How To Put The Subconscious Mind To Work
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I believe that all advanced thinkers, practitioners and teachers in this great movement of mental science are beginning to realize that there are certain fundamental laws, physical as well as mental, which must be observed and followed.

True, "All is Mind" but mind has a better chance to operate if it is given ideal conditions. The ideal condition, therefore, for mind to demonstrate to the best of its wonderful power is for man to try to keep his body physically fit. If the mind has to spend too much time, energy and strength in repairing the waste tissues of the body and restoring run down cells, or depleted vitality, it must of necessity, since the mind is working through the physical, have a certain amount of limitation. If it has to spend time overcoming foolish inharmonious weaknesses and sicknesses caused by irregular living, wrong eating, overwork, negative and inharmonious thinking, lack of proper exercise, sunshine and fresh air; too great a burden is laid upon it.

We, therefore, believe that after the healing, one of the most important things is to see that a right regimen of dietetics, exercise, breathing, recreation, accompanies right thinking.

While "All is Mind" this mind is now encased or tabernacled in the physical body. The physical has limitations. The physical may overtax the mind so that the mind in turn will not be able to produce the maximum amount of efficiency for success, prosperity, abundance, love, joy, peace and happiness as it would, if the mind had a perfect human channel through which to operate. It is absurd for anyone to think that while this spirit is in the physical that our bodies can live with- out nourishment. "All is Mind" but while we are in the body, we must eat to live. God gives us life, but we have to conform with his laws to have life at all. Mind is the basis of this life; in fact, mind is the God life, but our minds will not remain long in our bodies if we do not help the God laws to help the mind to keep us alive. For example, God gives us life, but we have to breathe to maintain that life. A man who plugs up his nostrils and shuts his mouth and tries to "think" that he can live forever without breathing is next door to a lunatic--or a half brother to a jackass. So there are other fundamental laws—physical laws which man must conform with to have the maximum amount of success, health and happiness. You would not expect a man to live forever if he does not sleep. Nature requires a certain amount of sleep while we are in the physical, if our minds, our spirits are to remain in our bodies. Therefore, after healing, we must be sure that we have rest, that we have our necessary sleep, that we have recreation, as well as right eating, exercising and fresh air.

A man cannot continue to break the physical laws and still expect his mind to keep him whole and harmonious and well. The late Professor James no doubt was right in saying that most of us only do about 10 percent of the work we can do. No doubt there is a great deal in the assertion that some people sleep more than they ought to sleep, but I believe if a person is living a nor- mal life, that nature adjusts the hours of sleep to suit the individual. Some people may get along with less sleep than others. If you are eating properly, having plenty of fresh air, exercising and thinking rightly, nature will see that you desire only the necessary hours of repose and sleep for the daily rebuilding and rehabilitating of the body.

Be sure, therefore, that you play fair with nature by adhering to the rules of the health game in right eating, thinking, exercising and breathing.

But there are certain health laws which if rigidly kept will help the mind to help the individual to help God to help him to keep well. To say that because mind is all we can eat anything is almost as absurd as the conduct of a faith healer I know who limps in his walk, who has fits of indigestion and who has to remain away from his office and his practice for weeks at a time because of his irregular living or something inside him put out of whack and yet his great slogan is "Mind is All, man can do anything he wants to do if he has the right mind."

These mental healers have but one angle of truth. Many of them are so warped and prejudiced that they are not able to apprehend any aspect at all of God given truth. Otherwise they would not say "you can eat anything you want to eat, it doesn't matter what--." Absurd, absolutely absurd. More sickness in America is due to overeating, fear, selfishness and worry than to any other one cause. Much of our sickness, however, can be corrected by dieting, sunshine, fresh air, drinking plenty of water, and exercising.

