and spirit- 
 ual faith a faith that perceives being in opposition to a mere 
 sensuous and illusory appearance. There is a faith that per- 
 ceives and consciously recognizes those truths and realities 
 which lie beyond the grasp of the animal or psychical man 
 or mind. In the Sanscrit language, in which is locked up 
 the profoundest truths ever revealed to the human mind, the 
 word for truth is sat or satya, which is the participle of the 
 verb as, to be. Hence, truth is that which is, in contradis- 
 tinction from that which only seems to be. It is the TO 6vrw? 
 ov, or truly existing being of Plato ; the amen of Jesus and 
 Paul. Faith is the perception of these supersensuous truths, 
 and says of them, "these are that which really is," and 
 maintains this attitude of thought in opposition to the falla- 
 cious and deceptive appearances of the senses. 
 
 In order to reach this position of thought, we must first 
 discover our true self. To him who would become spiritual 
 this is of supreme importance. When we discover our real 
 self, we find at the same time God, and health, and heaven. 
 In the philosophy of the Vedas, which means real knowledge, 
 all the ordinary names of God, as the Almighty, the Creator, 
 etc., are laid aside, and the single name Atman, the Self, 
 is used to denote the divine Being. This does not refer to
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 19 
 
 the Aditij the Boundless, the Absolute Being, which is name- 
 less, but to the highest manifestation of the Supreme Divine 
 Essence. It is the Self, or underlying, or inmost Reality, of 
 all that is. It is the Absolute Self, which includes our indi- 
 vidual self in it. The Atman is the Self in which each in- 
 dividual self must find rest, must come to himself, must find 
 his own true self, the immortal Monad, the spiritual and 
 imperishable entity. All this teaches the sublime truth of 
 faith, that in our inmost being we become identified with the 
 Divine Nature. The highest wisdom of Greece was expressed 
 in the precept, " know thyself." "When we find our real 
 self, everything afterwards in our path is easy. We must, 
 in the outset, as the French would say, find our true East 
 (s'orienter) , and fix our true position among created things. 
 We must ascertain the direction in which we are to look for 
 spiritual wisdom, and the region of our being where alone it 
 can be found. 
 
 In the Vedanta philosophy of India, the oldest religious 
 philosophy of the world, it is said : " There is nothing 
 higher than the attainment of the knowledge of the Self." 
 Again : " Despising everything else, a wise man should 
 strive after the knowledge of the self." This highest Self 
 is called in the Vedanta, which means the end or goal of the 
 Veda, the " silent thinker," as being the inmost spring of all 
 thought. It is also called "the one who knows," as it 
 partakes of the Divine Omniscience. It is also the " old man 
 within," who is identical with the Kabalistic "Ancient of 
 Days," " the holy elder," which means the inward sage, the 
 source of all true knowledge, and fountain of all true wisdom, 
 for at this point it opens into that in which are hid all the 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This inmost self in us 
 is a person only in the true sense of the word, as a mask that 
 conceals and partly reveals the universal spirit. To discover 
 our real self, and to find it included in the being of the man- 
 ifested God, the Christ of Paul, is the Platonic idea of
 
 20 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 redemption, and is the summit of all spiritual knowledge. 
 Jt is faith in its supreme sense. 
 
 The Atman of the Vedanta, the highest Self, and the 
 Christ of Paul, the Adam Kadmon of the Kabala, are the 
 same as the "Over-Soul" of Emerson. He says of it: 
 " The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the 
 present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that 
 great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft 
 arms of the atmosphere ; that Unity, that Over-Soul, within 
 which every man's particular being is contained and made 
 one with all others." (Essays, First Series, p. 214.) 
 
 In another place, speaking of the Over-Soul, Emerson 
 says : "Of this pure nature every man is at some time 
 sensible. Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is 
 too subtile. It is undefinable, unmeasurable, but we know 
 that it pervades and contains us. We know that all spiritual 
 being is in man. A wise old proverb says, ' God comes to 
 see us without bell' ; that is, as there is no screen or ceiling 
 between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no 
 bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and 
 God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken awa}\ We lie 
 open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the 
 attributes of God." (Essays, First Series, p. 216.) 
 
 The importance of finding this higher self, and develop- 
 ing it into consciousness, cannot be overstated. It is neces- 
 sary to all spiritual growth. It has always been earnestly 
 insisted upon by all who have written anything on the 
 deeper philosophy of human nature. The celebrated Ara- 
 bian philosopher, Muhammed Al Ghazzali, who was bora 
 A.D. 1056, wrote a work entitled The Alchemy of Happiness. 
 It contains the principles of a profound spiritual science, 
 the same that were taught under impenetrable symbols by 
 the Alchemists of the middle ages. Al Ghazzali commences 
 his work with these important words, which are the key to 
 all spiritual science: "O seeker after the divine mysteries!
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 21 
 
 know thou that the door to the knowledge of God will be 
 opened to a man first of all, when he knows his own soul, 
 and understands the truth about his own spirit, according as 
 it has been revealed. ' He who knows himself, knows his 
 Lord also.' Again, in the books of former prophets it is 
 written, ' Know thine own soul, and thou shalt know tlry 
 Lord ' ; and we have received it in a tradition, ' He who 
 knows himself, already knows his Lord.' This is a con- 
 vincing argument that the soul (or spirit) is like a clean 
 mirror into which, whenever a person looks, he may there 
 see God." This was written eight centuries ago. But 
 thousands of years before this it was said in the Vedanta of 
 India, k ' There is one eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal 
 thoughts ; he, though one, fulfils the desires of many. The 
 wise who perceive him within their self, to them belongs 
 eternal life, eternal peace." (India, by Max Mu'ller, p. 
 260.) 
 
 That man possesses a triune nature, and is capable of 
 living and acting on either of three distinct planes of being, 
 or, as it is stated in the spiritual philosophy of Swedenborg, 
 that there are three, discrete degrees of the mind, is one of 
 the oldest doctrines of philosophy, but is wholly unrecog- 
 nized in our modern systems of metaphysics. It is a funda- 
 mental idea in the New Testament psycholog} 1 , as also in 
 the philosophy of Plato, and is the ke}* to the theosophical 
 system of the Christ. In the First Epistle to the Thessalo- 
 nians, Paul gives the Platonic statement of this doctrine : 
 "And the God of peace himself^ sanctify you wholly, and 
 may your spirit, and soul, and bony be preserved whole (or 
 entire) without blame at the appearance of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ." (I Thes. v: 23.) The body is here used for the 
 lowest degree of the mind, the animal nature with the degree 
 of intellect that belongs to it. It is that which is called in 
 the writings of Paul the carnal or fleshly mind. It is the 
 Linga Sharira of Esoteric Buddhism, or what is called the
 
 22 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 astral body. It is of an ctherial nature, but not immortal. 
 It belongs to this material stage of our existence, and is 
 that intermediate principle which connects the higher degrees 
 of the mind or thinking substance with matter and with 
 the body. 
 
 r DjThe lowest degree of our immortal nature is called the 
 animal soul, and is the psyche of the New Testament, and 
 constitutes what the Apostle Paul denominates the psychical 
 man, which is badly translated "the natural man," which 
 designation of it is followed by Swedenborg. It is the 
 region in us of what is called external sense. It is also the 
 
 I seat of all the animal appetites and passions. As such, it 
 was denominated by Pythagoras thumos, and by the Bud- 
 dhists is called kama rupa, or body of desire, and vehicle of 
 
 . will. By the Hebrews it was called nephesh, and is the ser- 
 
 1 pent of Genesis, through the influence of which man fell 
 from the spiritual state into which he was created into a sen- 
 suous or psychical condition. And as Moses lifted up the 
 serpent in the wilderness on the cross as the Kabalistic tree 
 of life, so must the son of man, or the animal soul, be lifted 
 up. (John iii : 14.) For though humanity, on this plane of 
 mental being, is animal in its nature when compared with 
 spirit, it is elevated above the correctly defined animal crea- 
 tion in every other respect. And though this region is 
 called the animal soul, as it is the highest developed principle 
 of the brute creation, it is yet susceptible of evolution into 
 
 , something far higher, by its union with the higher degrees 
 of our being. (Esoteric Buddhism, by A. P. Sinnet, p. 25.) 
 ~"To this region of mind belongs, according to Plato, what 
 we denominate opinion, or the reception of the beliefs of 
 others. Opinions may be founded on truth, or they may 
 be false. "When true, they come next to knowledge as a 
 practical guide, and as near to genuine faith as the large 
 majority of mankind ever come. Here, also, is what we 
 call reason, which is a much less unerring guide than
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 23 
 
 instinct, which belongs to the animal soul, and which brings 
 us to the boundaries of the next higher degree. Instinct in / 
 man and animals is the knowledge that we derive from the 
 Universal Soul or Mind, of which our soul is only a personal 
 limitation, or individual expression. The animal soul is the I 
 basement story of our immaterial, intellectual nature. It is 
 the region in us of the evil and the false, of sin and disease ; ' 
 and we must acquire the power of transferring our con- 
 sciousness to a more internal plane of being. 
 /The next degree or region of the mind is where it rises 
 above the darkness and fallacies of the senses, and thinks 
 and acts on the plane of pure intellect. It is the region of 
 spiritual intelligence in distinction from external science or 
 sensuous knowledge, which belongs to a lower intellectual 
 range. It is called in the Sanscrit manas, which is trans- 
 lated human soul, as it is the distinctively human principle, 
 and that which distinguishes man from the highest of the 
 animal kingdom. It has been called also the rational soul, 
 but is more properly designated the intellectual soul, as 
 reason belongs to the psychical man, and never discovers | 
 truth. It is a distinct mind, including the intellect and all 
 the emotions aud affections that belong to the mind. It is 
 the interior man. Its development into consciousness should 
 be our highest aim. After the anastasis of Jesus he 
 appeared to the disciples and opened their understanding 
 (rtocma, not psyche, or animal soul) that they might under- 
 stand the Scriptures (Luke xxiv : 45) . And the psalmist 
 prays: "Open thou mine eyes, that I may see wondrous/ 
 things out of thy law" (Ps. cxix : 18). This is that region 
 of mind that perceives things in idea, and consequently inde- 
 pendently of the senses. Its range of vision is well-nigh 
 unlimited. In this region of our being the divine omnis- 
 cience comes to the dawning in us. Of the state of intellec- 
 tual lucidity and spiritual vision that is natural to this degree 
 of the mind, Paul speaks as " having the eyes of the under-
 
 24 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 standing enlightened" (Eph. i:18). And he prays thai 
 the Colossian Christians might be filled with the knowledge 
 of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding or 
 discernment (Col. i:9). The intellectual soul is a region 
 of mental elevation, or rather inwardness, where man is no 
 longer blinded by the external senses, but where the higher 
 perceptive faculties act independent of all organic instru- 
 ments. It is what Swedenborg inaccurately denominates the 
 spiritual man, though he properly apprehends and describes 
 this state of man. 
 
 It is proper to remark that this distinct region of mind and 
 higher story or plane of our being is the seat of faith, which 
 is the perception of truth lying above the range of the senses. 
 It is the location in us, so to speak, of the higher senses and 
 of ideas. In it also is found conscience, of which animals 
 are destitute. In it we perceive reality, the rita of the 
 Sanscrit, which answers to the Kabalistic justice and Paul's 
 "righteousness of faith," which signifies the perception of 
 real truth in opposition to the illusions of the senses. 
 
 As the intellectual soul is the real man, and is capable of 
 thinking and acting independent of both time and space, 
 which are not external to it, but only modes and states of 
 thought, it can transfer its real presence and personality to 
 any place however remote. As in this degree of our being 
 we begin to partake of the divine omniscience, so also we 
 begin to share the divine omnipresence. It is this principle 
 in us, when conjoined with the more subtle elements of the 
 animal soul, that is capable of going where it pleases, and of 
 actually appearing to distant persons, and speaking to the 
 inward ear, as we read of the Hindu adepts. This is done 
 by them by the application of certain mental forces and 
 spiritual laws, a knowledge of which can be acquired. This 
 occasionally takes place with persons at the hour of death, 
 but could be done as well before this if we learn to free the 
 interior man from the trammels of the body. Swedenborg
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 25 
 
 affirms from his own experience that the spaces and dis- 
 tances, and consequent progressions or movements which 
 exist in the natural world are, in their origin and first cause, 
 only changes of the state of interior things ; in other words, 
 of thought and feeling. And man, as to his spirit, is capa- 
 ble of translation to any distance, while the physical body 
 continues in its own place. (Earths in the Universe, sec. 
 125.) 
 
 //^The pneuma or spirit is the supreme degree of the mind or 
 thinking principle, the dome of the temple of God in man, 
 where our being rises into the immeasurable heavens. The 
 pneuma of Jesus and Paul is the inmost degree of the mind, 
 the angelic and divine man, the immortal and real self. It 
 is the celestial range of the mind's activity, and the seat of 
 the divinest powers and capabilities of human nature, since, 
 as Jesus declares, "God is Spirit," man as a spirit comes 
 into close relationship to the Godhead. Says Philo, the 
 mystic Alexandrian Jew, in a letter to Hephaestion, " God 
 has breathed into man from heaven a portion of his own 
 divinity. Thatwhich is divine is invisible. It may be extended, 
 but is incapable of separation. Consider how vast is the 
 range of thought over the past and the future, the heavens 
 and the earth. This alliance with an upper world, of which 
 we are conscious, would be impossible were not the soul 
 (spirit) of man an indivisible portion of that divine and 
 blessed Soul." The spiritual degree of the mind is the divine 
 realm of our being where the boundary line that distinguishes 
 our individual existence from the Godhead is obscurely / 
 marked, so that where the one ends and the other begins can 1 
 with difficulty be discerned. Here each one of us is a finite 
 limitation of the universal spirit, but not separate from it, as 
 the air in this room, though a distinct portion of the boundless 
 atmosphere, is not sundered from it. From this inmost depth 
 of his conscious life Jesus, speaking for all men, said, "I and / 
 my Father are one " ; and his being became so intermingled
 
 26 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CUKE. 
 
 with that of God that he could saj-, " The Father is in me, 
 and I am in the Father." /y _) 
 
 " The spirit," says Dr. Wyld, " is the thir^f actor in the 
 triune man. It is that which is an atom or spark of the 
 spirit of God. It is the hidden centre or ' light of every 
 man that is born into the world,' and hidden from the foun- 
 dation of the world. It is the secret Logos, which became 
 effulgent in Jesus, and it is that by which only God can be 
 known. It is above and beyond reason. It is the nature of 
 the knowledge and wisdom and power of God." (Theosophy 
 and the Higher Life, p. 12.) 
 
 This region of our being was denominated b}' Pythagoras, 
 the Nous, pure intelligence. In it faith becomes intuition, 
 its highest form. It is that immaterial and immortal sub- 
 stance, or essence, that is called in the German, geist; in 
 the French, esprit; and in the New Testament, pneuma. 
 But the Sanscrit designation of it as buddhi is the most 
 expressive of all the names given to it in the various lan- 
 guages. This means about the same as the inward Christ 
 of Paul. It is the Christ principle within, and the only hope 
 of glory. Its development in us, from its latent state into 
 consciousness, is eternal life. For this region of the real self 
 is never diseased or unhappy, and never dies. "It is only 
 the finite that suffers," says Emerson; "the infinite lies 
 stretched in smiling repose." 
 
 The spirit in man is the " Son of God " of which Paul and 
 the Kabala speak. It is also the " inward voice," the Meta- 
 tron, the redeeming angel. This still small voice is the 
 Fac7i, the sacred speech, the unutterable word of the occult 
 philosophy. This is resident in the hidden depths of our 
 own being, and in its reality always comes from within, and 
 never from without. 
 
 It is a great advance in our spiritual development, and an 
 important point gained toward the attainment of a mental 
 power to cure disease in ourselves or others when we come
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 27 
 
 to a clear perception of the truth that man is already a spirit, 
 and not merely sometime to become one. Every man, as 
 to his inner and real self, is as veritable a spirit as he ever 
 will be, only he does not know it ; and we do not see him as 
 such, because, in our superficial vision, we see only that which 
 hides the real man from our sight. 
 
 This is the true idea of man ; and, when intuitively per- 
 ceived, the idea, steadfastly maintained, will translate itself 
 into an expression upon every plane of our being. The 
 spirit is the supreme and celestial man ; and, by virtue of 
 its divine and immortal nature, it is never diseased or un- 
 happy. It possesses the right of dominion over the lower or 
 outer degrees of our being. It speaks, and it is done ; it 
 commands, and it stands fast. It is one of the highest 
 powers in nature because it is divine. 
 
 It is proper to remark, in closing this explication of the 
 triune constitution of man, that this doctrine is absolutely 
 fundamental, and must be fully apprehended and appropri- 
 ated, or our progress will hereafter be laborious and difficult. 
 "We need so to master this conception of human nature, that 
 we can more or less distinctly define, in our consciousness, 
 the boundaries of these discrete regions of our mental being, 
 so that our va^-ing thoughts and feelings, good or evil, 
 which make up the whole of human life, may be referred to 
 their proper place in us. To assist us in doing this, and to 
 make this desirable attainment easier, and to aid the memory 
 in tenaciously holding this doctrine, we furnish the reader 
 with the accompanying ancient diagram which symbolically 
 represents it to the eye.
 
 28 
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 J. 
 
 TRIUNE MAN. 
 
 Nous. 
 
 Pure Intelligence. 
 
 Inward Voice. 
 
 Intuition. 
 
 Metatron. 
 
 Vach. 
 
 Justice. 
 
 Faith. 
 
 Ideas. 
 
 Higher Senses. 
 
 Reality. 
 
 Conscience. 
 
 Instinct. 
 
 Reason. 
 
 Opinion. 
 
 Appetites. 
 
 Passions. 
 
 Seat of Evil. 
 
 Sin. Disease. 
 
 Matter. 
 
 Maia. 
 
 Shadow. 
 
 Celestial Man. 
 Spirit. 
 Pneuma. 
 Buddhi. 
 Son of God. 
 Inward Christ. 
 Real Self. 
 
 Intellectual Soul, 
 Logos. 
 Manas. 
 Ruach. 
 Human Soul. 
 
 Animal Soul. 
 External Sense. 
 Psyche of N. T. 
 Kama Rupa. 
 Nephesh. 
 Psychical Man. 
 Tlmmos. 
 
 Body. Soma. 
 Rupa. 
 Unreal Man.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SAVING POWER OF THE SPIRIT OF MAN. 
 
 IN the region of our own spirit we come into sj'mpathetic 
 and receptive communication with the collective intelligence, 
 or the universal Christ. There is a unity in the sublime life 
 of the spirit that leaves no room for a mere isolated individ- 
 uality, a mere personal existence sundered from the grand 
 whole. Each discrete region of our being is connected with 
 a universal principle or sphere of existence, of which it is a 
 personal limitation. The soul of man is a part, so to speak, 
 of the anima vmmdi, the soul of the world. 
 
 The intellectual soul is a personal manifestation of the 
 " intelligible world " of Plato, the Logos of the New Testa- 
 ment. The spirit is an atom, a monad, an item in the uni- 
 versal spirit. The parts are not scattered fragments, but are 
 inseparably included in the whole, and the whole is in each 
 of the parts. This grand whole, made up of innumerable 
 parts, or the universal world of spiritual intelligence, is 
 called in Sanscrit, Addi-Buddha. In the writings of Paul, 
 it is called the Christ. In it there may be distinct, but 
 never separate individualities, any more than there can be 
 separate rays of light. 
 
 The spirit has in it the life and power of the sublime unity 
 of spirit. We should never lose sight of this truth. The par- 
 ticulai 1 , sep'arate from the universal, is as nothing it is power- 
 less. The part, sundered from the whole, can do nothing. 
 Even Jesus could say, "the Son can do nothing of him- 
 self," or by himself. Echoing this necessary and eternal 
 truth, Emerson says : " The blindness of the intellect begins
 
 80 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 when it would be something of itself. The weakness of the 
 will begins when the individual would be something of him- 
 self." 
 
 It was a maxim of the Hermetic philosophy, that "power 
 belongs to him who knows," which refers to the true self, or 
 the spirit. Knowledge is power. But what knowledge will 
 give us the greatest power to save ourselves and help us to 
 save others, and how may we reach the highest consciousness 
 of authority over disease and sin? It is only by climbing 
 up to a position of thought where we can see that the self, 
 the immortal Ego, is neither diseased nor sinful, but is al- 
 ready saved, and was never lost except to our own conscious- 
 ness. Its inseparable conjunction with God on this plane of 
 our being makes disease and death an impossible concep- 
 tion to it. Can we gain this loftier altitude of being ? Or is 
 it, like the summits of the loftiest mountains, inaccessible to 
 the foot of man ? That there is in us a region of being in 
 which divinity dwells, and which is never invaded by evil or 
 sin, or any discomfort, we can easily admit as a theory, but 
 how can we make it real to our consciousness ? We can ap- 
 prehend the idea intellectually; how can we/eeZ it to be 
 true? Jesus, as a Son of God, a divinely human spirit, 
 clearly saw and felt this great truth. But the development 
 of sonship in one single person of human history does not 
 fulfil the broadly benevolent design of Christianity. Every 
 one who receives the Logos, the inner divine light and life, 
 becomes also a son of God. (John ii: 12.) That the real 
 self, the spirit of man, and the son of God is exempt from 
 evil and indestructible, is taught in the Jewish and Christian 
 scriptures, and the spiritual philosophy of all antiquity. In 
 the Vedanta it is affirmed, " No weapons will hurt the self 
 of man ; no fire will burn it ; no wind will dry it up. It is 
 not to be hurt. It is imperishable, unchanging, immovable. 
 If you know the self of man to be all this, grieve not." If 
 then wo are diseased, and sinful, and unhappy, it is not in
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 81 
 
 our true self, and these things are not to be classed among 
 realities, but are appearances only. This truth of faith, 
 though dimly seen, like a star from behind a cloud, has in it 
 a redeeming efficiency. For the best remedy for disease and 
 unhappiness is to find out that I am neither sick nor unhappy. 
 This is the knowledge that has in it a saving power. It is a 
 profound truth of Christianity that our true being is included 
 in God, and there is no evil in Him. It was the object of 
 Fichte in his great work, the Wissenschaftlehre, or science of 
 knowledge, to search out and discover the first and absolutely 
 fundamental principle of human knowledge. This was sup- 
 posed to be improvable, for the reason that it was a first 
 principle, and consequently there could be nothing tying back 
 of it that could be a subject of cognition. This first princi- 
 ple must be in itself intuitively certain, and must be that 
 which lends certainty to everything else which we know. 
 This absolutely fundamental principle is the Ego, or conscious- 
 ness of self. The Ego (the I, the myself) , was regarded by 
 him as embracing within itself the whole sphere of reality. 
 Outside of it there is absolutely to us nothing. The Ego is 
 the subject and the object. It is that which thinks, and that 
 which is thought, the perceiver and the perceived, the feeling 
 and the felt. The so-called non Ego, or the objects not my- 
 self, are known only in myself, and their inmost reality is 
 my thought. This is as far as science can go. It is its ultima 
 TJude. But there is a Beyond, which Fichte himself entered 
 in after life, as unfolded in his Destination of Man and Way 
 to True Blessedness. In the region of religious feeling and 
 intuition, and the transcendental realm of faith, we rise to the 
 recognition of a still more fundamental principle. It is not 
 merely that lam, but this truth arises from another back of 
 it, and out of which it springs, God is, and I am in Him, 
 and I am because He is. Our individual self is found, as 
 the Vedanta and Plato, and Jesus and Paul all affirm, to be( 
 included in the contents of the Absolute Being or Self.
 
 82 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 Outside of this all-comprehending Being, we never can be and 
 be anything. He who feels this, not as an empty, shallow, 
 unenlightened, noisy religious enthusiasm, but is forced to it 
 by a philosophical necessity of thought, will be conscious of a 
 power that partakes of the tranquil omnipotence of God. It 
 is a power which cannot otherwise be attained. It is an im- 
 movable fulcrum, more stable than the everlasting hills, on 
 which the lever of faith may rest. Such a person will un- 
 derstand as never before the words of the risen Jesus, and 
 the feeling which they express when he affirms that all power 
 in the heavens and the earth was given unto him. (Matt, 
 xxviii : 18.) Having attained to the idea and feeling of one- 
 ness with God, being borne up to it by a logical and philo- 
 sophical necessity, we do not approach disease in ourselves 
 or others, with a curative intention, in our solitary, inflated, 
 but really empty selfhood : but as our individual self plus the 
 Godhead, and the whole power and life of nature. 
 
 When we act from the external plane of thought and feel- 
 ing, as we do in our ordinary life in the world, our spiritual 
 and psychological power is at its minimum. When in fav- 
 ored moments, which by habit and culture might become 
 more frequent and prolonged, we retire inward by an intro- 
 version of the mind, we climb to a summit of our being 
 where we act as one with God, and all below us in the scale 
 of life is subject more or less to our influence. In propor- 
 tion as we act from the inmost degree or realm of our exist- 
 ence, we become possessed of a divine and miraculous 
 energy, meaning by a miracle the control of matter by spirit. 
 \ In harmon} T with this idea Paul affirms, " I can do all things 
 'in Him who strengtheneth me." (Phil, iv : 13.) There is & 
 profound philosophy, or rather theosophy, in this passage. 
 In man and in the wonderful powers of the mind we see the 
 highest exhibition of the Godhead. To say that man is a 
 part of God does not express the exact truth, nor the 
 highest verity. He is rather a manifestation of God, who
 
 THE PRIMITIVE HIXD-CCRE. 33 
 
 is not divisible into fragments or fractions, but is an indis- 
 soluble unity and whole. Says Carlyle, who was imbued 
 with the philosophy of Fichte, "To the eye of vulgar 
 logic, what is man? An omnivorous biped that wears 
 breeches. To the eye of pure reason what is he? A soul, a 
 spirit, a divine apparition. Well said Chrysostom, with his \ 
 lips of gold, ' the true Shekinah is man.' Where else is the 
 God's- Presence manifested, not to our eyes only, but to our 
 hearts, as in our fellow-man?" (Sartor Resartus, pp. 63, 
 64.) 
 
 To act in and from God, and thus possess a power above 
 our ordinary energy, is to attain to a deep conviction that | 
 " in Him we live, and are moved, and have our being," in 
 other words it is to feel that our life is included in his Life, i 
 and that his Being comprises ours in it. Till we make this 
 discovery, and come to the cognition of this eternal verity, ; 
 we are weak and spiritually poor. Without it, the angels ( 
 would no longer " excel in strength." (Ps. ciii : 20.) A man ' 
 may have a mine of gold hidden beneath the surface of his 
 field, but is none the richer for it until he comes to believe 
 it and know it. Then and then only he attains to a mental 
 appropriation and true possession of it. So we may have in 
 the manifested God, the Christ, the Collective Man, wisdom, 
 and righteousness, and health and blessedness, but if we are 
 blinded by our sensuous mind to this truth, it is all the same 
 as if we had it not. The deepest reality in man is spirit, 
 and as a spirit he is an individual, that is, indivisible (as the 
 word means) manifestation of the grand unity of spirit 
 which is God. Even his body, when we take a more pene- 
 trating look at it, is a symbol of spirit, and not wholly 
 material. It is a complex of spiritual forces, a combination 
 of ideas and sensations, without which it is to us as nothing, 
 and which are wholly included in the life of the soul. There 
 is a region of thought where we translate matter itself into 
 spirit. " Matter," says Carlyle, following the steps of
 
 34. THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 Fichte, " were it never so despicable, is spirit, the manifes- 
 tation of spirit ; were it never so honorable, can it be more ? " 
 (Sartor Resartus^ p. 65.) 
 
 In our spirit, in the inmost centre of our conscious exist- 
 ence, human life, as I have before said, and here again 
 earnestly reaffirm, merges into the Divine. Thence it is 
 that it springs. From that point the stream of life starts, 
 and thence forever proceeds. But this region of the Divine 
 Life in us, and seat of the highest spiritual power, is not an 
 inaccessible solitude that can never be approached and ex- 
 plored by consciousness, as if all access to it were forever 
 closed in this stage of our existence. It sometimes crops 
 out above the surface of our earthly life. It is only the 
 attainment of the good, the to agathon of the Platonists. In 
 every inspired thought, in each flash of intuition, in every 
 good deed and beneficent act springing from an inward 
 impulse and desire, there is a manifestation of it. The veil 
 of sense is then suddenly rent, in a degree, if not from the 
 bottom to the top, and the holy of holies is laid open to 
 view. The highest attainable state on earth, according to 
 Buddhism, is called Moksha, but this is identical with the 
 eternal life of the Gospels, and so rendered by Max Miiller. 
 This is not unattainable, nor difficult of attainment. Jesus 
 has made the way easy. He who believeth on the Son (or 
 Spirit) hath everlasting life. (John Hi : 16.) If we had 
 j sought it with a hundredth part of the earnestness that men 
 \ seek wealth, we should long ago have found it. That 
 "eternal life" that was with the Father has been mani- 
 fested unto us. (I John i : 2.) We seek it too far off, as 
 something in a foreign land, but it is alread}' in us, and we 
 are in it. We are like a man hunting round the world to 
 \ find the atmosphere, not realizing, because it is unseen, that 
 I it pervades and contains us. When I have discovered my- 
 self, I have found it. I am it. 
 To act from a spiritual intelligence, and to be moved by an
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 35 
 
 unselfish love, is to act from the Divine. He who loveth is 
 born of God, and dwelleth in God, and God in him. 
 (I John iv : 7, 16.) When we approach a patient to cure 
 him of his malady, if we are actuated by a good motive and 
 benevolent intention we are moved by him ; and if his 
 recovery is agreeable to the divine will, and thus comes 
 within the category of things possible, we are acting in con- 
 cert with God, and all his power is ours. Our Emerson has 
 well said : " Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by 
 the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from 
 these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries ; his 
 being shrinks out of all remote channels, he becomes less 
 and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute 
 death." (Nature: Addresses and Lectures, p. 120.) 
 
 I have said that it is a principle of Christianity, and of all 
 spiritual religions, that our true self is included in the being 
 of God. By this I do not refer to the "Unknown," the 
 Aditi, pure infinitude, the En-Soph of the Kabala, but to 
 the manifested God, the Christ of Paul. Not the Christ of 
 the popular theology, where the idea shrinks and dwindles 
 down to an isolated personality, but to a larger, fuller, 
 diviner Christ, an eternal, an all-pervading, all-containing, 
 and universal Christ. This is the universal Spirit, the first 
 emanation from the Father, whom no man knoweth, and 
 who is beyond the reach of thought. This Christ is inclu- 
 sive of all spiritual intelligence, and of all spiritual beings. 
 Neither the Jesus nor the Christ of Paul is a solitary per- 
 son in the common acceptation of the word, but something 
 more. They are symbols of principles and states that are iu 
 us, and in all spirits. This Swedenborg plainly teaches. 
 He says: " That the deepest mysteries lie concealed in the 
 internal sense of the Word, may most manifestly appear 
 from the internal sense of the two names of our Lord, JESUS 
 CnnisT. When these names are pronounced, few have any 
 other idea than that they are proper names, and almost like
 
 36 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 the names of another man, but more holy ; the learned 
 indeed know, that Jesus signifies Saviour, and Christ the 
 Anointed, and hence they conceive some more interior mean- 
 
 / ing ; still this is not what the angels in heaven perceive from 
 these names, their perception extending to things still more 
 divine ; for, by Jesus, when the name is pronounced, they 
 
 i understand the divine Good, and by Christ, the divine 
 
 \ Truth, and by both the union of good and truth." (Arcana 
 
 JCelestia, 3004.) 
 
 The word Christ in its etymology is closely related to 
 the Sanscrit Kris, the good, the holy, and to the Greek 
 Chrestos, the principle of good, identical with Plato's to 
 agathon, the Supreme Goodness, who created the world in 
 himself. This idea answers to the Christ of Paul. 
 
 The Universal Spirit and all-pervading Divine Presence, 
 and the inmost life of all that is, ha?, as one of its distin- 
 guishing characteristics, inherent in its essence and nature, 
 an irrepressible tendency to impart, to extend the sphere of 
 its healing, soul-saving influence. Our proper attitude 
 toward it is one of tranquil desire, passive receptivity, unre- 
 sisting willingness, and serene trust. The lower soul should 
 be held open toward it, with a suspension of its activity, and 
 by the absorptive power of the soul to imbibe its life. AVe 
 are not to dictate, but to receive. In the Apocalypse, the 
 living Christ, the only saving, healing principle in the 
 universe, is represented as saying, "Behold, I stand at the 
 door and knock : if any man open the door, I will come in 
 to him." (Rev. iii : 20.) But it is not on the outside door 
 of men's souls that he knocks for admittance, as if he were 
 external to us. The Christ is already within us (Col. i : 27), 
 and he seeks to pass outward into the soul and its body, and 
 permeate these with a higher life. He knocks on the inner 
 door, that opens inward toward God and the kingdom of the 
 heavens ; which, if we do not bar against his egress, he will 
 open and pass outward, and become the Saviour (or healer) of
 
 THE PRIMITIVE laND-CUKE. 37 
 
 the body (Eph. v : 23), and of others through us. In praying 
 to the Christ to save us, we are not merely to invoke the 
 Christ or call upon him to come in, but to evoke the Christ, 
 who is already in the hidden depths and centre of our being. 
 Even Jesus is in the true disciple. (John xvii : 23.) He, as 
 ihe highest individual expression of the universal Christ- 
 principle, is there as the way, the truth, and the life, and we 
 are to call him forth from the innermost recess of the mind 
 into the outer chamber, and even the external courts of our 
 existence. We look for the Christ as our Saviour, or healer, 
 in the wrong direction, as if he were far off and an absent and 
 distant being, instead of something already in the inmost 
 divine realm of our being. But the righteousness (or right 
 thinking) of faith saith thus: "Say not in thy heart, Who 
 shall ascend into heaven (that is, to bring the Christ down) ? 
 or, Who shall descend into the abyss (that is, to bring the 
 Christ up from the dead) ? But what saith it? The word is 
 nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart ; that is, the word 
 of faith which we proclaim." (Rom. x : 6-8.) 
 
 The connection of our inner self with the Supreme Self, 
 and the way in which our spirit is included in the Universal 
 Spirit, or the Christ, may be faintly illustrated by a tree, as, 
 for example, the sacred Banyan, which we will make repre- 
 sentative of the Kabalistic " tree of life." In this tree of 
 India, the branches bending to the ground take root and 
 form new stocks, till they cover many hundred feet in circum- 
 ference. But still it is all one tree, and in the Hindu sym- 
 bolbgy is called k ' the tree of knowledge" and " the tree of 
 life," and under its grateful shade the Gurus (instructors) 
 teach their pupils the mysteries of immortality. Every tree 
 is a whole made up of innumerable parts, each of which is a 
 likeness of the whole. I think it was the German poet 
 Goethe who first suggested that the leaf is a typical form, 
 and that every leaf and every bud is, as it were, a tree of 
 itself. This doctrine is now universally adopted in the
 
 38 THE PRIMITIV-E MIND-CURE. 
 
 science of botany. Besides the visible buds and leaves, 
 each of which is an ideal tree, there are a countless number 
 of latent buds that are ready to start into life under the 
 proper conditions. Through each leaf-form the life of the 
 whole circulates, and each leaf when sundered from the tree 
 withers and dies. We as individual spirits sustain the same 
 
 {relation to the Christ. (John xv: 1-8.) We are included 
 in him, and he abides in us. As each leaf is aa image and 
 representative of the whole tree, and possesses the qualities 
 and specific virtues of the tree, and as each drop of the ocean 
 has in itself the properties of the great deep, so that if the 
 ocean be salt each drop may predicate saltness of itself, so 
 our true self sustains the same relation to the Christ. If the 
 I universal spirit is free from disease and evil, and is always 
 I well and tranquilly happy, we may affirm the same of our 
 I true self, which is included in it. This is a doctrine of both 
 Jesus and Paul (John xvi : 33 ; I Cor. 1 : 30) , and also of 
 pre-Vedic Buddhism ; and, because of its great practical 
 importance, we shall further discuss it in our next lesson.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 39 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HAPPINESS AND HEALTH, AND WHERE THEY ARE TO BE FOUND. 
 
 BLESSEDNESS and health are so closely related that they 
 may be viewed as identical and inseparable. Disease has 
 its spiritual counterpart in some mental unhappiness, some 
 inharmony of the inner nature, some spiritual wretchedness, 
 which ultimates itself in the body. For this antecedent 
 mental disturbance we must first find a remedy, or the cure 
 of the body is impossible ; or, if it were possible, is of trifling 
 value. To learn how and where to find true happiness, is to/ 
 discover the best remedy for disease. 
 
 To begin our search for this panacea and true elixir vitce, 
 let it be observed that all desirable mental conditions are 
 already in the spirit of every man as a possibility ; or, as it 
 is expressed in philosophical language, in potentia^ though 
 they may, for the present, be beyond the region of con- 
 sciousness or sensation, though they exist as a fact in our 
 inner being, and only wait recognition. They may be in a 
 state of latency, like the germ of a plant in the seed, but are 
 capable of being awakened into conscious activit} 7 . It has 
 been said of the lotus, the sacred and expressive symbol in 
 the religion of the Hindus and the Egyptians, that its seeds, 
 even before they germinate, contain perfectly formed leaves, 
 and the miniature representation of the perfected plant. 
 This is an instance of pi-reformation or antecedent ideal crea- 
 tion, which has its application to the subject before us. All 
 the happy feelings and emotions that go to make up a state 
 of tranquil blessedness, or spiritual healthfulnoss, are already 
 in us, and can be aroused from their dormancy or quiescence,
 
 40 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 and be made to exist in actu, or in actual consciousness. 
 Disease on its mental side and in its spiritual essence, as the 
 word itself signifies, is a state of dissatisfaction, an uneas}', 
 disquieted state of the soul. Where shall we find relief? 
 Certainly not b} r looking outward. The true remedy does 
 not lie in that direction. Every one's best teacher, that is 
 doctor, is his own inner, divine self, the sage or ancient of 
 days within. Let us ever keep in mind, that all there is or 
 can be in what men call heaven, is already in us, like the 
 miniature plantlet in the seed of the sacred lotus. It is 
 there as a celestial germ. The kingdom of God is within. 
 This narrows down our search for it into a small compass, 
 and heaven is at liand, or within our reach. And surely 
 where heaven is, there must be health and happiness. In 
 ordinary language, heaven is represented as above us, and 
 its influences as descending upon us. This is an illusion of 
 the natural or psychical man, a fallacy of the sensuous mind. 
 In the science of correspondence, upward things are interior 
 things. This is a principle as fixed as the laws of geometry. 
 To view God and heaven as above us, is to separate them 
 from us. It is a falsity as great and fatal in religion as it 
 is in mathematics to affirm that the centre of a given circle 
 is external to its circumference. God and heaven are above 
 us only in the sense of being the inmost region of our own 
 being, our inward, divine self. If not here, they can exist 
 for us nowhere. The spiritual man will learn to explore the 
 depths of his inner being in his search for what others vMily 
 seek to find in something external. Happiness, health, and 
 heaven, which in their essence are one, are always within us, 
 and can never by any possibility be external to the mind. 
 To believe this, and to know it, is to find them. In the New 
 Jerusalem, which is heaven in man while on earth, or a true 
 spiritual condition developed from within, it is said there is 
 no disease, nor sorrow, nor pain, nor death, "for the first 
 things are passed away " ; that is, the sensuous or external
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 41 
 
 action of the mind has ceased to be the governing power, 
 and the man has emerged from the psychical into the spirit- 
 ual life. From being an animal soul merely, he has become 
 a spirit. \IIe has come to himself. He has become a son 
 of man who is in heaven. (John iii : 13.) He has risen 
 from the life of sense, which is only an apparent life, and in 
 the New Testament is called death, to the life of the spirit, 
 which is the only real and truly blessed life. Because mat- 
 ter and sense are the greatest barriers between us and the 
 world of pure spirit, it was the aim of the ancient philoso- 
 phers, from Hermes Trismegistus (the thrice great) down, 
 as it was also of Pythagoras, Gautama the Buddha, and 
 Jesus the Christ, to free the soul of man from the fetters of 
 sense, and its imprisonment in the body, and enable it to 
 begin on earth to realize its Godlike powers. For all of the 
 soul that is in the body is dormant and in a state of lethargy. 
 Its perceptions are illusory and deceptive. 
 
 How these higher possibilities of existence and divinei 
 mental conditions, which are inconsistent with disease and 
 cannot coexist with it, may be evoked from the unconscious 
 region of the mind into conscious activity, is the greatest 
 problem of philosophy and religion. It is a question that out- 
 weighs all others in its importance in transcendental science. 
 We will give a few hints towards its solution, just enough 
 to enable every one to place his feet in the j>a/t and turn his 
 mental eye in the right direction. It shall at least be our 
 uffic> to hold the candle while each one looks for himself. 
 
 It is of the first importance, that we learn the truth and 
 never lose sight of it, that as health and heaven are icithin 
 man, so all disturbed and depressing mental conditions are 
 in a region of our being that is relatively external to the 
 pneuma or inward divine spirit, which is our real Ego or self. 
 From this external plane of mental action, or o*f thought and 
 feeling, it is possible for us to retreat inward into a realm of 
 our being where all is peace and unruffled serenity.
 
 42 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 " Distractions are but outward things, 
 Thy peace dwells far within. 
 
 " These surface troubles come and go, 
 \ Like rufflings of the sea ; 
 \The deeper depth is out of reach 
 To all, my God, but thee." 
 
 We live too much on the surface of our being and have 
 not even found ourself, our real life, which is hid with Christ 
 in God. It is demonstrated by science that there is a depth 
 of the ocean which the most violent storms never stir. 
 Hurricanes that sweep navies from the ocean do not pene- 
 trate to this undisturbed realm of nature. This region of 
 placid calmness answers to our true existence, and a poet 
 has so used the correspondence. 
 