The next step, therefore, in the development of mental science is to get away from our lopsided, warped idea that everything is mind and that we can abuse all of the physical laws of nature. We must return to the common sense basis that, al- though all is mind, we must be in complete harmony with all physical and mental laws. Only thus can the efficacy of mind and its superiority over matter be demonstrated.

If I get a splinter in my flesh nature in time creates a fester, pushes up the skin and makes a slight enlargement through which the festering enlargement bursts the skin. Then the impurity around the splinter is released and the splinter expelled. Nature in time gets rid of the splinter.

But isn't it an easy thing to do, won't it save time and trouble and help nature, if I myself take the splinter out?

Nature is the most wonderful workshop. A needle may be broken off in the palm of a person's hand and in time will force its way up through the surface of the skin an inch or more from where it entered. But who wants a needle forcing its painful way through the tissues of the hand, if by one little twitch the broken steel may be removed ?

We therefore believe that all practitioners of every stripe and color, of every school and cult, will in time subscribe to complete and scientific conformity with the material laws of nature.

Recognition of the power of the mind to heal combined with respect for all natural laws is a program we recommend as a perfect whole to every healer.

Even Jesus could not have made his healing invariably permanent if the patient himself were not solicitous for his own recovery. In fact, all that Jesus did, or any other healer ever does, is to help the patient to help himself to get in harmony with the laws of nature. After the patient is helped into harmony with the laws of God, it is then the obligation of the patient himself to keep in harmony with these God-given laws. If the laws of nature are disregarded or treated with con- tempt it is not reasonable to expect that mind will be efficient in its healing processes. There's a parable of a maniac who suffered a relapse because he didn't fill his mind and heart with right thoughts and his hands with useful service and the second condition of that house was worse than the first. It is one thing to be healed. It is an- other thing to remain healed.

Mental inefficiency may result from functional derangement occasioned by the continued effort of the brain to do its work under diseased conditions. Nerve impulses may be obstructed or diverted by the physical condition of the nerves through which they pass. Since the brain is, first of all, a physical mechanism, and as such cannot be exempt from physical limitations, mental efficiency rests primarily upon a vigorous nervous system healthily environs. We should know the part that reflex neuroses play in mental hygiene, and in their preparatory training they should learn to recognize the indications of these affections in order that the nervous irritation may be relieved before it becomes a serious menace to brain growth and mental development.--Chas. E. Swift, "Mind in the Making."

The proper use of air, water, food, and exercise will produce physical perfection if the mind activity is ever constructive and creative.--Terry Walter, M. D.

No system of healing, no healer, regardless of the doctrine held or the method pursued, can guarantee health without the intelligent cooperation of the patient.

It is important fully to understand that when the brain is restored to health by good nerve tissue and healthy blood, it can be made by suggestion to exercise as healthy influence over the body as it previously exercised a harmful one. If ideal centers can produce ideal diseases, surely the rational cure is first to bring these ideal centres into a healthy condition, and then make them the means of curing the ideal disease. Mental disease requires, and can ultimately only be cured by, mental medicine. When will this be understood? And when will nauseous drugs cease to be ministered to a mind diseased ?

Of the usual remedies given, Dr. Russell Reynolds says: "The whole list of anti-hysteric remedies--musk, castor, valerian, and the like appear to have this one property in common: that they do no good, and delay the real treatment of the case, which is not one to be cured by nauseous 'gums,' but largely by mental, moral and social management."

Verily, H. W. Dresser, is right:

In the long run it is right living that secures health, and every man who has failed to adapt his conduct to nature's requirements must learn the art of health with regard to the matters in question. He who would truly possess permanent health in contrast with the supposable health of the anxious and the nervous people who consult a physician every time they feel a slight pain--should be able to take the matter into his own hands so that he will be able to avoid the life that breeds disease.

No one who has followed the writer thus far, who has noted the emphasis he puts upon the power of mind to heal the sick, to inspire the discouraged, to uplift the downcast and to strengthen the weak, can possibly misunderstand him when he says that to do something is much more important than merely to assert something. If we are using our forces in the wrong way we must, whatever our affirmation, begin to employ them in the right way.