 " There's quiet in the deep ; 
 Above let clouds and tempests rave, 
 And earth-born whirlwinds wake the wave ; 
 Above let fear and grief contend 
 With sin and sorrow to the end: 
 Here far beneath the tainted foam, 
 That frets above our peaceful home, 
 We dream in joy and wake in love, 
 Nor know the rage that yells above : 
 
 There's quiet in the deep." 
 
 So we may turn the mind inward upon itself as far as 
 thought can penetrate; in other words, we can change the 
 direction of the mind from looking outward upon apparent 
 things, to a gaze inward, in the direction of our real life and 
 true being, and the mental unhappiness, the pain, the disease 
 of whatever nature it is, will be left without the gate, sun- 
 dered from our real self. This region of our being is called 
 the secret place of the Most High, the Inscrutable Height of 
 the Kabala, the Divine Internal of Swcdenborg, which is the 
 Christ of Paul ; and here our truly existing self abides under 
 the shadow of the Almighty, and is the doorway that opens
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 43 
 
 into all the fulness of the Godhead. It is the portico, the 
 piazza, and the anteroom of the sacred temple, our Father's 
 house with many apartments. Here, in finding ourself, we 
 have found God, and, in a deeper quietude than is ever felt 
 in our lower nature, we dwell 
 
 " Too near to God for doubt or fear, 
 And share the eternal calm." 
 
 It is the region in us where thought becomes a divine force, 
 for the individual spirit consciously abides under the shadow 
 of the Almighty, or the obstructed and tempered light of the 
 divine Truth, adapted to the reception of the finite intellect. 
 The sacred lamp is only shaded by partially transparent 
 glass. It is the region in us of self-control in the fullest 
 sense of the term, and the central throne of the mind's do- 
 minion over the body and its diseases. It is the realm of our . 
 being where dwells the light of a higher Wisdom, the inward 
 Christ and Son of God, whom Paul found in himself. As I 
 one has said, " There is guidance for each of us, and by low; 
 listening we shall hear the right word." 
 
 "There syllabled in silence, let me hear 
 The still small voice that reached the prophet's ear, 
 Read in my heart a still diviner law, 
 Than Israel's leader on his tables saw." 
 
 In the home of the still small voice, the prayer of faith be- J 
 comes a saving power issuing from the centre of life. It lies 
 within the compass of our powers thus to retreat inward from 
 disease and our surface troubles, as certainly as it does to 
 fly to our sheltering house from the wintr}* storm without ; 
 and practice will make it easy and repetition a habit. 
 
 Things that make us unhappy, and which we call evil, are 
 not so real as the}' 1 seem ; but they are shadows that are 
 magnified out of all due proportion. In the Platonic doctrine 
 of creation, the Supreme Goodness is that from which all 
 things proceed, and is that which contains in itself all exist-
 
 44 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 I ing tbings. This, of course, cannot include anything that 
 is evil. Good is positive and real ; evil is the absence of 
 , good, and, consequently, has no real existence, only a seem- 
 ing existence. It is that which is good inverted, or seen 
 with the empty side uppermost. All things, or, as Plato 
 would say, all truly existing things, are from or out of God 
 (I Coi. xi : 12), and what is from Him is and must be good. 
 If then we view disease as an evil, we are forced to the con- 
 clusion that it is no-thing. It is emptiness, vacuitj-, the 
 absence of true being, and has only an apparent existence, a 
 false and fallacious wa} r of thinking which belongs to the 
 lower animal soul. Yet nothing seems more real to the 
 world at large. And so does a shadow to a child, who sees 
 it on the wall, and attempts to pick it off. The sources of 
 our unhappiness are always some false way of thinking. 
 Truth is that which t's, and falsity expresses what is not. 
 Falsit}* and non-existence are the same, as when I assert that 
 the angles of a triangle are in their sum either more or loss 
 than two right angles, I affirm what has no existence. Now 
 if it can be made to appear that all disease and the sources 
 of our uuhappiness are illusions or a false seeming, and 
 hence must count as nothing, it will afford us a secure stand- 
 ing-ground for a saving and Healing faith. To assist us in 
 climbing up to this exalted summit of thought will be the 
 object of our next lesson. It is of the first importance that 
 we learn to form the true idea of ourselves, and of others whom 
 we would aid into the way of true healing. To form only 
 l an intellectual conception of a state, is an incipient creation 
 ' of it, for certainly the idea is in us, and is a part of us. It 
 may be at first onl3' intellectual ; but, between intellect and 
 feeling, as we have before said, there is a law of attraction 
 as between male and female, and the feeling conjoined to the 
 intellectual conception makes it a thing of life, a divine 
 reality. To aid us in this true conception of man, we may 
 look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. (Ileb.
 
 THE PKIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 45 
 
 xii : 2.) In him, as an incarnation of the universal Christ,/ 
 we find the point where humanity in general rises into divinity, 
 the point where the highest heavens meet the earth, and b:eud 
 their higher life and light with our lower plane of existence. 
 If we look to Jesus as the divine model of the true idea of 
 man, we shall find his humanity the needle of a celestial 
 compass that alwa}-s points due East, toward God and heav- 
 enly blessedness. And as representing and including us, we 
 may confidently ask in his name, and receive that our joy 
 may be full. (John xvi : 24.) 
 
 There is a region of mental exaltation, or, if you please, 
 of inspiration, where the emptiness and nothingness of what 
 we call evil, and which is the source of our unhappiness, 
 clearly appears. Emerson, who combined in himself both 
 the poet and the philosopher, undoubtedly reached that 
 higher altitude of thought when he wrote : " Good is positive. 
 Evil is merely privative, not absolute ; it is like cold, which is , 
 the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonen- 
 tity." Again he says: "I think that only is real which, 
 men love and rejoice in; not what they tolerate, but what 
 they choose ; what they embrace and avow, and not the I 
 things which chill, benumb, and terrify them." (Nature: 
 Addresses and Lectures, pp. 120, 256.) 
 
 This higher altitude of thought, where the evil and the 
 false shrink into nihility, does not appertain to the animal 
 soul, but belongs to that higher range of the mind, that is on 
 a level with the Logos, the spiritual intelligence which is the 
 New Testament faith. "We need an Abrahamic faith, before 
 which the visible to sense disappears, and the " invisible 
 appears in sight " to the spirit, and eternal realities are dis- 
 closed to the immortal eye, of which the outward organ is l v 
 the veil. Abraham represents the principle of faith when it 
 rises into intuition, its highest form. He believed in God for 
 what was scientifically and physiologically impossible, and 
 adhered to it with divine obstinacy, until the thing promised
 
 46 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 became not only a possibility but an actuality. He believed 
 in God who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that 
 are not as though they were. (Rom. iv:17.) We must 
 believe in the same divine principle, which is the Logos or 
 inward Word in us, before which the things that have no 
 existence to the animal soul and sense appear as the only 
 realities. For faith is the evidence of things not seen. If it 
 is not this it is only opinion. 
 
 I CLIMB TO BEST. 
 
 Still must I climb if I would rest : 
 The bird soars upward to his nest ; 
 The young leaf on the tree-top high 
 Cradles itself within the sky. 
 
 The streams, that seem to hasten down, 
 Return in clouds, the hills to crown ; 
 The plant arises from her root 
 To rock aloft her flower and fruit. 
 
 I cannot in the valley stay ; 
 The great horizons stretch away ! 
 The very cliffs that wall me round 
 Are ladders into higher ground. 
 
 To work to rest for each a time ; 
 I toil, but I must also climb. 
 What soul was ever quite at ease 
 Shut in by earthly boundaries ? 
 
 I am not glad till I have known 
 Life that can lift me from my own ; 
 A loftier level must be won, 
 A mightier strength to lean upon. 
 
 And heaven draws near as I ascend ; 
 The breeze invites, the stars befriend, 
 All things are beckoning to the Best ; 
 I climb to thee, my God, for rest ! 
 
 (Lucy La room.)
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 47 
 
 CHAPTER 71. 
 
 THE REAL AND THE APPARENT IN THOUGHT, OR THE IMPOS- 
 SIBLE AND CONTRADICTORY TO SENSE IS TRUE TO THE 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 THE source of all real truth is that divine realm of being 
 which we call spirit. But truth in descending (or passing 
 outward) to the plane of the animal soul is inverted. This 
 finds its analogy in the transmission of light through .an inter- 
 mediate lens, as in the camera of the artist, where on the 
 negative plate, which may represent the lower soul, the 
 image is fully inverted, the bottom appearing at the top and 
 the right side on the left. Thus it is in the descent of truth 
 through the three degrees of our being. A glance at our 
 diagram representing the triune constitution of man will 
 make the analogy clearer. This doctrine that our sense- 
 perceptions are an inversion of the real truth, and in spirit- 
 ual things our senses are never to be believed, is the teach- 
 ing of Jesus, and Paul, and Plato, and is fundamental in the 
 life of faith. When once established and fixed in our 
 consciousness, it is a truth of momentous practical and saving 
 value. 
 
 It vras the aim of Jesus to raise his disciples or scholars 
 above the range of the sensuous mind to the perception of 
 real truth. His fundamental precept was of far reaching 
 importance to the man who would attain a truly spiritual 
 life. It was (and still is) "Judge not according to appear- 
 ance (<tyis, external sight, sense), but judge righteous judg- 
 ment." (John vii: 24.) This righteous judgment or recti- 
 tude of thinking is the Kabalistic justice, and the Sanscrit
 
 48 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 rita, real truth, and is identical with Paul's "righteousness 
 of faith." For faith is the elevation of the mind above the 
 plane of sense. "We walk by faith, not by sigJit" (ot/as, 
 appearance, sense) is the maxim of Paul (II Cor. v:7). 
 The words of Jesus above quoted furnish the key to a truly 
 spiritual knowledge. All our sense perceptions are falla- 
 cious, and are to be corrected before they are accepted. 
 They never give us the real truth. This was a doctrine of 
 the Hermetic philosophy. On this subject Swedeuborg says : 
 " Sensual things, and those which by their means enter 
 knmediately into thought are fallacious, and all fallacies 
 which prevail with men are from this source. Hence it 
 happens that few believe the truths of faith, and that the 
 natural man is opposed to the spiritual, that is, the external 
 man to the internal." (Arcana Celestia, 5084.) All the 
 profoundest truths, or truths of the spirit, are contradictions, 
 that is, they are the direct opposites of the first appearances, 
 the illusions, the fallacies of the psychical man. Whatever 
 the natural man, speaking from the plane of sense, affirms, 
 we are to interpret it by opposites, and we get the real truth, 
 just as darkness makes the hidden light of the stars visible, 
 and shows us worlds we never saw by day. In order to aid 
 us to rise from sense to faith, it will be well to demonstrate 
 that all our sense perceptions are an illusion or false seeming. 
 Hence, in judging rightly, they are to be contradicted, and 
 their testimony ruled out. 
 
 To begin with, it is a fundamental illusion that we are in 
 time and space, for the direct opposite is true ; that is, time 
 and space are in us as modes of thought and feeling, or 
 subjective forms of sensation, as Kant demonstrated. Time 
 is the succession of ideas in our minds, and motion in space 
 is a change of feeling. In common language, when our 
 feelings are stirred we are said to be moved. Hence dis- 
 tance, as it belongs to time and space, is not an external 
 entity, or something outside of us, but is in us as a state of 
 the soul.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 49 
 
 "When the scriptures speak of upward things or things 
 above, as God and heaven, mountains and hills, etc., they 
 really mean inward things. To ascend into the hill of the 
 Lord, and stand in the holy place (Ps. xxiv : 3) , is to think 
 from the inner realm of consciousness. The Most High 
 is the Divine Inmost in man. The power of the Highest 
 comes upon us when the inmost divine spirit in us is devel- 
 oped into conscious activity (Luke i : 35). To be en- 
 dued with power from on high (Luke xxiv : 49) has a 
 similar significance. When the primordial point, or Central 
 Life, is placed above us, to go upward is to go inward 
 towards the centre. 
 
 All outward things are in reality inward things. The 
 objective is the subjective. All the properties of matter are 
 only sensations and ideas in our minds. The world is not 
 external only as a sensuous seeming, as Maia or illusion. It 
 is a mental picture. On this subject, Schopenhauer in " Die 
 Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," says : " The world is my 
 presentation or mental picture is what I represent it to 
 be ; it agrees exactly with my thought ; it is my thought. 
 The world exists for me only as a picture and a belief exist- 
 ent in my mind, only so far as it is portrayed by my thought 
 and present to my consciousness. He prefers, says Prof. 
 Bowen, to call it as Kant did, a Presentation, a Vorstellung, 
 or placing before my mind of certain phenomena or appear- 
 ances. It is impossible and even inconceivable, that it 
 should be known to be anything else than it appears to be. 
 Make this mental picture as vivid or life-like as you please, 
 it is still only a mental picture. Whatever the ignorant may 
 fancy, or the superstitious may dream, nothing is known to 
 be behind it. It is only an appearance or presentation. He 
 only is a philosopher, says Schopenhauer, to whom this is 
 distinct and certain. (Bowen's Modern Philosophy, p. 394.) 
 All this is true of the human bod}*, which is no part of man, 
 but belongs to the world-picture and is a part of it. If man
 
 50 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 (or mind) were taken out of the universe, no universe would 
 
 q remain, because there would be no proof, no manifestation, 
 of anything outside of us, when you take away man, that is, 
 mind. For to that alone the world is, and to that alone can 
 ( it be shown. God created, and still creates, the world 
 I through man, says Swedenborg, and we may be allowed to 
 add, only in man. 
 
 Again. There are no external senses, whatever the 
 psychical, natural, or soulish man may believe and affirm, 
 for the simple reason that there is, and can be, no external 
 perception. There are no external sounds, for sound is a 
 sensation, and that exists only in mind. If the music is not 
 in us, it is nowhere. Light and color, which is a modification 
 of light, are not outside of me, but are in me. I am the 
 light. Light belongs only to mind and is a modification of 
 mind. "God is light," says John (I Jno. i: 5), and the 
 converse of this is true, the light is God, or an cmanative 
 principle from Him, and is not dependent upon the sun, nor 
 external eyes. 
 
 Do we live an individual and independent life? Is my life 
 an isolated fragment sundered from the One Life? Or is it 
 not rather true, as Paul affirms, " In Him we live, and are 
 moved, and have our being " ? Then it is no more I that live, 
 but the Christ, the Logos, the inward Word, liveth in me. 
 That is, God only lives, He is the living One, the El Chai. 
 We are taken on board the Universal Life, and can never get 
 outside of it. So God only sees, as Swedenborg sublimely 
 asserts in his comments on Gen. xvi : 13. The external 
 sees from something interior, and this from the inmost, and 
 this last from the Lord. Hence we may say, "Thou God 
 seest me," and I see only in thee, as was taught in the 
 philosophy of Malebranche, and which was borrowed from 
 the Arabian Al Ghazzali, and he borrowed it from the 
 Hindu metaphysics. 
 
 Again, let us ask the natural man, who cannot discern the
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 51 
 
 things of the spirit, and to whom they are foolishness, Are 
 the senses in our individual soul, or are they not rather in- 
 cluded in a universal sense, so that we are in the senses? To 
 be out of this universal sense is to be irrational and iusensi- 
 bk. All this will seem to the psychical man, as contradic- 
 tory, and impossible, and is therefore spiritually and sublimely 
 true. There is a universal principle of sense, a Divine Sen- 
 sorium, as Sir Isaac Newton calls it, which is everywhere 
 present, and our individual sense is not disjoined or sundered 
 from it, nor can our senses, as Plotinus affirmed, ever be cut 
 off from it. There is an all-seeing eye, an all-hearing ear, 
 an all-pervading and ubiquitous sense of feeling. True vision 
 is that eye in me, and my hearing is never outside the uni- 
 versal ear or sense. For a true universal is a one thing that 
 is in all things. "We must learn to see through the all-seeing 
 eye, and hear through the everywhere-present ear ; that is, 
 the Universal Divine Soul, the anima mundi. Then whatever 
 any person in any part of the world sees, or hears, or feels, we 
 may perceive. This is a great mystery, but is nevertheless 
 demonstrably true. We then have sensation and perception \ 
 in the universal sense or soul. 
 
 Once more, Do we move, or are we really moved? As time 
 and space are in us, as we have shown above, and as all 
 motion must be in time and space, it irresistibly follows, 
 that all motion in its spiritual essence must be in us as a 
 change in our interiors, to use the language of Swedenborg ; 
 or, in other words, as a modification of our thoughts and 
 feelings. Hence, motion in its reality is independent of the 
 body. "We may be carried away in spirit as Ezekiel was to 
 the river Chebar (Ezek. iii : 14, 15), or like John to an ex- 
 ceeding high mountain (Rev. xxi : 10), and visit any part of 
 the world, and not be missed by our friends in the same 
 room. All this is absolutely impossible, contradictory, and 
 incomprehensible to the psychical man, and hence must be 
 divinely true. It is only what Paul asserts, that " in Him we
 
 52 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 live, and are moved, and have our being." (Acts xvii : 28.) 
 If our life is included in God's life, wherever He is we may 
 and must be. He shares with the spirit of man in a mitigated 
 sense both his omnipresence and omniscience. 
 
 Again, it appeal's to the psychical or soulish man that our 
 kuowledge is self-originated and is our own. But such a 
 person must become a fool, as the apostle says, in order that 
 he may be wise. (I Cor. iii : 18.) Do we know, or are we 
 known ; that is, is our cognition active, or are we passive in 
 knowing ? Is not our knowledge shown to us ? One thing is 
 certain, that we know nothing that is not already known, and 
 which exists in the Universal Mind or Intellect, with which our 
 intellect is conjoined. Paul, one of the profouudest of Chris- 
 tian philosophers, says : ' ' Now we know in part, and we 
 prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come (or 
 the true Universal is known, and we grasp the idea of the 
 connection of our mind with it) , then that which is in part 
 shall be done away." Then shall we fully know even as we 
 also are fully known (I Cor. xiii : 9-12), where he expresses 
 the thought, which it is difficult to reproduce in a translation, 
 that all true and perfect knowledge is a passive reception, 
 or that we know all things in and through the Universal In- 
 tellect, the Logos or Word, which illuminates every man that 
 cometh into the world. The individual mind is only a 
 mirror, that receives and reflects, but does not shine by its 
 own light. A passive knowing is the highest form of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 It sounds like a contradiction to the natural man, and is, 
 therefore, true to the spiritual mind, that the sense or mean- 
 ing of the Bible and all good books is not in the letter or the 
 external words, but in us. The book does not in reality en- 
 lighten us ; but we, as it were, illuminate it. The meaning 
 of words is not in them, but in us. Words are only a sensu- 
 ous symbol of ideas, and ideas are only in mind, and cannot 
 by any possibility be in Bibles or books. The real Bible is
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 53 
 
 the inward "Word, the Logos, the Christ within. In this in- 
 ward Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
 edge. (Col. ii : 3.) And John says of " young men," which 
 marks a certain stage of spiritual evolution or development, 
 "Ye are strong, and the word of God abideth (or dwelleth) 
 in you." (I John ii : 14.) And if it is not in us, either 
 consciously or unconsciously, it is for us nowhere. 
 
 But all this discussion has a practical side to it, and is not 
 mere idle and useless speculation. We have seen that the 
 knowledge (so called) of the psychical man or mind, is in- 
 verted, and things are seen bottom side up. We must turn 
 them over, and contradict them, in order to come to the 
 perception of the real truth. The knowledge of the sensu- 
 ous mind is only a false seeming, and is never the real truth, 
 or Paul's righteousness of faith, or rectitude of intellectual 
 judgment. In common language a man says, " I am sick," 
 or in suffering or trouble. This is an illusion, as much as 
 when he says the sun rises and sets. His real self, his spir- 
 itual entity, and immortal Ego, is not subject to disease, but 
 this may always affirm, 7 am well and happy. To come to 
 an intuitive perception of this, and hold to it with a divine 
 stubbornness, in spite of the senses, and even reason, is to 
 reach the summit of faith, a faith that makes us whole. 
 To the sensual man or mind, 
 
 " It would seem 
 Less a thing to name or own, 
 Than an echo overblown 
 
 From a dream," 
 
 but is nevertheless an eternal reality. 
 
 Finally, one of the most impossible and unreasonable con- 
 ceptions to the psychical or soul-man, and consequently one 
 of the most sublime spiritual truths in the universe is, that 
 all pain is a positive good and pleasure in the region of our 
 true being. It is jinhmer divine good, struggling into a/ 
 birth in the external range or sensuous plane of our exist- 1
 
 54 THE PRIMITIVE MTNTJ-CURE. 
 
 ence. If accepted without opposition, and its outward birth 
 is effected, it ceases as pain, and becomes a pleasure. It is 
 then transmuted into a spiritual delight. The highest spirit- 
 ual development is born of suffering. When we come to a 
 clear recognition of this, and can view the pain as an inte- 
 rior good, it is instantly alleviated. Here the whole mystery 
 of evil is solved. All evil or pain is an inward, divine, spir- 
 itual good, that struggles to ultimate or externalize itself in 
 us, and is opposed and obstructed, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, by the soul. But when, by a supreme act of faith, 
 I can bring myself to be willing to suffer, I then cease from 
 suffering, by one of the deepest laws of my being. 
 
 If it be true that our spiritual entity is the real man, and 
 son of God, and is, by virtue of its divine and immortal 
 nature, exempt from disease, then the belief of disease is 
 but a dream, an illusion, a false seeming. Make it appear to 
 yourself that it is so, and " thou art freed from thine infirm- 
 ity." Demonstrate this grand truth of faith clearly to a 
 patient, and he is cured. What men call disease is not dis- 
 ease at all, but only nature's method of ciiring it. It is a 
 medicine and not a disease. This is a truth that is capable 
 of an extended illustration.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 55 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 DISEASE EXISTS ONLY IN THE MIND ON THE PLANE OF SENSE, 
 WHICH IS THE REGION OF DECEPTIVE APPEARANCES. 
 
 IT should be our steady aim in all that we do and say, to 
 raise a patient's mind and our own above the mere plane of 
 sense, with its deep-seated illusions. The external body, I 
 with all its diseases, exists only on that lower range of thought. I 
 To elevate the miud above the plane of sense is to exalt our 
 conscious being into the region of faith, where pain and 
 disease cannot exist. This is done to some extent in what 
 is called revery or a waking dream, also in the condition of 
 absent-mindedness, where the mind is withdrawn from exter- 
 nal things, and we think in ourselves independent of organic 
 conditions. The first point to be gained is to know our 
 self; the next to forget the body and become spirit. The / 
 natural or psychical man, or the mind that habitually acts on ! 
 a level with the body and the senses, sees everything in an j 
 inverted order, which is the direct opposite of the real truth. 
 He does not receive (or apprehend) the things of the spirit, 
 nor can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned or 
 judged, as Paul affirms. What men call knowledge, derived 
 from the testimony of the senses, is not knowledge at all, 
 but only error and delusion. When we examine the matter 
 more closely, we are astonished to learn how little we 
 know from sensation. When I say I hear the bell in the 
 church tower, it is not strictly true. All that I hear is a 
 sound which has no meaning in and of itself, but I have 
 learned by association to connect that particular sound with 
 a bell. But if I were hearing it for the first time, it would
 
 56 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 be impossible for me to know what it was. It is an act of 
 judgment, that is, a decision of the mind on the plane of 
 pure intellect, or what is called in the New Testament and 
 in Plato, faith, which teaches me that a particular sound is 
 connected with a bell, or a coach on the street, or an engine 
 on the railroad. It is one of the offices of faith, or the 
 higher intellect, to interpret the meaning of a sensation. If 
 we have a sensation of discomfort, we can make it signify 
 disease, and this meaning it will bear to us, or we can give 
 it the opposite meaning, and it will bear that signification to 
 us. This is a practical principle. A wrong interpretation 
 of our sensations is a fruitful source of disease. 
 
 All that we ever see by the sense of vision, as Berkeley 
 proved long ago, is a sensation of light and its modification 
 in the various colors. Everything else which we attribute to 
 vision is only an act of judgment. Sensation in itself 
 teaches us nothing. As long as the mind is fettered by the 
 senses, true knowledge, which is only another name for 
 faith, is impossible. In disease the senses give us no real 
 knowledge of our true condition. We must learn to dis- 
 believe them, and hearken to the voice of the higher wisdom. 
 Their testimony must be ignored, their fallacies rejected, 
 and the interior mind must assert its divine rights. A true 
 faith, which saves a man body and soul, begins where sensa- 
 tion ends, and is the " evidence of things not seen." In 
 order for faith to become a living power to heal ourselves or 
 others, it must be emancipated from the bondage of the 
 senses. Their clamorous voice must be silenced, and their 
 testimony must be ruled out. This is the true freedom from 
 matter that constitutes us spiritual, and essentially and dis- 
 tinctivel}' human. Things look quite different to the mind, 
 when it views them from the spiritual plane of thought and 
 perception from what they do when seen only through the 
 underground window of the. dungeon of the prison of sense. 
 To cure ourselves of disease, and remain under the blind-
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 57 
 
 ness of the senses, is like a shipwrecked mariner tiding to 
 keep afloat with a rock attached to him instead of a life- 
 preserver. Disease, having existence only in the mind on 
 the sensuous plane, is so far like all our sense-perceptions a 
 fallacious appearance, and not the reality we suppose it to 
 be. The spiritual man will learn to treat it as he does all 
 other illusions. But you will ask me, if the corn on your toe 
 is not as real as the toe itself? To this the answer is, that 
 neither of them have any real existence except as a thought 
 on the lower range of the mind, and a false belief; and 
 neither of them is any part of the real Ego or self. Both of 
 them could be removed by surgery and the inner man not be 
 mutilated or touched. Nothing has been subtracted from 
 our true being. When will the world come to the conscious- 
 ness of the truth, that it is ihepneuma or spirit, and not the 
 body, that is the man. In its inmost essence it is divine, 
 and, like Milton's angels, immortal in every part. It is 
 never separated from God. The last words of Gautama, 
 when, under the Sal-tree or sycamore, he was entering into 
 Nirvana, were : " Spirit is the sole, elementary, and primor- 
 dial unity, and each of its rays is immortal, infinite, and 
 indestructible. Beware of the illusions of matter." The spirit 
 is never separated from God. It is like a wave or ripple on 
 the ocean of being that is never disjoined from the ocean, 
 but is one with it. Or, as the divine Christ in Jesus declares, 
 "I am the vine; ye are the branches, and apart from me, 
 ye can do nothing." (John xv : 4, 5.) 
 
 There is a fundamental error which it is important that we 
 correct, for it is the parent of a large class of illusions. I 
 refer to the false belief, the illusive appearance of the exist- 
 ence of life and sensation, of pleasure and pain, of health 
 and disease, in the material body. Even motion in its 
 reality or on the spiritual side of it, is not in the body. It 
 is only " a change of state in the interiors," as Swedenborg 
 expresses it. When I raise my arm, the reality of the move- j
 
 58 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 ment is a modification of the mind. So when we change 
 our position from one part of the room to another, or go 
 from Boston to New York, the real movement is an invisible 
 change in our mental condition. In our dreams we travel 
 through space, and see objects in space and time. But 
 where is that space ? It is most certainly in us, for by the 
 closing of our senses we are shut off from the outer world. 
 The relation of motion and locomotion to a modification of 
 the mind is a principle that has importance in connection 
 with the subject of vision and action at a distance. 
 
 But to return to the subject of sensuous delusions. There 
 is no such thing possible as headache, or what the patient calls 
 the head, for that is never pained. Pain can no more be 
 predicated of the head than of the hat or bonnet. To come 
 to the inward consciousness and certainty of this, is a great 
 step towards the cure of it. Headache in its various forms 
 is only some disturbance, some inharmony or unhappiness in 
 the psychical or soul-principle. But I shall be asked, if the 
 head does not ache, what is it that aches? So the suu 
 appears to rise, but does not. If you ask what it is that 
 rises? the answer is, nothing rises. It is a deceptive appear- 
 ance, an error that counts for nothing. So of the headache, 
 if the head does not ache, nothing aches. It is an illusion, 
 a false belief of what does not and cannot exist. To in- 
 tuitively perceive this to be true, is a faith that makes us 
 whole. 
 
 The teeth never in reality ache. There has never been 
 such a thing as toothache since the creation of man. The 
 teeth were made for the mastication of food, and it is beyond 
 their function or power to ache. Even Dr. Carpenter, in 
 his Principles of Human Physiology ', alfirms that we do not 
 speak in exact accordance with the truth when we say that 
 we feel a pain in the hand. He would say that it was in the 
 sensorium, which is supposed to be located in the brain. 
 But this is a mistake or an illusion as much as the rising and
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 59 
 
 setting of the sun. The brain has no more feeling than the 
 hair, a truth which physiology admits. Dr. Carpenter's 
 affirmation amounts to saying that a feeling exists in what 
 lias no feeling. The sensorium, or seat of sensation, is not 
 in the body at all, or in any part of it. It is a principle of 
 the transcendental philosophy that time and space are not 
 external entities, but exist in us as modes of thought, time 
 being the succession of ideas in the mind, and space the 
 distinguishing of things, or the viewing of them as distinct 
 rather than all at once. But as both time and space are in 
 us as modes of thouglit, it follows that we locate a pain by 
 tliouglit and in thouglit. But we have the same power to deny 
 its existence in any particular part of the body, or to locate 
 it outside of the body, that we have to think at all. The 
 phenomenon of misplaced sensation is one familiar to physi- 
 cians and physiologists. Where we think a pain to be, there 
 it is to us, for it exists only in thought. To put it out of 
 thought is to annihilate it. The same is true of disease in 
 the proper sense of the word. By thought and in thought 
 we give it locality. But if it is not in the body, which is 
 intuitively true, and not in the spirit, which is the real self, 
 then where is it, you will ask ? It exists in the animal soul 
 as a false way of thinking. It may come to us from the 
 general current of the world's life, an established wrong 
 belief in the collective soul from which we are not discon- 
 nected. It is the office of faith to correct this established 
 " public opinion," and lift us out of its disordered current. 
 Faith disowns the disease or discomfort as belonging to the 
 non-ego, or the "not me," and by doing this we free our- 
 selves from it and relegate it to its source. 
 
 "With regard to other diseases, we ma} r affirm that paralysis 
 is not in the body. It is a loss of desire and will, which are 
 the spiritual principle of motion. Nervous diseases, as they 
 are popularly called, are not in the nerves. This popular
 
 60 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 notion or current opinion which is encouraged by the learned 
 ignorance of the various schools of medicine is only super- 
 ficial uonseuse. The nerves are innocent of any fault. 
 General debility is not a physical condition. Weakness and 
 strength cannot in strict propriety be predicated of the bodily 
 organism, as the five hundred muscles are not a force any 
 more than an engine is a force. In the latter the expansive 
 power of steam is the energy that moves the powerless 
 machinery, and even this has its seat in the universal world- 
 soul or life-principle. General debility, for which we give 
 Peruvian bark and iron, is a mental languor. Every one 
 knows how a little pleasurable mental excitement increases 
 the strength and invigorates the whole muscular system. 
 Nausea is not in the membranes of the stomach, but is either 
 a conscious or unconscious feeling of repugnance and antip- 
 athy in the soul. The very thought of a disgusting object 
 causes us to express it by a movement as if we were about 
 to vomit. Is it then the object or the thought of it that 
 makes us sick? But you will ask, " Is poison in the mate- 
 rial substance or is it in us? " If I affirm it is not necessa- 
 rily in the drug, you will kindly ask me to swallow stricnia 
 or Prussic acid. You will excuse me if I answer you in the 
 language of another under analogous circumstances : "Get 
 thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt not 
 tempt the Lord thy God." The truth seems to be that in the 
 spiritual or immaterial essence of Prussic acid there is some- 
 thing antagonistic to the life-principle in us. It is certainly 
 given in medicine in small quantities, so that below a certain 
 amount it is not considered deleterious, but useful. Then it 
 is not the thing itself that kills, but the quantity. "What we 
 affirm, and which is the only practical principle in relation to 
 the subject is, that having swallowed it accidentally, so that 
 we have not by our presumption " tempted the Lord our 
 God," there is a power in a true faith (if we have it or can
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. GJ 
 
 get it) that will save us from its effects. The lower law of 
 its deadly influence will be suspended by the action of the 
 higher law of faith. For this we have the authority of Jesus 
 the Christ. (Mark xvi : 17, 18.) If a person swallows only 
 a small amount of stricnia, but under the impression that it is 
 a large quantity, it will intensify its effects. If, on the other 
 hand, we swallow an overdose, but believing and thinking it 
 only a small quantity, it will mitigate its influence. If our 
 mode of thinking in regard to it thus affects its action, why 
 is it unreasonable that faith may wholly repeal the natural 
 law of its action? And if it is thus an antidote to poison, 
 and annuls the law of its action, wh} r may it not cure all 
 diseases that are curable ? Perhaps our best remedy is found 
 in the simple prayer, " Lord, increase our faith." 
 
 We might continue this discussion in regard to the mental 
 aspect of disease, and the common illusions respecting it, 
 and affirm that dyspepsia is not a condition of the stomach, 
 and so on through the whole catalogue of ills that flesh is 
 supposed to be heir to. But enough has been said to illus- 
 trate a general principle. CThe whole practice of materialis- 
 tic medication will seem to the spiritual man as absurd as it 
 would be to take the invalid and place him in the sunlight, 
 aud then apply the remedies to the shadow of the man rather 
 than to the man himself. ^)In the system of Jesus, the body 
 was healed by saving and restoring the soul. So, in the 
 employment of spiritual forces and metaphysical agencies in 
 the cure of an invalid, we ignore the body so far as to view 
 it only as the umbra of the real man, and direct our atten- 
 tion to the morbid idea, the mental image of the disease in 
 the mind of the patient. The importance of this procedure 
 we shall endeavor to show in our next lesson. "We do this 
 on the self-evident principle that an effect will disappear on 
 the removal of its cause, as an effect exists in its cause, and 
 is one with it. They must both stand or fall together. We
 
 62 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 act also on the principle laid down by Jesus, that " it is the 
 spirit that maketh alive; the flesh profiteth nothing." 
 (John vi : 63.) To direct our attention, as is usually done, 
 to the body only, is to aim away from the central maik, and 
 of necessity to miss it.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 63 
 
 CHAPTER VIH. 
 
 THE DEEPEST REALITY OF DISEASE IS A MORBID IDEA 
 AND BELIEF. 
 
 IDEAS, as we have before shown, are conceptions, or the 
 union of thought and feeling on the intermediate plane of 
 our being. By a morbid idea we mean a false or erroneous 
 intellectual way of thinking, which, if it becomes a fixed 
 mode of thought, is united to the correlative feeling. This 
 is the inner history of the genesis of all disease. Every 
 material thing in the universe, including the so-called physi- 
 cal diseases, exists in us as an idea, without which it has 
 and can have no existence for us. For the idea of a thing 
 and the thing itself, are not two separate and distinct enti- 
 ties, capable of an existence independent of each other, but 
 together they constitute an inseparable and indivisible unity. 
 Remove the idea of a thing, as of a chair, a table, or a coin, 
 or of a so-called bodily malady, as is frequently done in the 
 magnetic state, and from a law of necessity, the thing or 
 object disappears. The substance being removed, the phe- 
 nomenon, the appearance, the shadow, goes with it. The 
 properties or sensible qualities of all the objects of nature, 
 as Berkeley unanswerably demonstrated, cannot exist inde- 
 pendent of or outside of a percipient mind. They exist in 
 our minds as thoughts and ideas, and as a feeling which we 
 denominate a sensation. If we remove from our minds, or 
 from the inind of a patient, the mental image or idea of the 
 malady, the disease will vanish as certainly as to remove an 
 object from before a mirror will cause the disappearance of 
 its reflected image. In proportion as the idea and the belief
 
 64 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 Aof a malady are effaced, it will weaken its grasp upon us. 
 //Here is the direction in which we should perse veringly aim, 
 \l whatever therapeutic devices we may employ. In certain 
 cases, and under the proper conditions, it may be done, 
 instantaneously, but is more frequently effected gradually. 
 A foggy atmosphere does not clear away at once, like the 
 rolling up of the curtain in a theatre, but it slowly lifts to 
 show us " the whitely shining hills of day." The sun in 
 rising does not shoot up like a rocket from a vessel in dis- 
 tress, but the daybreak grows into the full morning. 
 
 When I affirm that to remove from the mind of an invalid 
 the idea of a disease, will cause the disappearance of his 
 malad}*, I feel myself standing on an established philosophi- 
 cal ground, an impregnable scientific position. In order to 
 dislodge me from it, it must be shown that a person can 
 have a pain, or discomfort, or any unhappiness, and not 
 perceive it or know it. But the problem for a true medical 
 philosophy to solve, is how to effect this radical change in 
 the mental status of the patient. How can we revolutionize 
 his mode of thinking, and pluck from his mind the deeply- 
 rooted idea of disease ? Knowledge is power, and truth is 
 omnipotent. That which is seemingly impossible is easily 
 done if we know how to do it. Truth is the kingly princi- 
 ple. Say the Hindu sacred books, " Royal rule is in its 
 essence truth. On truth the world is based. Truth is lord 
 in the world. All things are founded on truth, and there is 
 nothing higher than it." 
 
 We know it as a fact that has often come under our 
 observation, that the dislodging from the mind of a patient 
 of a morbid idea, with its accompanj'ing fear and unbelief, 
 which has come to have a controlling influence, and the sub- 
 stitution in its place of the opposite idea and belief, has 
 often effected an immediate and radical change in his physi- 
 cal condition. Let us take an illustrative case, for which 
 nearly every one's memory will be able to furnish a fact par-
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MINTJ-CURE. 65 
 
 allel with it. During the prevalence of an epidemic fever, a 
 person affected with a slight cold, or any combination of dis- 
 agreeable sensations, forms the idea that he is seized with 
 the malady in its incipient stage. "While this belief reigns 
 undisturbed, he is, and will continue to be, sick of a fever. 
 Under the dominating influence of this idea, he suspends his 
 business and takes to his bed. At this juncture of affairs, 
 the family physician, in whose skill and judgment he impli- 
 citly relies arrives on the scene. He is one of an ever-grow- 
 ing number, who is rising from the lower dignity of a physi- j 
 eian, a dispenser of drugs, to the higher office of a doctor or ) 
 teacher. On a careful and searching diagnosis of the case, 
 he assures the patient that his anxiety is groundless, his 
 f ^ars without foundation ; that he is laboring under an error, 
 and that the dreaded malady is not a fixed actuality. This 
 view of the case is accepted, and supplants and dethrones 
 the other, and in a brief time, as if a mill-stone had been 
 lifted from his condition, the man rises from disease to 
 health, and to the active discharge of the duties of his 
 calling. 
 
 It is to be remarked that fear as a form of unbelief, or 
 rather misbelief, and which is the tap-root of many a disease, / 
 is but a suppression of faith, and not an extinction of the ) 
 power or faculty of believing. Hence, when fear is removed, 
 faith, its opposite, naturally and spontaneously arises. The 
 allaying of the fears of a patient is equivalent to the excita- 
 tion of a saving or healing faith. Just as when a spiral 
 spring is pressed down by a superincumbent weight, if that 
 is removed, the spring returns by its own elasticity to its 
 proper position. So if by the divine power of truth, we can 
 lift from an invalid that which really holds him down, he 
 will " arise, take up his bed, and walk." 
 
 Let us return to the supposed case we have before us. 
 Hundreds of facts might be given which in principle are iden- 
 tical with it, and m all essential particulars are only repeti-
 
 66 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CURE. 
 
 tions of it. Let us carefully scrutinize the mental principles 
 involved in the cure. There was a desire to get well, for we 
 take it for granted that the man was not a professional in- 
 valid. This desire included in it a willingness to use the 
 proper remedy. There was a confidence in the knowledge 
 and skill of the physician, and this was sufficiently strong as 
 of necessity to constitute a pre-disposition and tendency to 
 believe his suggestions, and to adopt his ideas and way of 
 thinking. There was also a ready submission of the will to 
 the directions of the physician and faith in their efficacy. In 
 this condition of mind, the kindly positive and authoritative 
 affirmations of the physician changed the mode of the pa- 
 tient's thinking in regard to his disease. The idea of the 
 fever was at once weakened, and obscured, and finally 
 blotted out of the mind, and, with its disappearance, the 
 disease vanished. It was like meeting a man descending a 
 mountain road which we are ascending. We face him di- 
 rectly round in the opposite direction, take him by the hand 
 and lead him calmly up toward the summit, with its view of 
 the promised land. This case, carefully studied, will be 
 found to contain, compressed into a small compass, the 
 j arcane spiritual philosophy of every cure effected by any of 
 ^ the prevailing methods, and especially of the marvels of 
 jhealing wrought by the Christ. And by putting ourselves 
 into the same attitude toward Him to-day as the patient was 
 supposed to have done toward his physician, He will heal its 
 to-day in both soul and body. " He that cometh unto me I 
 will in no wise cast out" has never yet been proven false. 
 If it does in your case, it will be the first in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 How and by what means this change is to be wrought in 
 the mental status of an invalid is a matter to be decided by 
 the skill and judgment of the physician. There is no way in 
 which it can be done without his consent and cooperation. 
 Wilt thou be made whole, or wish you to get well? must be
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 67 
 
 answered in the affirmative, verbally or silently. "We can 
 lift a man from the water, while drowning, by main strength 
 and in spite of himself. But disease is not cured in that 
 waj 7 . We shall have to accommodate ourselves to the differ- 
 ent stage of mental and spiritual development in which men 
 are found. "We must sometimes descend towards the level 
 of their platform in order to raise them to ours. We must 
 condescend to their position, and come into a certain sympa- 
 thy with them in order to take them back with us to our 
 higher view. This principle of sympathy is supposed by the 
 Hindu Mozoomdar to furnish the key to the mystery of the 
 cures effected by the Christ. But it is not sympathy with 
 the disease, but sympathy with the true idea of the man 
 which is obscured by the disease. By coming into sympathy 
 with this, the two become stronger than one. 
 
 When we attribute the generation of diseased conditions 
 of the body to some antecedent abnormality of mind, we do 
 not mean to teach that a given disease, as rheumatism, or 
 dyspepsia, is the instantaneous creation of a sudden thought, 
 or the unexpected advent of an idea to our consciousness. 
 The disease may be the fixed ultimation, or translation into 
 a bodily expression of modes of thought and feeling long > 
 anterior to our first recognition of it. A person will say : j 
 " I was sick before I thought anything about it ; as, for in- 
 stance, I woke up in the night with a severe cold." This 
 means in reality that you woke up thinking that you had caught 
 a cold, or more properly that the cold had caught you. To 
 say that you had a cold without thinking about it, is in reality 
 affirming that you had a cold without knowing it ; for }-ou 
 certainly never knew it until you thought of it. Hence you 
 are testifying to what you do not know, and, consequently, as 
 a witness in this case, you are ruled out. You mean in what 
 you say, that you awoke in the night and became conscious 
 of certain unpleasant sensations, which were interpreted to 
 mean a cold. But faith could have given a different meaning
 
 68 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 to them, and you would have escaped the cold. Or, if you 
 had never thought anything about it, you would have re- 
 mained until this day in blissful ignorance that you had 
 ever had a cold. 
 
 The true spiritual physician will never forget, whatever the 
 temptation may be to do so, that there is a higher therapeu- 
 / tic efficiency in an idea than in any drug known to medical 
 ) science. In the language of the learned German professor, 
 Johannes Miiller, "The influence of ideas upon the body 
 gives rise to a great variety of phenomena, which border on 
 the marvellous." He illustrates this by a case mentioned by 
 Pictet. A young lady who wished to experience the intoxi- 
 cating effects of the nitrous oxide gas, which she had at dif- 
 ferent times before inhaled, came to Pictet for that purpose. 
 But, in order to test the power of the imagination, common 
 atmospheric air was given to her. She had scarcely taken 
 two or three inspirations of it, when she became insensible 
 and exhibited all the effects of the nitrous oxide. The ques- 
 tion arises, what was it that so affected her ? Was it anything 
 more than an idea, and a belief ? Surely then the influence 
 attributed by Jesus to simple faith is not unreasonable, 
 though its saving power is discounted in these days of gross 
 material medication. The influence of ideas, Miiller asserts, 
 when they are combined with a state of emotion, generally 
 extends in all directions, affecting the senses, motions, and 
 secretions. But even simple ideas, unattended by any excited 
 state of the feelings, produce most marked effects upon the 
 body. (Muller's Elements of Physiology, Vol. II., p. 1392.) 
 This is an important testimony from a high authorit}\ 
 
 M tiller lays down the general law that an idea having ref- 
 erence to a secretion (and the same is true of any physiologi- 
 cal action)\causes a stream of nervous energy to be directed 
 towards the secreting organ, and if the mind is at the same 
 time influenced by an emotion, the effect just mentioned is 
 more marked. But what Miiller denominates the nervous
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CUKE. 69 
 
 energy I prefer to call the universal, divine life-principle in 
 nature, the akasa (pronounced aAasa) of the Hindu meta- 
 physics, an all-pervading, omnipresent, vivific principle of 
 life and motion identical in its higher aspects with the Holy 
 Spirit of the Gospels. An act of faith determines a current, 
 so to speak, of this inconceivably subtle life-force toward the \ 
 result aimed at and desired. Hence through faith, which is 1 
 but a mode of thought in union with feeling, a disease is / 
 curable that otherwise would be incurable. 
 
 It is a peculiarity of the Hindu mind that it is transcen- 
 dental, and gives more reality to the supersensuous, and 
 especially to thought, than is done in our European and 
 American philosophy. The subjective and objective become 
 one. In the Lanka Vatara, one of the sacred books of 
 Buddhism, it is said: "What seems external exists not 
 at all, only the soul manifests itself in different forms." 
 Again it is affirmed, "All worlds are but the creation of our 
 thought." This sounds like the words of Fichte in his alge- 
 braic formula, " the Ego equals tlienon-Ego" orexternal things 
 are included in the Ego or inner self. Even Condillac, who 
 reproduced the sensational philosophy of Locke in France, 
 though a materialist, was compelled to say, "Though we 
 should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the 
 abyss, we never go out of cm-selves ; it is always our own 
 thought that we perceive." Neither Berkeley, nor Fichte, 
 nor Schopenhauer ever said more than this. The doctrine 
 taught by Buddhism twenty-five centuries ago has come down 
 through Christianity, and is faintly heard as a dying echo in 
 Emerson ; so faint that few even hear it at all. He says, 
 " All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance 
 which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of 
 thought, of those that are dependent, and those that are 
 independent of 3'our will." (Nature: Addresses and Lec- 
 tures, p. 324.) 
 
 Our doctrine is nothing new, and need not be startling.
 
 70 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 We are intensely conservative, as was Jesus the Christ, who 
 says no man who has drunk old wine, or tasted the ancient 
 spiritual truth, straightway desires the new, for the old is 
 better./" This is not common bar-room talk about the quality 
 
 | of wines, but has a deeper meaning. And you will allow me 
 
 to say, that in the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, there is a 
 
 \ rich and fertile stratum of sub-soil that the common religious 
 
 I plow does not turn up. The surface of the vineyard is 
 becoming exhausted, and unless we plough deeper we shall 
 raise but a meagre crop. 
 
 That the doctrine of this lesson is not new, but belongs to 
 an old philosophy and archaic wisdom-religion, I present as 
 a proof but one more quotation. In the Dhammapada, one 
 of the books of the sacred Canon of Buddhism, among the 
 brief religious sentences of which it is made up we find these 
 golden words : ' ' All that we are is the result of what we 
 
 \have thought; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up 
 
 /of our thoughts." 
 
 Five hundred years before Sakya Muni, Solomon says: 
 " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." (Prov. xxiii : 7.) 
 A thousand years after Solomon, under the modifying and 
 exalting touch of the higher wisdom in Jesus, it becomes the 
 central principle in his scheme of human redemption, " Be it 
 unto thee according to thy faith." (Matt, ix : 29.)
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 71 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF OBLIVESCENCE, OR THE ART OF FORGETTING A 
 
 MALADY. 
 
 THE possession of a good memory, that holds all truth in 
 its capacious grasp ready for use whenever an occasion 
 arises which calls for it, is one of the most valuable of our 
 mental attainments. But there are times, and especially in 
 disease and in our transient and permanent states of unhap- 
 piness, when we could be tempted to exchange it for the 
 ability to forget, the power to change the direction of our 
 thoughts, and expunge from the tablet of our minds the mor- 
 bid ideas that will not depart at our bidding. Like a lin- 
 gering and unwelcome visitor we bid them adieu and hope 
 we are rid of them, but they come back again through the 
 unbolted door. They are birds of evil omen, that not only 
 fly unbidden over our heads, but build their nest in our out- 
 house, and will not be scared away. In the cure of a man's 
 disease (or in the healing of ourselves) , we are to attend to 
 these false and fallacious ideas. Here is the seat of the 
 trouble, and where the remedy is to be applied. In showing 
 that disease exists on its spiritual and real side as a morbid 
 idea, we have driven the animal to his lair, and can now 
 suspend the chase and raise the question of the best method 
 of extermination. A new idea, when it is so administered to 
 an invalid as to be appropriated and to become a fixed mode 
 of thinking, and is not hastily thrown off by a mental excre- 
 tion, renews the entire man, soul and body. Since thought 
 and existence are one and the same, if we change a man's 
 mode of thinking and believing, we modify his whole life, as
 
 72 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 certainly as an alteration in the direction of the wind from 
 west to east will cause the vane on the church-spire to point 
 eastward. But to dislodge from the mind of a patient a 
 morbid idea, that has become fixed and maintains its hold 
 with au obstinate steadfastness, is the most difficult work 
 the intelligent medical practitioner has to perform, and one 
 that few ever undertake to do, hence "They heal the hurt of 
 the daughter of my people slightly," or in part only (Jer. 
 viii : 1 1 ) . To do this requires more skill than to amputate 
 a limb or select the right drug. The common medical prac- 
 tice is like coming to the rescue of a man who has fallen 
 among robbers ; we secure his valuables, but leave the man 
 in the hand of his enemies. To change the way of a 
 patient's thinking, or even our own, might at first seem as 
 much an impossibility as to change the skin of the Ethiopian, 
 or the spots of the leopard. It is not enough to paint the 
 skin of the one, or dye the hair of the other. This is super- 
 ficial. After the return of Berkeley from a journey in 
 France, he was stricken down with a fever. On his re- 
 covery, his friend, Dr. Arbuthnot, wrote to Dean Swift, 
 "Poor philosopher Berkeley has now the idea of health, 
 which was very hard to produce in him ; for he had an idea 
 of a strange fever upon him so strong that it was very hard 
 to destroy it by introducing the contrary one." What the 
 learned and justly celebrated physician meant for a good 
 natured witticism, contains a profounder philosophy of 
 human nature than the medical schools ever teach. We 
 have before shown that the idea of a thing and the thing 
 itself are not two distinct and separate entities, but are an 
 indivisible unity and unbroken whole. The idea, as the 
 German idealists maintain, is the ding an sick, the thing in 
 itself; the object is the phenomenon, the appearance, the 
 shadowy representation of it ; or, as Swedenborg, following 
 the terminology of the Schoolmen, would say, the one is the 
 esse, the other the existere derived from it. This he always
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 73 
 
 affirms is the relation of the soul and its body. (Heavenly 
 Secrets, 10,823.) 
 
 What we must aim at in the treatment of a given malady 
 is permanently to efface the idea and belief of it. If things 
 have existence to us only as we think of them, then to put 
 them out of thought is practically to annihilate them, as we 
 have shown in a previous volume. There are works on the 
 art of memory with directions how to improve the retentive 
 power of that faculty, and these volumes have their value in 
 the education of the young. But what an invalid, who 
 remembers too well and too much, most needs to learn is the 
 art of forgetf ulness, the blessed science of oblivescence. 
 We are told in all works on mental philosophy, that we best 
 and longest remember that on which we often and intently 
 fix the attention. So, on the other hand, in proportion as 
 we cease to attend to anything, or to fix the thoughts upon 
 it, the idea fades from the mind and ceases to be to us an 
 actuality. 
 
 It is oftentimes amusing, as well as mai-vellous, to see 
 what an invalid can do when, for some reason, he forgets 
 his disease. The coming into mind of some more influential 
 thought, so that the idea of disease drops out of conscious- 
 ness, will effect in reality as great results as those about 
 which we read in the advertisements of patent medicines. 
 We were knowing to a case of rheumatic lameness of long 
 standing where the patient, under the diverting influence 
 of an absorbing conversation, was seen to walk for a 
 fourth of a mile without any show of lameness. At length 
 he paused short in the road and exclaimed that he had for- 
 gotten to limp ! and, as it was so late in the journey, he 
 concluded not to begin. An older brother of ours, who was 
 disabled by the severing of the large ligaments of the right 
 ankle, in his wakeful hours could not step his foot on the 
 floor ; yet in a state of somnambulism would go where it 
 would seem well nigh impossible for a person in full wake- J 

 
 74 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 fulness and soundness of limb to transport himself. In the 
 somnambulic state he forgot both his lameness and his body. 
 
 )The inner and real man walked and climbed, and the passive 
 5 body accompanied it. The wife of a tailor in New Hamp- 
 shire, who had been confined to the bed for years as a help- 
 less and hopeless invalid, was awakened in the middle of the 
 night by the flames in her room. The house was on fire, and 
 there was no time for debating the question whether she 
 could rise and walk or could not walk. The all-absorbing 
 thought of the impending danger effaced from her mind the 
 idea of disease, and this suddenly dropped out of conscious- 
 
 / ness, and in spirit she ran out of doors, and the body went 
 with it. In her case the cure was permanent. These cases 
 were not miracles, but facts in harmony with law the sover- 
 
 / eignty of the mind over the body. The time is not in a very 
 remote future when people will be educated in the use of 
 
 / these latent and now dormant, because unused, psychological 
 
 I powers. In a speech, made many years ago in the cit}* of 
 New York by Kossuth, he says that when governor of 
 Hungary, he was at times nailed to his bed by sickness (to 
 use his own expression), but news would come from the 
 army that demanded all the strength of his activity, and in 
 the exercise of that self-originating power of thought that is 
 usually but erroneously called free will, he would say to his 
 body, " Be well," and it obeyed him. This was not merely 
 the command of a despotic will, issuing its ukase to the body, 
 which is as useless as to issue an order to a rock to fly, but it 
 was an act of faith the same faith which has subdued king- 
 doms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the 
 mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the 
 /edge of the sword, and to sum up its sublime effects in a few 
 words crowded with meaning, out of weakness has made men 
 strong. (Heb. xi : 33, 34.) If faith as a causal agent and 
 power will accomplish such results, is the cure of disease by 
 it to be deemed an incredible and impossible achievement?
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 75 
 
 But the oft-repeated question will again arise in the reader's 
 mind, " How am I to get this faith?" The very question 
 involves in it a fundamental mistake. You are not to get it 
 in any way, but to use it. We are looking for what we 
 already possess, like a man who is asked to lift an obstruc- 
 tion out of his path, and he inquires, " Where are my arms 
 with which I can do it ? " Faith is only the action of the\ 
 mind above the plane of sense, with its false and deceptive* 
 appearances. In the atmosphere of the world of both matter 
 and mind, there is a lower and an upper stratum that move 
 in opposite directions. Like an adventurous aeronaut, we 
 must cut the cable of sense that holds us to the earth and its 
 illusions, and we shall rise into a current of thought that 
 will bear us in the opposite direction, away from the West 
 toward the East, the true orient, the home of the rising sun, 
 the origin of things. In the cases mentioned above, the 
 inner man broke through the chrysalis encasement of the 
 senses, and seized the helm and turned the vessel, about to 
 founder in a storm, in the opposite direction. To discover 
 the inward and supreme man, the true self, is to come into 
 the possession of faith. He is invisible and concealed be- 
 hind a thin curtain, and by a signal can be summoned to our 
 aid. The Being whom we call God is the most intimately, 
 present and active force in the world, but is deeply veiled* 
 from sight. 
 
 It must be kept in mind that all causes are absolutely 
 invisible to the external senses. They exist in a realm of 
 being of which the senses are not and cannot be cognizant. 
 It is only effects that are ever discernable to the sensuous 
 degree of the mind or the psychical man. When I exert a 
 certain mental energ}', which we name volition, I raise my 
 arm. The visible motion is but the outward expression of 
 an unseen mental force. So when I move a chair or a table, 
 the power which does it is out of sight. Take as an illustra- 
 tion the apparent movement of one ball by another on a
 
 76 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 billiard table. The first ball is not the cause of the motion 
 of the second, but the real cause lies further back. It origi- 
 nates in the mind of the player. He makes an exertion of 
 will which communicates a motion to the muscles of his arm. 
 This is transmitted to the cue that is held in his hand, and 
 through this it is communicated to the first ball, through that 
 to the second, and so on. But the only cause is a mental 
 force or act which is an invisible spiritual energy. In a way 
 analogous to this God governs the world, and we our bodily 
 organism. We must fix it in our thought as a fundamental 
 axiom that matter in all its modifications, forms, movements, 
 conditions, and qualities, whether in the human body or the 
 world at large, is never anything but an effect, of which 
 some spiritual force is the originating and governing cause. 
 The absolute impossibility and non-existence of physical 
 causation is a prominent article in the creed of the spiritual 
 man. The body can never affect the mind. But turn this 
 affirmation bottom side up and you get the truth. But it is 
 said that if you tie a ligature around the arm or the leg, it 
 will interfere with the circulation and obstruct the healthy 
 action of the limb. This is admitted, but before we surren- 
 der our position we may be allowed to pause and inquire if 
 the cord tied itself, or was it somebody's mind and will that 
 tied it? Does a billiard ball or a boy's marble ever move 
 itself ? It does just as much as the world or the human body 
 ever moves itself. Now the principle of all motion and the 
 realm of causation belong to the "unseen" but real world. 
 And when we are in the interior state, and act from that 
 region of our being, we are in the realm of causation, and 
 the thoughts and volitions of the spirit become themselves 
 causes, especially when they act in harmony with the benev- 
 olent aims of the Universal Mind, of which our minds are 
 only personal limitations. 
 
 We know that one mind can affect another mind, and thus 
 affect the body. This is a demonstrated fact, as much so as
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 77 
 
 any principle of Chemistry. Says Dr. George "VVylcl, " The 
 very common experiment of blindfolding certain individuals 
 and then touching them with one finger, or sometimes willing 
 them without contact, and thus influencing them to act 
 according to your secret thoughts demonstrates the silent 
 action of mind on mind, and through this on the bodies of 
 other persons." ( Theosophy and the Higher Life, p. 27.) 
 I simply recommend this power of the mind, as I have done 
 for twenty-five years, in the cure of disease in ourselves and'\ 
 others. It can be made to inaugurate and accelerate an \ j 
 impulse towards recovery. Do not the above-mentioned 
 interesting psychological phenomena render its use for that 
 purpose rational and worthy of trial ? 
 
 The phenomena mentioned by Dr. Wyld may seem trifling 
 and frivolous. So does the movement of the marbles by a 
 boy in his sports, yet he employs a force like that by which 
 God moves the worlds in their orbits. To raise our curative 
 effort above the appearance of trifling, our silent suggestion 
 may take the form of unspoken prayer, that summons to our 
 aid the Central Power of the universe. We shall illustrate 
 this principle of silent suggestion more fully in our next 
 lesson. 
 
 It only remains in the language of Paul to answer the 
 question, "How may we get faith?" Says the inspired 
 apostle, " Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word 
 of God." (Rom. 3^:17.) The original term for hearing 
 (akoe) means instruction in a derivative sense, the listening i 
 or hearkening to a teacher. But the teacher is the Word of ] 
 God, not a book, but a rema, a flowing out, an emanation from 
 God. The same word is used by Jesus when he affirms that 
 man does not live by bread alone ; in fact, not at all, but by 
 an emanative life and light from God. (Matt, iv :4.) This 
 principle of light and life, this true bread of life, is that t 
 primal emanation from God which we name the Universal 
 Spirit, of which our spirit is an individualized expression.
 
 78 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 "The spirit of man," said Solomon, "is the candle of the 
 Lord, searching all his inwards parts." (Prov. xx : 27.) 
 Now a candle does not in reality shine by its own light, but 
 is a manifestation of a universal luminiferous principle of 
 light. So the spirit of man is a finite limitation of the 
 Universal Spirit, the Christ of Paul, and the true light of 
 every man that cometh into the world. In our worldliness 
 we have covered it with a bushel, an opaque veil of sense. 
 But the precept of the higher wisdom in Jesus is, " Let your 
 light shine." (Matt, v : 16.) It is in a perpetual endeavor, 
 as all light is, to shine, but we prevent it by our impenetra- 
 ble and commercial bushel. We limit and measure it as the 
 merchant does his produce kept on sale. We are enjoined 
 to let our light shine. We are not to institute a long series 
 of efforts and devices to make it shine. We are not to blow 
 "the candle of the Lord" as a man would the smoking 
 embers of his fire, for by that procedure we are in danger of 
 blowing it out. But remove the bushel and assume an atti- 
 tude of listening, which a true disciple always takes, and like 
 the one in Patmos, we shall turn to see the voice that speaks 
 (Rev. i : 12), for it is that inaudible word or emanative light 
 of truth which proceeds from the mouth of God. 
 
 " Hearken, hearken ! 
 Shall we hear the lapsing river 
 And our brother's sighing ever, 
 
 And not the voice of God? "
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 79 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE INCIPIENT IDEA OF RECOVERY, AND WHENCE DOES IT 
 COME? 
 
 THE first indication of recovery from disease is discernible 
 in the consciousness of the patient in the idea, the impres- 
 sion, the belief however faint, that he is recovering and will 
 ultimately get well. This prophetic idea is the initial step 
 up the ladder on which we climb from disease to health. It \ I 
 does not in reality, but only in appearance, follow any favor- 
 able bodily change. It is the herald of the subsequent 
 recuperation of the physical powers. It is anterior to any 
 favorable modification of the bodily symptoms, the John the 
 Baptist in the wilderness of our disordered condition, an- 
 nouncing the approach of the kingdom of God in us. It is' j 
 not an effect of an antecedent physical change, but a cause. \ I 
 The spiritual idea is the forerunner bearing the news of the j 
 coming victory of spirit over matter ; and if the idea is ac- / 
 cepted and finds lodgement in the consciousness, it silently 
 and with divine celerity goes to work to adjust the body into j 
 its outward expression, or to translate the language of heaven 
 into the vernacular of sense. It is the secret Logos, the 
 creative Word, the invisible divine force that in all creation 
 works from within outward. 
 
 But whence comes this sanative idea, this creative thought, 
 this healing belief? It certainly comes from the universal 
 realm of mind, and issues from the spiritual world ol which 
 our minds are a part, for all ideas belong to that boundless 
 realm of life. As that world is in a perpetual endeavor, and 
 has in its nature a conatus to impart good and truth to us, as
 
 80 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 certainly as the all-surrounding atmosphere is by its pressure 
 striving to fill every vacuum, the patient may receive it 
 directly from the Universal Mind, if his soul is held passively 
 open and upward to imbibe and absorb its influx. We know 
 that to whisper in a person's ear will wake him out of sleep, 
 if not as quickly, still as certainly, as to blow a trumpet. So 
 the Logos, the Metatron, or redeeming angel of the Jewish 
 Kabala, the inward voice, whispers in our inner ear to arouse 
 us from the lethargy of the life of sense to the life of the 
 spirit. Even Jesus may thus speak to the true disciple if 
 the inner ear is attuned in harmony with celestial music, and 
 the sheep may still hear the voice of the good shepherd. 
 It is not the Christ who has become dumb ; we are only hard 
 of hearing. Tf we turn the inner ear towards the ever-present 
 Universal Christ, we shall " hear the heart of silence throb 
 with a soundless word," as the mystics of all ages and all lauds 
 have done. The secret Logos, the true light of life, is con- 
 cealed in the depths of our own being. It speaks to men in 
 the advent of a saving idea clothed in silence, a deep and 
 calm revealing. This is not a new doctrine, but a former 
 friend and acquaintance, who has been so long absent from 
 this materialistic generation, that we have forgotten his 
 countenance. It is not a doctrine that belongs to a shallow, 
 religious enthusiasm, but to philosophy as well ; from the 
 Hindu Upanishads down through Sokrates, with his daimo- 
 nion, or inward divine voice, into Christianity, where in the 
 church it has wellnigh been buried out of sight. On this 
 subject the Rev. John Norrib, who reproduced in England 
 the philosophy of Malebranche, when writing about 1690, 
 says that " the Divine Nous, or Eternal Wisdom, is intrinsi- 
 cally with or praesential to the mind, and we see and un- 
 derstand all things in Him. From this it necessarily follows 
 that the right and only method of inquiry after that truth 
 which is perfective, is to consult the Divine Nous or Eternal 
 Wisdom. For this is the region of truth, and here are hid
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 81 
 
 all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It is that great 
 and universal oracle lodged iii every man's breast, whereof 
 the ancient Urim and Thummim (lights and perfections) 
 were an expressive type and symbol. This is reason ; this 
 is conscience; this is truth; this is that light within, so! 
 darkly talked of by some who have by their awkward, un-j 
 toward, and unskilful way of representing it, discredited one > 
 of the noblest theories in the world. But the thing in itself, 
 rightly understood, is true ; and if any man shall yet call it 
 Quakerism or enthusiasm, I shall only make this reply at 
 present, that it is such Quakerism as makes a good part of 
 John's Gospel and Augustine's works. But to return : this, I 
 bay, is that Divine Oracle which we all may and must consult, 
 if vc would enrich our minds with truth that truth which 
 is perfective of the understanding. And this is the method 
 of being truly wise. And this method is no other than what 
 is advised us by the Divine Nous, the substantial Wisdom of 
 God (Prov. viii : 34) : " Blessed is the man that heareth me, 
 watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my 
 doors." And again, says the same substantial Wisdom : 
 "Whoso is simple (sincere, honest) let him turn in hither." 
 (Prov. ix : 4.) And again, " I am the light of the world ; he 
 that followeth me (or as the word more properly signifies, ho 
 that consorts or keeps company with me), walketh not in 
 darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John viii : 12.) 
 
 This, therefore, is the via intelligentioe, the way and 
 method of true knowledge, to apply ourselves to the 
 Divine JVbus, the eternal Wisdom of God. But this is to 
 be found only in that region of our being which is in accord 
 with it, and an inlet to it. 
 
 The initial idea of recovery may come to the patient 
 through the influence of others ; for how much our silent 
 fears and forebodings on the one hand, and our hopes and 
 our faith on the other hand, may have to do with the vary- 
 ing condition of the sick, we do not fully realize. A dis-
 
 82 THI', PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 abled and leaky vessel may be saved from going down and 
 brought safely into port by attaching it to a t trong and well- 
 built steamer. In harmony with this law of sympathy, we 
 find that it was sometimes through the faith of others, rather 
 than that of the patient, that Jesus the Christ found a cure 
 possible. Our individual minds, acting on a higher plane of 
 thought, may be the medium of the transmission to him of 
 the incipient idea of recovery, and our silent sphere may 
 communicate to him a divine therapeutic impression, which 
 will grow into a physiological impulse in the direction of 
 health. A sympathetic friend, with his better thoughts and 
 hopeful atmosphere and words of cheer, adds new fuel to the 
 smouldering embers of my vital fire. His influence snuffs 
 the candle burned down to a smoking wick. As a withered 
 plant may absorb a reviving moisture from the air, so I 
 receive new life from him. In treating a patient for the 
 removal of the morbid idea in his mind, of which the disease 
 is but the outward expression, I know of no better way than 
 to form the true idea of him in my own mind, and set this 
 over against his idea of himself. To one who, judging from 
 the plane of sense, thinks himself sick, he is so to himself ; 
 but to one who, looking deeper, so as to find the real maw, 
 and thinks and knows that the true self is not diseased, to 
 him the man is not sick. Here is a contest of ideas for the 
 mastery, the old battle of Michael, the prince of God, the 
 representative of the Christ-principle or of spirit on one side, 
 and of the dragon on the other, the symbol of the principle 
 of sense, the nephesJi, the old serpent, reproduced on a 
 smaller scale. Here it is an individual soul, rather than the 
 world at large. (Rev. xii: 7-11.) But as our idea is spir- 
 itual, and his is on a lower plane, and as the higher by 
 divine right governs the lower, the unequal contest is not 
 doubtful. "The dragon and his angels fought, but pre- 
 vailed not. And now is come the salvation, and the power, 
 and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his
 
 THE PKIMTHYE MIND-CUKE. 83 
 
 Christ," for the accuser or deceiver (the principle of sense) 
 is cast down. This old war between the spirit and the flesh 
 is not always settled in a day, but if we form the true idea 
 of ourselves and tenaciously maintain this mental position, 
 Jie animal soul and its body will surrender to it in the end. 
 
 It is a doctrine taught in the ancient Hermetic philosophy, 
 and the esoteric science of the East, that there is a Universal 
 Mind. It is enough for our present purpose to say, that this 
 Mind connects all individual minds in a state of sympathy. 
 It is the underlying philosophy of psychometry, or the sus- 
 ceptibility of being affected by the thoughts and feelings of 
 others. For from this Universal Mind, or Greatest Man, as 
 the Swedish seer denominates it, our minds are never sepa- 
 rated, and through it our thought and will impulses are com- 
 municated to others, in a way analogous to that in which 
 sound is supposed to be transmitted from one place to an- 
 other through the atmosphere which unites them. Of this 
 universal mind-principle, Emerson says, in the commence- 
 ment of his Essay on History : " There is one mind common 
 to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same, 
 and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the 
 right of reason, is a freeman of the whole estate. What 
 Plato has thought, he may think ; what a saint has felt, he 
 may feel ; what has at any time befallen any man, he can 
 understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a 
 party to all that is or can be done ; for this is the only and 
 sovereign agent. ... Of this universal mind each individual 
 is one more incarnation." (Exsays, First Series, pp. 11, 12.) 
 
 Every man is not only an inlet of this universal mind, but 
 may be an outlet of it. It not only flows into us, but our 
 individual mind may be a channel through which it may go 
 forth to bless and strengthen others, and that whether they 
 are in the same room with us, or miles away ; for in this 
 universal principle distance is annihilated, and we may attain 
 to that highest triumph of mind, visio in distantia, et actio in
 
 84 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 dislantia, as Schopenhauer calls it, or vision and action inde- 
 pendent of distance. For it is one of the deepest laws of 
 our inner being, that the spirit is always present with the 
 object of thought, and that object tends to become one with it. 
 The mind of others is included in the general mind that com- 
 prises ours also in itself. Our will, faith, and imagination 
 may transmit through it a beneficent and saving impulse, for 
 no man is or can be alone. He is in vital and sympathetic 
 conjunction with the whole realm of mind ; as much so as 
 the air in this room is not sundered from, the air of immen- 
 sity, and it may be renewed from it. It greatly increases 
 our psychological and spiritual power in our efforts to do 
 good and relieve human suffering, to feel that this universal 
 mind (which, when uncontaminated by the general world- 
 life, is the Holy Spirit) lies back of us as a reserved force, 
 to be called into action when the occasion demands it. AVe 
 should so consecrate ourselves to the good of universal being, 
 that we may become an organ of communication between the 
 Universal Divine Life and the diseased and unhappy one to 
 whom we are called to minister. Says Dr. Wyld, in his 
 excellent little book, "The wholesome, pure, and benevolent 
 man or woman, by simply placing the hands on the patient, 
 and calmly desiring the blessing of God, would seem to be- 
 come sometimes a medium for the transmission of spirit tits 1 
 benevolence." (TJieosophy and the Higher Life, p. 12.) 
 There can be no doubt than it was the belief of the primitive 
 ( and Apostolic Church, that a divine, sanative virtue and in- 
 ) fiueuce could be thus imparted to those who were receptive 
 of it. If it were ever done in any age of the world, it can 
 be done now as well. ^ 
 
 By the power of silent suggestion, combined with a sincere 
 desire to impart good and truth, and by vocal utterance if we 
 deeply feel it, we can do much towards dislodging from the 
 mind of an invalid the idea, the belief, the thought of his 
 malady, and with the disappearance of this the body can be
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 85 
 
 left. 10 take care of itself, or rather it can be commended, like 
 the plants of our garden, to the loving care of the Universal 
 Life of nature. Our main point of attack should be on the 
 morbid idea, for if this be expelled from its throne the sceptre 
 will be taken by the higher soul, and convalescence will com- 
 mence. Just as when a vessel has grounded on a dangerous 
 sand-bar at the entrance of a harbor, by throwing over the use- 
 less ballast it will float of itself and by a law of its nature. So 
 when the aeronaut finds himself descending into a swamp, he 
 throws out a sand-bag, and he rises into a higher stratum of 
 the atmosphere. By the power of silent thought, which in its 
 nature is a tacit speech, we can deposit in the fruitful soil of 
 the itnconscious mind of an invalid the living germ of a better 
 condition, which, like the mustard seed of Palestine, will 
 develop into a tree. "We may inoculate him with a sanative 
 contagion. We may insert into his tree of life the bud, the ; 
 living scion, that will unfold into a branch bearing better [ 
 fruit. The spiritual nature of man acting through the will 
 and imagination, and determined to a definite aim by love 
 and faith, is the most realforce in the universe, for thoughts 
 nre not u trifles light as ah*," but are substance and divinely 
 living things. When an individual is in a passive, and con- 
 sequently receptive, state, and is actuated b}- a sincere desire 
 of recovery, he is highly sensitive to our thought and will- 
 impulses, and these may affect the inner ground of his being. 
 Though the impressions we make may not at the time be 
 fdt by him, they are undoubtedly received, and under the 
 proper circumstances will manifest themselves in his improved 
 condition. They are sometimes like characters written with 
 invisible ink, which on exposure to the light and heat of the 
 fire become plainly legible. 
 
 I would not give to the above a factitious value, like the 
 advertisement of a patent nostrum, but may be allowed to 
 say that after experiments with it for nearly a quarter of a 
 ccuinry, in connection with the old occult science of magnet'
 
 86 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CURE. 
 
 ism or the wisdom -lore of the ancient Magi, of which it is a 
 part, I have found it to possess a therapeutic efficiency. 
 There is no method (at least, I humbly confess after long and 
 patient search I have not been able to find one) that will 
 cure everybody and everything without regard to conditions, 
 that sometimes lie beyond our control. Even Jesns, the 
 Christ, did not and does not now scatter cures around him, 
 like a royal prince throwing a handful of coin into a crowd of 
 beggars. \He cured the receptive few, and left the unrecep- 
 \ tive many as they were. Nor is there any system of healing 
 known to the most penetrating eye of spiritual science that 
 can cure a man and leave him to live as he lists. This is a 
 noxious medical heresy, at which we wish to hurl a passing 
 rebuke, for it is either ignorance of all the laws that govern 
 human life, or something worse. If the former, I take back 
 the rebuke ; if it be the latter, I let it stand. Nor is there 
 any mental science of healing the ills that flesh is said to be 
 heir to that a man can learn and successfully apply, irrespec- 
 tive of the degree of his mental attainments and spiritual 
 development. It is possible to give to a student of spiritual 
 philosophy only the alphabet, and he must become in himself 
 all the rest. As the Rosicrucians of the days of old said, 
 " the Rosie Cross becomes and is not made." And the 
 needed spiritual evolution or unfolding is not the result of a 
 single revolution of the earth on its axis, like the abnormal 
 and unsubstantial growth of Jonah's gourd, but may be the 
 slower and surer product of years. But I would not convoy 
 the impression that to become spiritual we must hide away 
 from the world in the unapproachable solitude of mountains, 
 or entomb ourselves alive within the barred enclosure of a 
 monastery. Jesus did not this, and never recommended it. 
 We may grow up with the world and in it, and not be of it. 
 
 To return to the subject of silent suggestion, we remark 
 that it may be employed as an expression of faith in the 
 treatment of ourselves. Based on the doctrine of the triune
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 87 
 
 nature of man, and that thepneuma of the New Testament 
 psychology and the Buddhi of the Hindu philosophy is divine, 
 and that matter is an illusion, we ought to be able to say in 
 thought, and to teach an invalid to say, I AM NOT SICK oil 
 UNHAPPY. The disease is no more a part of myself than the 
 mould on the plant is the same as the plant, or the barnacles 
 on a ship are a part of the ship. The body is no more 
 myself than the clothes I wear, and a rent, a stain, or a patch 
 in my garment does not affect the man. But the truth of 
 which the suggestion is the formulation, to be the most effi- 
 cient, must arise from within. It then becomes the secret 
 Logos, the Vach or sacred speech of the Vedas, the still small 
 voice, the inaudible " word," and has a divine potency in it. 
 This soundless word is the Deus dixit, the Lord said, of the 
 Old Testament and of the Jewish prophets. It is the " lost 
 word " which modern Masonry laments, and for which they 
 try to find a substitute. It is that word or " ineffable name," 
 through which, according to the belief of all nations, wonders ; 
 were wrought, and which Jesus possessed in its perfection. \ 
 The remarkable faith of the centurion consisted in his confi- 
 dence in the saving power of this word. " Speak the word 
 only, and my child (or servant) shall be healed." (Matt. 
 viii : 5-10.) If we have not this inner or occult word, we do ( 
 but little in the cure of disease by spiritual forces and 
 agencies, and we must cover our face with a mantle and 
 stand in the opening of the cave, as Elijah did, until it 
 comes to us. 
 
 There is above us, and around us, and in us a realm of 
 pure spirit, and inhabited by spiritual beings as much above 
 our ordinary humanity that contributes to the swelling of the 
 volume of the census as they are above the lower order ol 
 animals. It was a favorite conception of Plato that thinking i 
 is asking. Thought directed to the universal world of spirit 
 becomes a silent interrogative impulse, and a response is 
 echoed back in a spiritual idea or thought in our miuds.
 
 88 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 Hence the philosophical disquisitions of Plato took the 
 dialogue form. If the reader should feel that thought 
 addressed to this boundless realm of life is like speaking into 
 vacancy, let him think of Jesus, and your cogitative aim has 
 rhit the central mark, for he, according to Paul, has been 
 exalted to its summit and stands at its head. Through him 
 as a point of contact we come into communion with the high- 
 est realm of life and thought. We drink at the fountain- 
 head of pure spiritual knowledge. I cannot better close this 
 somewhat protracted lesson than in the language of that 
 noble man, Keshub Chunder Sen : " As pilgrims we approach 
 the great saints, and commune with them in spirit, killing 
 the distance of time and space. We enter into them, and 
 they enter into us. In our souls we cherish them, and imbibe 
 then* character and principles. If they are not personally 
 present with us, they may be spiritually drawn into our life 
 and character. They may be made to live and grow in us. 
 This is a normal psychological process, to which neither 
 science nor theology need take exception. I believe philos- 
 ophers have not noticed one thing, the absorbent character 
 of the soul. It is a wonderfully impressionable substance. 
 An hour in the company of the saints is enough. The whole 
 heart is revolutionized. All Scriptures bear testimony to 
 this blessed influence." (Oriental Christ, by P. C. Mozoom- 
 dar, p. 128.) 
 
 " Each creature holds an insular point in space, 
 Yet what man stirs a finger, breathes a sound ; 
 But all the multitudinous beings round 
 In all the countless worlds, with time and place 
 For their conditions, down to the central base, 
 Thrill, haply, in vibration and rebound, 
 In full antiphony, by a common grace ? 
 I think this sudden joyance, which illumines 
 A child's mouth sleeping, unaware, may run 
 From some soul newly loosened from earth's tombs. 
 I think, this passionate sigh, which half begun,
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 89 
 
 I stifle back, may reach and stir the plumes 
 Of God's calm angel standing in the sun." 
 
 (Mrs. Browning.) 
 
 The universal spiritual realm of light and life is not reluc- 
 tant to impart, but is waiting to give of its exhaustless stores 
 as soon as we become admissive of its higher life. Jesus 
 but gives voice to it when he says, " I have many things to 
 say unto you ; but ye are not able to bear them now. How- ( 
 beit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you 
 into all the truth." (John xvi : 12, 13.) The sole condi- I 
 tion of receiving is a willingness to receive, and a disposition 
 beneficently to use. Then by assuming an attitude of pas- 
 sivity, or mental inertia, toward it, we may absorb it, as the 
 earth imbibes the light and heat of the sun.
 
 90 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 WHAT IS IT TO BE SPIRITUAL? AND HOW MAT WE 
 BECOME SO? 
 
 THERE is often in the minds of people only a vague idea of 
 what it is to be spiritual. It is to them an indefinite something 
 or " somewhat," which they are feeling round in the dark to 
 find, and would hardly recognize it, even if they accidentally 
 laid their hands upon it. It is among religious people 
 usually confounded with a certain devotional frame of mind, 
 and sometimes is viewed as an ecstatic state of the emotional 
 nature. But these may exist, and the subject of those expe- 
 riences may not have attained to the life of the spirit. They 
 
 v may be only the bubbles, painted by the sun with the hues of 
 the rainbow, and floating on the current of the lower soul. 
 What is it to be spiritual ? how ma}- 1 become so ? are ques- 
 tions of the gravest practical importance to every human 
 being. The great spiritual philosopher of the North answers 
 the question by saying that, to think spiritually is to free 
 
 I thought from the limitations of time and space. In the 
 Buddhistic philosophy, these inquiries are answered by teach- 
 
 \ ing that to be spiritual is to be liberated from the bondage 
 
 j of matter. In the Christianity of Jesus, the inquiry is met 
 
 with the answer, "Judge not according to appearance (oi/as, 
 
 sight, sense), but judge righteous judgment," which is the 
 
 Sanscrit rita, the real truth. (John vii : 24.) This freedom 
 
 from the bondage of matter and sense is to be accomplished 
 
 not merely by ascetic mortifications, which are of no value 
 
 j except so far as they give us self-control in the fullest sense 
 
 1 of the word, but b}' reaching a higher mental position, the
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 91 
 
 standing-ground of faith, from which material things are / 
 seen and felt as illusions ; that is, as an evanescent and de- 
 ceptive appearance. To emancipate the mind from the fet- 
 ters of sense, is to be free from disease and sin in the 
 Platonic and New Testament signification of the word. This 
 deliverance, together with the quenching of the lower desires,^ 
 and a consecration to a life of love and use, is the Nirvana 
 of Buddhism, and the kingdom of the heavens of Jesus. 
 This can never be reached on earth (for it is a state attainable 
 here and now) , so long as we view matter as the most real | 
 thing in the universe. With this view as a confirmed and 
 governing conviction, we can no more become spiritual than 
 we can sail our ships of commerce in the air. In the most 
 exalted moments of our religious life and feeling we are 
 sometimes borne upward above the plane of sense, and 
 earthly things seem vanity and delusion, " an empty show." 
 But these experiences are often only transient moods, mere 
 flashes of spiritual light in the starless darkness above and 
 around us, instead of permanently established modes of 
 thinking. In these ecstatic visions, which have no unshaken 
 basis on which to rest, but are supported only by our ever- 
 varying emotions, and a slender devotional framework, we 
 soon again descend to the dead level of the plane of sense. 
 Thus we alternately rise above the earth and sink into the 
 dismal swamp of materialism. To be carried up by a mere 
 devotional frame of mind, as in a balloon which is in constant 
 danger of collapsing, is a very different position from that 
 occupied by the man who has built his habitation and erected 
 his observatory upon the summit of a mountain, which is an 
 immovable point above the clouds, where the life of the heav- 
 ens ever meets and mingles with our lower conditions. A 
 philosophical idealism, of which Bishop Berkeley is one of the 
 best exponents, when inwrought into the very texture of the 
 mind, furnishes a secure and permanent foundation for a 
 spiritual mode of thinking. It is the spontaneous philosophy
 
 92 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 of the interior man, as the current materialistic science is of 
 the psychical or natural mind. The eagle is at home in the 
 lofty atmospheric heights ; the earth-worm is equally so in 
 the mud ; and both are useful A their proper place. " The 
 i great lesson," says Professcfr.jFiske, "which Berkeley taught 
 I mankind was, that what we call material phenomena are 
 / really the products of consciousness cooperating with some 
 Unknown Power (not material) existing beyond conscious- 
 ness. We do very well to speak of ' matter ' in common 
 parlance, but all that the word really means is a group of 
 qualities which have no existence apart from our minds. 
 Modern philosophers have quite generally accepted this con- 
 clusion, and every attempt to overthrow Berkeley's reasoning 
 has hitherto resulted in complete and disastrous failure. . . 
 We are thus led to a view of things not very unlike the views 
 entertained by Spinoza and Berkeley. We are led to the in- 
 ference that what we call the material universe is but the 
 manifestation of infinite Deity to our finite minds. Obvi- 
 ously, on this view, matter the only thing to which mate- 
 rialists concede real existence is simply an orderly phan- 
 tasmagoria, and God and the soul, which the materialists 
 regard as the fictions of the imagination, are the only 
 conceptions that answer to real existences." ( Unseen World, 
 jpp. 51, 52.) 
 