Aye, affirmations cover a multitude of sins for those who want an excuse for irregular living.

A suggestion--affirmation--will not plant corn, harvest wheat or bake bread. Affirmations must be used with as much intelligence and good common sense as are called for in any human situation. We cannot by taking an affirmation live without eating or sleeping. All the affirmations in this world or kingdom come won't supply oxygen for the body unless we do our part in breathing.

There is no formula that will enable a man by substituting affirmation for accomplishment to make headway in life. Of course, every one must believe in himself to succeed but he must back up that belief by effort and work.

There is no "prosperity treatment" that can change a man's condition from non-prosperity to prosperity other than that which inspires him to go out and bring prosperity home by preparation, work, effort, love and expenditure of time.

Complete cures can better be made if a regulation of life habits, a correction of wrong mental attitudes, and an establishment of a different way of thinking and living are demanded of the patient. Reeducation and persuasion play heavy roles in the transforming process.

If our sickness has been caused by irregular living, environmental conditions, inharmonious vibrations or wrong thinking, it then is most essential if we are to have our healing and maintain health that we change these elements.

Mind can accomplish most anything, but the mind that is hampered by over-eating, poor air, cramped conditions, etc., is a mind that has to spend much of its energy in overcoming those conditions, when it should be devoting itself to keeping health, success and happiness.

Therefore, besides keeping your minds clean and open it is most essential that you give attention to your bathing, to your eating, to your exercising and to your breathing.

A mind that is unhampered in a healthy body, of course, will not have as much work to do as the mind which has to overcome physical limitations. By keeping your body fit, therefore, you help your mind, to bring and keep success, health and happiness.

It is a singular fact that many people, after having been healed are careless about the formation of regular health habits for themselves, and selfishly indifferent to the healing of others who are sick.

It is a sad reflection upon human nature that the comfort, ease of mind and pleasure obtained under treatment by the suggestion method often tend to make the patient indifferent to health observation.

After the healing has been effected, the patient should under no circumstances allow himself to become indifferent to health rules and regulations. He should be more desirous, more eager, than ever to yield whole-hearted compliance with the laws governing health of mind and body.

We have put great emphasis upon the power exercised by the mind over the body. Now, we should like to direct the attention of the careful student and the sincere aspirant after truth to the fact of the vast influence exerted by the body over the mind. In the mental science movement this has been one of the neglected truths. The observant and unprejudiced will unquestionably agree that there is an influence exerted by disease or by a disordered physical body upon the mental state and the moral tendencies.

The careful student is compelled to recognize that in many instances it is the physical disorder which is to blame for the depressed mental state. Destructive states of either mind or body react, the one upon the other, each tending to make the other worse, until such a time as the body regains its equilibrium of health, or the mind recovers its lost mastery of feelings and emotions.

Dr. Wm. S. Sadler has well said,

All thoughts which are evolved in the brain and which finally find expression in various ways, are actually constructed out of literal, physical impressions, transmitted over the nervous system from the organs of special sense to the brain.

It is true, physical disturbances of the circulation or of the digestion are often contributory to hypochondria; in fact, most hypochondriacs are sick both in mind and body, but the mental state is usually the determining factor. Most hypochondriacs would speedily recover if they would but become confirmed optimists. Faith is the important remedy and the essential element m the cure of hypochondria. In this unfortunate and imaginary disease--none the less real and painful in its effects because it is imaginary--the entire brain seems disordered.

No one will seriously question the fact that pain invariably exerts a deleterious influence upon the mind. Intellectual activity and mental usefulness are restricted or well-nigh destroyed by severe or long continued pain in any part of the body, resulting from any cause whatsoever.

Many people are sick because they violate the laws of their physical nature.