 When we come to a clear perception and intuitive convic- 
 tion of this, a new and higher existence has dawned upon 
 us. We have attained to the all-satisfying truth, and are 
 made free. (John viii:32.) In that day the interior soul 
 of man has left the circumference of being, with all its 
 unsubstantial shadows, and has moved up an immense dis- 
 tance toward the Central Life and Supreme Reality. Such 
 a person is not of the world, even as Jesus the Christ was 
 not of the world. (John xvii : 14-16.) He can now act 
 upon the body from within, as God perpetually operates in 
 nature.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 93 
 
 It is the doctrine of idealism that matter exists only in 
 mind. This was the doctrine of Berkeley, Fitche, Hegel, and 
 Emerson, and is well stated by Rev. Arthur Collier, a con- 
 temporary of Berkeley. In the introduction to the " Clavis 
 "Universalis," he observes: "I suppose I need not tell my 
 reader that when I affirm that all matter exists in mind, after 
 the same manner that body exists in place, I mean the very 
 same as if I had said, that mind is the place of body, and so 
 its place, as that it is not capable of existing in any other 
 place, or in place after any other manner." 
 
 Matter, inclusive of the human bodj', exists for us only in 
 the mind, and in the mind on the plane of sense, its lowest i i 
 range of action. To elevate our consciousness above that I 
 basement story of our being, is to be clear of it. 'This is | 
 faith. We would ask the reader, If all your five senses 
 were closed or were quiescent, would not matter to you be 
 deprived of all its properties, and would there remain for you 
 any external world or any physical body ? The same is true 
 of physical disease. It is the office of faith, as defined by 
 Plato, and as the term is used by Jesus, to raise us to a 
 higher plane of thought and perception, where disease as an 
 external entity disappears. I would not affirm that to attain 
 to this spiritual mode of thought is an easy acquirement, nor 
 would I affirm that it is next to an impossible achievement to 
 reach it. To apprehend it as theoretically true is not diffi- j \ 
 cult. And most of us remain here looking up rather than 
 going up. To the great mass of mankind, if they ever think 
 of it at all, it is only a promised land seen in the distance 
 from the mountain summit of our highest spiritual experi- 
 ences. The humanity of Jesus climbed up to this celestial 
 height, and also to some extent that of Gautama, the Buddha. 
 Jesus, as an incarnation of the universal Christ, represents 
 the whole of humanity, and hence he says, "If I be lifted 
 up, I will draw all men unto me." (John xii : 32.) In the 
 Grecian Mysteries, whose original aim was to lead the
 
 94 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 initiate from a mere external and sensuous plane of thought 
 to the profoundest spiritual attainments, the fifth and last 
 stage was denominated friendship and interior communion 
 with God. This was the holy of holies of their spiritual 
 temple, in which man reaches that summit of thought where 
 there are but two truths in the universe, the All, and the 
 nothing. Christianity aims to conduct its sincere disciples 
 to the same goal, not by a mechanism of rites and ceremo- 
 nies, nor by an unenlightened superstition and shallow enthu- 
 siasm, but by an orderly evolution of our spiritual nature. 
 The nearer we approach it, the more our spiritual power and 
 psychological force are augmented. It has been univer- 
 sally taught in the ancient spiritual philosophy, that the 
 inmost soul of man is the outcome, or offspring, or offshoot, 
 of the Universal Soul, and is a manifestation under finite 
 limitations of the first creative Principle. If this is so (and 
 it is intuitively true) , then the inner nature of man must of 
 necessity share in a degree the attributes of the world-creating 
 Power. It is made into the image of God, and so far is 
 God. "We can form no idea of God that is not to some 
 extent realized in us. The idea is in us and a part of us. 
 "We can worship no God that is not bounded by our concep- 
 
 j tions, and we can conceive of nothing in Him that is not 
 actually existent in the spiritual and divine powers which 
 are either active or latent in us. The highest image we 
 
 \ can form of Him is only what we are capable of becoming. 
 
 II would not affirm that this is all of God, but only all that 
 we can know of Him. Just so far as we know God, we 
 become God, and can to the same extent do divine works. 
 
 As all matter exists only in mind, it follows that all modi- 
 fications of the mind effect changes in that appearance which 
 we call matter. This is an invariable law. The same object 
 is never seen twice alike ; as, for example, the ocean, the 
 mountains, or the forest. Matter is an illusion or deceptive 
 appearance that is perpetually changing with our ever-vary-
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CTTKE. 95 
 
 ing mental states. It is a sublime truth of the old phi- 
 losophy, that the world is created through man, and every- ( 
 thing in it corresponds to something in man. There is a 
 close relationship between the life of the world and the life 
 of man. We impress our character on our surroundings, or, 
 to use a fashionable word, our environment. The latter does 
 not make us, but we give character to it. It is said that 
 when man fell, or descended from spirit to sense, the ground 
 was cursed for his sake. So Milton says : 
 
 " Earth felt the wound, and nature sighing through all 
 Her works, gave signs of woe that all was lost." 
 
 As life is developed, the world is seen to be more and 
 more. It is fair to suppose that the highest animal does 
 not see as much in the world as we see. Take an idiot, 
 and suppose him to rise in intellect until he becomes a 
 sage ; the earth keeps even pace with him. Suppose the 
 sage gradually to sink into idiocy ; the earth descends 
 with him, becoming less and less, until it disappears. 
 Hence the remark, so often made, that we shall die, but 
 the world will live on, is not strictly true. The real truth 
 is, the world will die, or become evanescent to our exter- 
 nal senses, that is, the world that is in us, but we shall con- 
 tinue to live in a higher world, that goes forth from us, 
 and through us. The same law holds good in regard to the 
 relation of mind and body. The body is but a part of the 
 external world, and both are to us what we think and believe 
 them to be. 
 
 If we glance at our very ancient diagram, which symboli- 
 cally represents the triune nature of man, the first triangle 
 represents the spirit, as a personal limitation of the grand 
 unity of spirit, and with its point downwards, its tendency 
 to descend. It is masculine or active. The lower triangle 
 represents the animal soul, which is considered in its relation 
 to spirit as feminine or reactive, and in nearly all languages
 
 96 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CUBE. 
 
 the word is feminine in form, as the Greek psyche, and the 
 Latin anima. With the point upward it represents the ten- 
 dency inherent in its nature, to ascend to meet the spirit. 
 The union of the two, as in the two interlaced triangles, is 
 significant of the highest condition of man on earth, the con- 
 junction of the soul and spirit to form the interior man. The 
 two triangles thus interlaced, are, according to Jacob 
 Behmen, the highest religious symbol. It signifies not only 
 the union of the spirit and soul, but also of God and man. 
 
 1\The lower triangle, with its point upward, is aspiration, 
 /Which meets a response in inspiration represented by the 
 jupper triangle with its point downward. The two together 
 are the "Blazing Star," the "Star in the East," of the 
 Magi, whose significance was fully realized in Jesus. They 
 represent the true ideal state, the " celestial-natural" condi- 
 tion, as it was denominated by Swedenborg, the true life of 
 faith, in which the higher light of the spirit perpetually cor- 
 rects the illusions or deceptive appearances of the senses. 
 i Faith is not merely an intellectual state, but intellect in 
 [ | union with feeling, which is life, life on a higher plane of 
 thought. Belief and life, in their etymological sense, seem 
 to be the same. To believe is to live, as the first syllable is 
 only intensive, and the latter from the Danish lever, the 
 German leben, the Dutch lieven, all meaning life or to live. 
 To believe is a movement of our interior life towards the 
 state which is the object of desire and of faith. To believe 
 that we are well or are becoming so, turns the current of our 
 life and of the Universal Life in that direction. To believe 
 the truths of the spirit in opposition to the illusions of sense, 
 is salvation in the complete signification of the word. These 
 truths are the " blood of the Lamb," by which we overcome. 
 (Rev. xii: 11.) It was a peculiarity of the old philosophy, 
 that they expressed and preserved the highest truths under 
 the covering of appropriate symbols. In the original zodiac, 
 which signifies the circle or cycle of life, there were only ten
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 97 
 
 signs, answering to the ten Sephiroth or emanations of the 
 Kabala. The first was Aries the Lamb, and this answers to 
 the Christ of Paul, the Universal Spirit. By the blood of the 
 Lamb is therefore signified the living truths of the spirit, 
 which is a meaning as fixed in the science of correspondence 
 as the definitions of geometry. In this blood, which is per- 
 petually shed for the many, we may wash our robes and 
 make them white. It is this, and this alone, which can save 
 the soul from its illusions, its sin, and disease. To save a 
 man from bodily disease, without an effort to save the soul, 
 is to act like a fireman who should rush into a burning build- 
 ing to rescue a sleeping inmate, and should only seize his 
 clothes, and leave the man as he was. Not so did Jesus the 
 Christ, who illustrates in his beneficent life the truth that 
 the highest function of a healer is to be a doctor or teacher. 
 And the highest and most saving truths we can dispense, are 
 not those that we learn from books and teachers, but are the 
 clear shining of the " Star in the East" within us. The 
 Arabian alchemist, Abipili, utters these golden words: " I 
 admonish thee, whoever thou art, that desirest to dive into 
 the inmost parts of nature ; if that thou seekest thou findest 
 not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee." When 
 we act mentally upon an invalid or upon ourselves from the 
 spiritual world within us, we act in concert with the intelli- 
 gent forces that control nature, and can determine them to 
 the healing of disease, or at least accelerate their action. It i 
 is the divine order that spirit should govern matter ; or, as ' 
 it was expressed in the ancient metaphysical science, that 
 the heavens should rule. (Dan. iv : 26.) 
 
 The person who desires to become spiritual and acquire 
 the power to cure disease by mental forces, in order to make 
 money and become rich, has parted companj- with Jesus^ ( 
 and lost his way at the very commencement of his journey. 
 He has switched off upon a side-track, and has accidentally 
 stepped on board a freight train that is bound in the opposite
 
 98 THE PRIMITIVE MINU-CURE. 
 
 direction, and has missed the passenger car which has moved 
 on due East. He who desires to make money out of spirit- 
 ual science, is like the man who vainly sighs for the wings 
 of a dove that he might use them in wading in the mud. 
 The wings of the soul of which Plato speaks are not given 
 for that use. The truly spiritual man or mind does not 
 desire to sell a minimum of spiritual truth for a maximum 
 price in money ; but rather imparts to all who will receive 
 without money and without price. Spiritual gifts, among 
 which is the gift of healing, God has never thrown into the 
 markets of the world. The first recorded attempt to buy 
 a spiritual gift was a disastrous failure, and the speculator 
 in heavenly things purchased to himself only a severe re- 
 buke. (Acts viii: 20.) To bringdown the celestial life of 
 the spirit into the disgusting scramble for wealth, is like 
 inviting our angelic visitors to aid us in ditching our swamp. 
 The most spiritual men the world has ever held, including 
 Jesus, have been poor, in the ordinary sense of the word. 
 But while poor in that sense, they possess all things. They 
 may have no legal title to the land, but they own the whole 
 landscape. They have in themselves as an everlasting in- 
 heritance all that the goodly things of earth spiritually 
 signif y and represent. They seek first the kingdom of God 
 and its righteousness (right thinking) , and all other things 
 are thrown in, like the wrapping paper of the merchant. 
 (Mat. vi:33.) Gold and silver are symbols of celestial 
 good and truth. Having in ourselves the latter we possess 
 all that is of value in the former. This is the teaching of 
 Jesus the Christ, and is Christian science and true meta- 
 physics. This word was introduced into philosophy by 
 Aristotle, and is composed of two Greek words which signify 
 <$& r physics. In a system of education, it was supposed 
 that the study of physics, or of visible nature, came first, 
 and the study of the spiritual side of nature and of the mind 
 came last, or, as Paul expresses it, first that which is natural
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 9& 
 
 or psj-chical, then that which is spiritual. (I Cor. xv : 46.) 
 To seek the achievement of spiritual development, in order 
 to employ our powers in making money, is a total perversion 
 of the divine order of life, and such a person becomes 
 spiritually blind by an immutable law of our being. If we 
 are now in the full light of the noonday sun, when the earth 
 is fully inverted and we with it, we find ourselves in mid- 
 night darkness. So the spirit of man, which is full to over- 
 flowing of an irrepressible love and good will to all men, is 
 the light side. The selfish animal soul is the dark side. 
 We must see to it that our microcosm, or little world, does 
 not turn bottom side up, but ever remain in its true position. 
 
 BE TRUE. 
 
 " Thou must be true thyself, 
 If thou the truth wouldst teach; | 
 
 Thy soul must overflow, if thou 
 Another's soul wouldst reach; j 
 
 It needs the overflow of heart 
 To give the lips full speech. 
 
 *' Think truly, and thy thoughts 
 Will the world's famine feed ; 
 
 Speak truly, and each word 
 Will be a fruitful seed 
 
 Live truly, and thy life will be 
 A great and noble creed." 
 
 e leea ; i 
 >rd of thine 
 
 'ill be 
 

 
 100 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 SPIRITUAL TRUTH THE BEST REMEDY FOR DISEASE. 
 
 As disease exists only on the mental plane of sense, as 
 we have before shown, and this is the region in us which is 
 subject to illusions and deceptive appearances, and as the 
 disease itself for which we are often called to administer a 
 remedy is in many cases only a sensuous seeming, so spirit- 
 ual truth, which is only another name for faith, is the most 
 efficient remedy in nature. It is a specific having a divine 
 sanative virtue and potency hi it. This should never be 
 forgotten. Spiritual truth expresses the reality of things, or 
 / that which is, and when vocalty expressed, or silently sug- 
 ( gested and by a thought impulse projected into the mind of 
 an invalid, is an infallible antidote to that sin (or error, or 
 false belief) , which is the underlying cause of disease, which 
 is often unreal and in itself no-thing. In the case of a given 
 disease, we are first to find out what is false and unreal in 
 regard to it in the mind of the patient, and all this counts 
 for nothing. It is a minus quantity. Subtract it from the 
 diagnosis, and there is often no remainder nothing which 
 amounts to a concrete reality. Physicians frequently feel j 
 this, but may deem it inexpedient to say so. To ascertain 
 what a so-called nervous patient thinks about his own case, 
 is in nine cases out of ten the best statement of the sensuous 
 delusions which are to be corrected. This he is only tooi 
 willing to give us, and to pour it into the listening ear of | 
 /every visitor. His statement of his condition is the one to 
 be combated, and his confirmed ideas are to be expunged 
 from his mind not by reasoning merely, for that often
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 101 
 
 only confirms him in them. His reason (so called) is the 
 head of the serpent, that the seed of- the woman, or the 
 truths of wisdom, is to crush. Having heard his statement 
 of the case, he should be instructed ever after to keep silent, 
 as it is a law of our being, that to express a feeling in words <., 
 gives intensity and fixedness to it. When I say ' ' I am 
 sick," my thought or existence is run into a different mould, | 
 from what it is when I say " I am well." 
 
 How a change in our mode of thought reaches the body 
 through an intermediate form, organism, orinedium, is told us 
 by Swedenborg, which we quote not as an authority, but as an 
 illustration. He says : "There was a philosopher who ranked 
 among the more celebrated and sane, who died some years 
 ago, with whom I discoursed concerning the degrees of life, 
 and that one form is more interior than another, but that one 
 exists and subsists from another ; also that when an inferior 
 or exterior form is dissolved, the superior or inferior form still 
 lives. It was further said that all operations of the mind are 
 variations of the form ; in the purer substances these varia- 
 tions are in such perfection that they cannot be described ; 
 and that the ideas of thought are nothing else ; and that these 
 variations exist according to changes of the state of the affec- 
 tions. How the most perfect variations are given in the 
 purer forms may be concluded from the lungs, which fold 
 themselves variously, and vary their forms according to every 
 expression of speech, every note of a tune, every motion of 
 the body, and according to every state of thought and affec- 
 tion; what then must be the case with interior things which, 
 in comparison with so large an organ, are in the most perfect 
 state? The philosopher confirmed what was said, and de- 
 clared that such things had been known to him when he lived 
 in the world, and that the world should apply philosophical 
 things to such uses, and should not be intent on bare forms 
 of expression, and on disputes about them, and thus labor in 
 the dust." (Arcana Celestia, 6326.)
 
 102 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 According to this philosophy, when expressed more clearly, 
 a change of thought as an act of faith, or imagination, or 
 any modification of the mind, on its higher plane adjusts 
 the form of the intellectual soul into its representative image, 
 and this latter moulds the animal soul-principle and psychical 
 body into its expression, and through this it passes outward 
 to the physical organism. So a morbid and fixed idea forms 
 the lower soul into its image, and this by a law of corre- 
 spondence changes the outward body into a condition that 
 expresses the idea on a material plane. Here it can go no 
 further, as it has reached the outside boundary of existence. 
 The term " bod} 7 ," in its radical sense, signifies that which is 
 fixed or set. Hence the human body, in its different condi- 
 tions, is always only the fixedness of an idea. This is also 
 true of all matter, as all the endless variety of plants. They 
 are divine ideas printed in the book of nature by the demi- 
 urgic intellect. So an act of faith, or a perception of spirit- 
 ual truth, by supplanting the idea of disease, passes outward 
 into a psychical or soul manifestation, and finally is translated 
 into a bodily expression. Since every idea of the mind forms 
 the soul and interior body, which are the inward man, into 
 its expression, it has been affirmed, and is eternall}' true, 
 that in the other life, as we call it, the whole quality of a 
 man is exquisitely perceived from a single idea of his thought, 
 for every idea is an image of the man. (Arcana Celestia, 
 301.) And by those whose inner vision is unveiled, and who 
 have emancipated the intellectual soul from the body, the 
 same can be seen now. When the Christ as the primal Light 
 and Life comes to a man, and he may come every day and 
 not merely at the end of the world to us, the veil of sense 
 is removed. 
 
 " He comes from thickest films of vice, 
 
 To clear the mental ray, 
 And on the orbs oppressed with night, 
 
 To pour celestial day."
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 103 
 
 If we have a man's ruling idea and his central love, we 
 have the whole man, all that he is or can be for the time 
 being ; for all his thoughts and feelings revolve around these, 
 and never break entirely loose from their orbit. Hence Emer- 
 son very truly says, " The key to every man is his thought. 
 Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he 
 obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. 
 He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which 
 commands his own." (Essays, First Series, p. 241.) In 
 having your picture taken, the artist always recommends you 
 to have some pleasant thought in your mind, because this 
 gives you the best expression. But thought affects not only 
 the face, but the whole body. Would it not be well for some 
 nervous invalids to sit for their picture several times a day, 
 until they become themselves the fixed and finished picture 
 of their pleasant thought? "Every distinct idea of man, 
 and every particular affection, is an image and effigy of him, 
 even as to its minutest fraction ; that is, there is something 
 therein which partakes, in a nearer or remote degree, of all 
 his intellect and of all his will " (or love) . (Heavenly Secrets, 
 803.) A man's ruling idea, to the inner eye, is a spiritual 
 image of the real man, far more so than our picture taken by 
 the photographic artist is a representation of ourselves. For 
 in the one there is life, while the other is but an inanimate 
 shadow. But we must never lose sight of this deep law of 
 our being, that all ideas have an inherent tendency to actualize 
 or externalize themselves in the corporeal organism. 
 
 The science of modern times has never appreciated the 
 power of intense thought directed to a person with a benefi- 
 cent end or healing intention. Medical science admits the 
 influence of the imagination of a patient upon himself, but \ 
 wholly ignores the influence of our imagination and faith 
 upon others, which is by no means an unimpoi'tant matter. 
 The mind can thus act at any distance. In the realm of / . 
 spirit, thought is a movement (so to speak) of the spirit, a
 
 104 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 transportation or extension of the spirit, a being " carried 
 away in the spirit " to the place or person that is the object 
 
 _, of thought. Our inner being accompanies its thought, so 
 that wherever the thought is, there the spirit is, and there it 
 can act ; for it is the spirit that thinks, and its thought is in- 
 
 - separable from it. This fact is recognized by Charlotte Bront6, 
 and illustrated in her novel of "Jane Eyre." She makes 
 her heroine hear the voice of her lover, calling her name, 
 though they were far apart in space ; and she was so strongly 
 impressed with its reality that she leaves all and goes to him, 
 finds him blind and suffering, and needing her love and 
 sympathy, and really calling her in spirit. Such a phenom- 
 enon is not wholly a fiction, and much less a miracle. It 
 comes within the domain of the laws of the mind. Such 
 mental telegraphy is an every-day occurrence among the true 
 adepts of spiritual philosophy. 
 
 The proclamation of the spiritual truth in regard to a given 
 malady, will have more effect in removing its cause and weak- 
 ening its hold, than the whole list of drugs described in the 
 United States Dispensatory. Few diseases can long with- 
 stand the light of truth, but will silently disappear before it 
 like birds of night at the approach of day, or like the mists 
 of the morning before the rising sun. The man who habit- 
 ually occupies the idealistic and spiritual plane of thought, 
 and can speak with confidence from that commanding posi- 
 tion, can say with Jesus, " The words that I speak unto you 
 are spirit and are life." (John vi:63.) And his utter- 
 ances or tacit affirmations addressed to the patient will have 
 a sanative and redeeming potency far beyond the prescrip- 
 tions of the superficial learning of the medical schools, though 
 I would not undervalue a true medical science. 
 
 (The advantage we gain in speaking to a patient in thought 
 rather than by vocal utterance, is that in the former case 
 we are met by no opposition of will, no tendency to question 
 and raise objections, and what we thus say to him reaches
 
 TUB PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 105 
 
 the interior degree of his being, whereas a verbal utterance 
 may penetrate no further than the external plane of his 
 mind, or even lodge in the external ear. The arrow of truth 
 falls into the morass, and does not pass to the flowery fields 
 beyond. When we speak to a patient in thought and in 
 silent prayer ) we touch the hidden spring of his life if he is 
 in a condition of receptivity, and thus filter the stream at its 
 fountain. We can thus act upon him independent of distance 
 and all material limitations and restraints, if we have learned 
 to speak the inner language. In the system of Jesus, as sin, 
 in the sense of an error or fallacious idea (and not merely 
 what we call wickedness, for in the original that is expressed 
 by another word) , in the mind, was recognized as the cause 
 of disease and as constituting its spiritual essence, so truth 
 was deemed to possess the highest therapeutic efficacy. 
 This is to be spoken in love, according to the direction of 
 Paul (Eph. iv : 15) , and in the same spirit we should tena- 
 ciously adhere to it. Such truth is not an empty abstraction 
 or " airy nothingness," but the most vitally real and poten- 
 tial thing in the universe. It inherits God's loving omnipo- 
 tence, from whom it is perpetually born. All forces are 
 spiritual, and a spiritual truth is a divine force. As Paul 
 asserts, "we can do nothing against the truth." (II Cor. 
 xiii : 8.) That will hold its own against all odds, and in the 
 end have everything its own way. Single-handed and alone, 
 it is more than a match in its silent omnipotence against a 
 noisy mob of delusions. In dispensing truth as a curative 
 agency we are not dealing in empty abstractions (for truth 
 is never sundered from the Divine Mind) , nor in the infini- 
 tesimal triturations of matter, but in the divinest and most 
 substantial force in the whole realm of nature. 
 
 There is a marvellous power in a living thought, especially ; 
 when it proceeds from the theoccntric region of our being ; ( 
 and this power is becoming recognized by science. Says 
 J. II. Stirling (the translator and commentator of Hegel) in
 
 106 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 his triumphant reply to Huxley's " Physical Basis of Life," 
 " Throughout the entire universe thought is the controlling 
 sovereign, nor does matter anywhere refuse its allegiance. So 
 it is in thought too that man has his patent of nobility, and 
 believes that he is created in the image of God, and himself 
 a freeman of infinitude." (Half Hours with Modern Scien- 
 tists, p. 125.) A friend of ours, a physician of Boston, in a 
 letter, writes, " It occurred to me a short time since that we 
 should think well of all, and not ill of any, because the 
 thought of another has some power to make him what we 
 think him, not only physically but morally. Momentous 
 realities are involved in our thoughts. How little of such 
 realities are realized by the majority." 
 
 He who has attained to the power of spiritual thought has 
 been anointed and crowned a king. This is the Kabalistic 
 " crown of life." The ruling idea of the minds of such men 
 as Appolonius of Tyana, who was, I think, nearly contempo- 
 rary with Jesus, was the rightful sovereignty of the spirit, 
 the supreme and real man, over all below it in the scale of 
 life. (Gen. i : 2G-28.) An intelligent apprehension of this 
 truth, and the feeling of it gave him his marvellous power, as 
 it did also to Pythagoras and to Jesus. Such men are not 
 mere spectators of nature, mere lookers on, but control it 
 and make it subservient to their will. Jesus was a king 
 (John xviii : 36-38) , and so is every man in the unseen 
 depths of his spirit, wherein lies the image or idea of God. 
 But it is of little use to be a king and not know it. To have 
 I the sovereign power of spirit, and not to know it or be con- 
 ' scious of it, is all the same as not to have it. And we can 
 know it only by faith, which is " the evidence of things not 
 seen." 
 
 On the sovereign power of the mind, Dr. Nichols, a distin- 
 guished chemist, very truly and eloquently says, " The mind 
 of man is the great overpowering force in the world, a prin- 
 i ciple dominating everything. No form of energy acting
 
 THE rRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 107 
 
 under law has escaped its control, no physical forces have 
 become its master ; they all combined bow to its behests and 
 become its servants. It must be a supernatural principle, a 
 distinct creation, a divine essence, a mighty force, standing 
 apart, and designed to stand apart, from all the other forces 
 of nature." (Whence? What? and WJiere? By James B. 
 Nichols, M.D., p. 12.) 
 
 The inquiry will be raised, " Of what use is it to think the 
 real truth of a person unless he is influenced to think the 
 same of himself?" In answer to this, let it be observed that 
 thought spontaneously takes a fixed form in an idea, which 
 is a thing of life. When we think of a patient near or far 
 off in space, if we think spiritually or in a state of abstraction 
 from the body, and hold steadfastly to our thought of Mm, it 
 will be transferred to him if he is receptive, and will assume 
 form in his mind as an idea the same as in ours. If we 
 recognize the truth that his spiritual and real self, the immor- 
 tal Ego, is not sick or unhappy, the thought will take form 
 in his mind as an idea and belief, and this makes it to him a 
 reality so long as the idea and belief remain. Swedenborg 
 affirms that when an angel of heaven determines his sight, 
 that is, his thought, to another, his interiors are transferred 
 and communicated to him according to his state of receptiv- 
 ity. (Heavenly Secrets, 10,130.) The same is true of our 
 spirit, or of man as a spirit. When we think of a person the 
 real truth in regard to him, that the real self is not invaded 
 by disease, and think this with a feeling of its truth and with a 
 beneficent desire to do him good, our " interiors" are trans- 
 ferred to him through the medium of the universal mind, and 
 he thinks from us, but all the time not knowing otherwise 
 than that he thinks wholly from himself. The thought will 
 arise in him, " I am not sick." He is, in a certain true 
 sense, inspired by us, and caused to think and feel above 
 his ordinary level. This supplies the missing link that con- 
 nects our thinl ing with the mind of the patient, which we
 
 108 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 shall more fully illustrate in our instruction regarding the 
 universal life-principle. We often witness through the oper- 
 ation of this occult law two or more persons in the same 
 room who are found to have been thinking of the same object 
 or person at one and the same time. So all the great dis- 
 coveries and inventions have been made by men in different 
 parts of the world at about the same time. Our thoughts 
 and ideas are recorded on the imperishable " tablet of the 
 universal intellect, and through this become contagious. 
 This is a principle of the Hermetic philosophy, which has 
 more influence on human life and its manifestations than has 
 been recognized by modern science. 
 
 It is to be observed that the powers of the soul increase in 
 proportion as it is freed from the influence of the body. The 
 intermediate or intellectual soul can be affected either by the 
 higher spirit or by the lower animal soul and the body, as was 
 taught by Plato. And to teach the initiate how to liberate the 
 soul from the body and set it free from the distorting influence 
 of the senses was one of the aims of the esoteric science of 
 the ancients, a subject to which we shall recur in our next 
 lesson. The potency of the will and the imagination in a 
 state of ecstasy was an idea familiar to the old occult philos- 
 ophy, and is mentioned by Paracelsus and Van Helmont, the 
 fathers of modern magnetic science. But the state which 
 was called by the Neo-Platonists ecstasy is not necessarily 
 an abnormal one, but is in reality only the intellectual soul 
 acting independent of the body. There are persons who can 
 enter into this condition at will, and act from a higher or 
 interior degree of the mind, and thus be "endued with 
 power from on high."
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 109 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ON THE TRIUNE NATURE OF MAN, AND THE FREEING THE 
 SOUL FROM THE BODY. 
 
 THE doctrine of the triune nature of man is one of the 
 oldest doctrines of philosophy, and is absolutely fundamental 
 in a true spiritual science. It was an occult doctrine, and 
 was revealed in the fullest degree only to the highest initi- 
 ates, or the " perfect," as they are called by the apostle Paul. 
 In the Kabala man is viewed under the three divisions, or 
 distinct regions, of mental being, named spirit, soul (ruach), 
 and crude spirit (nephesh). The latter is the " serpent" of 
 Genesis, and designates the principle of sense, and the mere 
 animal mind or man. The body was very properly viewed 
 as no part of man, as all its elements belong to the so-called 
 external world. Man is identical with mind, as the term is 
 from a Sanscrit word meaning to think. Man is mind ; and , 
 each degree of the mind is man as he thinks and acts on 1 
 either of three discrete planes of being. 
 
 In the Platonic philosophy, which professedly was bor- 
 rowed from the arcane science and religion of India, Egypt, 
 and the East, man, or mind, is viewed under the three 
 degrees of pneuma (spirit) , psyche (soul) , and thumos (ani- 
 mal and irrational soul) . The spirit, sometimes called nous, 
 was considered as the real man, or man as he exists in the 
 divine idea ; and as it is generated by the Father (pure 
 thought), and is the first emanation from the "Unknown," 
 it possesses a nature kindred and even homogeneous with 
 the Divinity, and is capable of beholding the eternal reali- 
 ties. The lowest degree is the blind animal life-principle, or
 
 110 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 soul, technically called thmnos. The word is derived from 
 the verb 6vw (f/mo), meaning to burn and also to sacrifice. 
 It means, also, to move with a rapid, violent, impetuous 
 motion, and hence was considered the seat of all disordered 
 and vehement passions, such as govern the life of animals. 
 In the New Testament Psychology it is called the flesh and 
 the carnal mind, and to be under its dominion is death. It 
 is the sensuous mind, the seat of all sensation, as many ani- 
 mals have the senses more acutely developed than man. All 
 its perceptions are illusorj 7 and fallacious, a false seeming. 
 Life on this plane, the basement story of conscious being, 
 is a dream, rather than a reality, when the innermost divine 
 spirit is latent, and not developed into conscious activity. 
 Plato, in the " Republic," represents such men as captives in 
 a subterranean cave, with their backs turned toward the light, 
 and who can see nothing but the reflected shadows of things, 
 and yet think them actual realities. In order to the percep- 
 tion of the real truth of things, we must rise to a higher plane 
 of thought and life. 
 
 The intermediate degree, or distinct region of mind, which 
 is situated between the two extremes of mental existence, 
 and which is capable of being influenced by either the higher 
 or the lower, the inmost divine spirit or the irrational ani- 
 mal soul, was called psyche, or the rational soul. When 
 freed from the distorting influences of the physical senses 
 and the selfish animal passions, and disencumbered of the 
 bod}-, it is the Logos or Word, the true light of every man 
 that cometh into the world. It dwells in the " intelligible 
 world," the world of ideas and of enduring realities. It 
 is the region of creation and of formation. It is the true 
 ^ object of all education to free the soul from the trammels of 
 / the body, and raise it from the plane of sense to the percep- 
 tion of the real and the enduring, in the place of the mere 
 seeming, the ever-changing, and the evanescent. This is the 
 liberty wherewith the Christ, the inward Word, makes us
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. Ill 
 
 free (Gal. v: 1). It is the "Justice," or right thinking of I 
 the Kabala, a rectitude of mental perception, called by the \ 
 apostle Paul the righteousness which is of faith. For faith ; 
 is the action of the mind above the plane of sense. 
 
 Swedenborg's doctrine of degrees, or of three discrete 
 regions of the mind, was borrowed and reproduced from 
 the Hermetic philosophy. He says: " In every man there 
 are from creation three degrees of life, the celestial, 
 the spiritual, and the natural." (True Christian Religion, 
 sec. 239.) These degrees constitute three distinct ranges 
 or planes of life, or three worlds or heavens. In another 
 place, Swede nborg says : "I have been instructed concern- 
 ing these degrees of life, that it is the last degree of life 
 which is called the external or natural man, by which degree 
 man is like the animals as to concupiscences and phantasies. 
 And that the next degree of life is what is called the internal 
 and rational man, by which man is superior to the animals ; 
 for by virtue thereof he can think and will what is good and 
 true, and have dominion over the natural man by restrain- 
 ing and also rejecting its concupiscences and the phantasies 
 thence derived ; and moreover, by reflecting within himself 
 concerning heaven, yea, concerning the Divine Being, 
 which the brute animals are altogether incapable of doing. 
 And that the third degree of life is what is most unknown to I 
 man, although it is that through which the Lord flows into ) 
 the rational mind, thus giving man a faculty of thinking as a I 
 man, and also conscience, and a perception of what is good, t 
 and elevation from the Lord towards Himself. But these 
 things are remote from the ideas of the learned of our age." 
 {Arcana Celestia, 3747.) This doctrine of degrees bears a 
 close resemblance to the Platonic views given above. 
 
 The Alchemists, who were simply Hermetic philosophers, 
 writing in a language wholly unintelligible to those who had 
 not the key to it, made the trine nature of man and all 
 things to consist of salt, mercury, and sulphur. Salt was the
 
 /.* 
 
 112 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 universal menstruum, the prima materia, from which all 
 concrete things spring, and to which they are reducible, and 
 is the body of man as to its primal substance. Mercury was 
 the symbol of the rational soul, the true anima mundi, the 
 Logos, or creative Word in man. Sulphur was the secret 
 fire or spirit in the system of the Alchemists. The three 
 united into a unity, which is the true spiritual or illuminated 
 state, was the philosopher's stone, and the white stone of the 
 Apocalypse. (Rev. ii: 17.) It was the time magic mirror 
 or translucent " spirit-seeing crystal." The term for crystal 
 in Greek is, when divided into twin or half-words as follows : 
 chryst-allos, and means that the philosopher's stone is the 
 Christ within, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge. Christ within is the great mystery of the 
 Gospel. (Col. i : 27.) " Know," says Synesius, " that the 
 quint-essence and hidden thing of our ' stone ' is nothing less 
 than our celestial and glorious soul, drawn by our magistery 
 (instruction) out of its mine, which engenders itself, and 
 brings itself forth." 
 
 Dr. Justinus Kerner, in his life of Madam Ilaufe, the 
 Seeress of Prevorst, following the Kabala, makes our inner 
 man to consist of geist (spirit), seele, (soul), and nerven 
 geist, or nerve spirit, a semi-intelligent life-principle. The 
 nerven geist answers to the Kabalistic nepliesli, crude spirit, 
 and being only of a semi-spiritual nature, is that which 
 renders the rational soul visible as an apparition. It is the 
 astral body, and by means of it the soul is enabled to affect 
 material objects, make noises, and move articles. In short, 
 it can speak to the inner ear of a person, using the universal 
 aether as its vibrating atmosphere. TJie adept or true illumi- 
 natus can free his soul from tJie body at any time, for he has 
 attained to the liberty of the sons of God (Rom. viii: 21), 
 and can clothe the soul with the more subtle elements of the 
 crude spirit or nephesh, and go where he pleases, and pro- 
 duce effects, as interiorly speaking to a person coramuni-
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 113 
 
 eating to them an idea and an inward impulse to an action, 
 imparting to them a sense of his presence, and sometimes 
 becoming visible to them. In this state a man is invested 
 with the powers and properties of a disembodied spirit, and 
 can speak by psychological impression to another mind far or 
 near. Says the northern Seer, " The speech of an angel or 
 of a spirit with man is heard as sonorously as the speech of 
 one man with another, yet it is not heard by others who stand 
 near, but by the man himself alone. The reason is that the 
 speech of an angel or of a spirit flows first into the man's 
 thought, and by an internal way into his organ of hearing, 
 and thus actuates it from within ; whereas the speech of man 
 flows first into the air, and by an external way into his organ 
 of hearing, which it actuates from without. Hence it is 
 evident that the speech of an angel and of a spirit with man is 
 heard in man, and since it equally affects the organs of hear- 
 ing, that it is equally sonorous." 
 
 It was one of the arcane principles of the archaic wisdom 
 religion and science of man, that is now lost to the world at 
 large, that it is possible for the intellectual soul to free itself 
 from the trammels of the body, and emancipate itself from 
 all material restraints and limitations. It then acts above 
 time and space, and can transport itself, with all its senses, 
 to any part of the world, guided and governed by the inner 
 divine pneuma or spirit. It can make itself felt and seen by 
 persons a hundred miles away, for it is where it thinks to be. 
 In the tenth book of the Pymander (power of thought 
 divine) of Hermes, it is said : " Command thy soul to go to 
 India, and sooner than thou canst bid it, it will be there." 
 
 " Bid it likewise pass over the ocean, and suddenly it will 
 be there." 
 
 " Command it to fly into heaven, and it will need no wings, 
 neither shall anything hinder it, not the fire of the sun, nor 
 the aether, nor the turning of the spheres ; not the bodies of 
 any of the stars ; but, cutting through all, it will fly up to 
 the last and furtherest body."
 
 114 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 If any one should ask, " What becomes of the body, while 
 the soul is absent from it?" the answer is that its life is 
 continued and all the vital processes are carried on by the 
 Universal Soul, of which the individual soul is a part. 
 
 This separation of the soul, and making it independent of 
 the body and of the laws of matter, can be done when the 
 person is in a perfectly normal state, without a trance, and 
 only in a state of mental abstraction, which would not be 
 noticed by others ; or, as Swedenborg calls it, " in a state 
 of perfect wakefulncss." 
 
 It would at first thought appear, that to free the soul from 
 the body was the last thing reached, in our spiritual develop- 
 ment, the very summit of human attainment. But so far is 
 this from being the case, that it is viewed in the Hermetic phi- 
 losophy as the first step to a true spiritual elevation, and the 
 evolution of the deific powers of man. It is to be observed, 
 as Thomas Taylor has remarked in the preface to his transla- 
 tion of the "Phsedo" of Plato, that to separate the soul from 
 the body, that is, to set it free from the limitations of the 
 bodily senses, and disencumber it of all gross matter, is one 
 thing, and to separate the body from the soul is quite another 
 thing. The one is a philosophical state, the other is what 
 men call natural death. To be able to emancipate the soul, 
 and free it from all dependence upon organic conditions, is 
 necessary to the highest form of knowledge and spiritual 
 power. Plato says in the "Phaedo" : " It is demonstrated to 
 us, that if we are designed to know anything purely, we must 
 be liberated from the body, and behold things with the soul 
 itself." When we do this we become inhabitants of an inte- 
 rior realm, the " intelligible world," the home of all knowl- 
 edge, and see things in idea alone, and consequently in their 
 reality. Freed from the earthly body, the soul appears in 
 that world in a form or body that is composed of the pure 
 substance of that world. " For according to the arcana of 
 the Platonic philosophy," says Thomas Taylor, " between an
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CURE. 115 
 
 etherial body, which is simple and immaterial, and is the 
 eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene (or earthy) 
 body, which is material and composite, there is an aerial 
 body, which is material indeed (like the nerven geist of Ker- 
 ner, and the nephesh of the Kabala), but simple, and of a 
 more extended duration. And in this body the unpurified 
 soul dwells for a long time after its exit from hence, till this 
 pneumatic (or aerial) vehicle being dissolved, it is again 
 invested with a composite body ; while, on the contrary, the 
 purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial regions 
 with its etherial vehicle alone." Plato, in the " Cratylus," a 
 treatise on the "rectitude of names," says that the bod}* 
 (o-w/Aa) of man was so named because it is the sepulchre 
 (fn//xa) of the soul. And it was the object of the Eleusinian 
 Mysteries to show that union with the body and bondage to 
 matter and sense, was death. This was taught also by Jesus 
 and Paul. To free the soul from its material thraldom, and 
 convince it of the illusory nature of matter, is the true anas- \ 
 tasis, or resurrection of the soul from the dead. This is the" 
 resurrection to which Paul refers, and which he sought to 
 attain. (Phil. Hi: 11-13.) It was the aim of Buddhism, 
 and also of the ancient Mysteries, to lead the initiate to this. 
 To this Jesus refers when he says, " Ye shall know the truth, 
 and the truth shall make you free." (John viii : 32.) It ij 
 the state of ecstasy of Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, and 
 which they considered necessary to the attainment of the 
 most exalted spiritual knowledge and power. It is a state 
 in which the ordinary functions of the senses are suspended, 
 and the pure mind is freed from their dominion. Says the 
 Kabala, "Come and see when the soul reaches that place 
 which is called the Treasury of Life ; she enjoys a bright 
 and luminous mirror, which receives its light from the high- 
 est heavens." (Sohar, I, 65, 6.) In closing this section, I 
 would only say that the Rosicrucians claimed to be able to 
 know all that was ever known in any part of the world and
 
 116 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 in every age ; for all that was ever known still exists, indeli- 
 bly recorded on the tablet of the Universal Mind, and our 
 individual mind may be an inlet to it. All that was ever 
 known exists in the " intelligible world," the world of ideas; 
 and into this realm we rise when we learn to forget the body 
 and become spirit. 
 