Health is both a natural and a contagious thing--more so than sickness, else we should have been swept into oblivion long ere this. With obedience to the laws of breathing, exercise, diet, sleep and right thinking presupposed, we need never get sick.

After our healing, how can we go on breaking the laws of nature and expect that nature will continue to keep us well? There are certain things which Mother Nature demands and if these requirements are not met, our good old mother has to spank us again. Overwork is one of the prevalent causes of nervous disorders as well as of many physical disturbances.

When you believe that you can do more work than you have been doing, there is no doubt but that you will. It is the preying of the mind upon work to be performed that is vastly worse than the work itself. Therefore, if it is necessary for you to play the work horse, go about your tasks cheerfully; do not allow your work to drive you, but you drive the work. In any event observe moderation. There is a limit even to work.

The late Professor James tells us that we can do nine times as much work as we now are doing and still have the spirit and strength for more work. But, even at that, there is a limit. Know your limit. Be wise.

After healing, what! Conform to all the hygienic laws of life.

The most lasting, satisfactory and helpful element in mental therapeutics springs from teaching patients how to help themselves and how to help others, and not from what the healer can do unaided.

After a patient has been healed, it is advisable for him to make occasional visits to a practitioner to attend lectures, to join classes and associate with people of like mind. Further than this he should himself "carry on" for at least three months after the healing. "Whatever method or methods have been employed in effecting his cure, whatever the methods which particularly appeal to him, he should at all events practice the Silence once or twice a day. He should, moreover, continue to take healing thoughts, to charge the subconscious mind just before retiring at night and upon awaking in the morning, and to comply faithfully and religiously with nature's requirements as to diet, sunshine, exercise, breathing, work and rendering service unto others.

Wise care of one's self means simply steering into the currents of law and order- mentally, morally and physically. The physical, mental and moral man are all three actually interdependent but all the care in the world for each and all of them can lead only to weakness instead of strength unless they are all three united in zeal for a useful life for the benefit of others.

In other words, we can be only at our maximum efficiency by taking good care of the mind and of the body which tabernacles the soul. Therefore after we have been healed, to maintain our healing and our maximum amount of mental and bodily efficiency we should be sure that we keep strictly the laws of life.

We have made a careful study in these pages of the crux of the whole disease matter and if we have succeeded in making anything at all clear it is this: that when we live in harmony with nature's laws, mentally and physically, it is im- possible to be sick. Sickness and disease are breaches of natural law so it is apparent that each person should subscribe to partnership with the Infinite. The wise seeker after health will do everything to be a good partner with nature by observing her health rules and regulations.

We Violate Natural Laws

Health is but life under normal conditions; hence, disease is life under abnormal conditions. We are living in a civilization which has forced us into a more or less unnatural mode of living. We do not eat naturally, sleep naturally, drink naturally, breathe naturally, or dress naturally.

"We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us"--truly we can add, at least, there is but little health in us.

It takes a big mind, to perceive that the root of disease is ignorance, that somewhere along the path of life law was violated, and to face himself like a man and say: Of my own ignorance I created this. This diseased condition is the result of destructive mental forces generated in wrong thinking, I am responsible for this, I will arsie and go to my Father in whom is all resource for my healing. --Helen Rhodes Wallace.

"One can no longer understand life unless one admits that mind and body are one."

Andre Tridon has put some authority in his statement when he thus expresses himself on this subject:

It is only the profoundly ignorant who at the present day pretend to know the limits of the physical and of the mental and attempt to attribute certain phenomena to the mind and others to the body.

The truth meanwhile occupies, as ever, the medium position between the two, there being times when the body sways the mind, and other times when the mind sways the body, the two being, as has been forcibly expressed by Miss Cobbe, something like a pair of coupled dogs; sometimes one and sometimes the other obtaining the victory, and sometimes both pulling together in harmony.

"If mental strain, and depression can produce constipation, then constipation arising from other causes may and does produce mental depression and nervousness. In fact in most nervous disorders there is some such vicious circle as this."--Thomas Parker Boyd.