 The action of the intellectual soul at a distance, and an 
 internal perception of persons and things, which is not 
 dependent upon the external organs of sense, which is 
 sometimes witnessed in the present day, is no new phenom- 
 enon in psychological science. It was experienced by Paul, 
 and hence belongs to Christianity, and is nothing foreign and 
 hostile to it. He says to the Christians at Colosse, "Though 
 I am absent in the flesh, } - et am I with you iu the spirit, joy- 
 ing and beholding }-our order and the steadfastness of your 
 faith in Christ." (Col. ii : 5.) To the same effect he speaks 
 to the Corinthian Church. (I Cor. v: 3.) And also the 
 remarkable experience recorded in II Cor. xii : 1-5. These 
 states were only a liberation of the soul from the trammels 
 of matter, and not a projection of the soul out of the body, 
 as some have called it, for that would imply that the soul was 
 in the body like a bird in a cage. This is not the real truth, 
 but an illusion as much as the appearance of our image in a 
 mirror, which is not in the glass at all, but in our sensorium, 
 which is the mind on the plane of sense.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 117 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 EXECUTING JUDGMENT UPON OURSELVES, OR IN THOUGHT 
 SEPARATING DISEASE FROM THE REAL SELF. 
 
 To think and to exist are one and the same. / think and 
 / am are identical expressions. To think rightly is to be 
 well and happy. The first thing to be done in curing our- 
 selves of disease by the ideal or psychological method, is 
 to separate, in thought, our inner conscious self, the im- 
 mortal divine Ego, from the disease, placing the malady out- 
 side our real being, and viewing it as no part of ourselves, 
 but as something foreign to us. This, in the expressive 
 language of Scripture, is executing a judgment, or an act of 
 separation, as the word means, upon ourselves. We learu 
 to distinguish between ourselves and the disease. Of disease 
 and pain, which seem to be the common lot of mankind, 
 Fichte very truly says : ' ' They can reach only the nature 
 with which I am in a wonderful manner united, not what is 
 properly myself, the being exalted above nature." (Desti- 
 nation of Man, p. 125.) Supposing I had a wart upon my 
 hand ; I should ask myself the question, is that wart any 
 necessary part even of my body? I am certain that it is 
 not, but is rather a superfluous and needless excrescence. 
 But I am equally conscious that it is no part of my inner 
 self, what Plato, and Paul, and Swedenborg call the inward 
 man. The same is true of disease, which is always a de- 
 formity, or a deviation from the true idea of my being. It 
 is no part of my real self. I disown and renounce all con- 
 nection with it, and relationship to it. If I can maintain I 
 this attitude of thought toward it, the malady will disappear \ \ ,
 
 118 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 as certainly as a cloudy day will sometime be followed by 
 sunshine. It will have no solid foundation on which it can 
 rest, and will vanish as surely as the loosened hair of an 
 animal in spring will fall from him, or the withered, and now 
 useless, leaves in autumn will drop from the tree to the 
 ground. 
 
 Of one truth we may be certain, and it is fundamental in 
 
 \ the ideal or transcendental method of healing ourselves or 
 Mothers : that what I do not like is no part of me. Jesus 
 
 ^ "said of the prince of the world, or the ruling principle of the 
 age in which he lived, that it came to him, but found nothing 
 in him. There was nothing in him that responded to it. He 
 executed judgment upon it, and separated himself wholly 
 from it. "Now is the judgment of this world (or age). 
 Now shall the prince of this world (or age) be cast out." 
 He elevated himself above and out of the current or sphere 
 of the world-life. Paul also learned from the profound 
 occult philosophy and arcane science into which he had been 
 initiated, to distinguish, or separate in thought, between his 
 real self, his spiritual entity, and what he did not like, or 
 that to which his ruling love and his will, which were his 
 life, were opposed. He says: "The good that I would (or 
 desire) I do not ; but the evil that I would not, that I do. 
 Now if I do that I would not (or dislike) , it is no more I 
 (the true self) that do it, but sin (in the sense of error, illu- 
 sion) that dwelletli in me." (Rom. vii : 19, 20.) This is a 
 most important principle, and of fai'-reaching practical value. 
 Let us return to our rude illustration of disease, the wart on 
 the hand, or we can take a tumor internal or external. If I 
 
 j like it, I take it up into my life, and it becomes an integral 
 
 ' part of myself. I incorporate it into my being, and I become 
 one with it. This is true of everything I like. It finds some- 
 thing in me that responds to it, and which meets and unites 
 with it. In fact, it is only the outward correspondence of 
 what was already in me. But if I do not like it, and thus
 
 
 J 
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIXD-CURE. 119 
 
 view it as something foreign to me, I separate it from my 
 life, and the wart, or tumor, or disease will die, and I shall 
 live on without it. If I thus disown it as a part of mj-self , 
 and cease to think of it as included in the contents of the 
 Ego, it will derive no support from my inner being, and will- 
 disappear as certainly as a branch severed from a tree will 
 wither and die of itself. So a disease upon which I sit in 
 judgment, from the throne of the divine spirit in me, or 
 which I separate from my conscious inner self, and utterly 
 disown as a part of myself, will be not only like a house built 
 upon the sand, but like a castle in the air, a building that 
 has no foundation, and which must of necessity fall to the 
 ground, or rather must be viewed like all sensuous illusions 
 as having no real existence. We make disease a part of 
 ourselves only by thinking it such, and thus we give it 
 vitality, and a certain hold upon us. This is a falsity, a 
 phantasy, an error, an illusion, and a sin in the New Testa- 
 ment and proper sense of the word. The great lesson which 
 every invalid needs to learn, is to cast it out of his real inner 
 self, by viewing that self as entirely distinct and separate 
 from it, to draw, as it were, a circle to represent his inward 
 man, his spiritual being, and then place the disease as an 
 unsightly blot outside its circumference. Disease is thus no 
 longer classed with the realities of being, but is relegated to 
 the region of illusion. By a right mode of thinking we cast 
 it out and dispossess ourselves of it. Then it will be as the y 
 poet Crabbe says of every great lie like a great fish out of^ 
 water. Only let it alone, and it will die of itself. When I ^ 
 am conscious that I do not like a disease that has afflicted 
 me, then that inward self that dislikes it may be considered 
 as entirely free from it. It is outside the boundaries of my 
 immortal and real being. To maintain with a volitional i 
 obstinacy this attitude of thought towards it, will have a] 
 marvellous power in curing it. By coining to a rectitude of 
 judgment, as Jesus calls it, and elevating our thoughts above 

 
 120 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUIIE. 
 
 the region of a false seeming, it removes the obstruction in 
 the way of the inward divine self, appropriating the physical 
 organism as its perfect representative in the world of sense. 
 If we steadfastly hold in mind this true idea of ourselves, it 
 will form the soul, and through that the body into its out- 
 ward expression, just as certainly as in a stormy day, when 
 the clouds are dispersed, the sun will shine. The error, the 
 illusion, that 1 am sick, or in pain, or any discomfort, that 
 my real and inner self is diseased or unhappy, is that alone 
 which forms a cloud between me and the sun of a higher sky, 
 whence all life emanates. When that veil is removed, the 
 Sun of Righteousness with its living light will arise within 
 my interior world with healing on its wings. The chilling fog 
 of sensuous fallacies and delusions will lift, and show our 
 willing feet the shining pathway to a higher life and diviner 
 blessedness. 
 
 It is to be kept in mind that all natural objects have an 
 immaterial or spiritual side which is their invisible counter- 
 part. This is their image or idea. All the things of the 
 outward world the sun, moon and stars, rivers, trees, 
 mountains and flowers have existence in mind alone, as 
 thoughts and feelings, or ideas and sensations. If either is 
 wanting, they cease to exist as concrete entities. For, as 
 Berkeley affirms, their esse is percipi; that is, their being 
 consists in being perceived. The same is true of the human 
 body and those conditions of it which we call diseases, as a 
 wart, or tumor, or cancer. These are but a combination of 
 sensational images or ideas, apart from which they cannot 
 have an objective reality. 
 
 We have shown in what has been said above the importance 
 of separating our inner self from the malady of whatever 
 nature it may be, and of viewing our real self as free from 
 it. For, as Von jV^-er's lucid subject says, " The spirit is 
 not subject to suffering as the soul is," and the spirit is what 
 we mean by the Ego, when we say / am. But we may go a
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 121 
 
 step further in this act of judgment, and disown the very 
 idea of disease. The disease, according to the system of 
 Berkeley, exists only as a morbid idea, and this has an exis- 
 tence only in the external sensuous range of mind, the animal 
 soul, or Paul's psychical man. This is not my divine and 
 immortal Ego or self, for that is spirit, and as such is a 
 manifestation of the grand unity of Spirit, which is God. 
 This is the Kabalistic "Son of God." It was taught by 
 Hermes Trismegistus, that God's Son is the only man, and 
 is the immortal divine spirit that constitutes the inmost being 
 of every personality. It is the divine entity which is the 
 real man, the essential Ego, for the material body, and its 
 vivifying animal soul are only the covering of the real man. 
 And this divine personality is exempt from the possibility of 
 old age, disease, pain, and death itself. By disowning and 
 renouncing the idea of the malady as being any part of our 
 real self, it will fade away from thought and existence, 
 because we have cut the root from which it derives all its 
 life. We say of certain persons that we dislike the sight of 
 them, and even renounce the thought of them. We disown 
 them as companions, cut ourselves loose from their society, 
 and throw away and burn their picture, and everything which 
 can by association recall their idea. With a calm and tran- 
 quil frame of mind we must do something like this w : th 
 disease, and pain, and the source of an}* mental unhapp'uess. 
 We must learn to separate our real self, the immortal " Son 
 of God," from it, and renounce all ownership in it as a part 
 of ourself, and then do the same with the sensational image 
 or idea of it in the soul, which is the sensuous or animal 
 mind, and the onl}* seat of disease and pain. We view this 
 thumetic region of our existence with all its contents of dis- 
 ordered passions, phantasies, illusions, and morbid ideas, as 
 outside the circumference of our inner divine self. This is 
 the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit under the influence 
 of the inward divine light, which is called the Word of God,
 
 122 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 of which the unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrewa 
 speaks. (Heb. iv: 12.) He, who can learn to do this with 
 facility, has a marvellous power of healing himbclf and 
 others. It is the highest act of faith, and that state of mind 
 to which Jesus refers when he says : " Be it unto thee accord- 
 ing to thy faith." Faith is an activity of mind above the 
 plane of the senses, and a perception of truth that lies above 
 and beyond their illusions and fallacious appearances. It is 
 the divine order that the higher should control the lower ; the 
 interior, the external. And as faith springs from the inmost 
 divine realm of our being, since it is, as Paul asserts, " the 
 gift of God," it has dominion dei gratia over both the soul 
 and the body.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 123 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE CREATIVE POWER OF THE IDEAL, OR THE EXTERNALIZA- 
 TION OF THOUGHT. 
 
 IN the Kabalistic scheme of creation, called the ten SepJn- 
 roth, or Emanations, and which contains the key to all arcane 
 philosophy, the first emanation from the "Unknown" is pure 
 thought. This is the Christ of whom Paul so often speaks, 
 the starting-point, the Crown of all existence. This divides 
 into two rays, a Father and Mother ray : a masculine and 
 active, a feminine and reactive potency ; the one pure intel- 
 ligence, the other wisdom. The union of these in all then* 
 correlations is necessary to the existence of everything in 
 earth and heaven. Existence and thought are identical. 
 All being (or substance) by a law of necessity assumes 
 Jorm. A thought of a thing, by a law of evolution inhe- 
 rent in its nature, assumes form in an idea, which is the 
 living image of the thought, fit is the form, or first expres- \ 
 sion, of the thought^ But an idea tends to a further exter- 
 nalization, in fact, to become an actuality in the world or 
 sense. This is the true conception of the law of creation. 
 It is the successive stages in the externalization of thought, 
 first as a living image or soul of a thing which we call an 
 idea. It is being, or thought, becoming visible in a form 
 and as a form. Then it passes still further outward (or 
 downward) and ultimates itself in the material world, 
 or comes to a manifestation on the plane of sense. All i 
 mind is essentially creative, and the subjective tends to 
 become objective, and the ideal to pass into the act-' 
 ual. As God creates the world by that effort of Will
 
 124 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE 
 
 and Thought, which Plato calls the Divine Idea, and 
 Swedenborg and the Gospel of John, the Word, so we, 
 as being in the image of God, can, in a certain proper 
 sense, create. With a certain intensity of will and thought, 
 the images that arise are subjective. They are called hallu- 
 cinations, or creatures of the imagination. They are by no 
 means destitute of reality, for all the objects of nature are 
 only a mental picture more or less vivid. To us, as in our 
 dreams, they are as real as any of the visible objects of the 
 world around us. With a more intense and intelligent con- 
 centration of the will, the intellectual ideas take shape in the 
 cosmic nicctler, the mother principle of things, and be- 
 come concrete, objective, and visible entities. Here is the 
 greatest of secrets, the deepest of all mysteries, explained, 
 the law of creation. In this way God perpetually creates 
 the world in us and through us. 
 
 All ideas distinctly formed in the mind respecting ourselves 
 tend to a full realization in the body. The spiritual and ideal 
 form tends to a further externalization in a material shape. 
 The condition of the bod}' is always the material shaping of 
 the controlling idea. But the developing of the idea, or evo- 
 lution of the spiritual image in the body, is not always, nor 
 generally, instantaneous, but is progressive. The creation of 
 the world instantaneously by the divine Jlat is not now enter- 
 tained by thinking men anywhere. It is a tenet that has 
 passed out of science and philosophy. In fact, creation is 
 not now an accomplished event. It is not a thing done, but 
 one that is in the process of being done. The divine idea is 
 not yet fully realized or actualized. The world is an unfin- 
 ished picture. As the Platouists would say, it is in a state 
 of becoming. The divine idea, the universal divine life, a 
 mysterious power of order and arrangement, is at the very 
 centre and heart of things, struggling to work itself out into 
 a complete material expression. Universal nature is moved 
 from within by the Universal Mind, of which our minds are 
 a part.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 125 
 
 In giving treatment to the body, which is our world, it is 
 not so much our aim to impart life to it from without 
 though this can be done as it is to aid the inner life, the 
 real conscious self, and the true idea of our being in its 
 birth into actuality or a material expression. The body, 
 which is the external shell of our being, becomes fixed. The 
 tschamping, shampooing, or massage may remove the hard- 
 ness of the shell so that it can more readily take shape from 
 the inward idea. All motion, all progress, all development, 
 is in the direction of the least resistance, as James Hinton 
 demonstrated. To remove obstructions, to break up the 
 fixedness of the body, which is the characteristic of old age, 
 to accelerate the process of excretion and disintegration, is 
 to aid the process of the reformation of the body from 
 within. In the germ of the animal body, as in the seed of 
 the plant, there is the living idea of the future organism. 
 And that idea forms the body after the pattern of itself. It 
 is function (or idea) that creates its appropriate organ, and 
 not the organ that makes the function. For instance, the 
 heart is made to beat, and this action commences before its 
 tissues are formed, even when it is only a fluid mass of proto- 
 plasmic jelly. So it is always the function, the idea, which 
 creates its organic expression. Thus it is, and of necessity 
 must be, in regard to the whole body. 
 
 If we will form the true idea of man, and apply it to our- 
 selves, and hold it steadfastly in the mind, and believe in its 
 realization, by one of the deepest and most certain laws of 
 our nature, it will tend to recreate the body after the pattern 
 of that mental type. Creation is a begetting, and nature 
 means that which is born. It is the product of the divine 
 idea expressing itself in our minds on the plane of sense. 
 The renewal of the body by the creative power of the divine 
 idea of man is the true palingenesis or regeneration. (Mat. 
 six : 28.) 
 
 It seems to be a divine law that all animal bodies are
 
 126 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 renewed at least once a year. The crab and the lobster 
 annually cast off the old shell, and a new one forms from 
 within. The serpent sheds his skin, and this is the last 
 step in the renewal of his body. Birds cast off their 
 feathers, and this takes place by a cause or force that acts 
 from within outward, and it is the last stage in the process 
 of their renewal. The ox and the horse shed their hair in 
 spring. The tree renews itself once a year, and a new one 
 grows around the older ones, which in time decay, leaving 
 the trunk hollow. Perennial plants die down to the root, 
 where the infant plant-germ remains, and starts into life with 
 youthful vigor in the spring. All these phenomena are 
 illustrations of a general law of life that is called rejuvenes- 
 cence. Man should move forward in this divine order. If 
 we keep the mind ever young, the body can be left to take 
 care of itself. Man, in health, casts off the external shell 
 once a year, for there is nothing in the animal world that is 
 not in man. He "renews his youth as the eagles"; but 
 what the new body shall be depends on the character of the 
 controlling idea and fixed belief, for the outer shell will shape 
 itself into its material expression. As God creates the 
 world by the Divine Idea, so we, in the same way, create 
 our bodies, which are a microcosm, or world on a small scale. 
 Every step in the disintegrating and renewing process is 
 influenced by the governing idea, for the body exists, like 
 everything else, in thought, and is what we think it to be. 
 It is formed after the pattern of the image which we form of 
 ourselves in the mind. If that is the divine and true idea of 
 man, it will make our humanity divine, a thing of health, and 
 harmony, and beauty, even in its ultimate manifestation in 
 the body. If Jesus, as Swedenborg affirms, made his human- 
 ity divine even to its ultimates, it was effected by maintaining 
 in thought, and steadfastly holding before his mind, the 
 divine idea of man. Every new and higher conception which 
 we form of the inward nature of man, and consequently of
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 127 
 
 ourselves, by an undeviating law, tends to an outward bodily 
 expression. It is the living germ, the seed of a new state, 
 having a divine creative potencj" in it. A seed is one of the 
 most marvellous things in nature. It is the embodiment of 
 the idea of the future plant, containing in it a conatus or 
 tendency to develop, under the proper conditions of soil and 
 air, in the external world. So the kingdom of heaven, or 
 the true spiritual condition of man, in its incipiency, is like 
 a grain of mustard, which a man plants in a field, and which 
 afterward becomes unfolded into a tree, " bearing fruit and 
 yielding seed after its kind." (Luke xiii : 19.) It is the 
 business of the psychological physician to plant in the mind 
 of the patient the fruitful idea of a better condition. He is 
 like the husbandman that goes forth to sow, and often, from 
 a single idea that finds lodgement in the interior mind, there 
 is afterwards reaped an abundant harvest. (Mat. xiii : 3-9.) 
 The kingdom of heaven, says Jesus, is also like leaven, which 
 a woman took and hid in three measures of meal (the slieah 
 was a peck and a half) until the whole was leavened. (Mat. 
 xiii : 33.) If we can impart a new life to a patient, however 
 little it may seem to be, it will propagate itself and multiply 
 itself until it reduces the whole organism to its own nature. 
 If our mode of thought is on a higher range, and our spiritual 
 state above his, it will be easy to do this, on the principle 
 that water runs down hill, or descends from a higher to a j 
 lower level. And whatever can be done at all by the psy- 
 chological method, can be done easily and without labored 
 effort. "The Father, who dwelleth in us, He doeth the 
 works." 
 
 In the application of this important law to self-cure, we 
 need to fix in our minds the change we know ought to be 
 effected, or form the idea of the state to which we aspire, 
 and in a measure we have already become what we desired 
 to be. It is our right and privilege to believe this. As an 
 artist said to Emerson, " A man cannot draw a tree without
 
 128 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURB. 
 
 becoming in a certain sort a tree," so we cannot form the 
 true idea of an animal without becoming in some degree that 
 animal. In forming the true conception of a child, so that 
 we could paint him as he is internally and externally, we 
 become as a child, and think and feel as a child. The idea 
 we form of an angel is not a mental picture or image of 
 some one else, but is that of our true self. So we cannot 
 form the true idea of ourselves, or of any mental state, with- 
 out becoming in some good degree, the realization of it. To 
 steadfastly believe this, and tenaciously adhere to it, is to 
 experience the dawn of the state to which we aspire, and 
 this by one of the deepest aud most uniform laws in the 
 whole world of mind.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 129 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE NATURE AND RIGHT USE OF THE WILL. 
 
 MUCH of the efficiency of the will is lost by our not under- 
 standing its true nature and the best method of its use. 
 The highest conception of an act of the will is that it is an 
 inward divine impulse towards a good end or aim. Paul 
 affirms that it is God who worketh in us to will and to do of 
 his good pleasure. (Phil, ii : 13.) The will is the inner- 
 most root of our life, and forever flows forth from the 
 Divinity within us, the theocentric region of our spiritual 
 being. This is also true of faith, which Paul also declares 
 to be " the gift of God," or an emanation from Him. 
 (Eph. ii : 8.) Hence, Jesus said to his disciples, "Have 
 the faith of God." (Mark xi : 22, marginal reading.) 
 Paul, in one of his Epistles, says that the life which he lived 
 in the flesh, he lived by the faith of the Son of God 
 (Gal. ii : 20), which is identical with the divine spirit of 
 man and is in man. In another place he says, when it 
 pleased God to reveal his Son in me, immediately I con- 
 ferred not with flesh and blood, or no longer took counsel of 
 the sensuous mind, as having a higher guidance within. 
 (Gal. i : 16.) The imagination is also, when used in dis- 
 tinction from the fancy, a divine spiritual power, and as a 
 mode of thought, is one of the most subtle and potent forces 
 in the universe. The fancy belongs to the psychical or animal 
 soul region, which is the region of illusion and sensuous fal- 
 lacies. But thought is a manifestation of God. It is a 
 power that arises perpetually out of the One Life, and is 
 never sundered from it. (II Cor. iii: 5.) The will, the
 
 130 THE PRIMITIVE MEND-CURE. 
 
 faith, the imagination, are the highest powers of the human 
 mind, as they are an activity of the divine realm of our being 
 a stirring of deep divinity within us. If the end towards 
 which these powers are directed is not a worthy one, we 
 then, as it were, cut them loose from the Divinity in us, and 
 they become only a spontaneous and perverted activity of the 
 self-hood, or the selfish action of the animal soul. But there 
 lies back of every virtuous and beneficent exercise of will, 
 the life and tranquil omnipotence of the Deity. The Divine 
 Mind is not sundered from our volitional activity, in our 
 psychological effort to relieve pain and cure disease, any 
 more than you can disconnect a ray of light from its central 
 source. The will, and imagination, and faith are from God, 
 and are God in man. Pythagoras taught his disciples that 
 God is the Universal Mind diffused, as it were, through all 
 things, and this mind, or intelligent life-principle, by virtue 
 of its universal sameness, and that it is the inmost essence 
 of all things, could be communicated from one object to 
 another, and could be made to create all things by the indi- 
 vidual will power of man. (Isis Unveiled, vol. 1, p. 131.) 
 This is strong language, but there is a profound truth in it 
 which comes from a philosophy older than the enlightened 
 sage of Samos. Marvellous things, and to the world miracu- 
 lous things, have been done by the spirit, which is the divine 
 and miraculous man. The inseparable connection of a wise 
 and good man with God, was a spiritual verity better under- 
 stood by the older philosophers than by modern scientists, 
 who seem to have wholly lost sight of it. It was taught as an 
 esoteric doctrine in their occult science and wisdom-religion. 
 Of modern philosophers, no one appears to have appre- 
 hended this sublime truth with greater clearness than Johann 
 Godfried Fichte, He says of the will of man: " P>ery 
 virtuous resolution (and we may say the same of every 
 benevolent healing intention) influences the Omnipotent Will 
 (or Life) , if I may be allowed to use such an expression, not
 
 THE PRIMITIVE HIND-CURE. 131 
 
 in consequence of a momentary approval, but of an everlast- 
 ing law of his Being. With surprising clearness does the 
 thought now come before iny soul, which hitherto was sur- 
 rounded with darkness, the thought that my will, as such 
 merely, and of itself, can have any results (or conse- 
 quences)." (Destination of Man, p. 110.) In another 
 place he says: "The will is the effective cause, the living 
 principle of the world of spirit^ as motion is of the world of 
 sense, I stand between two opposite worlds ; the one visible, 
 in which the act alone avails, the other invisible and incom- 
 prehensible, acted on only by the will. I am an effective 
 force in both these worlds. My will embraces both. The 
 will is in itself a constituent part of the transcendental world. 
 By my free determination I change and set in motion some- 
 thing in this transcendental world, and my energy gives 
 birth to an effect that is new, permanent, and imperishable." 
 (Destination of Man, p. 98.) 
 
 In using the will with a healing intention upon ourselves, 
 or in making a psychological impression upon another, it 
 first acts in and upon the Universal Life-Principle, and b\* 
 reaction upon the mind of the patient or upon our own, as 
 the case may be. And in this way we meet with no obstruc- 
 tion and tendency to contradict, as we often do when we 
 approach the patient from without and verbally address him. 
 A true healing influence goes forth from our inward spirit, 
 but this is only an individual manifestation and personified 
 expression of the One Spirit which is in full accord with the 
 human spirit. In the psychological method of treating 
 disease, it is a fundamental doctrine in which we must 
 become immovably grounded, that a voluntary activity of 
 mind is the only power and causal agent in the universe. j 
 Mind and will are the first principle of motion. On this 
 subject Bishop Berkeley truly sa} r s : " It is plain philosophers 
 amuse themselves in vain when they inquire for any natural, 
 efficient cause distinct from a mind or spirit." (Principles
 
 132 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 of Human Knowledge, sec. 107.) In our effort to relieve 
 suffering and cure disease by mental action, we may feel 
 sure that we are acting from the realm of causation. 
 
 If we comprehend the principles laid down in what has 
 been said above, as to the true nature of the will, and can 
 appropriate them, we are prepared to receive instruction in 
 the use of this spiritual power in its most intense and effi- 
 cient form of action. It is to be observed that the will 
 belongs to the Universal Life-Principle. It is not an active, 
 but a passive or reactive potency. It is included in the 
 department of the love or feeling, and in its highest form is 
 the Chokma or Sophia of the Kabala, which in its correla- 
 tions or descending degrees becomes the living force of the 
 world. Thought or intelligence is the active or masculine 
 potency, and the will the passive and feminine power. 
 Thought speaks, and the will responds. In making a psy- 
 chological impression, active thought or intelligence is the 
 power, and the will of the patient is the responsive echo. 
 The conception of the will as an active power, and a power 
 capable of originating action of itself, has been a fundamen- 
 tal mistake in modern psychology, but one of which the 
 ancient science of mind is free. 
 
 Thought is the highest active principle in the universe, 
 and the will is an equally potent reactive force. But the 
 most intense form of its action in a psychological, curative 
 effort, upon ourselves or others, is not when it is put forth 
 as a command, but as a positive affirmation. It does not 
 say, "Be thou so and so," but rather, " You will be well," 
 and in its highest expression, "You are well." It is to be 
 remembered that the will is strengthened by faith, which is 
 the ground of all reality, and the basis of all possibility. 
 (Mark ix : 23 ; xi : 24.) The will is guided and qualified by 
 the imagination. When it goes forth in an affirmation, the 
 will, faith, and imagination are combined into a unity. 
 Men instinctively use this form of will, without being able
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 133 
 
 to give a reason for it. In the government of children in 
 the school or family, when the child is directed to do a cer- 
 tain thing, and replies, " I will not," the parent or teacher 
 says to him, " You will do it," rather than " I command you 
 to do it." In military life we witness great numbers of men 
 controlled by one despotic mind. The commanding general, 
 in issuing his orders to his subordinates regulating the move- 
 ments of a campaign or a battle, simply says to each of 
 them, "You will do this or that," "You will move with 
 your soldiers to yonder position," and it is done. In the 
 first chapter of Genesis we have a sublime exhibition of the 
 omnipotent, creative Thought, going forth as Will. It is 
 not as in our common translation, " Let there be light, and 
 there was light " ; but, in the more eloquent simplicity of the 
 original it is, "God said (or thought) Light is; and light 
 was." It is only thought formulating itself in a positive 
 affirmation. The more closely our finite minds imitate this 
 divine form of expressing the will's potency, the more largely 
 it will partake of God's omnipotence. This explains the 
 reason of the influence of simple suggestion to one who is in 
 the magnetic state. To say to a person, " You will be 
 sick" or "You are sick," has an influence in making them 
 so. To suggest to him "You are better" has more power 
 to make him so than a thousand orders or commands. So 
 to say to a wicked man that he is good, or will be so, has 
 more reformative influence than all our commands or threats 
 that we can utter. When the will goes forth in the form of 
 a command, it throws the thing to be realized into the future ; 
 but when united with faith, and put forth as a positive 
 affirmation, it views the thing to be done, the change to be 
 effected, as a present reality, an accomplished fact. Hence 
 Jesus said to the nobleman of Capernaum, " Thy son liv- 
 eth " ; and that very hour the fever left him. (Luke iv : 
 46-54.) To the invalid at the pool of Siloam he said : 
 "Thou art made whole (or saved); sin no more, lest a
 
 134 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 worse thing come upon thee." (John v : 14.) To the 
 woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years, call- 
 ing her to him, he said, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine 
 infirmity." (Luke xiii : 12.) And wherever in the language 
 used by Jesus, the will seems to express itself in an impera- 
 tive form, the real meaning is an affirmation, and the origi- 
 nal is usually capable of that translation. When the leper 
 of Capernaum said to him, "If thou wilt, thou canst make 
 me clean," he replied "I will it; be thou clean"; that is, 
 thou art clean a form of expression which is based on the 
 recognition of the fact, that in his inner being, his immortal 
 self, he was free from the leprosy, and that it had an ex- 
 istence only in the body, which is no part of man. It is 
 only an illusory veil which conceals the real man from view. 
 The affirmation of Jesus, addressed to the inward man, was 
 responded to by the man's will, and there was awakened in 
 him a consciousness, a feeling of the truth of it. Thus the 
 will exhibited its true nature, as a reactive principle, a re- 
 sponsive echo of thought. It is the Verily, the Amen of the 
 New Testament ; a word derived from the Hebrew Amuna, 
 meaning truth. The rabbins believed it to possess a won- 
 derful power. Its full significance is, when it is the response 
 to an affirmation, " That is truth, and I believe it." 
 
 It is proper to remark, in closing, that a strong will-force 
 makes no more exertion in a silent curative effort, directed 
 to ourselves or others, than the mind makes in believing and 
 affirming that two and two are four. All labored effort, all 
 strain, all struggling is not will, but the lack of it. We 
 should recognize the fact, the eternal verity, that the thing 
 to be done, as the cure of a malady, or anything that may be 
 viewed as the "good pleasure" of God, is from this very 
 fact, in an effort to become an actuality. And the attitude of 
 the will towards it is properly expressed by the word fiat, 
 which means " let it be done or become." "If we ask any- 
 thing according to his will, we know that he heareth us."
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 135 
 
 (I John v: 14.) The thing to be done, the object to be 
 effected is like a spiral spring which is pressed down by a 
 weight laid upon it. Yet there is a tendency in it to rise, 
 and it will do so, and assume its cone-like form as soon as 
 the obstruction is removed. We are potentially already what 
 we ideally aspire to and long for, and will some time become 
 so actually. For an idea that has life in it will assert itself. 
 
 All the volition that is necessary in making a psychological 
 impression upon a patient is that of a wish or benevolent 
 desire, expressing itself in an affirmation. This is the 
 radical meaning of the word volition, from the Latin volo, to 
 wish. This adds to the thought the mere intellectual con- 
 ception an element of life-force. The influence of desire 
 or emotion is to give intensity to the thought, to render it 
 more vivid, or living, as the word means. Desire alone is 
 powerless ; and thought alone is lifeless and inefficient. They 
 must be combined into a harmonious unity. In the language 
 of the Hermetic philosophy, they must be made into a cross, 
 in which the upright line is the intellect, and the horizontal 
 or base line is the love or the emotional nature. This makes 
 a living force, what Swedeuborg calls the power of truth 
 from good. It may be represented by the light of winter 
 which is in excess of heat, and the life of the world is then 
 dormant. In spring, the light, which answers to the truth, 
 is equally combined with heat, which corresponds to love, 
 and everything starts into life. In every genuine act of 
 faith there is a union of thought and emotion, or an intellec- 
 tual conception and a feeling that it is true. This is what 
 makes it the " word of power." 
 
 It is taught in one of the sacred books of the Hindus, the 
 Atharva-Veda, that the exercise of such will-power is the highest 
 form of prayer, and it is instantaneously answered. For we 
 realize in proportion to the intensity of our desire and the 
 strength of our faith freed from all doubt. For desire is the 
 incipiency of the thing or state desired, and faith is its full 
 fruition.
 
 136 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVH. 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL LIFE-PRINCIPLE, AND ITS OCCULT PROPERTIES 
 AND USES. 
 
 WE see everywhere in nature the indications of a universal 
 and intelligent force which governs the world. We behold, 
 in whatever way we look, 
 
 " The tokens of a central force, 
 Whose circles, in their widening course, 
 O'erlap and move the universe." 
 
 It is the common bond and life of nature, and exhibits a 
 conatus to repair the hurts of every living thing, of plants 
 and animals, from the mushroom to the sovereign of an 
 empire. It is the office of the physician to influence, direct, 
 and control the universal principle of life, to come to its aid in 
 its curative endeavor, and to intensify its action and diminish 
 or increase its quantum. Says Lord Lytton, who, if not an 
 adept, was deeply versed in the arcane philosophy of the 
 East, " To all animate bodies there must be one principle in 
 common, the vital principle itself. What if there be one 
 certain means of recruiting this principle? And what if 
 that secret can be discovered?" (A Strange Story, p. 104.) 
 Van Helmont, to whom science owes a debt of gratitude the 
 world has never paid, was the discoverer of hydrogen gas, 
 and he affirms that the life-principle is of the nature of a 
 gas, a word which etymological!}* signifies spirit, like the 
 German geist. In this sense, that of a universally diffused 
 and omnipresent and omniactive substance of life, the asser- 
 tion of Van Helmont was made, and only in this sense can
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 137 
 
 it be accepted. It is stored up in exhaustless and overflow- 
 ing abundance in the bosom of nature. It cannot be 
 destroyed, or increased, or diminished. It cannot be created 
 or annihilated. It is one and indivisible, and can be con- 
 trolled in its lower degrees of manifestation by the intelli- 
 gent will of man, which is the highest form of its develop- 
 ment and expression. It is identical with what is called 
 magnetism, which is a word of Persian origin, and signifies 
 the " wisdom-principle." The life-principle is in itself 
 without quality, and is a blind force obedient to a control- 
 ling influence. It is submissive to the will of the spiritual 
 man, and servilely obeys it. It acts according to the direc- 
 tion given to it by our imagiuation, and tends to realize our 
 idea, as the hand and brush of the painter follow the image 
 which they copy from his mind. Of this universal life-prin- 
 ciple Madam Blavatsky observes : " We breathe and imbibe 
 it into our organic system with every mouthful of fresh air. 
 Our organism is full of it from the instant of our birth, 
 but it becomes potential only under the influx of will and 
 spirit." (Isis Unveiled, vol. i., p. 616.) This invisible and 
 ubiquitous life-principle, the anima mundi of Plato, and the 
 magnetic agent, has occult properties and potencies in it that- 
 few know anything about. It obeys our thoughts and takes 
 quality from them. It answers to the human voice, and 
 j-ields to the impulse of our will, and even understands the 
 meaning of traced signs and motions of the hand, especially 
 if they are correspondences. However incredible this may 
 seem, it is nevertheless true, as Baron Du Potet, the prince 
 of modern maguetists, affirms. But wh}- should it not be 
 so, since the rational soul of man, the immortal psyche, is 
 only the highest expression of the universal soul or the intel- 
 ligent life-principle in nature ? And when the soul is closely 
 united to this universal force it possesses, if we only but knew 
 it, a marvellous power. It is then, as it were, the general in 
 command of the universal living energy to direct it to the
 
 138 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 accomplishment of a desired result. Life is everywhere. 
 A desire of recovery is a search after life, and this, as 
 Emerson sa3"s of power, is an element with which the world 
 is so saturated there being no chink or crevice in which it 
 is not lodged that no honest seeking need go unrewarded. 
 All matter is animated and acted upon by invisible agencies, 
 Df which heat and light are the most apparent. But these are 
 only expressions on the plane of sense of the invisible and 
 imponderable life-principle. Heat in its spiritual essence is 
 a feeling, and light is truth. 
 
 " This conscious life, is it the same 
 Which thrills the universal frame, 
 Whereby the caverned crystal shoots, 
 And mounts the sap from forest roots, 
 Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells 
 When spring makes green her native dells 1 
 How feels the stone the pang of birth 
 Which brings its sparkling prism forth ? 
 The forest tree the throb which gives 
 The life-blood to its new-born leaves ? " 
 
 ( Whittier.) 
 
 In his "Coming Race," a work which contains many hints 
 respecting the Oriental occult science, Lord Lytton denomi- 
 nates the universal life-principle and primal force, which the 
 Hindu adepts call the akasa, by the unusual name of rril, 
 and says that in vril his underground people thought that 
 "they had arrived at the unity in natural energetic agen- 
 cies." Like the aJcasa of the Hindu transcendental science, 
 it is a sort of " atmospheric magnetism," and controllable by 
 the imagination and will of man. It is the " occult air" of 
 the Kabalists, and is called by the Jewish prophets " the 
 breath of God" and "the breath of life." Its nature, 
 hidden properties, the laws of its action, and how to control 
 it, was undoubtedly a part of the esoteric teaching in the 
 prophetic schools. It is clea r ly mentioned in the celebrated 
 vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel, " Come from the four
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 139 
 
 winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, and they shall 
 live." (Ezek. xxxvii : 9.) Is it true that this subtle and 
 universal element of life will come at our call, and can we 
 give it quality and modify its action? If so, it is the most 
 important thing that medical philosophy can teach. Of the 
 occult philosopher Harouu of Aleppo, Lord Lytton says : 
 " He had discovered the great principle of animal life, which 
 had hitherto baffled the subtlest anatomist, and provided only 
 that the great organs were not irreparably destroyed, there 
 was no disease that he could not cure, no decrepitude to 
 which he could not restore vigor ; yet his science was based 
 on the same theory as that espoused by the best professional 
 practitioners of medicine, viz., that the true art of healing is 
 to assist nature to throw off the disease, to summon, as it 
 were, the whole system to eject the enemy that had fastened 
 on a part. And thus his processes, though occasionally 
 varying in the means employed, all combined in this, viz., 
 the reinvigorating and recruiting of the principle of life." 
 (A Strange Story, p. 186.) 
 
 "The universal substance," sa}-s Eliphas Levi, "with its 
 double motion (its active and reactive properties) , is the great 
 arcanum of being." This is profoundly true. This preex- 
 istent and invisible essence of things which we call life, this 
 elemental and universal substance, is often latent in nature, 
 and is without form or quality in itself, but receives quality 
 from our imagination or thought, just as water takes form 
 from the glass vessel that contains it. We see illustrations 
 of this in the life of men. If a person swallows a few drops 
 of water, or a pill made of bread crumbs, thinJcing it a cathar- 
 tic medicine, it will give to it that quality, and it will quicken 
 the peristaltic movement of the intestinal canal. Thought 
 has power to alter the nature of things so as to radically 
 change their quality. This is implied in the promise of 
 Jesus, that, if we believe, or have faith, to drink any deadly 
 thing will not harm us. Thus Paul overcame the otherwise
 
 140 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 fatal bite and poison of the viper. Jesus also says, "Be it 
 unto thee according to thy faith " ; but faith is only a mode 
 of thought. The passive life-principle of the human body 
 and of all things is as sensitive to the influence of thought 
 and imagination as the mercury in the bulb of the thermome- 
 ter or barometer is to atmospheric changes. This universal 
 life-principle and primordial substance has an affinity for our 
 inward character, as some one has said, and is en rapport 
 with the purposes which we wish to effect by it, as the relief 
 of pain and the cure of disease. Our minds and wills can 
 : give quality to it ; and by the projectile power of the mind, 
 and by a thought-impulse, a current or tendency of it can be 
 determined upon the body of another, to recruit and augment 
 his vital energy. By certain movements of the hands, which 
 are but the expression of our thoughts, we can cause it to 
 accumulate in the brain, and the whole physical organism or 
 any part of it, and its invigorating effects will sometimes 
 border on the marvellous. The reinforcing the vital power 
 of the whole system is the shortest and most direct way of 
 curing any diseased part. The air and the water contain all 
 the invisible essences of things, that from which all plants and 
 minerals arise, and of which they are, so to speak, only con- 
 densations, or precipitations, so that they become manifest to 
 our crude senses. We see granite rock floating in the air in 
 the form of dust. But there is an invisible, imponderable 
 dust, or primal stuff, or substance, the mysterious clay of 
 the first chapter of Genesis, out of which dust the body of 
 man was and is formed, and to which it returns. These 
 spiritual virtues and living principles of things are control- 
 lable by the will, faith, and imagination of man, and can, 
 with any quality our thought may give them, be determined 
 upon the body or any of its organs. They can also be 
 infused into any inert substances, as milk-sugar, or water, 
 or even paper, and they become invested with the peculiar 
 properties of any herb or drug. But all this lies within the
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 141 
 
 unexplored domain of the occult science of medicine. In an 
 old work by a Scotch physician by the name of Maxwell, enti- 
 tled " Medicina Magnetica," and published at Frankfort in 
 1C 79, it is said : " That which men call the world spirit (the 
 welt-geist of the German, the anima mundi of the Platonic 
 philosophy) is a life, as fire, spiritual, fleet, subtle, and ethe- 
 real as light itself. It is a life-spirit everywhere, and every- 
 where the same ; and this is the common bond of all quarters 
 of the earth, and lives through and in all. 
 
 " If thou canst avail thyself of this spirit and accumulate 
 it in particular bodies, thou wilt receive no trifling benefit 
 from it, for therein consists all the mystery of magic (or 
 magnetism). This spirit is found in nature free from all 
 fetters ; and he who understands how to unite it to a har- 
 monizing body possesses a treasure which exceeds all 
 riches." 
 
 " He who knows how to operate on men by this spirit can 
 heal, and this at any distance he pleases." (Ennemoser 's His- 
 tory of Magic, Vol. II., p. 258.) This brief extract contains 
 the key to the mystery of healing by magnetism, and by 
 mental forces and agencies. The true magnetic healer has 
 learned the nature and properties of the universal divine life- 
 principle, and how to influence its action. It is an exalted 
 science in its higher applications, and will be rescued from 
 its present degradation, and restored to its ancient dignity as 
 the science of sciences. It was once called magic, a word 
 which signifies wisdom, for it was a true spiritual philosophy, 
 founded upon immutable and eternal principles, and was 
 practised by many of the noblest and divinest men the world 
 ever saw.
 
 142 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL ETHER OF SCIENCE, AND THE JETHER OF THE 
 HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 MAGNETISM, as the universal life-principle, and that by 
 which God is present and acts in nature, is in a perpetual 
 effort to ultimate or actualize the divine idea of things in 
 material forms. This effort we believe can be aided, and its 
 operation greatly accelerated, by the intelligent will and im- 
 agination of man. "When I think that a patient is well, or 
 is getting well, and this is true, as has been shown before, 
 of his immortal self or spiritual entity, the thought by an 
 occult law takes form in an idea, in the Logos or Divine 
 Truth, as Swedenborg would call it, which is a spiritual and 
 living substance. But this idea will take a more external 
 shape in the universal soul-life of nature, the primal sub- 
 stance or cosmic matter. It then becomes a real creation, 
 an ideal entity, a thing of the unseen world. But the soul 
 of the patient is a part of the soul of the world and not dis- 
 connected from it ; and on his soul the ideal picture ma}' be 
 photographed, and it will still tend outward by a force pro- 
 portioned to the intensity of the original thought and vivid- 
 ness of the idea, until it translates itself into a full bodiby 
 expression, or creates the physical organism into its own 
 image. "An idea," says Plutarch, "is a being (or thing) 
 incorporeal, which has no subsistence by itself, but gives 
 figure and form unto shapeless matter, and becomes the 
 cause of its manifestation." (De Pladtio Philosoplioi-um.) 
 The cosmic matter, the primal stuff of which all things are 
 made (and which is recognized in science as the universal
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 143 
 
 aether), and which is the same everywhere and in all things 
 in the universe, is of itself without form or quality. It is the 
 original chaos. It only receives form and quality from ideas 
 which are in mind only. Hence it is that mind shapes mat- 
 ter, and gives it all its properties. This universally diffused 
 principle, the great magnetic agent, and which Sir Isaac 
 Newton called the divine sensorium (for it is really the seat 
 of all sensation) , is the anima mundi, the soul of the world. 
 The animal soul of man is an individualized expression of it, 
 and through it we are connected in sympathy with all other 
 souls, and all the objects of nature, even to the stars and all 
 the heavenly bodies. Newton says of it in his "Fundamental 
 Principles of Natural Philosophy" : "Here the question is of 
 a very subtle spirit, which penetrates through all, even the 
 hardest bodies, and which is concealed in their substance. 
 Through the strength and activit}- of this spirit (or immate- 
 rial substance) bodies attract each other, and adhere to- 
 gether when brought into contact. Through it electrical 
 bodies operate at the remotest distance, as well as near at 
 hand, attracting and repelling (he might have said that in 
 it and by it distance is annihilated, and all objects touch 
 each other) ; through this spirit (or intelligent, tm-material 
 substance), light also flows and is refracted and reflected, 
 and warms bodies. All senses are excited by this spirit, and 
 through it the animals move their limbs. But these things 
 cannot be explained in few words, and we have not yet suffi- 
 cient experience to determine fully the laws by which this 
 universal spirit operates." Thus far and no farther can 
 modern science go. But the Archaic or Hermetic philoso- 
 phy gives to the universal aether certain occult metaphysical 
 properties, with which it was familiar, but of which our mod- 
 ern materialistic science is totally ignorant. The word is 
 from CU00J (aitho) , to burn, to shine. This aether, according 
 to Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Hyppasus, Heraclitus, 
 Hippocrates, and all the oldest philosophers, was viewed as
 
 144 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 a divine, luminous principle or substance, which psrmeates, 
 and at the same time contains all things in it. It was called 
 by the Hermetic philosophers the astral light, which signifies 
 not star-light, as the word would seem to indicate, but the 
 feminine wisdom-principle, it being from the same root as 
 Astarte and Ashtaroth. It is a spiritual fire that does not 
 burn. In the treatise on the Nature of the Gods (Lib. ii., c. 
 36) , Cicero says : Aerem amplectatur immensus cetlier, qui 
 constat, exaltissimis ignibus, the immensurable aether, which 
 consists of the most subtle and exalted fire or flame, embra- 
 ces the ah*. Also Apuleius (" De Mundo") says: Codum 
 ipsum stettasque colligens, omnisque siderum compago, (ether 
 vocatur, non ut quidem putant quod ignitus sit et incensus, 
 sed quod cursibus rapidis semper rotatur. The aether is that 
 in which all things exist when we get round to their immate- 
 rial side. All life is compared to a flame, and the soul is 
 poetically, but truly said to be a vital spark of heavenly fire. 
 All growing things assume the flame form, as leaves and 
 grasses. The aether is the unparticled substance, of which 
 all things are made, and to which they return. The fire of 
 which John the Baptist speaks, the baptismal flame, is iden- 
 tical with the Holy Spirit, and is the universal aether of 
 occult philosophy ; for it was not viewed as material in the 
 common acceptation of the term. In the Book of Hermes, 
 called Pimander, which signifies the Divine Thought, it is 
 said : " The light is I. I am the nous or intelligence, and I 
 am thy god, and I am far older than the human principle 
 which escapes from the shadow. I am the germ of thought, 
 the resplendent Word, the Son of God. Think that what 
 thus sees and hears in thee, is the Verbum of the Master, 
 it is the Thought which is God the Father. The celestial 
 ocean, the cether, which flows from east to west, is the Breath 
 of the Father, the life-giving principle, the Holy Ghost." 
 
 The universal aether, according to the authors of that 
 remarkable book, the "Unseen Universe," is the repository
 
 THE PKIM1TIVE MIND-CURE. 145 
 
 of the spiritual images of all living things, and even human 
 thoughts. All things that ever were, that are, or ever will 
 be, all that was ever said or written, thought and felt, leaves 
 its record upon this imperishable tablet of the unseen world ; 
 and the truly spiritual man, by using the vision of his own 
 spirit, may read it there, and know all that has been known 
 or can be known ; for it still exists in the universal princi- 
 ple, which is the Apocalyptic " book of life," and the myste- 
 .rious "tree of knowledge" of Genesis, and the memory of 
 God. 
 
 It is one of the fundamental ideas of the work mentioned 
 above, that "thought affects the matter (or substance) of 
 another world simultaneously with this," and the missing link 
 connecting mind and matter is thus found, and the great law 
 of continuity is maintained. A blow on the body of another 
 affects not merely the external shell, but goes deeper, and 
 wounds and scars the primitive matter of the body. So a 
 treatment given to another in kindness and a desire to heal, 
 affects the inner man, and through that tends to form the 
 external body into the image of health and divine harmony. 
 
 A thought impulse can affect and set in motion the univer- 
 sal aether, the life-principle. It can create a current in the 
 astral light, the welt-geist of the German, and give it quality, 
 and direct it to a person near at hand, or send it as a sana- 
 tive influence to any distance. Few persons know of the 
 marvellous power that lies latent and slumbering in human 
 nature ; and it is well it is so. 
 
 Our thoughts and feelings are not the evanescent things 
 the}' are supposed to be, but they record themselves on this 
 unseen tablet, and create a current, or, as it were, an eddy- 
 ing sphere, in the universal aether or life. The prevailing 
 mode of thinking and predominant feelings of an age or com- 
 munity create a current or tendency in the world's life that 
 bears us on with it, and it is hard to row against the stream. 
 This is what is called iu the teaching of Jesus the world,
 
 146 THE PRIMITIVE HIND-CURE. 
 
 which is viewed as the antagonist of the spiritual life. " Yo 
 are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the 
 world," by which is not meant the earth, but the general 
 current of thought and feeling in the age and country where 
 we live. To the spiritual eye most souls are seen floating in 
 it like the dead and withered leaves of autumn upon the sur- 
 face of a swollen and muddy stream. To take a patient and 
 lift him out of this current of established beliefs and con- 
 firmed illusions, is the Herculean task before the true physi- 
 cian. When one is sick in any degree, the general current 
 of the world's life leads him to think that he must take some- 
 thing, or do something. There is only one way in which we 
 can not only stem this flood, but rise entirely out of it into a 
 higher stratum of thought and feeling, and that is through 
 the power of an intelligent faith. " This is the victory that 
 overcometh the world, even your faith." (I John iv:'4.) 
 " And to him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree 
 of life which is in the Paradise of God." (Rev. ii : 7.) This 
 is purely Kabalistic, but full of meaning to him who has the 
 key to it. The garden of God, according to the old science 
 of correspondence, signifies spiritual wisdom and its delights. 
 "The tree of life" is the Kabalistic Adam Kadmon, the 
 primal and universal spiritual man, the true maximus homo, 
 or greatest man, of the Scandinavian seer. To eat of this 
 tree is to come into direct communication with the centra] 
 fountain of all manifested life, that from which all exist- 
 ence springs, and to which it seeks to return. This is the 
 elixir of life, " the spiritual essence of silver" of the Alche- 
 , mists and Hermetic philosophers. The tree of life of the 
 \ \ Kabala was represented with its roots upwards and branches 
 ^ downwards. So we need to be taken up from our present 
 inverted condition, the illusory life of sense, and trans- 
 planted into the garden of God, and planted with the spiritual 
 root of our being upward, and we shall bear fruit downward. 
 We shall receive influx from above, and no longer from
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 147 
 
 beneath, from the inephitic vapors of the Stygian lake. Then 
 we reach the secret of a long life in that tranquillity of mind 
 which results from a life above the world, or that sphere or 
 current of mental disorder that constitutes the life of men in 
 general. It is on this plane alone that disease (which in its 
 essence is discontent, dissatisfaction) can exist. On the 
 spiritual plane we look down upon it, like earthly fogs seen 
 from the summit of a mountain. 
 
 In closing this lesson I would remark that things become 
 necessary to the sustenance or maintenance of life in propor- 
 tion as they become more and more subtle and interior. 
 
 1. We have the mineral and earthy elements in our food. 
 A due proportion of these is essential to the preservation of 
 the integrity of the corporeal structure. 
 
 2. Water, which is an element less gross than minerals, 
 and we can live longer without food than we can without 
 water. 
 
 3. The air, which is more subtle than the aqueous element 
 and a thousand times more necessary to life. 
 
 4. Lastly, the universal aether, the principle of life itself, 
 and the universal magnetic agent. 
 
 We must caution the reader against taking a too material 
 conception of this subtle principle, as is done by modern 
 science, but was not done in the ancient Hermetic philosophy. 
 This is the " one thing needful," a designation applied to it 
 in the old spiritual science, and often recurring in the writ- 
 ings of the Alchemists of all ages, and also employed by 
 Jesus in his conversation with Martha. (Luke x: 38-42.) 
 It is that rema or emanation from God, from which man lives 
 more than from bread. (Luke iv : 4.)
 
 148 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE MOTHER PRINCIPLE OP THINGS, AND ITS USE IN SELF- 
 HEALING. 
 
 THE universal life-principle in its latent state is the pri- 
 mal matter and cosmic substance, and fills all space, and 
 connects all worlds. It pervades and contains the air, as 
 the air contains the water, and the water the earth. We 
 inhale it with every breath, and in it we live, and move, and 
 have our being. But it is " without form and void " of 
 quality. It is pure existence, and to it properties aud qual- 
 ities are given by thought alone. To it any quality can be 
 given by the imagination as we breathe it in. It is the 
 mother principle, the feminine creative potency, the passive 
 power in nature, and is co-eternal with spirit, of which it is 
 the correlative opposite. It is an interesting fact that tbe 
 word mother and matter are nearly identical in most of the 
 languages of the world. In Latin we have mater and 
 materia, the matter, stuff, or material of which anything is 
 made. In Italian, madre signifies mother, cause, origin, 
 root, spring, and mould for castings. In the latter sense, the 
 mother principle is the universal matrix. In Spanish we 
 have madre, mother, and materia, matter. In Portuguese, 
 madre means mother and the mould for castings. Even in 
 the Irish, mathair means mother and also matter. This pri- 
 mal matter is the mother principle, or feminine passive ray, 
 emanating from the " Unknown." It is the universal mould 
 in which all ideas take shape. It is represented in the Jew- 
 ish cosmogony by Eve (or Heva), " the mother of all living 
 things," the very name signifying completeness and fulness
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 149 
 
 of life. The feminine principle of things is not absolutely 
 passive, but its characteristic is reaction. The quality which 
 we impress by our thought upon this universal life-principle, 
 it takes, and it is reflected back with it in the respiration. 
 The sun shines by its own light, and the feminine moon 
 reflects. There is an occult air, immaterial and impercepti 
 ble to any of the gross external senses, but most vitally real, 
 for things increase in reality as they come nearer to the 
 central point of existence. "This air," says the Kabala, 
 " is the most occult (occult issimus) attribute of the Deity." 
 It is identical with the akasa of the Hindu philosophy. In 
 its latent state it is the universal aether, the air of immensity, 
 " an unburning vivific flame." It is the Shekinah of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit of the New Testa- 
 ment as a feminine life-principle. The Shekinah is that 
 subtle light, or divine luminous substance, or visible glory, 
 which was a symbol and vehicle of the divine presence. It 
 was the sacred fire of the Persians, and the Astral light of 
 the Rosicrucians. This primal, eceryichere-present principle, 
 or immaterial substance, is the universal matrix in which the 
 ideas of the intellect take form and become to our minds 
 and senses visible entities. In the Hindu theosophy, the 
 grandest system of metaphysics the world has ever seen, it 
 is called Nari and Manama, the universal mother. It was 
 symbolized by the Lotus ; and Brahm, the active masculine 
 poteucy seated on the Lotus floating on the water creates 
 the world. In the Egyptian philosophy it was called Isis, 
 and the attributes and names given to it, the Roman Catholic 
 system has borrowed and given to Mary, which name means 
 the sea as a feminine priuciple. In the Archaic wisdom- 
 religion this universal principle was denominated the mother- 
 soul of the universe and the astral virgin, which waits to be 
 fertilized or impregnated by the intellect or male potency. 
 It was called pure essence, the mother of the five virtues, 
 elements, or potencies : in other words, the primal force from
 
 150 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 which nil the forces of nature spring. She was also called 
 wise mother, mirror of justice, or real truth, as all the knowl- 
 edge of the world in every age is recorded in it as in a sealed 
 book. It was also the symbol and the repository of the 
 occult science of the ancient sages, and represented by the 
 ark. Hence Isis was veiled, to signify that this spiritual 
 science and mystic wisdom was concealed from the world at 
 large. The unveiling of Isis was the revelation of the hidden 
 truths of the arcane philosophy. Both Nari and Isis were 
 called womb of gold, sistrum of gold, and virgin queen of 
 heaven codnm, which is from the Greek koilia, the belly, 
 the womb of the universe, signified by the blue vault with its 
 mysterious depths, the blue ray being the feminine color. She 
 was the mother-soul of all beings and things. It is the source 
 of all celestial light, the morning star of the Apocalypse 
 (Rev. ii : 28) , the Syrian Astarte, the Jewish Astaroth, and 
 the astral light of the Kabala. 
 
 Creation, as we have said before, and here repeat, is a 
 begetting ; that is, it is the union of the male principle 
 pure spirit, the nous of Plato, the primal light with the 
 feminine principle, the Sophia, the prima materia, the pure 
 cosmic immaterial substance. The first is represented by 
 the upright line or descending ray ( I ) , and the latter, by the 
 horizontal or base line ( ) , and the union of the two forms 
 the cross (-j-), one of the oldest and most expressive of 
 religious symbols. " All that is created," says the Kabala, 
 " by the Ancient of the Ancients, can live and exist only by 
 a male and a female" (principle). Thought and feeling, 
 idea and sensation, combine to make a thing, a concrete 
 reality. 
 
 The most ancient name of the Deity, the Mystic designa- 
 tion of God, and found in all the Archaic esoteric religious 
 philosophies, expresses this truth. It was IA.O, pronounced 
 by the Jews if uttered at all Yaho, and bj 7 the Samar- 
 itans, Yava. Its significance was kept absolutely occult, and
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 151 
 
 deeply veiled from the multitude. It is composed of the 
 masculine upright Hue (1) as the oue or unity, and the fem- 
 inine, ought (0) or cypher. The two in combination make 
 the number ten (10), which, in its symbolic esoteric sense, 
 means all, and fulness, completeness, the Alpha and the 
 Omega, the first and the last, and all between the extremes. 
 With the H or All, the aspirate or breathing, which mysti- 
 cally signifies breath, soul, life, coming between the mascu- 
 line upright and the representative of the feminine passive 
 or reactive principle, the oval, egg-shaped ought, the San- 
 scrit Siphron, it teaches that all things that live and exist, 
 consciously and unconsciously, are generated by the con- 
 junction of these two principles. And the most ancient 
 name of God, IAO, means that He is the All, that we and 
 all other creatures are included in his Being, and that "he 
 giveth life, and breath, and all things." The egg, the oval, 
 the cypher, is the representative of the feminine universal 
 life-principle and creative potency, and it was a tenet of 
 the occult philosoph}-, that all things are produced from 
 an egg. But the cypher by itself stands for nothing ; in 
 union with the one (pure spirit) it means all things. In the 
 Creation, the Divine Spirit brooded over the " face of the 
 waters." As all the emotions and interior feelings are ex- 
 pressed in the face, it came to signify the inmost pure 
 essence of things. Over this the Spirit brooded and gave 
 it form and quality. But man, in his complete being, 
 reaches from the last (matter) to the first (spirit), from 
 earth to the highest heaven. Our spirits can imitate the 
 creative act of the Elohim. Thought, which is a movement 
 of the Divine Spirit in man, and springs out of the unknown 
 depths of the Godhead, can act on this universal passive 
 principle, and in it, it will take form in an idea, which is a 
 living thing, an actual creation or thing begotten. This 
 universal mother principle is that through which thought is 
 made effective.
 
 152 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 Celestial wisdom, the Divine Sophia, the second emana- 
 tion of the Kabala, by a law of correlation or correspon- 
 dence, in its descent downward, or its passing outward from 
 the living Point (the Centre which is everywhere, of a circle 
 which is nowhere) becomes the reactive mother principle of 
 nature, the cosmic matter, or immaterial substance, the 
 chaos, the liyle of Plato and the Greeks, the prima materia. 
 It is the Sakti of the Buddhists, the sacred presence, the 
 veil of God, the instrument or agent of the active power and 
 creative energy of gods and men. It is the vehan or vehicle 
 or medium of communication between one mind and another, 
 and through which a psychological impression can be made, 
 and ideas communicated by psychological telegraphy far 
 and near. It is the messenger dove, the carrier pigeon of 
 the spirit, the invisible and everywhere present, and divinely 
 sensitive silver wire through which a thought impulse may 
 be transmitted over continents and across oceans. It is that 
 by which God is present in the world, and through which one 
 spirit may be present to another spirit a thousand miles 
 away, for in it, distance ceases to be, and all objects may 
 touch and communicate. It is also the universal principle 
 of sensation, that in which all sensation and perception 
 exist, and through which a sensation may be transmitted any 
 distance. It is the universal eye, the all hearing ear, and 
 the omnipresent sense of feeling. It is the medium of 
 sympathy, or psychometry, or that through which our states 
 affect others, and our feelings become infectious. All this, 
 and much more, is true of it. 
 
 This knowledge was kept for ages absolutely occult, and 
 has, for wise reasons, been concealed from the rabble from 
 tl\3 foundation of the world. It was taught by "the wise 
 men" to the elected few, but under allegorical forms of 
 expression was hidden from the unthinking multitudes, to 
 whom it was not given to know the Hysterics of the king- 
 dom of God, and it is fully known only to a chosen few
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CORE. 153 
 
 to-day. It still belongs to that wisdom which Paul spoke 
 only among the perfect. But the time is at hand when it 
 may be proper to unloose the seven seals, and in some degree 
 open the mystic scroll that is written within and on the 
 backside (Rev. v:l). And the knowledge of this arcane 
 philosophy will invest the soul of man with greatly enlarged 
 powers of doing good, and of " working the works of God." 
 In the possession of this spiritual science, magnetism be- 
 comes the wisdom-lore of the ancient sages, the knowledge 
 of spiritual things, and their relation to natural things. 
 Religion becomes the recognition of the Father and Mother 
 sides of the Divine Being, an androgyne Deity, the divine 
 character rounded out into full-orbed completeness, and not 
 a one-sided, stern, inflexible, masculine power and justice. 
 And heaven itself, with its angelic hosts, is moved up from 
 the immense remoteness, where the theology of materialism 
 has placed it, into actual contact with men's souls. 
 
 In our Western theology, the masculine side of the divine 
 nature has been pushed into extreme prominence, to the 
 exclusion of the feminine side. In the Hindu system the 
 reverse of this is true, and Mozoomdar boldly affirms, " "We 
 believe in a Mother God." It is an interesting fact that 
 among them the Supreme Divine Essence, the Aditi (from 
 a, not, and diti, bounded), is feminine, as the form of the 
 Sanscrit word indicates. Hence, to the Hindu mind, the 
 Absolute Divinity is passive and responsive, which ought to 
 lay a firm foundation for faith in prayer. This is only 
 another way of saying. " God is love," as love is the femi- 
 nine side of human nature, and true love is an irrepressible 
 inclination and impulse to give. In Swedenborg's " Science 
 of Correspondence," the Father signifies the Divine Love, 
 b} T which conception the sterner features of the Masculine 
 Divinity of the popular theology are softened into mother- 
 hood, and the God we adore becomes tenderly responsive to 
 our supplications, as the maternal instinct with loving haste
 
 154 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 flies to the rescue of her waiting child. In the Roman Cath- 
 olic Religion, Mary is -worshipped as a representative of the 
 Universal Mother, and thus they unconsciously appeal to 
 the Mother nature of God, and have accomplished the use 
 of keeping alive in the Western mind this idea. Among 
 them, Mary is the healer, and thus they teach without know- 
 ing it a great truth. There is in God, in the Christ, in 
 Jesus, and in every holy and truly spiritual being, a mascu- 
 line and feminine element. The perfect harmony and bal- 
 ancing of these is the highest condition of man. But it is 
 the feminine clement that binds up the hurts of every living 
 thing. Nari, Isis, and Mary represent the maternal side of 
 the Divine Being, and the feminine divine life-principle in 
 nature. The original trinity was not that of Father, Sou, and 
 Holy Ghost, but was expressed by the relations of Father, 
 Mother, and Son. This is given us in the " Timseus " of 
 Plato, but came from the much older philosophy of India. 
 Each discrete degree of the human mind is dual ; that is, 
 it is constituted of intellect, and sensibility or feeling, a 
 masculine and feminine element in union. So in the Divine 
 Mind and all its manifestations and incarnations. Suppose, 
 in the Christian theology, we should view the Holy Spirit 
 as the universal Mother element, it would at first be sus- 
 pected of heres}-, but nevertheless would express an eternal 
 truth. But such is the fixedness of religious opinions, that 
 the bare mention of the divine motherhood in God is deemed 
 improper, and subjects one to the charge of being " a setter 
 forth of strange gods." But everything in nature is dual. 
 The air we breathe is a union of two gases, oxygen and 
 nitrogen, a positive and masculine, and a negative or 
 feminine element. So water is a combination of oxygen 
 and hydrogen. Minerals and earths follow the same law. 
 All the salts of chemistry and their name is legion are 
 a union of an acid and an alkali. Marble is carbonic acid 
 and lime, and is carbonate of lime.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CURE. 155 
 
 The maternal element in God and nature is manifested in 
 the tender, protecting, nursing, and healing care of the 
 maternal parent among animals for her young. Jesus refers 
 us to the hen as an illustration. Take these qualities and 
 attributes exhibited everywhere in nature in the ineffable 
 tenderness of motherhood, and project the idea upon the 
 plane of the infinite, and you have our conception of the 
 universal divine life-principle. We may call it Eve, or Mary, 
 or the Holy Spirit, but must not separate it from God. We 
 may always trust in it to cure our maladies of body and 
 mind, and can pray to this side of the divine character. It 
 furnishes a secure standing ground for an assured faith, and 
 will until " mothers cease their own to cherish." When we 
 fully grasp the idea, it will ever say to us in the words of 
 Jesus, " Be not afraid ; onby believe." (Mark v : 36.) 
 
 The union of intellect and feeling, the masculine and fem- 
 inine elements, to constitute a world, a thing, a perfected 
 and complete human entity, is the symbolic significance of 
 the cross, which expresses one of the grandest, most far- 
 reaching and all-comprehensive truths in the whole realm of 
 mind. Thus we rescue the sacred cross from its degrada- 
 tion in the modern theology, and restore it to its ancient and 
 true meaning, and its saving, healing power. It is said that 
 Constautine, the Roman emperor, had a vision of a cross in 
 the heavens, on which was inscribed the letters I. H. S. 
 vince. That meant, and still means, In hoc signo, vince, in 
 what this sign signifies, conquer ; for the truth, sublime in 
 its simplicity, symbolized by the cross, is of the widest 
 practical importance in the system of mental cure. The 
 union of intellectual thought with feeling or emotion gener- 
 ates power. The omnipotence of God is the conjunction of 
 infinite wisdom and infinite love. The union of the Divine 
 Intellect and the Divine Love is Life, and all conscious and 
 unconscious life is the result of that conjunction, a truth we 
 have aimed to keep before the mine of the reader of these
 
 156 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 lessons. Hence the cross is the Kabalistic " tree of life." 
 The highest psychological power is attained when we feel the 
 truth we know and express. When the principle of spiritual 
 intelligence in us is conjoined with its correlative emotion, it 
 becomes a supreme saving and healing power. Intelligence 
 alone, unvivified by love, is cold and dead, and has no more 
 animating power than moonbeams reflected from polar ice. 
 The healing power of Jesus was the result of the union of 
 a divine intelligence with a pure, unselfish love, and his very 
 name signifies and represents the saving principle that is the 
 product of that union, as we shall have occasion to illustrate 
 hereafter.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 157 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE KABALISTIC AND MESSIANIC METHOD OF HEALING, AND 
 THE ONE PRACTISED BY JESUS THE CHRIST. 
 
 THAT the cures wrought by Jesus were effected by the 
 application of certain fixed principles, which, when properly 
 formulated, constitute an intelligible transcendental mode or 
 science of cure, there can be little doubt. His practical 
 metaphysics are not an impenetrable and incommunicable 
 secret. The knowledge of its leading principles is attainable 
 by the spiritually enlightened mind to-day, and that knowl- 
 edge will invest us with the power to do the works that he 
 did. It was the practical application of the Messianic 
 method of cure, described in symbolic language in the 
 Kabala. In the Sohar, or Book of Light, of Rabbi Simon 
 Ben Jochai, it is said : " In the garden of Eden (which was 
 in the lower region of the spiritual world, corresponding to 
 the soul region in man) there is one palace which is called 
 the palace of the sick. The Messiah goes into this palace and 
 invokes all the sufferings, and pains, and afflictions of Israel 
 to come upon Mm, and they all come upon Mm. Now if he 
 did not remove them thus, and take them upon himself, no 
 man could endure the sufferings of Israel, due as a punish- 
 ment for transgressing the Law : as it is written, ' Surely 
 he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.' " (Isa. 
 lii:4.) (See Ginsburg's Kabala.') This remarkable passage 
 from the Kabala gives no foundation for the current doctrine 
 of vicarious atonement, which was wholly foreign to the 
 Jewish mind, but gives the key to a method of healing prac- 
 tised by Jesus, and perhaps also by the mystic Pythagorean
 
 158 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 sect of the Jews called Essenes, and also in Egypt Thcra- 
 peutae or Healers, to which sect Jesus himself unquestion- 
 ably belonged. Through the sympathetic or psycliometric sense, 
 which may be defined as the susceptibility of being affected 
 by the states of others, and which detects with unerring accu- 
 racy the mental condition of the patient, which is the spiritual 
 cause of his disease, we take it on ourselves, at least so far 
 as to have a clear conception of it. This wonderful " soul- 
 measuring " power is represented by the golden reed in the 
 hand of the apocalyptic angel, by which he took the meas- 
 ure of man, that is, detected the quality of a person. By 
 it we take up into ourselves the condition of the patient, 
 not to permanently carry it, but temporarily take it up intel- 
 lectually and in idea, in order to loosen its hold upon him 
 and to remove it from him. It is as if we should find a man 
 by the wayside prostrate on the ground, with a rock which 
 has fallen upon him holding him down. We lift the rock 
 from him, not in order to carry it ourselves, but only to 
 remove it from him. So it is said of Jesus that he fulfilled 
 the saying of the Book of the prophet Isaiah, " Himself took 
 up (or assumed to himself) our infirmities, and bore away (or 
 removed) our diseases." (Mat. viii : 17.) We turn toward 
 the patient the psychometric or "soul-measuring" sense, or 
 the receptive side of human nature, which may become 
 acutely developed in us, in order to receive into our minds 
 the idea, the mental image, the living psychic germ of the 
 disease. This is the spiritual side, the immaterial counter- 
 pal t of the malady. This we take up, as it were, into our- 
 selves, not sensationally only a slight degree, but rather 
 intellectually, in order that as a cause of the disease, it may 
 be remitted or borne away from the patient. Space is filled 
 with the psychic germs or embryos of things. These are 
 identical with the atoms of Democritus. The general cur- 
 rent of the world-life is crowded with the soul-germs of 
 disease, which in their essence are morbid ideas and falla-
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 159 
 
 cious beliefs. These are the latent causes, a sort of spiritual 
 bacteria, that may, under certain conditions, find lodgement 
 in men's souls, and germinate, as it were, in foe prima male- 
 ria of the brain, and be thus the fruitful seed of disease, and ; 
 develop into actuality in the physical body. These morbid 
 ideas, which are the true interior life of disease, are to be 
 taken up, as we have before said, and borne away from the 
 patient. So when the evil, the morbid idea, the sin, that lies / 
 at the root of the malady is removed, a vacuum is, as it 
 were, formed, which God and nature are said to abhor, and : 
 the opposite good and truth, from a fixed divine law, flow in. / 
 A living, life-giving truth cannot be received until the error, ' 
 the illusion, the sin which occupies the mind is removed. 
 Healing, saving truth does not crowd out error or a false 
 belief from the mind, nor neutralize it as an acid combines 
 with an alkali to make a salt. But when the error or sin is 
 removed, truth spontaneously flows in ; when an evil is put 
 away and ejected from the mind, we come into the opposite 
 good. This is according to an established divine order. 
 V>'hen we take up into our intellectual consciousness the 
 morbid idea in the miad of the patient, or take upon our- 
 selves intellectually, but not sensationally, his spiritual con- 
 dition, we vicariously represent him in our own person, and 
 bear that condition away from him, and prepare the soil of 
 his soul for the reception of the seed of healing and saving 
 truth. Thus did Jesus. He bore, or represented in his own , 
 person the sins of men. (I Pet. ii:24.) He affirms that 
 his works can be repeated by his followers. (John xiv : 12.) 
 In the case of the cure of the paralytic, mentioned in the 
 Gospel of Matthew, there are many valuable hints which can 
 be taken advantage of in the psychological method of cure. 
 One is that the remission of sin, or the banishment from the 
 mind of a patient of the error or false idea, of which the 
 disease is the physical counterpart or material expression, is 
 equivalent to the cure of the malady. It is also affirmed that
 
 160 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 God has given to the " son of man'' a purely Kabalistic 
 expression for man, as to his soul-principle power to do 
 this. The spirit is the real man and son of God. The soul, 
 as being generated by the spirit, is the son or offspring of 
 the real man. This, when pervaded by the life of the spirit, 
 has power on earth to bear away from the mind of another 
 a false idea or sin. This is clearly taught in that remarkable 
 passage in the Gospel of John, which contains a great truth 
 and principle of Christianity which has been dropped out of 
 the life of the church and forgotten. After the appearance 
 of Jesus as a spirit to his disciples or scholars, he said to 
 them, " As my father hath sent me, even so send I you. 
 Whose soever sins ye remit (that is, banish, bear or send 
 away) , they are remitted unto them ; and whose soever sins 
 ye retain, they are retained." (John xx:21, 22.) The 
 term sin is here used in its radical sense, of an " aberration 
 from the truth," or the divine realit}' of things, an error, a 
 falsity, an illusion, and not in its corrupted theological sig- 
 nification. In this sense sin is the psychic germ of disease, 
 the idea or living image of it, and that alone from which it 
 can "exist. The disciples of Jesus in all ages, through the 
 coming to them of the Paraclete as the spirit and power of 
 truth from him, and as the inward Word, which was to be 
 inspired into them by his spiritual presence, were to be 
 endowed with power to remit or put away sin, as being the 
 i cause of every physical malady, from the minds and life of 
 men. How this is to be done in harmony with the laws of 
 the mind has been shown above. We take up into ourself 
 the morbid condition of the patient, and assume the psychic 
 embryo of the disease, so that we vicariously represent him, 
 and "bear it in our body up to the tree " (I Pet. ii : 24) , a 
 profound Kabalistic expression. We take up into ourself 
 his condition in order that we may form a clear idea of it, 
 and this idea of it is the real disease, the ding an sich, or 
 thing in itself. Thus we are able to remit it or put it away
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 161 
 
 from him. This leaves in his mind a " peaceful vacancy," 
 which the universal Divine Life and Light make haste to fill. 
 This is the Messianic method of cure, and our skill and 
 facility in doing this will prove to the world the curative 
 efficiency of the psycho-therapeutic system of Jesus. There 
 is a power in this psychological and transcendental method 
 which few are prepared to admit. 
 
 It may aid us in understanding the deep philosophy of this 
 method of cure, if we bear in mind that ideas are the only 
 immediate objects of consciousness. In this Berkeley and 
 Locke both agree. And it is a doctrine older than Plato, 
 that ideas are the only real things. All real things belong to 
 the " unseen world," or lie be} 7 ond the grasp of the senses. 
 "Things seen," says Paul, "are temporal," are transient, 
 evanescent, and unreal ; " but things unseen (by the outward 
 sense) are eternal." (II Cor. iv: 18.) Kant somewhere 
 says that " the rose which we see is not the thing in itself, 
 the ding an sich, but a phenomenon or appearance." The 
 same is true of all the objects of nature and of man. You 
 do not see the realities of things with the eye. I do not see 
 my friend, but only what hides him from mj* sight. Man is 
 always invisible to sense. I close my eyes and think of an 
 absent friend, and I perceive a mental image of him, a li\ ing 
 idea of him. This is the real man, the spiritual entity, the 
 ding an sicA, the thing in itself. This is the true doctrine of 
 Platonic love, of which men speak without knowing what it 
 means. Says Plotinus, " As long as some one is conversant 
 with that figure only which is manifest to the eyes, he does 
 not yet love the object which he sees ; but when departing 
 from it, he generates in himself, in his impartible (indivisi- 
 ble) soul, a form which is not an object of sense, then love 
 springs forth." (Plotinus, translated by Thomas Taylor, p. 
 92.) That is the love of the real person or thing. It is 
 only by closing the eyes, or by freeing the soul from the 
 trammels of the physical senses, that we see, in the interior
 
 162 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 light, things in themselves. Perhaps blind persons see more 
 realities than we see, for the reason that what we call vision 
 is but a veil drawn over our real sight. Jesus, the Christ, 
 refers to this, when he sa3's of the sensuous Jewish rabble, 
 " that having eyes, they saw not, and having ears ihe\ hoard 
 not." The understanding the intellectual soul-principle 
 is the true organ of vision. It is that which lies back of the 
 eye, and is represented bj- the eye. " The light of the 
 body," says Jesus, "is the eye (intellect), if thine eye is 
 simple, or not compound, that is, if we see with the intellect 
 alone without the external organ, our whole body, or soul, is 
 full of light." The whole soul becomes an organ of vision, 
 and all the five senses are reduced to a unity, an indefinable 
 perception of ideas, the spiritual and real side of things. 
 
 "What men call disease has a spiritual side to it, an ideal 
 reality. The external is the apparent and phenomenal, the 
 shadow and not the substance. If the spiritual idea of it is 
 the real side of it, and if we can take this up into ourselves, 
 and bear it away from the mind of the patient, it is easy to 
 see that he would be redeemed from it. 
 
 But it must be kept in mind that this method of cure which 
 was practised by Jesus implies in the patient a desire to be 
 saved, and a predisposition to believe. Where these exist, 
 the cure is easy. Where they do not exist, little can be 
 done, and it is a waste of time and energy to undertake im- 
 possibilities. We often witness the efficiency of this ideal 
 method of cure where it is instinctively employed without an 
 intelligent comprehension of its principles. How often docs 
 the mother, when her child has fallen down and inflicted 
 upon himself a slight bruise, lift him gently up, pass her 
 hand over the place, take up the idea of it into herself, and 
 by dispersive movements of the hand put it away, as it were, 
 saying to the child, " Now it is all gone," and telling him to 
 jump up and run. That is quite frequently the last ever 
 heard from it, for the cure is complete. But in this whole
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 163 
 
 transaction there lies concealed a deeper philosophy than the 
 world in general has ever recognized. 
 
 Every person is surrounded by an emanative sphere of his 
 life. This is represented by the aureola or nimbus around 
 the heads of saints and divinities in pictures and medals. 
 Especially is this seen in the pictures of Jesus. This is a 
 circle or disk of rays invisible to our crude senses, but plainly 
 perceptible to our inner vision, and is by no means a mere 
 creation of fancy having no substantial reality, but represents 
 what actually exists in every person an emanative sphere 
 of our thoughts and feelings ; in other words, of our life. It 
 is different in different persons, and in the same person at 
 different times, as it is always in correspondence with our 
 inward states. In all depressing mental conditions, as, for 
 instance, in melancholy, this nimbus or sombre exhalation is 
 to be removed by dispersive passes, which is one of the most 
 effectual ways of changing the morbid mental condition of a 
 patient, and of expunging from his mind the idea and misbe- 
 lief which constitute the invisible side of his malady. This 
 is the teaching of the ancient arcane science of magnetism, 
 and the experience of many thousands of years has placed it 
 among established principles and demonstrated its efficiency. 
 It is now given to the world for the benefit of humanity. By 
 removing the dark cloud (so to speak) or the odyllic emana- 
 tion that surrounds the brain, and it is as easily done as 
 you can quench the flame of a candle with a sweep of the 
 hand, you prepare the way for the reception of a higher 
 and better influx. Just as when you brush away the air 
 around your face with a fan, fresh air immediately flows in 
 to take its place. 
 
 This principle is given with an actual experimental knowl- 
 edge of its practical value, though to our modern materialistic 
 science of medicine it may seem of no importance. It has 
 been said by some one " that Jesus cured disease by purify- 
 ing the atmosphere both within and without the patient."
 
 164 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 This he could do by the power of the inner Word and the 
 Spirit, and by these divine agencies we may learn in our 
 feebler way to do the same. A knowledge of the science of 
 magnetism is of great advantage to the practitioner of the 
 mental cure system. To cure disease by the phrenopathic 
 method, while wholly ignoring magnetism, must seem to 
 many persons like professing to fly without wings, or like an 
 attempt to practise telegraphy and denouncing the battery 
 and the wire, but all the time using both while kept out of 
 sight. But it must be borne in mind, that the most efficient 
 and successful use of the principle of magnetism does not 
 imply contact with a patient. The establishment of this prin- 
 ciple is one of the things done for the science by the cele- 
 brated and world-renowned Baron Du Potet, the prince of 
 modern magnetists, and who is worthy to be named with 
 Pythagoras, with Apollonius of Tyana, and with Paracelsus, 
 and Van Helmont. Magnetism in the old spiritual science is 
 identical with the universal life-principle, and is the medium 
 through which our minds influence the minds of others, and 
 a thought and will impulse are transmissible. To undertake 
 to affect the mind of another without it is as absurd as to 
 attempt to communicate sound through an absolute vacuum, 
 or for a skilful mechanic to go forth to his work, but leave 
 his tools behind.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 165 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 * 
 
 THE SUMMIT OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, OR THE MYSTERY OF 
 THE CHRIST, AND ITS SAVING INFLUENCE. 
 
 PAUL declares that he counted all things as loss, and even 
 as useless refuse, in comparison with the excellency of the 
 knowledge of Christ. He joyfulty suffered the loss of all 
 things that he might win (or gain) Christ, and be found in 
 Him, not having his own righteousness, which is of the law, 
 and which is only apparent and not real ; but that righteous- 
 ness which is from, or out of, God, through faith in Christ. 
 (Phil, iii : 8, 9.) This places the knowledge of Christ at the 
 summit of human thought, and makes it the summum bonum, 
 or supreme good of the human heart. This is not an exag- 
 geration, but a sober divine truth, an infinite fact and 
 reality. To be consciously in Christ is to be a new creature 
 or creation, that is, it is the birth of a new and higher man 
 in us. It is to merge our individual and partial self in the 
 higher Self, our Ego in the absolute Ego. Paul attained to 
 this conception. In the Epistle to the Galatians he says : 
 "I am crucified with Christ (a Kabalistic expression), 
 nevertheless I live, yet not I, but the Christ liveth in me." 
 (Col. ii : 20.) He found himself included in the Christ, as 
 the divine Collective Man, and by virtue of this conjunc- 
 tion, was complete in Him who is the head of all principality 
 and power ; for in him is the first personal manifestation 
 of the "Unknown," and all the fulness of God. (Col. ii : 
 10.) All human spirits are included in the being of the 
 Christ, who is the Universal Spirit, and have gone forth 
 from Him without going out of Him so as to lose their con-
 
 1G3 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 nection with Him. The intuitive recognition of this sublime 
 truth in all its far-reaching significance, and in all its prac- 
 tical saving influence, is the highest act of faith. We have 
 shown in a preceding lesson the importance of separating 
 by an act of judgment, our real. self, the immortal Ego, from 
 the disease that afflicts us. But it is the completion of 
 this act of faith, and its crowning position, to find our real 
 self included in the Absolute Self, or personage which Paul 
 denominates the Christ, who is the first and only man, as all 
 other men as to their spirits are but repetitions or modified 
 manifestations of Him. 
 