The chief objection to most of these therapeutic sciences is that they put forward a theoretical, one-sided mental scheme, thereby ignoring half of life. A theory of health to be of real value must be founded on established evidence and natural laws. However noble the spiritual structure reared upon it may be, Man, whatever else be true of him, will be a natural being as long as he lives in this physical world.

There are partisans of various therapeutists who insist that any workable knowledge of the organism of man is unnecessary; that even to mention physiological science is to compromise with materialism. They see no virtue in physical exercise, in the regulation of diet, correct breathing or proper mastication of food. For all of these they would substitute the affirmation of thought, and the spiritual realization of ideals, and then dogmatically proclaim that the art of health preservation is known only to them!

Such people should remember that their claims like the dogmatic implications of "revealed" religion must, of necessity, undergo the critical scrutiny of unbiased, thinking people. We are in an age where we accept nothing which runs counter to nature. We must have a reason for our faith, something more than mere creed or dogma. "We must have an educational philosophy of health which any reasoning man might accept whatever his metaphysics or religion.

Most cases of the "blues" for instance are due to imperfect elimination caused in its turn by overeating or underdrinking, improper breathing or by all three.

Atkinson says, in "Mind and Body":

This action and re-action works along the lines of building-up as well as tearing-down. For instance, if a person's Mental States are positive, optimistic, cheerful and uplifting the body will respond and the Physical Conditions will improve. The Physical Conditions, thus improving, will react upon the Mental States giving them a clearness and strength greater than previously manifested. This improved Mental State again acts upon the Physical Conditions, improving the latter still further. And so on, an endless chain of cause and effect, each effect becoming a cause for a subsequent effect and each cause arising from a preceding effect.

Likewise, a depressed, harmful Mental State will act upon the Physical Conditions, which in turn will react upon the Mental States, and so on, in an endless chain of destructive cause and effect. It is a striking illustration of the old Biblical statement: "To him who hath shall be given; to him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."' In improving either the Mental State or the Physical Condition, one gives an up- lift to the whole process of action and reaction; while, whatever adversely affects either Mental State or Physical Condition, starts into operation a depressing and destructive process of action and reaction. The ideal to be aimed at is, of course, "A healthy Mind in a healthy Body"-- and the two are so closely related that what affects one, favorable or unfavorable, is sure to react upon the other.

Herbert A. Parkyn, M. D., well states the action and reaction of Mind and Body, as follows:

A tree is much like a human being. Give it plenty of fresh air, water and a rich soil, and it will flourish. In the same degree in which it is deprived of these does it wilt, and the first part of the tree to wilt when the nutrition becomes imperfect is the top. This is owing to the force of gravity; the blood of the tree, the sap, having to overcome this force of nature when nourishing the highest leaves. The blood of man is also affected by this same force, and the moment a man's circulation begins to run down, owing to stinted nutrition, we find that the first symptoms of trouble appear in the head--The brain failing to receive its accustomed amount of blood, such troubles as impaired memory, inability to concentrate the attention, sleeplessness, nervousness, irritableness, the blues and slight headaches develop; and the impulses sent all over the body becoming feebler, the various organs do not perform their functions as satisfactorily as usual. The impulses to the stomach and bowels becoming weaker and weaker, dyspepsia or constipation, or both, soon follow.

As soon as these, the main organs of nutrition, are out of order, nutrition fails rapidly and more "head symptoms" develop. Every impulse of the muscular system leaves the brain, and the strength of these impulses depends upon the nutrition to the brain centers controlling the various groups. As the nutrition to these centers declines, the whole muscular system, including the muscles of the bowels becomes weaker and the patient complains that he exhausts easily. The impulses for elimination becoming weaker, waste products remain in the circulation, and any of the evils, which naturally follow this state of affairs, such as rheumatism, sick-headache, biliousness, etc., are likely to develop. The centers of the special senses feeling the lessening of the vital fluid, such troubles as impaired vision, impaired hearing, loss of appetite (sense of taste) and inability to detect odors quickly soon follow. The sense of touch becomes more acute, and it is for this reason that one in poor health becomes hypersensitive. Lowered circulation in the mucous membrane of the throat and nose is often the cause of nasal catarrh appearing on the scene as an early symptom.