 This leads us to inquire, " Who and what is the Christ of 
 Paul?" This is called a mystery, by which is not meant an 
 incomprehensible doctrine, or unknowable truth, but one not 
 generall}' revealed ; in fact, only made known to the ' ' per- 
 fect," or those fully instructed. Paul received this knowl- 
 edge by direct revelation from the risen and ascended Jesus 
 more fully than any and all the other apostles. It was a special 
 dispensation of the " grace" of God to him, as one fitted by 
 his previous studies to receive it and fully apprehend it. He 
 tells us how by revelation was made known to him the 
 mystery, which, when we read, we may perceive his. under- 
 standing in the mystery of the Christ which in other gener- 
 ations had not been made known unto the sons of men, as it 
 was then revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the 
 Spirit. (Eph. iii : 2-4.) It was a doctrine concealed from 
 the masses and veiled from their understanding by a sym- 
 bolic covering, for the idea of communicating spiritual knowl- 
 edge to the unthinking multitude did not belong to the 
 ancient civilization. He declares also that the great mys- 
 tery of the Gospel, and a truth which had been generally 
 hidden from mankind during all preceding ages and genera- 
 tions was then made known unto the saints, which is Christ 
 in us, the hope of glory. (Col. i: 26, 27.) The rescuing 
 these truths from the inner sanctuary and the priestly caste,
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 167 
 
 and making them the common property of mankind, was the 
 real offence of Jesus, and the one for which he suffered 
 death. Thus he died for the benefit of all men everywhere. 
 But the question still recurs, " Who is Christ, and what is it 
 to be in Him, and to have Him in us?" "We will now rever- 
 ently approach and lift at least a corner of the veil from this 
 great mystery, the deepest, the most satisfying, and the 
 most influentially saving of all knowledge that lies within the 
 reach of human thought. If we get but a glimpse of it, it will 
 be in our consciousness the dawn of a new day, the beginning 
 of a new creation. 
 
 In all the archaic wisdom-religions, the Hindu, the Egyp- 
 tian, the Chaldean, and also the Judaic and early Christian, 
 there lies back of all creation or manifested existence, the 
 " Unknown God," the supreme Divine Essence, the Sway- 
 ambhuva of the Hindus, or the Aditi, the Absolute, the 
 Unbounded, as it is defined by Max Muller ; the same who 
 is called in the Chaldean and Jewish Kabala, the En Soph, 
 the No Thing. It is perhaps the Father of Jesus, whom no 
 man knoweth, onh" so far as he is revealed in the Son. Out 
 of this " Invisible God," as he is called by Paul, all creation 
 springs, but by an order and law that is called emanative 
 causality. Each successive emanation from the Unknown 
 Abyss, or each out-going universal principle, is less and less 
 subjective, and more and more external and comparatively un- 
 real, and matter is the remotest effect and ultimate boundary 
 of the emanative energy, beyond which is the No Thing again. 
 The Christ of Paul is the first, and includes all the others in 
 himself. He is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, 
 and all between the extremes. In that truly Kabalistic 
 book, the Apocalypse of John, the Christ is called "the 
 beginning of the creation of God." (Rev. iii : 15.) It will 
 be borne in mind that Paul was familiar with the secret doc- 
 trines of the Jews, as they are given in the Kabala of Simon 
 Ben Jochai, and a slight knowledge of this explains many of
 
 1G8 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 those things, which, as Peter affirms, are hard to be under- 
 stood in his Epistles. In the scheme of the Ten Sephiroth, 
 or Emanations, or Hypostases, the first is the Crown, the 
 Crest or Apex of all created existence, and which is pure 
 thought and the principle of thought. This is the Primordial 
 Point, the initial act and principle of creation. This divides 
 itself into two rays : a Father and a Mother ray, a masculine 
 and feminine principle and potency, the Nous and the 
 Sophia. The union of these is the Son of God, the first 
 man, the God-Man and the Man-God, the Adam Kadmou of 
 the Kabala, called also Protogonos, or First Begotten. It is 
 the Archetypal Man of Plato, or of man as he exists in the 
 divine Idea. All things and all worlds are contained in him, 
 and go forth from him without going out of him. Hence 
 the tendency of all things, in their return toward their 
 source, to assume the human form. As the Kabala ex- 
 presses it, the mineral becomes a plant, the plant an animal, 
 the animal a man, and man becomes divine. This is the 
 Divine Man, the Christ of Paul, at the same time a divine 
 personage and a universal humanized principle of life and 
 light. In the Epistle to the Colossians, which contains a 
 fuller expression of the Christology of Paul than aiy other 
 of his Epistles, he says of the Christ, " Who is the image of 
 the Invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him 
 were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, 
 things visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, 
 or principalities, or powers, all things have been created 
 through him and unto (or in) him ; and he is before all 
 things, and by him all things consist" (or hold together}. 
 (Col. i : 15-18.) This is the Kabala with the veil removed. 
 In the first emanation from the " Unknown," the Maximus 
 Homo, or greatest man of Swedenborg, and the Christ of 
 Paul, all men and all things are included, like a body made 
 up of innumerable parts, each of which is an image of the 
 whole. We are in him, only more really so, in the same
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 1G9 
 
 way that the artist creates the picture or the statue first in 
 himself. This is an ideal but real entity, without which the 
 material expression of it could not exist. This idea is the 
 immortal part of it. The material manifestation of it may 
 be marred or destroyed, but this, never. This ideal and real 
 man which I am in Christ, the archetypal man, has the force 
 of destiny, not meaning fate, but an intelligent and benevo- 
 lent plan of my life, which has its use in the grand economy 
 of being. It is only when we perceive by faith that we are 
 included in the being of the Divine Man, Christ, that we are 
 complete, or filled out to the full expression of the divine 
 idea of man. Our weak and imperfect self is merged in the 
 grand unity of the divine-human principle, the divine human- 
 ity of the Lord, which is the Christ. Our life is no longer 
 an isolated fragment of life, but is merged in the whole. 
 When that which is perfect (or universal) is come, then that 
 which is in part is done awa}'. The individual, isolated Ego 
 disappears, and our life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. 
 iii : 3.) Or, as it is expressed by Jesus in relation to those 
 who believe on him, "I in them and thou in me, that they 
 may be perfected into one." (John xvii : 23.) As our true 
 being is in the Christ, he gives his life to us, and permits us 
 to call his life and his righteousness our own, and to appro- 
 priate it as such. Just as if each member of our body were 
 an express image of the body, and the life of the whole cir- 
 culated through it. This finding of our real self in the 
 Cbrist is the perfect state of man, or of man returned to the 
 state whence he started into existence. There is a Divine 
 Human Principle and Personage that is the inmost life of all 
 that is in the heavens and the earths. There is an unbroken 
 chain of being, from the moss to the angel, and each indi- 
 vidual link, though it has a form of life peculiar to itself, is 
 yet a manifestation of the life of the whole. As it has been 
 eloquently said, "the last, highest, brightest link of this 
 chain, and w'iich conjoins it to the Deity, is man ; the iucar-
 
 170 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 nation of thought itself, which is the summation of the uni- 
 verse ; man, that includes in himself all other links and their 
 single secret, the personified universe, the subject of the 
 world." (J. H. STIRLING in his triumphant reply to Huxley, 
 Half Hours with Modern Scientists, series ii., p. 137.) 
 
 The universal spirit is the proximate or first emanation 
 from the " Unknown," and is the Universal Man, or a divine 
 human principle, and my spirit, which is my immortal self, 
 is an individualized manifestation of the whole, a finite limi- 
 tation of it, without being sundered from it. Philo, the 
 Jewish mystic and philosopher, and a contemporary of 
 Jesus, calls the Logos, who is the manifested Christ, the 
 true man, 6 dXrjOivos cu0p<o7ros. Viewing nyself as a discon- 
 nected fragment of the whole, and on the plane of sense be- 
 coming blind to the invisible tie which binds me to the whole, 
 I may be weak, and diseased, and sinful. But when by faith 
 I connect my real self with the supreme and perfect Man, 
 as if a drop were returned to the ocean, without ceasing to 
 be a drop, then I am whole or complete. I am now included 
 in Christ ; I have found my real self in Christ, and have 
 become a new and higher creation, as all who thus believe 
 in Christ are taken up into Christ and incorporated into 
 him, and he is never sick or sinful. This is the Christ of 
 Paul, and his conception of a life of faith in him. It is 
 not strange that he denominated it a nn'stery, and that he 
 should suffer the loss of all things that he might win (or 
 gain) Christ and be found in him. This is the priceless 
 pearl or spiritual truth of the kingdom of the heavens, in 
 order to purchase which a man sells all other things, and 
 finds it cheap at that. For when my immortal Ego, my 
 inner and real self, is intuitively perceived to be in Christ, it 
 represents the grand unity of spirit, or man as the image 
 and Son of God, just as a drop of the ocean possesses all 
 the qualities and properties of the great deep, and is, as it 
 were, the ocean concentrated into a drop. This is accord-
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 171 
 
 ing to that sublime axiom of the Hermetic philosophy, 0;- 
 nia ex CTno, Omnia in Uno, Omnia ad Uhum, Omnia per 
 Medium, et Omnia in Omnibus, All things out of One, All 
 things in One, All things tend to One, All things through an 
 Intermediate, and All things in All. It was the doctrine of 
 Paul, that to be in Christ, or to intuitively view our individ- 
 ual spirit and real self as included in the Christ, just as the 
 atmosphere of this room, while it receives form and limita- 
 tion from the room, is nevertheless inseparable from the 
 boundless air, raises man to a plane of thought and conscious 
 life that is inconsistent with sin and disease. This idea and 
 disease cannot coexist in our consciousness on this exalted 
 elevation. By this faith man is lifted up to a spiritual alti- 
 tude, far above that sensuous stratum of our being where 
 sin, disease, and death are possible. This is Paul's resur- 
 rection in Christ and with Christ. If this is an eternal 
 truth, and not the baseless fabric of a dream, then wh}- need 
 we look any further for a remedy for either soul or body ? 
 By this Pauline doctrine, we are brought under the branches 
 of the tree of life, and ma}- pluck and eat and live forever, 
 for the Kabalistic " tree of life " is none other than the first 
 man, the Christ of Paul. 
 
 The Christ is not only a manifestation of the Divine 
 Intellect, or highest intelligence, but also of the Divine 
 Love, a love that passes knowledge, an infinite and irre- | 
 pressible inclination to impart his own good and truth to all. j 
 And the Christian method of salvation is to find in the Christ j 
 all that we need, and to appropriate it or make it our own 
 by faith. Christ, as we have said, is the Archetypal Man, 
 or man as he exists in the Divine Idea. And this idea con- 
 tains in its essence a conatus to realize itself in every human 
 being. The Christ within is in an endeavor to pass outward 
 into an ultimate expression, and save even the body. 
 
 The next degree of emanation below the Christ of Paul, 
 and which brings the "Unknown" one discrete degree
 
 172 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 nearer to us, is the Logos or Word, as it was called by 
 Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists. It is also so named 
 in the prologue of the Gospel of John, and is represented as 
 the active principle of creation, and the true light tluit 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In it is life, 
 and the life is the light of men. (John i : 1-14.) He is the 
 Pimauder of. Hermes, the Viradj of the Hindus. In the 
 Kabala he is called the Angel Metatron, the mediatorial 
 principle. He is the Angel of Jehovah of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and by an angel is meant an emanative principle or 
 that which is sent forth from God. He is the Presence 
 Angel in whom was the name of God. The Word is the 
 source of all knowledge and all goodness in the rational soul 
 of man. All truth in us is Christ as the Word. Thus, as 
 Paul expresses it, he is made unto us wisdom from (or out 
 of) God, and righteousness (or faith), and sanctification, 
 and redemption. (I Cor. i : 30.) This manifestation of 
 God as the "Word "is the inward voice, " the still small 
 voice" that Elijah heard within. It is what men call con- 
 scieuce, but it does not merely teach what is right and what 
 is wrong, but gives us an intuitive perception of all truth 
 that lies above and beyond the range of the sensuous mind. 
 The Logos is identical with the Daimonion, or inward teacher 
 of Sokrates. It is the inner light of the Quietists and the 
 Society of Friends. The abode of the Logos is the " intelli- 
 gible world " of Plato, and the rational soul in man belongs 
 to this plane or sphere of being. This world, which is per- 
 sonified in the Logos, is the repository of all spiritual knowl- 
 edge. All that was ever known or can be known is there in 
 idea, and may by influx flow into the rational soul of man, 
 as the flower absorbs and appropriates the dew or the every- 
 where present moisture of the atmosphere. The sages and 
 initiates of the inner sanctuary claimed to possess the secret 
 of absorbing knowledge without intellectual effort by simply 
 holding the soul open passively to receive it, and it could be 
 assimilated so as to become a part of themselves.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 173 
 
 The next manifestation of God, and the lowest or most 
 external divine triad, is the Adonai or the Lord, the Uni- 
 versal Life-Principle, the Anima Mundi, and nearly the same 
 as the Holy Spirit. The Lord is the divinely intelligent 
 principle that creates and governs the material universe, and 
 is its only life and force, but who has infinite depths of 
 being beyond all sensible phenomena. In the Kabalistic Ten 
 Sephiroth, the lowest triad is made up of Hod (splendor) , 
 and Netzah (firmness), answering in us to understanding 
 and will. These masculine and feminine principles are 
 united in Jesod (foundation) , the Mighty Living One, being 
 the corresponding name of God. The three personified are 
 the Adonai, the Lord of life. Swedenborg, from the Her- 
 metic philosophy, everywhere affirms and continually reiter- 
 ates the truth that there is but one Life in the heavens and 
 upon the earth, and that Life is the Lord. From this every- 
 where present Life springs the instinctive intelligence of 
 plants, animals, and men. The Christ is the principle of 
 illumination in the Spirit of man, the Logos of the rational 
 sowZ, and the Lord, as the wdt-geist, or world spirit, of the 
 psychical nature. The Christ, as the Adonai or Lord, is 
 the inward teacher of the mind on the plane of sense, quick- 
 ening, exalting, and rightly interpreting all our sense per- 
 ceptions, and removing the veil from truths symbolically 
 expressed. Under this view he is presented to us b}- Paul 
 in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he says, that 
 when the Old Testament is read, there is a veil upon the 
 heart of the Jews which prevents their perceiving its esoteric 
 or interior meaning, like the sun obscured by a cloud. "But 
 whenever a man shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken 
 away. Now the Lord is the Spirit : and where the Spirit of 
 the Lord is, there is liberty (or freedom from the bondage of 
 sense). But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a 
 mirror, the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
 image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the 
 Spirit." (II Cor. iii : 14-18. New version.)
 
 174 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 This doctrine of the Christ, and our relation to Him, is a 
 Platonic doctrine. Says Dr. Ackermann, "The safest way 
 to a living apprehension of the Platonic Idea proceeds from 
 the trite apprehension of impersonality in consciousness, and 
 this in its relation to the Godhead. He who grasps himself 
 in thought, and apprehends and finds himself in himself and 
 at the same time in another, viz., in God, to him it will no 
 longer be obscure and unintelligible what Plato meant by 
 ideas." (Christian Element in Plato, p. 186.) It is a doc- 
 trine much older than Plato, and existed in the minds of 
 men as a saving truth before the foundation of the pyramids 
 was laid.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 175 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE RELATION OF JESCS TO THE CHRIST AND TO MAN. 
 
 AFTER what has been said in the preceding section, it only 
 remains to say a few words respecting the relation of Jesus 
 *o the Christ of Paul. As all human minds are connected 
 through a universal mind, through Jesus as an inlet the 
 Christ entered into humanity, and deposited in it the germ 
 of a new and higher life. In a preeminent degree, he was 
 an incarnation of the Christ, not that no one else ever 
 was, for all spiritually enlightened mind is a manifestation 
 of the Christ and the Word. But owing to the unexampled 
 spiritual evolution of the man Jesus, his individual life be- 
 came merged and blended into a unity with the " Only-Be- 
 gotten of the Father," the Universal Christ. In him also the 
 Word was made flesh or manifested on the psychical plane of 
 mind, and we beheld his glory. And his intelligent mastery 
 of the natural forces indicated his union with the Adonai or 
 Lord who has all power in the heavens and the earth. In 
 Jesus we witness a complete humanized expression of the 
 Christ, the Word and the Spirit. His personality is an inlet 
 and an outlet of those universal divine principles, and a 
 medium through which they may enter into each one of us, 
 and through which the human race may have access to them. 
 In him and through him we may have an actual communica- 
 tion with the Christ, " in whom are hid all the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge," as we can have through no other 
 man of human history. If this is true (and I fully believe it 
 is) , why need we go an}' farther to find all the instruction 
 we need in the divine science of spiritual things. Coming
 
 176 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 into sympathetic relation with him, I am brought into con- 
 junction with the fountain of all true wisdom, and it may 
 flow into my mind according to the degree of my receptivity. 
 For neither Jesus or the Christ have ever removed out of 
 hailing nearness to the human spirit. In his second coming 
 or advent as the Paraclete, " the Spirit of truth," he prom- 
 ised to teach his disciples all things and guide them into all 
 truth ; in fact, to make known to us those many things 
 concerning the mysteries of the kingdom of God, which he 
 had to say, but men were not then able to receive. There is 
 no doubt that all that was ever known by man still exists in 
 the world of mind, and through Jesus may be communicated 
 to the spirit of man ; so that there is nothing hid, no occult 
 wisdom, that may not be revealed. For Jesus was and 
 is familiar with it all, and it is the nature and animus of 
 Christianity to make what was confined to the few in past 
 ages the common property of man. It is but three steps 
 upward to communion with the Highest. Jesus conducts us 
 to the Christ, and the Christ to the Father. He has been 
 lifted up or elevated on the mystic cross, not merely the 
 wood of Calvary, the place of skulls, but the Hermetic cross 
 as " the tree of life," and from his spiritual altitude he is 
 drawing all men unto him. (John xii:32.) Jesus repre- 
 sents not merely an Oriental Christ, but the Universal 
 Messiah or anointing One. What he said to one he said to 
 all mind in that condition. (Mark xiii : 37.) No word he 
 ever uttered can be lost beyond recall. (John xiv : 26.) It 
 still exists in mind. In Jesus as a man raised up to repre- 
 sent all humanity, the Christ touched with a vivifying contact 
 our psychical nature, and that need not be suppressed by 
 extreme ascetic mortifications, as is done in Brahmanism, 
 and the lower Buddhism, but nujy be lifted up entire, au 
 Moses symbolically lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
 the representative of the sensual principle in man. So in 
 Jesus, every " son of man" a Kabalistic expression for the
 
 THE PKIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 177 
 
 human soul ma}- be elevated from a mere sensuous or psy- 
 chical plane of thought to a true spiritual life, with all its tran- 
 quil blessedness. An invocation directed to Jesus will reach 
 the listening ear of an ever-present and never-distant Christ. 
 The Christ of whom I have spoken might seem to many to 
 be too abstract a conception, too transcendental, until men 
 are raised to a higher spiritual level. But in Jesus we have 
 a principle of mediation. In him the Christ becomes objec- 
 tive, and through him my thought-utterances and heart-crav- 
 ings may reach the heart of the Christ, as certainly as the 
 sound vibrations of my voice may be heard by my friend, far 
 removed from my sight, through the telephonic wire and its 
 ethereal vibrations. After long and patient study of the 
 Christ of Paul and his relation to the human spirit, the real 
 life of man, and the relation of Jesus to the Christ and to 
 humanity, I can say to the world, as the inspired apostles 
 said to the Jews on the da) T of Pentecost, " Let all the house 
 of Israel know assuredly that God hath made this Jesus 
 whom ye crucified both Lord and Christ." (Acts ii: 36.) 
 And if any one asks, "What must I do to be saved (or healed 
 of sin and disease) , the shortest, most definite, and divinely 
 efficacious prescription I could give is, " Believe in the name 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Believe 
 in him for all his name implies. For Jesus is presented to 
 us in the Christian system as able to save to the uttermost 
 (or to the remotest boundary of our being, the body) all 
 that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make 
 intercession for us (or to execute the divinely established 
 function of mediation between us and the only saving power 
 in the universe, and which is concealed in his name) . If he 
 cannot save, I know not where to look, or to whom to apply. 
 In the formula Jidei or condensed expression of faith of 
 Buddhism, which is called Trisharana or "the three ref- 
 uges," it is said, " I take my refuge in Buddha, Dharma, 
 and Samgha." By Dharma is meant the doctrines, teachings,
 
 178 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 and precepts of Gautama. Samgha signifies the assemblies 
 and ritualistic observances of the Church. After a careful 
 study, pursued without prejudice, of the system of Buddhism, 
 both in its theoretical and practical aspects, while acknowl- 
 edging in it much that is divinely true, and identical with 
 Christianity, I am still constrained to say, " I take my refuge 
 in Jesus the Christ." In every age of the world God has 
 raised up extraordinary men, and imparted to them a high 
 degree of light from the living Word. Such was Moses, 
 Zoroaster, Confucius, Plato, and above all Gautama the 
 Buddha. There was many a stray beam of the living light of 
 the Logos in all their systems, but it does not come in a form 
 to be easily and practically appropriated by the souls of men. 
 in general. And if Jesus should say to me as he did to the 
 twelve select disciples, when many of his shallow followers 
 were leaving him, ' ' Will you also go away ? " I should be 
 constrained to say, as all- the world's great teachers passed 
 in procession before the mind, " Lord, to whom shall I go? 
 Thou hast the words of eternal life." (John vi : 68.) In 
 Jesus we may come into saving contact with the "Word of 
 Life." (I John i : 2.) In no person was there ever so con- 
 scious a union with God, as even Eenan affirms. The phi- 
 losopher Porphyry was united to God, as he says, but twice 
 in his life, while his teacher Plotinus had been six times. 
 They had come to the perception of their own inner divine 
 spirit, the Augoeides, or shining One, of the philosopher in- 
 itiates. But a conscious and inseparable union with God was 
 the normal condition of Jesus. And there is no shorter or 
 better route to the attainment of the highest spiritual light 
 and life than a sympathetic conjunction with Jesus, the Way, 
 the Truth, and the Life. For that eternal Life which was 
 with the Father is manifested in him, and brought within our 
 grasp. In the Pauline development of Christianity, when 
 rescued from the dogmas of a theology that has been grafted 
 upon it, and freed from the shell of exoteric Judaism and
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 179 
 
 restored to its primitive meaning, we find God's response to 
 our soul's inmost needs. It is the power of God and the 
 wisdom of God unto salvation for both soul and body, to 
 every one that belie veth. 
 
 But, according to Paul, my salvation in Christ is not to be 
 viewed as an event to transpire in a distant or near future, 
 but a genuine faith apprehends and appropriates it as an 
 eternally existing fact. " The head of every man is Christ, 
 and the head of Christ is God." (I Cor. xi : 3.) That is, 
 the highest region of our being, the immortal Ego, and real 
 se//, is inseparable from the Christ, the God-Man, and the 
 Man-God, and that spiritual and divine entity was never 
 lost, or diseased, or unhappy. It is not the head, the sum- 
 mit of human nature, the spirit, that needs to be washed or 
 cleansed. That is already pure ; but it is the feet, the r 
 animal soul ; and if these are washed, we are then clean every j 
 whit. This is one of those profound sayings of Jesus that 
 even the apostles did not understand until they were initi- 
 ated more fully into the mysteries of the kingdom of God. 
 (John xiii : 4-10.) All men were created in Christ, as I 
 have before said, something as an artist creates his picture 
 or statue, in idea. This is the real and immortal entity. So 
 in Christ; or, as " a man in Christ," as Paul expresses it, 
 I am perfect and complete. This is the true idea of my 
 existence, the divine plan of my life. If I believe this of 
 myself and of Christ, and steadfastly maintain this idea and 
 belief, it will work itself out into an ultimate expression, and 
 translate itself into even a bodily manifestation. This idea 
 of ourselves has been lost to our consciousness, and the 
 divine plan may have been temporarily marred. But Paul 
 teaches that we may be created anew in Christ Jesus unto 
 good works, which God before ordained that we should walk 
 in them. (Eph. 2 : 10.) Thi'ough Jesus, the divine ideal 
 becomes the actual. Every one of us was made for a use in 
 the grand economy of the universe. To find out what we
 
 180 THE PRIMITIVE MIXD-CURE. 
 
 are created for, and to do that use, is our highest health and 
 happiness. Jesus sought to find in those he healed the true 
 idea of their being, and to so create them anew as to make it 
 an actuality. We should do the same. 
 
 It has been said of Gautama the Buddha, that his life is 
 " the history of a soul in search of spiritual rest, of the 
 various experiments by which he vainly sought to find it, of 
 the success that at last crowned his efforts, and finally of his 
 life-long endeavor to communicate to others the blessing he 
 seemed to himself to have obtained." The answer of Bud- 
 dhism to the inquiry, 
 
 " O where shall rest be found, 
 Best for the weary soul ? " 
 
 is in the extinction or " snuffing out" of desire. Desire, it 
 is said, begets will, and will is force, and force is matter, 
 and matter is evil. So the descent from desire to matter 
 and unrest is in as direct a line downward as that pursued 
 by an apple in falling from the tree to the ground. There is 
 much of truth in this. The answer of Jesus, speaking as the 
 Christ, is " Come unto (or up to) me, all ye that labour and 
 are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Mat. xi : 28-30.) 
 In the doctrine of the Christ and of his relation to me as 
 constituting my inner and true self, we find a secure refuge 
 from sin and disease. When, by a supreme act of faith, I 
 perceive that my spiritual self is included in him, as the 
 Collective or Universal Man, I have found myself, and found 
 it in Christ, as Paul expresses it. So far as I believe this it 
 becomes to me a conscious reality, and in him I am possessed 
 of all good that can be an object of desire, and have nothing 
 to ask. (John xvi : 23.) We have reached the true Nirvana, 
 or snuffing out of desire, when we can say, 
 
 " Thou, Christ, art all I want. 
 More than all hi thee I find."
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIXD-CURE. 181 
 
 This is not so much an extinction of desire, as it is its com- 
 plete satisfaction and fulfilment. As disease in its essence, 
 as the word radically signifies, is a state of unrest and 
 disquietude, when I have found my real self in Christ, and 
 in him every need is met, I am in a state of true health. 
 
 " Now rest, my long divided heart, 
 
 Fixed on this blissful centre, rest, 
 Nor ever from thy Lord depart, 
 
 With him of every good possessed." 
 
 No one was ever entirely satisfied with himself until he 
 finds his real self; and, as Plotinus would express it, the 
 man that I am here is united to the man that exists in True 
 Being, or the Christ. But why was man from a pure spirit 
 reduced to the bondage of the senses, and imprisoned in 
 matter? The reason is given by Paul in the Epistle to the 
 Romans. The intelligent creation, or man as an intelligent 
 spiritual being, was made subject to vanity (which is the 
 maia or illusion of the senses and of matter of the Bud- 
 dhists) , not willingly on our part, and consequently it is not 
 what we are condemned for, but it was done by the reason 
 of Him who hath subjected us to this in hope of deliverance. 
 For the "creature," says Paul, shall be delivered from the 
 bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sous of 
 God, which is the designation of man as a pure spiritual 
 intelligence. Then he will connect in his own personality 
 the two extreme links of existence, the Alpha and the Omega, 
 or spirit and matter. The evils and sufferings of our present 
 sensuous condition are only travailing pains that are followed v , 
 by the birth of a higher state. (Rom. viii : 18-22.) All ' 
 this was taught Kabalistieally or symbolically in one of the 
 early chapters of the Book of Genesis. The marriage of the 
 Benai Eloheim or sons of God, which represents our spiritual 
 nature, with the " daughters of men," the psyche of the 
 Greeks, or the mind on the sensuous and material plane,
 
 182 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 gives birth to a higher race, mighty men, and men of re- 
 nown. From this union of our higher with the so-called 
 lower nature, we have a race of men who can consciously 
 dwell in the world of sense and at the same time in the realm 
 of spirit, like Jesus " the son of man who is in heaven."
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 183 
 
 CHAPTER XXIH. 
 
 THE KABALISTIC JUSTICE AND PAUI/S RIGHTEOUSNESS OP FAITH, 
 AND THEIR CURATIVE POWER. 
 
 IN the philosophy of Plato and the Oriental Theosophy the 
 word "justice" had an occult meaning far transcending its 
 ordinary signification. In the popular mind it had, and still 
 has, the same meaning as equity, but among the philosopher 
 initiates it was something more, and much more. Plato says in 
 the " Cratylus " that he learned from the sacred mysteries that 
 justice is the same as cause, it being the most penetrat ing of 
 all things. But in stating this, he sa}'S, he seems " to inquire 
 farther than is becoming, and to pass beyond the trench." 
 He therefore puts it into the mouths of others, of whom he 
 asks the meaning of the word, to give its full signification. 
 One man gives it as his opinion that justice is the sun, 
 because the sun's light penetrates and influences everything, 
 meaning of course the spiritual sun, whose light is pure truth. 
 Another is made to say that justice is that intellect of which 
 Anaxagoras speaks when he affirms that intellect by which 
 he means a pure deific or spiritual intelligence orders and 
 is the cause of all things. It is a rectitude of thought, a 
 perception of things on the square, to use a Masonic symbol. 
 These higher intellectual perceptions, uninfluenced b}' the 
 illusions of the senses, and which are the rays of a divine 
 intelligence, are " the righteousness of faith " of which Paul 
 speaks. It is the faith of the Christ, the intellectual percep- 
 tion that belongs to the crest or summit of our being. It is 
 the faith of the " Son of God," the Kabalistic designation of 
 our inmost spirit. It is at the same time a deific intelligence
 
 184 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 and a deific power, because it is a manifestation in us of the 
 same intellect that creates and governs the world. Accord- 
 ing to Plato, our gnostic or knowing powers exist in three 
 degrees. The lowest is mere animal instinct, and reason, 
 and opinion, which may be true or false. The next higher 
 degree is faith, which is far more than opinion and that 
 degree of knowledge which is called science, which is a super- 
 ficial perception of external facts. The highest of all is 
 intuition, which is the divine light that illuminates the 
 inmost or supreme man or mind. This is an intelligence 
 invested with a large fraction of God's omnipotence. 
 
 It is also said by Plato in the " Timaius " and it is a fun- 
 damental doctrine of the ancient Theosophy that there are 
 two classes of things of which our minds are cognizant; 
 first, things that exist in true being, or those that have a real 
 existence, and are, as Kant would call them, " things in 
 themselves." These are ideas. Secondly, there are things 
 that are in a state of " becoming to be," but realty are not. 
 These include all our sense-perceptions and the objects of 
 the so-called external world. They are not realities, but 
 only their appearances or resemblances. These are recog- 
 nized by opinion, which is only a little elevated above the 
 animal life, conjoined with irrational sense. The other 
 class of things, or those that have true being, are appre- 
 hended by pure intellect, which, as we have seen, is identi- 
 cal with the Kabalistic " justice " and Paul's righteousness 
 of faith. The word so often used by Paul, Sucuxrvvr), and 
 which is in our common version translated " justification," is 
 the understanding of the just man, as Plato asserts, or the 
 attainment of pure intelligence. Dr. Ackermann, in his 
 " Christian Element in Plato," says that the Platonic mean- 
 ing of afjiapTLo. (liamartia), sin, is an error of the understand- 
 ing, and we must suppose that Plato and even Paul under- 
 stood Greek. By sin is meant the illusion and erroneous 
 judgment of the senses, which is always the direct opposite
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 185 
 
 of the truth, or that clear intelligence which is called justice 
 and faith. Paul says, " Let not sin reign in your mortal 
 bodies," that is, let not these erroneous and illusory judg- 
 ments of the mind on the plane of irrational sense control the 
 corporeal condition. But let grace (or occult wisdom, as the 
 word Kabalistically means) reign unto righteousness, through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. v:21.) 
 
 In every case of disease it is incumbent on us to ask, 
 whether it belongs to things that really are, or those which 
 have an existence in our true being, or to the class of things 
 which includes all our sense perceptions, that only appear to 
 be, but really are not. It is our right to appeal the case 
 from the court of irrational sense, with all its phantasms, to 
 a higher intellectual tribunal, to the decision of the Pla- 
 tonic and Kabalistic justice, and Paul's "righteousness of 
 faith," where the decision of the mind on the plane of sense 
 will be reversed, and the disease will be classed among illu- 
 sions, deceptive appearances, or sin which has no right to 
 reign in our mortal body. This is only following the precept 
 of Jesus, " judge not according to appearance (sight, sense), 
 but judge righteous judgment " ; or, according to the true 
 nature of things, which is ahva3's the direct opposite of the 
 decision of the sensuous mind. Faith in the above sense, as 
 the perception of truth which is above and beyond the grasp 
 of the senses, would seem to be the divinely appointed 
 remedy for the maladies of the soul, from which the diseases 
 of the body arise, and of which they are the corporeal ex- 
 pression. In the " Timaeus," Plato says, "that the disease of 
 the soul is folly, or a privation of pure intellect. But there 
 are two kinds of folly, the one madness, the other ignorance. 
 Whatever influence therefore introduces either of these must 
 be called disease." ( Works of Plato, by Thomas Taylor, 
 p. 544.) If this is true, it irresistibly follows that the most 
 efficient remedy for the soul's ailments must be real truth, 
 and the perception of truth that lies above and beyond the
 
 186 THE PKIJITTIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 plane of sense, and that puts our minds on the same exalted 
 level with that divine intellect that creates and governs the 
 world, is the Kabalistic justice, and Paul's righteousness of 
 faith or rectitude of thought. This pure thought uninflu- 
 enced by sense, which separates the disease from our true 
 being, and views our real self as exempt from all evil, is a 
 silent but omnipotent energy that is the sovereign panacea 
 for the maladies of the soul and its body. He who has the 
 most of it comes nearest to the Christ, before whose name 
 every knee bows, or owns allegiance. 
 
 The doctrine of the triune nature of man has always been 
 the teaching of the spiritually minded of all ages and coun- 
 tries of the world. It is a doctrine of which we must never 
 lose sight, and it must be to us something more than an 
 opinion; it must become to us an intuitive perception, as it 
 was to the mystics of the middle ages, as Ruysbroek, 
 Eckart, and Tauler. They looked upon human nature as 
 tripartite, like the three stories of a house, or like the tem- 
 ple of Solomon, which is more a symbolic than a historic 
 edifice. There is in man, first, the outer court of sense ; 
 next, the inner sanctuary of the intellectual soul ; and 
 lastly, in the East, the most holy place, the spirit, where, 
 like the high priest, we may commune with God. This is 
 the inmost region of our being, and our real self. It is 
 included in the Christ, or the Universal Spirit. On this 
 subject, Ruysbroek says, " I believe that the Son is the 
 image of the Father, that in the Son have dwelt from all 
 eternity, foreknown and contemplated by the Father, the 
 prototypes (or ideas) of all mankind. We existed in the 
 Son before we were born. He is the creative ground of all 
 ci'eatures, the eternal cause and principle of their life. 
 The highest essence of our being rests therefore in God, 
 exists in his image in the Son." (Vaughn's Hours with the 
 Mystics, Vol. I., p. 25.) This summit of our being, which 
 is the real and divine man, is never contaminated by evil,
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 187 
 
 nor invaded by disease. The recognition of this truth, and 
 the separation in thought of sin and disease from our inmost 
 and only true self, is the Platonic (and also the Pauline) 
 idea of redemption. Says Dr. Ackermann, " It is evident 
 what Plato means by redemption, or how he conceives this 
 event in the life of the soul. He thinks of it as a coming to 
 one's self, an apprehending of one's self as (truly) existent, 
 as a severing of the inmost being from the surrounding cle- 
 ment, as a separation of one's self from the changing mass 
 of the world and life, as a concretization of the original spirit- 
 ual element in man to a divinely illuminated germ of light and 
 life." (Christian Element in Plato, p. 247.) This coming 
 to ourself , or the discovery of our true being, as in the case 
 of the prodigal son, is the first step in our return to the 
 Father, and the finding of this self not only in one's self, but 
 also at the same time in another and higher being ; that is, 
 in God in Christ, is the Christian and Pauline idea of Salva- 
 tion in the full sense of the word. We are expected and 
 taught by the pulpit and the Church to find pur real self, and 
 to view it as polluted by sin, from the crown of the head to 
 the soles of our feet.- But this is the direct opposite of the 
 truth. It was one of the doctrines of the Hermetic philos- 
 ophers of all ages, among whom we unhesitatingly class 
 Paul, that there centrally dwells in human nature the voice 
 of the Divine Wisdom. This is the Genius Optimus, the 
 Daimonion or divine guide of Sokrates, our inmost divine 
 spirit and true self, the " Soul of the Soul," and the all- 
 seeing 63-6 of the mind. It is that part or region of man 
 that is incapable of contamination or damnation, and is 
 never affected by evil and never lost, even in the greatest 
 of sinners. This is even said to have been Cromwell's firm 
 reliance and belief, and his last question to his attending 
 chaplain bore reference to the assurance of it. In most men 
 it is latent, and is as unknown to consciousness as the inte- 
 rior of the pyramid of Cheops, or the central world of the
 
 188 THE PRIMITIVE MIND -CURE. 
 
 universe. But it will sometime rise from its chrysalis enfold- 
 meuts, and come into conscious life and activity. In this 
 life of sense, we have taken our journe}* into a far country 
 away from our Father's house or the realm of pure spirit. 
 " Our (true) country," says Plotinus (that is, truly existing 
 being), "is that from whence we came, and where our 
 Father lives." Again, he says of this world of spirit, the 
 kingdom of God in man, "Whoever is a spectator of this 
 divine world becomes at one and the same time both the 
 spectator and the spectacle, for our inmost self and immortal 
 Ego is inseparable from it. He no longer beholds this intel- 
 ligible world, or world of intelligence, externally, but he 
 becomes the same with it." (Plotinus, Translated by 
 Thomas Taylor, p. 100.) This is man as an image or idea 
 of God, and not the vulgar and debased thing to which that 
 divine name is usually given. And faith, when it rises 
 above mere opinion, and becomes a clear intellectual percep- 
 tion of eternal truth, is the divinest power and highest saving 
 and healing energ}- in the universe. " If thou canst believe, 
 all things are possible to him that believeth." (Mark ix : 23.) 
 " If ye had faith as a grain of mustard, ye might say to this 
 sycamore tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou 
 planted in the sea, and it would obey you." (Luke xvii : 6.) 
 This is a sober truth, and not an Oriental exaggeration. 
 The attainment of true faith is the recovery of the lostracKjrzc 
 word. It is a perception of eternally existing realities, and 
 is the Logos (or Word) in man. It is what Paul denomi- 
 nates, " the word of faith." Sin, in the Platonic sense of 
 error, illusion, false opinion, is the opposite of faith, for 
 " whatsoever is not of faith is sin." (Rom. xiv : 23.) But 
 faith is not merely intellectual light ; it is conjoined with 
 love or feeling. Says Swedenborg, "All who are in the 
 truths of faith from good are in power from the Lord, and 
 this in the degree that they attribute all power to Him and 
 none to themselves." (Arcana Celestia, 4932.) This is Paul's
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 189 
 
 paradox, " When I am weak, then am I strong." (II Cor. 
 xii : 10.) Again, "Truth has no power except from good, 
 but its power from good is incredibly great." (Arcana 
 Celestia, 6344, also 6323, 8200.) "The power of truth 
 from good is so exceeding great, that if man were inspired 
 by divine truth from the Lord, he would have the strength 
 of Samson." (Arcana Celestia^ 10,182.) 
 
 In the Kabalistic scheme of emanation, called the Ten 
 Sephiroth, or universal outflowing divine principles, which 
 correspond to something in man, the fourth is love, and has 
 as a corresponding name of God, El, meaning the Strong 
 God, the Mighty One. The fifth, which is justice or faith, 
 has, as a corresponding name of God, Eloah, the Almighty. 
 The two together make the Eloliim, the creative potencies 
 mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis as forming the 
 world. The fifth Sephira or emanation is also called strength, 
 and the fourth greatness, because love enlarges the sphere 
 of our life and our sympathies, while a man is little in pro- 
 portion as he is selfish. Faith was also called by the Kaba- 
 lists the right hand of God, and love the left hand. This 
 gives us a sublime view of the power of faith, as it is a man- 
 ifestation of the divine nature in man, and explains the 
 words of Jesus, " Have the faith of God." (Mark xi : 22.) 
 The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews asserts that God 
 created the worlds (^Eons) by faith. (Heb. xi : 3.) As 
 the Logos, it is the creative potency in man. 
 
 As to the faith of which Jesus speaks, let it be observed, 
 that a seed signifies a spiritual truth, a living idea. The 
 seed of the woman, that is, the truths of wisdom, the Divine 
 Sophia, shall bruise the serpent's head, the serpent signi- 
 fying the principle of sense, the NepJiesh, with its illusions 
 and fallacies. "For, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
 wilderness, even so must the son of man (or the soul) be 
 lifted up," and it must be done on the cross, which repre- 
 sents the union of the intellect with the love or feeling.
 
 190 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUUE. 
 