No organ of the body can perform its functions properly when the amount of blood supplied to it is insufficient and we find, when the blood supply to the brain is not up to the normal standard, that brain functions are interferred with to a degree corresponding to the reduction in the circulation. Since the amount of blood normally supplied to the brain is lessened in nervous prostration, we find that the memory fails and the ability to concentrate the attention disappears. The reasoning power becomes weakened and the steadiest mind commences to vacillate. Fears and hallucinations of every description may fill the mind of a patient at this stage, and every impression he receives is likely to be greatly distorted or misconstrued. Melancholia with a constant fear of impending danger is often present. In fact, the brain seems to lose even the power to control its functions, and the mind becomes active day and night--The reduction of the nutrition to the brain lessens the activity of all the cerebral centers also, and digestion becomes markedly impaired, thereby weakening the organ itself upon which the supply of vital force depends.

When it comes to the satisfaction of his bodily wants the animal has more sense than man. It does not violate the laws of nutrition as man does. It lives nearer to nature and eats things in the way nature intended they should be taken into the we can fire food. The diseases of man are the penalty he pays for violating nature's laws.

The average length of life among the Mohammedans is one hundred and he often remains a youngster at that. Dr. Miller's studies and surveys in the Balkans have shown that many men are now living there one hundred twenty and one hundred fifty years of age who do not look over forty or fifty. These people live in the fresh air, next to nature, eat cheese, fruit and sour milk.

All forms of animal life known to man except man himself live eight times their maturity. Man matures at twenty-one. Measured by the scale of other animals he should, therefore, live to be at least one hundred and sixty-eight years of age as body. Man, on the contrary, has invented a dozen and one ways of cooking so that we are beset on every side with some new fangled idea of how we compute time. The average age is forty. Man has got away from nature. He's paying the penalty.

He eats wrongly; he coops himself up in an ill-ventilated office; he lives in a cubbyhole of an apartment he calls a residence; he puts on outlandish clothing, which interferes with respiration and shuts out the sunlight, nature's chief source for health. In other directions he has got even further away from nature. The complexity of our present-day civilization and the keen competition to get ahead results in man's being filled with fear, hatred, envy--to say nothing of prejudice and the other negative thoughts--most of which, if not all, paralyze the assimilation, clog up and poison the system so that the natural sequence is sickness and chronic diseases. Emotional states registered in the flesh as anger, fear, prejudice, hatred, envy, revenge, also produce acute disease. Thus a natural way of living has been perverted by man into a way of living, eating, dressing and yielding to mental strain wholly at variance with the laws of nature and the laws of God.

Intelligent functioning of thought with action and the application of psychology to every day problems is not to "demonstrate over" the laws of nature but to understand these laws and work in accordance with them.

Health is our normal condition. It is our birth-right. "It is as natural to be well as it is to be born." All diseases are the result of a transgression of natural law. Man's ignorance about the natural laws of health has produced the thousand and one ills that flesh is heir to.

Terry Walter in "The Hand Book of Life," expresses it this way:

We say that the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body--that the two do not function independently one of the other. We walk with our head or our heels, which? If our head did not say walk, should we do it? The mind is the control and if this control is not in good working condition it does not guide us in the right direction. On the other hand if the body is not cared for with regard to proper physical requirements, the blood stream, the quality of which determines the quality and activity of thought, does not produce a healthy brain, and so we first show the necessity of lung development, body sanitation, within and without, proper diet, and systematic and intelligent exercise; in other words, to get well or to keep well, you must properly use the four physical essentials of all life--air, water, food, and exercise.

Nature has everything called for in the process of making or remaking itself. Health is the supreme work of the normal body. A. A. Lindsay, physician of over twenty-five years practice says "that the soul has a preference for, a trend toward Construction, and a power deficit for Healing"; that a constructive suggestion is in accord with its innate ideals and, therefore, the impulse to reorganize for harmony is ever present. This explains why one who has an acute disorder will recover if he has proper nursing, hygienic and dietetic attention and is free from artificial things as obstacles to his recovery. Purely medical authorities declare that with the sort of attention above mentioned ninety to ninety-five percent of the people with acute disorders recover, and many times, they also say, "they recover in spite of the medicine."

The words that John writes in his third epistle are suggestive: "Brethren, I desire above all things that thou shalt prosper, and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." To do this one must conform to the laws of life.

As told by Villette H. White:

One of the gentlest of ladies happened to mention to a friend--an enthusiastic adherent of a healing cult—that she had a bunion; to which her friend replied, "Oh, you must hate somebody !" A little common sense would have suggested that an ill-fitting shoe, and not a state of mind, was responsible for the trouble. So there may be many immediate causes for disease aside from mental states.

F. W. Sears, M. P., shoots straight at the mark, when he says:

Many persons will say, "Why, could thinking make me well, I would have been well long ago." Let us see how much they have thought of health ? How much they have recognized their oneness with it? They have recognized it in this way: They say, "I wish I could be well; I want so much to be well." They would make these statements a half a dozen times perhaps and then they would spend a couple of hours in telling about how much sickness they had in their lives. Some persons will spend hours each day in talking about their ailments, when they can find someone to listen. Is that living in the consciousness of health ? No! It is living in a continued consciousness of disease, of lack of health, and it is impossible for us to have health while we continue to build a consciousness of disease. On the other hand, it is impossible for us to have disease, when we have lived in and acquired a consciousness of health and harmony.

Healthy people, those who have established a "health consciousness" so that it is natural for them to be well, never think of being sick, never fear sickness, and never are sick unless through anger, hatred, envy, jealousy, impatience, intolerance, worry, anxiety, resentment, resistance, condemnation, criticism, fear, etc., they generate the negative energy which later on creates so much interior-soul-inharmony that it registers in the body as disease. This is the only way such persons ever can become sick.

It seems to be a law of the nervous system to find its equilibrium by a series of "ups and downs." Progress in anything in life is seldom steady, but if the general trend is toward recovery, there is no reason for discouragement but rather for getting a little stronger grip on one's self. Improvement may be rapid at first, but slower later. The reason may be found in this statement from Hoffman: "Nervous energy for any kind of response is limited. If the stimulation is continuous the response must become gradually less energetic." This would indicate that in the use of the will the nervous reserve is first drawn upon, and afterwards the improvement is to be made by building up impaired tissue, which is a much slower process.

However, we must continue to use the stimulus of the will, as "long continued stimuli tend to make new reflex paths in the nervous matter."

We are told that a certain amount of stimulus is expended in rousing nervous matter.

If no more is added, the inertia will not be overcome. Does not this show the need of perseverance in sending, not weak suggestions, but imperative commands over the nerve paths?

So the necessity of reading, studying, and continuing charging the subconscious mind for health, harmony, power and poise is so important that all of the mental healers combined can not overemphasize the necessity of people who want to maintain health by doing something to help themselves.

"We have mentioned elsewhere that the hardest part of our healing is to reach that frame of mind where we are willing to dig up the roots of wrong thinking and throw them into the ash can of forgetfulness.

Very often a person will not play fair with himself after he has effected a cure. He thinks it's all over, that health is restored and that he need feel no sense of obligation to himself, his neighbor, or his God. He is well and again begins to travel the treadmill of wrong living and wrong thinking the same as before.