 The proper ground of faith is the divine promise. But 
 what is meant by this? There is often a deep spiritual phi- 
 losophy concealed beneath the external envelope of a name 
 or word, as has been taught in the "Cratylus" of Plato, 
 which is a dialogue on the rectitude of names. The name 
 of a thing expresses its inward essence and true nature and 
 quality. The word " promise " is from the Latin promissum, 
 and means a thing sent beforehand, and in this sense an- 
 swers to the Greek word. It is, as it were, the preexistent 
 idea of a certain good announced beforehand, and which 
 waits to be recognized and appropriated by faith, and 
 then it becomes an actuality or a thing possessed. The 
 divine promises are based on the inseparable and immutable 
 connection of certain things with each other, as substance 
 and form, cause and effect. There are some things that 
 God has so joined together that they can never be put 
 asunder. If we have one, we must have the other. There 
 are certain mental conditions of such a nature, and so indis- 
 solubly associated, that if 1 have the one, I must and surely 
 will have the other. This may be illustrated by the fixed 
 laws of geometry. If we make a triangle, the value of all 
 the angles is just two right angles, neither more nor less. 
 If we make a triangle with lines composing it of any length, 
 and we are asked, What is the sum of its angles? we can 
 always say, with absolute certainty, two right angles. This 
 we knew beforehand, for it is based upon the immutable 
 truth and reality of things. Now the promises of God are 
 the announcement of certain eternal truths, and their divinity 
 consists in their truth, and not in the book where they are 
 found. They are divinely and unalterably true wherever 
 they are found, whether in the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, 
 or the Almanack, or by whomsoever announced. This is 
 forcibly asserted by Paul when he says that the promises of 
 God are Yea and Amen (from the Hebrew Amuna, truth) , 
 in Christ Jesus, unto the glory of God by us (II Cor.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 191 
 
 i : 20) ; that is, they are the announcement of certain eternal 
 truths, like the affirmation that if you make a triangle, you 
 have, and must have from the essential nature of things, 
 two right angles, and this result is given beforehand, so that 
 you need not stop to count -or measure the angles. The 
 intuitive perception of these eternal truths is faith. If we 
 are governed bj T the body and the senses, or walk after the 
 flesh, as Paul would say, we shall be sick and die. Our 
 existence will be a dying life and living death. But, if we 
 are governed by the spirit, and believe the spirit and dis- 
 believe the body and the senses, we shall live, and greatly 
 live. This, in a word, is faith. 
 
 Jesus affirms that if we ask, we receive, not that we shall 
 sometime receive. This is eternally true, and faith is the 
 recognition of its truth. For asking, where it is the expres- 
 sion of desire, is receiving ; for the desire is the incipiency 
 of that which is its object, and in proportion as we believe, 
 we have. The two things go together, so that every one 
 who asks, receives, and the statement of this eternal law of 
 the necessary conjunction of the two things is what is meant 
 by the word promise or the sending beforehand of a thing. 
 The promise is the expression of the idea of the good we 
 seek. To add to this the element of feeling, makes it a living 
 and conscious reality. Hence Jesus says, and in his 
 words thei-e is the promise of God, or the announcement cf 
 an immutable truth in the heavens above and the earth 
 beneath, "Whatsoever things ye desire, when ye pray, 
 believe that ye receive, and ye shall have." (Mark xi : 24.) 
 For we have, and mentally appropriate and possess a thing, 
 in proportion as we believe. We cannot have, unless we 
 believe we have. These go together like substance and 
 form, cause and effect, thought and existence. We cannot 
 have the one without the other, and if we have the one, we 
 must of necessity have the other. 
 
 Again, Jesus says, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father
 
 192 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 in iny name, he will give 3*011." (John xvi : 23.) God gave 
 to Jesus the name that is above every name, that at the 
 mention of this mysterious name every knee should bow, of 
 things in the heavens, and the earth, 'ind under the earth. 
 It is the name, as the Chaldean Oracles say, which rushes 
 through the infinite worlds. Now this name is that which 
 expresses the Christ, the crown and summit of manifested 
 being. That name is in ws, and represents our inmost 
 spirit, the Son of God, and the Christ within. To ask in 
 the name of Christ, is to ask from this summit of our being. 
 This is in the quality of the Christ, and asking here is praying 
 for that which we know to be his desire and necessary impulse 
 to impart, and what he would ask, and does in that sense 
 ask, the Father to give. Our inmost spirit is the Son of 
 God in us, and the Father always hears the Son. The desire 
 of the Christ to bless and impart good, real and not apparent 
 good merely, may be represented by a musical note or sound. 
 Our asking from the Christ realm of our being, is a note in 
 harmony with it, and the two blend together in one sound, 
 and as such it reaches the all-hearing ear of the listening 
 God, the supreme and eternal Goodness.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 193 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE PRATER OP FAITH THAT SAVES THE SICK, OR THE HEALING 
 POWER OP SPIRITUAL TRUTH. 
 
 IT is a principle taught in the spiritual philosophy of all 
 ages and countries that prayer is the most intense form of 
 the action, or influence, of one mind upon another. All 
 genuine prayer is a union of intellect and feeling, and this 
 makes it a living spiritual force. It is thought vivified by 
 love, and directed toward its object. As the will is the pri- 
 mal force in man, and is but the intensifying and focalization 
 of desire, the highest effort of will naturally takes the form 
 of silent invocation. It spontaneously seeks to gain a higher 
 level, a mightier strength to lean upon, and union with a Life 
 that can lift us from our own and rescue us from the weak- 
 ness of an isolated individuality. It is confirmed and per- 
 fected by faith, which, as both Plato and Jesus teach, is an 
 operative spiritual cause; and the will, combined with faith, 
 goes forth more in the form of affirmation than that of sup- 
 plication. As Jesus who is himself the way, and the truth, 
 and the life affirms that whatsoever we ask the Father in his 
 name, or in the quality of the Christ, the supreme Wisdom, 
 the Father will give us ; and as our own spirit is the Christ 
 in us, and is one with Him, we use the following formula as 
 expressing the highest activit}' of the will, faith, and imagina- 
 tion, in an act of benediction, or the communication of good 
 and truth to others, and as a vehicle through which God's 
 "saving health" which is the interior meaning of the name 
 Jesus may be imparted to the souls of men. The apostles 
 declare that it was by the saving virtue of the name of Jesus
 
 194 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 that the cripple at the Beautiful gate of the temple was healed, 
 and that there is none other name under heaven given among 
 men whereby we must be saved. (Acts iv : 12.) According 
 to a law of correspondence, a name signifies and expresses 
 an inward essence, principle, and quality. When the name 
 of a person, as Washington, Napoleon, or Lincoln, is men- 
 tioned, there comes into thought the particular quality and 
 character of the man. Hence the name represents that 
 inward quality. The same is true of things. Their names 
 signify to us their inward essence. The Hebrew name for 
 Jesus (Yehoshua) , as Reuchlin demonstrated in his work on 
 the Kabala, by leaving out one letter (the SJiin), becomes 
 the mysterious Yava, the sacred and ineffable name of God 
 among the Jews. The Yava (or Yaho) is the second Sephira, 
 the Sophia, or Supreme Wisdom-Principle, and is the 
 perfect conjunction of the intellect and the love on the high- 
 est spiritual plane. This is exactly the characteristic of Jesus 
 and the quality of his life, and consequently is that which his 
 name signifies. In the following prayer of faith, there is, 
 we sincerely believe, the saving, healing virtue, of the name 
 of Jesus Christ the Nazaraion, and of the principle his name 
 represents. 
 
 INVOCATION. 
 
 In that mysterious and sovereign name that is above every 
 name, and which signifies and represents the only saving 
 principle in the universe, and before which every knee bows, 
 in heaven, and on earth, and under tlie earth, and from the 
 summit of our triune nature, and the spiritual crest of our 
 own being, we approach in thought the Universal Presence 
 of the Father, the one and only Life, and Supreme Reality. 
 In thy light we recognize the truth that our spirit is a mani- 
 festation and personal limitation of the grand unity of Spirit, 
 and in its essence is divine, and included in the being of
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 195 
 
 Him who is the Crown of all manifested existence, and the 
 head of all principality and power, and the supreme source 
 and inmost spring of all saving and healing influence. In 
 our inmost and true existence and real self, we are not, 
 and cannot be, diseased, for we are one with Thee. Thou 
 wilt cause the light and power of this great truth to pene- 
 trate the darkness of our souls, and disperse the errors, and 
 illusions, and false opinions, and deceptive appearances of 
 our irrational and sensuous mind, the only seat of evil, and 
 Thou wilt enable us to see and feel that, as immortal and 
 divine spirits, we are well and happy, and in this region of 
 our being, we share the deep tranquillity of the Christ and 
 thine own eternal calm. Thou art speaking anew to us, and 
 in us the creative Word, the still small voice, " Let there be 
 light," and the darkness and blindness of the soul and of 
 sense are becoming pierced with the radiance of a celestial 
 day, and Thou art reducing the chaos of our lower soul to 
 the divine order of the Spirit. We are not projecting our 
 voiceless language of adoring and supplicating thought into 
 vacancy, but into thy Presence, from which we cannot 
 escape; and the ineffable light of th}' Life is opening and 
 demolishing the thick wall of solid darkness which has 
 hitherto enclosed us. From this higher position and diviner 
 altitude of thought, to which Thine abounding grace has 
 raised us, we perceive that our true being has not been 
 invaded by disease or any discomfort, but as included in the 
 Christ, the Universal Spirit, is secure from all evil, and free 
 from all sin. By the light of thy "Word in us, which is the 
 fountain of all spiritual intelligence, we perceive that our 
 salvation in spirit and in the Christ is not to be viewed as an 
 event which is to transpire in a distant or near future, but is 
 to be apprehended and appropriated by faith as a fact exist- 
 ing in the present, and an eternal reality. With the humble 
 boldness which this divine truth gives us, we view ourselves 
 therefore as now well, a'nd already saved in the Christ, who
 
 196 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE 
 
 is in the bosom of the Father, and we with Him and in Him 
 are sheltered in the secret place of the Most High, and here, 
 overbrooded by the Infinite Life and Love, sickness and 
 sorrow, pain and death, and the disquieting fear of them, 
 can never reach us. Thou wilt cause us to feel more and 
 more the divine redeeming power, and healing efficacy of 
 this eternal truth, and the saving virtue of the name of 
 Jesus ; and Thou art translating this true idea of man and 
 our high calling of God in Christ into a bodily expression in 
 us, that we may be saved to the uttermost, and from the 
 centre to the material circumference of our existence. 
 Awaken in us all the slumbering life of the Spirit; rend 
 from our inner eye more fully the veil of illusion ; remove 
 from our mental vision the bandage of sense ; and free us 
 from the dominion of the dull mass of the body, and the lim- 
 itations and thraldom of our material being. Break every 
 link in the fetters of our soul ; remove the bars from the 
 doors of our prison ; open wide the windows of our soul to 
 the radiance of the spiritual sun, and the true light of life 
 will penetrate and illuminate the gloom of our disordered 
 condition. This sublime truth, that as a spirit created into 
 thine image, and indissolubly included in thine own being, 
 we are exempt from disease and all evil, is a ray in us of 
 thine own intelligence, and is inseparable from thine Infinite 
 Mind and, as such, partakes of thine own tranquil and 
 saving omnipotence. To this fixed stake we would forever 
 cling, though assailed by doubt and fear, and tossed by 
 storm and flood. In the name of the Christ, in whom and 
 through whom our life is hid in Thee, the Universal Father, 
 and only true Being, we affirm by faith in opposition to blind 
 sense, that we are now freed from our infirmity. By the 
 light and sovereign authority of the inner Word, we disown 
 and renounce disease and sin as any part of our immortal 
 and real self, and before the tribunal of the righteousness of 
 faith, or divine rectitude of thought, we execute judgment
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 197 
 
 upon them, and separate them from us in our conception as 
 something external and foreign to our true being. It is 
 done. As to all that which constitutes our permanent and 
 unalterable personality, we are not diseased, but are now 
 saved in Thee. And we commit the keeping of our souls 
 unto Thee, the God of peace, who canst save us wholly, and 
 preserve our spirit and soul and body as a harmonious 
 unity, unto the full revelation of the light and life of immor- 
 tality. "Faithful is He who calleth us, who also will do it." 
 We trust henceforth thy boundless Wisdom, Love, and 
 Power, to give thine own idea of man a full expression in 
 us. In the name of the Christ. Amen. 
 
 When we can grasp the meaning, and measure and weigh 
 the full import of this formula of faith, and it becomes in us 
 a fixed mode of thought, and we can repeat it, not as a suc- 
 cession of empty words, but in the interior light of their deep 
 significance, we are put in possession of the power of the 
 inner Word, and the Spirit through which Jesus healed dis- 
 ease, and cast out demons. Spiritual thought can penetrate 
 where spoken words can never reach, for thought is a more 
 peal force than sound. It is an arrow that never falls short 
 of the mark, or misses its aim. It is the same " Spirit of 
 truth " which brooded over the original chaos or unparticled 
 and unorganized cosmic matter, and changed it into the 
 cosmos, a word which primarily signifies order and arrange- 
 ment. It is the same as the power of the Highest (or Divine 
 Inmost) that overshadowed Mary. In our patients, and in 
 every human being, there is the lateut germ, the spiritual 
 ovum, the dormant but still living idea of man in perfect 
 health and blessedness. Spiritual thought, the light of true 
 intelligence, united with feeling, is the Divine Sophia, the 
 creative Wisdom-Principle and potency, which can "brood 
 over " (or incubate, as the original word means) this latent
 
 198 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 idea in man, vivify it into consciousness, and impregnate it 
 with a divine vitality. The repetition in thought, or in a 
 tacit verbal utterance of something like the above form of 
 invocation, is one of the most effectual modes of doing this. 
 Its influence will come upon the patient like the dew of heaven 
 (the old symbol of spiritual truth) upon a withering flower. 
 The gretitest forces in the universe are silent. The light of 
 the sun falls in stillness upon the earth, and lifts countless 
 millions of plant-germs up toward the heavens, and slowly 
 but surely elevates the trees of the forest into the embrace 
 of the sky. The cure of mental and bodily maladies by the 
 influence (that is, as the word means, the inflowing) of one 
 mind upon or into another, is no new thing in the world. It 
 is not a new invention or discovery, but a rediscovery. It is 
 a resurrection into life of the dry bones of primitive Chris- 
 tianity. It is based on laws of mind as fixed, and more cer- 
 tain, than any of the principles of chemistry the naturally 
 and essentially diffusive tendency of our mental states, and 
 the absorptive and receptive nature of the soul of a patient 
 in a passive state, and actuated by a sincere desire of ivcov- 
 ery. Under the influence of fear and unbelief, or rather mis- 
 belief, disease is both contagious and infectious. Under other 
 and better conditions, health of mind and body is equally so, 
 for the Supreme Goodness has not given evil the advantage 
 over us in this respect.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 199 
 
 CHAPTER XXTV. 
 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL TELEGRAPHY, OR THE TRANSFERENCE OF 
 THOUGHT AND IDEA FROM ONE MIND TO ANOTHER. 
 
 IT is affirmed by Swedenborg that the speaking in thought, 
 the cogitatio loquens, is understood by the angels and spirits 
 who are with man ; and if that is true, then it is by no means 
 incredible or unreasonable, that, in treating a patient near or 
 far off in space, our spiritual thought, directed toward him, 
 should affect his spirit. When a subject is in the magnetic 
 state, if we ask him a question in thought, he perceives it and 
 answers it just the same as if it was spoken to him in words. 
 It is also a marvellous fact, but nevertheless true, that if you 
 address him in a language that he has never learned, he still 
 understands you as easily as he would if spoken to in his 
 native tongue ; for he understands the thought and idea, 
 which are the living soul of all language. But magnetism 
 adds no new power to human nature. A person in a passive, 
 and consequently impressible, state, may be influenced by our 
 thoughts. When we use the formula of invocation given in 
 a preceding lesson, the spiritual sphere of our minds may 
 dispel the sphere of the patient's mind, and our thought may 
 affect him somewhat as it would if he thought the same. It 
 is affirmed by Swedenborg that such methods were used by 
 the ancient Magi and the Jewish prophets, in order to ex- 
 cite in the minds of others a better state of thought and 
 feeling. 
 
 The communication of thought and ideas from one mind to 
 another without the use of spoken words, and that at great 
 distances, has been practised in all ages of the world by the
 
 200 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 spiritually unfolded man. In Lord Lytton's " Zanoni " it ia 
 said, that, when Zanoni visits the abode of the recluse who 
 had been his teacher, "years long and many had flown 
 away since they met last, at least bodily and face to face. 
 But if they are sages, thought can meet thought, and spirit 
 meet spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself 
 divides not the wise." (Zanoni, Chap. V.) 
 
 Such communication is perfectly natural and easy to the 
 spiritual man. It has been from the remotest ages, and still 
 is practised by the Hindu adepts in occult science. Says an 
 intelligent investigator of the phenomena exhibited b} r them : 
 " Though it may seem to us a very amazing and impossible 
 thing to sit still at home and impress our thoughts upon the 
 mind of a distant friend by an effort of will, a Brother (an 
 adept) , living in an unknown Himalayan retreat, is not only 
 able to converse as freely as he likes with any of his friends 
 who are initiates like himself, in whatever part of the world 
 they may happen to be, but would find any other modes of 
 iommunication, such as those with which the crawling facul- 
 ties of the outer world have to be content, simply intolerable 
 in their tedium and inefficiencj'." (The Occult World, by 
 A. P. Sinnett, pp. 32, 33.) 
 
 This is done in perfect harmony with the laws of spirit, 
 and with as much ease as we can carry on a conversation 
 with our friends in the same room with us, for what men call 
 the supernatural is the natural in the spiritual sphere. 
 Thought is the most real thing in the universe, and when 
 united with love or emotion is the divinest and most far- 
 reaching and penetrating force in the whole realm of being. 
 On this subject Madam Blavatsky,, a very competent witness, 
 as she is herself an adept in the practice of psychological 
 telegraphy, says in her great work, " Isis Unveiled," 
 "Experiments with the telephone prove that the human 
 voice and the sounds of instrumental music may be conveyed 
 along a telegraphic wire to a great distance. The Hermetic
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 201 
 
 philosophers taught that the disappearance from sight of a 
 flame does not imply its actual extinction (nor indeed of the 
 object burned) . It has only passed from the visible to the 
 invisible world, and may be perceived by the inner sense of 
 vision, which is adapted to the things of that other and more 
 real universe. The same rule applies to sound. As the 
 physical ear discerns the vibrations of the atmosphere (or 
 aether) only up to a certain point, not yet definitely fixed, 
 but varying with the individual, so the adept, whose interior 
 hearing has been developed, can take the sound at this van- 
 ishing point, and hear its vibrations in the astral light indefi- 
 nitely. He needs no wires, helices, or sounding-boards ; his 
 will-power is all sufficient. Hearing with the spirit, time and 
 distance offer no impediments, and so he may converse with 
 another adept at the antipodes with as great ease as though 
 they were in the same room." 
 
 " Fortunately we can produce numerous witnesses to cor- 
 roborate our statement, who, without being adepts at all, 
 have, nevertheless, heard the sound of aerial music and of 
 the human voice when neither instrument nor speaker were 
 within thousands of miles of the place where we sat. Li 
 their case tJiey actually lieard interiorly, though they supposed 
 their physical organs of hearing alone were employed. The 
 adept had, by a single effort of will-power, given them for 
 the brief moment the same perception of the spirit of sound 
 as he himself constantly enjoys." (Isis Unveiled, vol. ii., 
 pp. 605, 606.) 
 
 These phenomena are absolutely established facts, and 
 contain a principle which is applicable to communication 
 with the universal world of spirit, the realm of angels, and 
 heaven of the blest. In solitude and inward silence, their 
 thoughts may come to us as " the still small voice within." 
 What we call language is only thought expressed on the 
 plane of sense. But our true being lies behind the veil of 
 sense, and this may hear and speak the soundless language
 
 202 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 of thought and ideas. Thought, being the supersensuous 
 side of language, is a more real and potent thing than spoken 
 words. On this principle is based the practice of the cure 
 of disease by the ideal or transcendental method. 
 
 The transmission of thought, the transference of ideas 
 from one mind to another, in perfect harmony with the laws 
 of mind, and without a miracle, has been practised by many 
 persons in various countries. In this case, the old maxim 
 of the Hindu metaphysical philosophy, and one much older 
 than Lord Bacon, holds good : " Power belongs to him who 
 knows." If we understand the laws that govern it, and the 
 conditions under which it can take place, we can do it. It 
 takes place as naturally as the descent of water from a 
 higher to a lower level. Thought is not a faculty of mind ; 
 it is mind itself. It is the very being of mind. It is spirit. 
 And our spirit may enter the soul region of another person 
 in a passive state, as readily as the light of the sun enters a 
 sky -light in the roof of a building and illuminates the room 
 below. 
 
 The Abbe 1 Fretheim, who lived in the seventeenth century 
 and published a work entitled " Steganographie," could con- 
 verse with his friends any time he pleased, by a transmission 
 of his thoughts. He says : "I can make my thoughts 
 known to the initiated, at a distance of many hundred miles, 
 without word, writing, or cypher, and even without a mes- 
 senger. If any correspondent should be buried in the deep- 
 est dungeon, I could still convey to him my thoughts, as 
 frequently as I chose, and this quite simply, without super- 
 stition, without the aid of spirits." A certain Cordanus is 
 chronicled as having been able to send his spirit or thought- 
 presence on such psychological errands, with any messages 
 he chose to transmit. When he did so, he affirms that he 
 felt "as if a door was opened and I myself immediately 
 passed through it, leaving the body behind me." There was 
 more reality in this than the world at large is prepared to
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 203 
 
 admit. It is not an illusion, but a substantial reality ; since, 
 by one of the deepest laws of my inner being, the spirit is 
 always present with the spirit of him who is the object o* 
 thought. So wherever my thought is, there the spirit itself 
 is ; and the spirit is the sovereign power in human nature. 
 
 The case of a high German official, a counsellor Weser- 
 raan, is mentioned in a German paper on Psychology, pub- 
 lished in 1820, who claimed to be able to cause any friend 
 or acquaintance, at any distance, to dream of any subject he 
 chose or see any person he liked. His claims were proved 
 good, and were testified to on several occasions, by sceptics 
 and learned professional persons, (/sis Unveiled, vol. i., 
 pp. 476, 477.) 
 
 From my own observation of these, to many incredible, 
 phenomena, now for more than twenty years, I have no rea- 
 son to doubt the truth of the above. I will only say, that all 
 that is claimed above to have been done, I have many times 
 witnessed. And why should it be thought a thing incredible, 
 that there should be such a thing as a S} 7 stem of psychologi- 
 cal telegraphy, and even the transference of our inner con- 
 scious self to any distance of space, which for it has no real 
 existence ? Every one knows that he can transport himself 
 wherever he pleases by that power and mode of thought 
 which we call imagination. But imagination is inseparable 
 from the spirit of man ; so that wherever I imagine myself 
 to be, there my real personality is. And if / am there, why 
 may I not speak in thought, which is the language of spirit, 
 to my friend, who, as to his inner being, is another spirit? 
 The thing is really as natural as our ordinary conversation 
 with each other. 
 
 In sleep, when the soul is more or less emancipated from 
 the body, and freed from its limitations and restraints, the 
 mind acts with more intensity and power on other minds. 
 And the more we can pass into an interior state, where the 
 bodily senses become quiescent, which is the Neo-Platonic
 
 204 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 ecstasy, the more we can do so. This is well illustrated by 
 a fact mentioned by Dr. Abercrombie, which, as an instance 
 of psychological telegraphy, or the transfer of thought and 
 idea from one mind to another, is explained on this princi- 
 ple : A young man, who was at an academy an hundred 
 miles from home, dreamed that he went to his father's hou.^e 
 in the night, tried the front door, but found it locked ; got 
 in by a back door, and finding nobody out of bed, went 
 directly to the bed -room of his parents. He then said to his 
 mother, whom he seemed to himself to find awake, " Mother, 
 I am going a long journey, and have come to bid you good- 
 bye." On which she answered, under much agitation, " O 
 dear son, thou art dead ! " He instantly awoke, and thought 
 no more of his dream, until a few days after he received a 
 letter from his father inquiring very anxiously after his 
 health, in consequence of a frightful dream his mother had 
 on the same night in which the dream just mentioned oc- 
 curred to him. She dreamed she heard some one attempt to 
 open the front door, then go to the back door, and at last 
 come into her bed-room. She then saw it was her son, who 
 came to the side of her bed, and said, " Mother, I am going 
 a long journey, and am come to bid you good-bye" ; on 
 which she exclaimed, " C uear son, thou art dead ! " Noth- 
 ing unusual happened to either of the parties. (Inquiries 
 concerning the Intellectual 1 ^o'crs, p. 210.) 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie can give no explanation of this interest- 
 ing fact, though he vouches for its truthfulness. But it is 
 neither a miracle nor a "coincidence," by which is meant 
 the happening of two things together. But it is easily 
 accounted for on the principle of the transmission of thought 
 and idea, under certain conditions, from one mind to an- 
 other. Once admit the possibility of this, and all is plain 
 and natural. 
 
 I remember to have read in the New York Tribune many 
 years ago, an account of two men who were intimate friends,
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 205 
 
 and who, on separating from each other for a short time on 
 business which took them many miles apart, agreed that on 
 a certain day, at nine o'clock at night, each would retire to 
 his room and think of the other, and write down their 
 thoughts. When they met, they were to compare what they 
 had written. One of them at the appointed time went to his 
 room, but forgot the engagement, and retired to bed and fell 
 asleep. The other thought of his friend, and imagined a 
 beautiful landscape garden with flowers, arbors, fountains, 
 statues, etc., and wrote down his thoitglits and ideas, with his 
 mind fixed upon Ids friend. On meeting, the one who forgot 
 the appointment he had made, apologized for his forgetful- 
 ness, but said that in his sleep he had a remarkable dream, 
 which, on waking in the morning, he had written down. On 
 reading it, it was found in all essential particulars to be a 
 copy of the thoughts of the other. This was not a mere 
 " coincidence," but under the same or like circumstances 
 would "happen" again. How much the thoughts of our 
 friends influence us for good or evil, we do not know, but 
 much more than the world is ready to admit. Our formula 
 of invocation is based on the reality of this influence, and 
 aims to show how most effectually to use it, and how our 
 will, imagination, and faith may best employ the divine 
 power of truth in the cure of mental and bodily disease. 
 
 The communication of thought and idea from one mind to 
 another takes place without effort on our part, under certain 
 conditions and limitations that are necessary to prevent its 
 being abused to purposes of evil. It is easy for him to do 
 who *' knows," but if it were too easily done, it would intro- 
 duce inextricable confusion and disorder into the realm of 
 mind. To do it requires a certain degree of spiritual de- 
 velopment, which, when attained, deprives one of all desire 
 or inclination to abuse it, or to use it only for the most benefi- 
 cent ends, as the relief of suffering, the removal of the cause 
 of mental inharnaony, and the cure of disease. It is only
 
 206 THE PRIMITIVE MTND-CURE. 
 
 giving quality, and direction, and a definite aim to the sphere 
 of our own thoughts and feelings, which is very easily done. 
 Says Cornelius Agrippa: "Out of every body proceed 
 images, indivisible substances, and on that account a man is 
 in a condition to impart his thoughts to another man who 18 
 hundreds of miles away." (Sprengel's History of Medicine, 
 Part II., p. 267. Ennemoser's History of Magic, Vol. II., 
 p. 254.) 
 
 This is what Swedenborg calls the emanative sphere of a 
 person or thing. Each emanative ray or immaterial atom is 
 a living resemblance or idea of the person, possessing his 
 peculiar quality, and by means of this sphere we may make 
 ourselves visible to the inner senses of another person remote 
 from us in space. This idea may take shape in the universal 
 substance, the cosmic matter, and be, as it were, a duplicate 
 of ourselves. It is our " thought," our inner and real per- 
 soualit} 7 externalized and extended abroad. According to 
 the doctrine of Aristotle, every object and every person is 
 continually emitting or throwing off certain resemblances of 
 themselves. These species, or phantasms, as they were 
 called, like the Platonic ideas, are directly present to our 
 organs of sense in the soul, however remote in space the 
 objects may be from which they proceed. This waathe 
 theory of vision which prevailed in Europe for more than a 
 thousand years ; and it has the merit of being as rational ns 
 the one adopted by the materialistic science of to-day. 
 
 Spirit cannot effect the grosser form of matter directly, 
 but only through an intermediate substance or principle. In 
 order to reach the soul of the patient, and through this affect 
 the body, our spiritual thought and ideas must be impressed 
 upon the " astral light," the universal life-principle, which 
 is the wire through which our thought must pass. This is 
 always near us, for every soul is in it and is a part of it. 
 Our thought may be impressed upon it by a whispered utter- 
 ance, and tacit speech, also by the hand (and this is the
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 207 
 
 philosophy of gesture) , and also by an expiratory respiration. 
 The hand can be made the silent tongue that speaks the 
 voiceless language of ideas. It may be made to speak a 
 language understood by the life-principle, the world-soul, 
 just as certainly as you can beckon a man to come to you, or 
 go away from you, and without saying a word can cause him 
 to look at an object by pointing your finger towards it. In 
 treating a patient by the transcendental method, we must 
 learn to talk to him in thought, in words, and with the hand. 
 
 When a person is in the magnetic state, what you suggest 
 to him becomes the law of his being. Say to him that an 
 apple is an orange, or that water is wine, and he has so 
 vivid an idea and belief of those things that they are trans- 
 formed into an orange, or into wine, as the case may be, 
 possessing all the sensible properties of those objects. But 
 only a few persons are good subjects of magnetism. For- 
 tunately, it has been found that when a person is in a passive 
 state, and is desirous of being healed, and is predisposed to 
 believe and to follow your directions, to silently suggest the 
 truth to him creates in him a tendency to think the same. 
 This is a very ancient principle of the science of magnetism. 
 There is a silent action of mind on mind, without the use of 
 spoken words. It is generally admitted by medical men, 
 that our faith will affect ourselves ; but they wholly ignore 
 the fact that our faith and imagination may affect another, if 
 not to the same extent as it does ourselves, yet as certainly 
 in a degree. We can be helpers of another man's faith. 
 That our faith or mode of thinking may affect the mind of 
 another, through the medium of a universal mind or life 
 which connects all minds by a law of sympathy, is a truth 
 recognized in the promise of Jesus, "These signs shall fol- 
 low them that believe," one of which is, "They shall lay 
 hands on the sick, and they shall recover." (Mark xvi : 18.) 
 
 The principle of silent suggestion has its application also 
 to self-healing. It is possible for the higher soul or spirit to
 
 208 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 speak to the lower soul somewhat as we address another per- 
 son. The faith of which Paul so often speaks, and by which 
 we attain to righteousness, or a divine rectitude of thought, 
 is the recognition and affirmation of the truth with regard to 
 our real self, that in the Christ or spirit we are already 
 saved. In the Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom 
 and knowledge, and in him we are complete or made full. 
 (Col. ii: 9, 10.) The intuition of this great truth, and the 
 confident affirmation of it, is the Pauline justification, and 
 Kabalistic righteousness, which means soundness of mind. 
 It is a faith that makes us whole. To affirm this of ourselves 
 in thought is a supreme act of faith. And to give it vocal or 
 verbal utterance intensifies and confirms it. " For with the 
 heart (or in the centre of our being), man believeth unto 
 righteousness ; and with the mouth, confession is made unto 
 salvation." (Bom. x : 10.)
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CDRE. 209 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 EESUKRECTION FROM THE BODY, OB THE LIBERTY OP THE SONS 
 
 OP GOD. 
 
 ACCORDING to Plato, there was once a winged race of men 
 on the earth. Of course this is symbolical of a race who 
 could emancipate themselves from the limitations and thral- 
 dom of the body, and who could rise in their thoughts above 
 the plane of sense. According to Swedenborg's science of 
 correspondence, wings denote spiritual truths, and to rise on 
 eagles' wings signifies to be elevated by spiritual truths to 
 celestial light. (Arcana Celestia, 8764.) 
 
 The great majority of mankind have lost their wings, and 
 are grovelling in the dust. 
 
 " Here man, fool man, inters celestial hopes, 
 Without one sigh, and prisoner of earth, 
 And pent beneath the moon, here pinions all 
 His wishes, winged of God to fly at infinite, 
 And reach it there where seraphs gather 
 Immortality on life's fair tree, fast by 
 The throne of God." 
 
 The higher soul of man, imprisoned in the body and buried 
 in the sepulchre of irrational sense, loses the use of its 
 wings, and its angelic powers are latent and dormant. 
 Instead of soaring into the heavens, it can at best only wade 
 in the mud. 
 
 The true wings of the soul are faith and love, or the per- 
 ception of real truth, and a pure emotional state to balance 
 it. 
 
 How to emancipate the soul from the body and the mind 
 from the illusions of sense, so that we may attain to a truly
 
 210 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUKE. 
 
 spiritual mode of thought and feeling, and to the almost 
 deific powers belonging to such a condition, is the great 
 problem of religion and philosophy. Momentous conse- 
 quences are involved in its solution. The importance and 
 necessity of the resurrection of the soul from the body in 
 order to the attainment of a spiritual life on earth is well 
 stated by Sokrates in the " Phaedo " of Plato. He says : " In 
 fact it is quite plain that if we are ever to know anything 
 clearly, we must be released from the body, that the soul by 
 itself may see things by themselves as they really are. And 
 then only, methinks, shall we have that which we desire, and 
 of which we call ourselves lovers, naruel}', wisdom." Here, 
 then, is the only pathway which leads up to the temple of a 
 true spiritual knowledge. For as Sokrates, or rather Plato 
 through him, says, "We shall be so much nearer to true 
 knowledge the more we refrain from such contact and fellow- 
 ship with the body as is not absolutely necessary." The way 
 to effect this emancipation of the soul, imprisoned in the body, 
 from material limitations, at which all the ancient philoso- 
 phies aimed, is as well stated by Sokrates in the "Phaedo" as 
 it can be expressed. He says : " They who love knowledge 
 know that their soul when first received by philosophy is 
 absolutely bound up in the body and glued fast to it, and 
 compelled to survey the things that really exist through it as 
 through the bars of a dungeon, and not in her own nature ; 
 and that she is wallowing in all ignorance as in a mire, and 
 is not aware that the strength of her prison comes from her 
 own desires, so that the prisoner actually conspires to his 
 own captivity." 
 
 " Well, as I said, lovers of knowledge know that philosophy, 
 receiving the soul in this condition, gently encourages her, 
 and tries to effect her release by showing that perception by 
 means of the eyes and ears and other senses is altogether 
 deceitful, persuading her, moreover, to withdraw the senses 
 so far as she can dispense with them, and exhorting her to
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 211 
 
 retire into herself and be self-collected, and to believe none 
 other than herself, and that part of real independent exist- 
 ence which she contemplates directly in herself ; but to hold 
 as untrue whatever things, by means of different faculties, 
 she may perceive to be varying in their different manifesta- 
 tions ; knowing that such as these belong to the visible and 
 to the realm of sense, but that what she sees in herself alone 
 belongs to the invisible and to the realm of thought. She 
 withdraws herself as much as possible from pleasures, and 
 desires, and pains, and fears, deeming that when any one is 
 powerfully affected by pleasure, or fear, or grief, or desire, 
 he brings upon himself no slight evil, as might be expected, 
 like sickness, or waste of property, occasioned by indulging 
 the passions, but he suffers the last and worst of all evils, 
 and yet takes no account of it." 
 
 "And what is that evil? It is this. The soul of every 
 man at the time of undergoing intense joy or intense sorrow 
 is led to believe that whatever causes these is most real and 
 true, although in reality it is not so. And this applies espe- 
 cially to things visible. And it is in this state of feeling that 
 the soul is most effectually imprisoned in the bod}-. Because 
 every pleasure and every pain is, as it were, a nail which 
 nails and clamps the soul to the body, and fashions her in 
 the image of the body, causing her to believe that to be true 
 which the body affirms to be true, and from agreeing with 
 the body and rejoicing in what appertains thereto, she must 
 perforce, I think, end by acquiring a like nature and habits." 
 (Phcedo, sec. 83.) 
 
 These are golden words, uttered by one who represents the 
 ancient wisdom, the old wine of the kingdom of God. We need 
 to learn to close the senses to the external world of illusion, 
 and turn the mind inward towards the light of the unseen and 
 real world. We must forever fix it in our minds that things 
 seen by the senses are temporal, unreal, and evanescent 
 shadows, but things not seen by the mortal eye, but lying
 
 212 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 
 
 wholly beyond its ken, are the only eternal and enduring 
 realities. We must as much as possible divest the soul, the 
 inner man, of all its material and sensuous integuments, " the 
 coats of skin" with which it has been clothed, and free it 
 from the finite limitations of its personal existence, and 
 leave it in its primitive innocent nakedness to absorb the 
 light and life of " true being," and to become one with that 
 looundless realm of uncreated spiritual effulgence. We must 
 close the lower windows, and, like the ancient temples, let 
 the light in at the top. Then 
 
 "The world that time and sense have known 
 Falls off, and leaves us God alone." 
 
 It is a fundamental doctrine of the Hermetic philosophy that 
 the soul of man is not of necessity included in the body, nor 
 bounded and circumscribed by it. The body exists in the 
 soul, and is included in its existence, but the body does not 
 and cannot limit and contain the soul. This is the divine 
 method of viewing it, and is in direct contradiction to the 
 common popular conception of it. According to Plato in the 
 " Tirna3us," God first creates the world-soul, the anima mundi, 
 and then the world is created or generated in it. The world- 
 soul is not limited by the world, but fills all space, and is 
 space itself, in which everything exists. So the soul of man, 
 according to the Platonic philosophy, was made out of the 
 universal soul, of which it is a personal and finite limitation, 
 and in the interior of the soul the body was formed. The 
 body, to -use an imperfect illustration and analog}', is like an 
 island in a lake or ocean. While it is true that the island is 
 pervaded by the water, it does not contain, measure, or 
 bound it. He who views the body as containing the soul is 
 like the man who should suppose that the water he finds by 
 digging in the sand of an island is all there is in the lake or 
 ocean which surrounds it. So the soul of man is much more 
 than what is included in the body. It is by divine right a
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 213 
 
 freeman of infinitude, as it is not, only in our unbelief or 
 misbelief, separated and disjoined from the divine soul of 
 the universe. This is a principle of the ancient wisdom, and 
 is one of far-reaching importance. When the soul is freed 
 from the bondage of the enfeebling conception that it is in 
 the body, its fetters are broken, and the stone is removed 
 from the door of its sepulchre. It is no longer subject to 
 the body, which is an inverted order of its life, but it 
 becomes its rightful sovereign. If the body is not external 
 to the soul, but is internal, then the soul, being more than 
 the body, when properly instructed and reinforced by the 
 higher divine spirit, can form the body after the pattern of 
 any idea it pleases. Men on the stage form an idea of a 
 certain state which they would represent, and even children 
 in their sports do this, and then the idea moulds the body 
 into its outward expression. Can we not make these bodily 
 representations of an inward idea permanent? We can 
 become the part we play. In the drama of life we can assume 
 the character of perfect health, and the body will come into 
 harmony with that idea. For the body is passive and inert 
 clay, and the soul is the potter. That the soul is not of 
 necessity imprisoned in the body like a bird in a cage, but 
 as a part of the divine Soul of the world, from which it is 
 never sundered, may attain to a boundless freedom, with its 
 senses almost unlimited in their range, is a truth which has 
 always been known to the initiates of the inner sanctuary. 
 This is the liberty of the "sons of God," of which Paul 
 speaks, and which is enjoyed by the adepts of the Himalaya 
 Mountains to-day. A soul imprisoned in the body is subject 
 to the laws of matter ; freed from the body, it is subject only 
 to the laws of thought. 
 
 But how reach this state ? Not as long as the soul is 
 bound to matter, and views matter and the body as really 
 existing things. Not surely as long as the soul thinks and 
 feels that it is limited to the body and bounded by it. For
 
 214 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CUBE. 
 
 then its powers are dormant, and it can act only in and 
 through the body. On this subject let the soul in us listen 
 to the voice of the ancient wisdom. Says Plotinus (Ennead 
 3, lib. 6), " Since matter is neither soul, nor intellect, nor 
 life, nor form, nor reason, nor bound, but a certain indefi- 
 niteness ; nor yet capacity, for what can it produce ? Since 
 it is foreign from all these, it cannot merit the appellation of 
 being, but is deservedly called non-entity." He proceeds to 
 affirm that it is but the shadow and imagination of bulk, like 
 an image in a mirror or in water. It is constituted in the 
 shade and defect of true being, and hence must be the most 
 unreal thing in the universe, a mere flying and ever-changing 
 mockery. It has, in fact, no solidity, which is one of the 
 most firmly seated of our illusions in regard to it, and one of 
 the last to quit its hold upon us. For when a man puts his 
 hand upon a block of marble, it is difficult to feel that its 
 solidity is only a sensation of resistance in us. So of all its 
 so-called properties. Supposing those sensations to be all 
 removed from the soul, with their removal, all matter, and 
 hence also the human bod}*, is gone. And whenever those 
 modifications of mind or sensations exist in us, then matter 
 exists, for it is nothing else. 
 
 Plotinus also says " that those who view body as a real 
 being, and make sense the standard and measure of truth, 
 are affected like persons in a dream, who imagine that the 
 perceptions of sleep are true. For sense is alone the employ- 
 ment of the dormant soul ; since as much of the soul as is 
 merged in the body, so much of it sleeps. But true elevation 
 and true wakefulness are a resurrection from, and not with, 
 the dull mass of the body. For indeed a resurrection with 
 the body is only a transmigration from sleep to sleep, and 
 from dream to dream, like a man passing in the dark from 
 bed to bed." (Introduction to the Timceus, by Thomas 
 Taylor, p. 431.) In the light of this Neo-Platouic philoso- 
 phy, with what fulness of meaning come the words of Paul
 
 THE PRIMITIVE MIND-CURE. 215 
 
 to us: "Awake to righteousness and sin not" (1 Cor. srv: 
 34), where righteousness is used for the Kabalistic right 
 thinking or faith, and sin for the illusions of sense. He also 
 says, "Awake thou that sleepest (or thou that art sunk in 
 the life of sense) , and arise from the dead, and the Christ 
 shall give thee light." (Eph. v : 14.) There is no other 
 way to the attainment of true spiritual life, light, and power.