If our sickness is due to wrong thinking and wrong living and we are healed, no one in the world can guarantee that we are going to remain healed if we go back to the old way of living and thinking which originally produced our sickness. We can no more begin a new life living wrongly and thinking wrongly and be well than we could live the old life in that manner successfully. After our healing it must be right about face, forward march. We must toe the line of right thinking and right living without hewing to the right or without wobbling to the left.

Perhaps more sickness comes from selfishness than from any one thing. While not all deafness comes from selfishness, yet most deaf people can trace their affliction directly to their own selfishness. If a person, deaf because of selfishness, is healed and then continues to live a selfish life, of course he's going to revert.

I healed a woman in one of my campaigns who had been deaf for twenty-two years. She said her deafness was a great impediment to her business success. When she was healed, I told her that her ailment came directly from selfishness and that to maintain her hearing she would have to change her way of living. (The woman confessed that before coming to me she had spent thousands of dollars to be healed.)

In the face of my statement and her costly experience she strenuously attempted during the public lectures of my campaign to return a thumb- worn and badly soiled copy of Applied Psychology and get a fresh copy in exchange. On top of all this, be it remarked, she has not yet paid for her class!

Think of it! A complete healing after twenty-two years of deafness, and after thousands of dollars spent upon other methods to regain her hearing! Then, after I warned this woman she must if she were to keep her healing change from her selfishness into a life of charity, giving an abundance, she indulges in the contemptible nickel-pinching piece of selfishness above stated.

And they wonder why they are sick!

Hence, after our healing it is absolutely essential (it cannot, in fact, be made emphatic enough) that we change our way of thinking and our way of living.

In my search to ascertain how other authorities and healers work, I ran across the following illuminating paragraph:

A thoughtful young physician said not long ago to a Christian minister: "I am sometimes disgusted with my work. I am expected to cure a man of disorders and diseases which may be largely the result of his evil appetites and passions, and then, without touching his soul, leave him to return again to wallow in his evil. All that I am doing, as I see it, is to set at naught the stern lessons whereby a man is taught, through suffering in the body, that he has sinned in the soul. I wish I could deliver him from the sin in his soul while I am delivering him from the suffering in his body."

The foregoing suggests a similar experience of mine. One of my patients from a distant land wrote somewhat to this effect: "I took your class and was healed in mind and body. For three months I did not have an ache or pain. Life was one sweet song. For the last few weeks I have felt the old trouble returning. Can you tell me what is the matter?"

Of course I could. If anger, grief, sorrow, reverses, misfortune or any emotional state (in other words inharmonious thinking) has caused the sickness, and the person is healed, he is healed because he changes his mind--right about face.

This correspondent, like many another good person after having been healed for three months, and thinking that the trouble was gone forever, reverted, went back to the old way of living, the old way of thinking. It is obvious that if hatred and jealousy or grief or sorrow brought about our first sickness that the condition will be duplicated if after the healing has taken place you go back to the same way of thinking and living as formerly, and this woman after her healing no doubt not only went back to her old way of thinking but neglected her reading.

This we must emphasize. The very first condition for most people, if they would maintain, restore or keep their health, is to live in a healthful mental atmosphere. This is one of the most important things we have to learn. Our thinking, our daily thinking, must be done along lines which are wholesome, aspiring and uplifting. And it must, just as far as possible, ignore and inhibit thought of disease and diseased conditions.

We must always recognize every department of that all important factor which both effects healing and maintains our health after we are healed. Not only must we change our way of thinking, by surrounding ourselves with a better "atmosphere" for healing, but we must also observe the laws of nature which are the laws of God.

Paul Ellsworth speaks with much authority when he says:

There seems to be an inherent tendency in carnal mind to throw over its allegiance to God or natural law as soon as it finds itself in possession of even a measure of direct power over physical things. This is the danger in direct healing--that it will stimulate the carnal consciousness to say in effect, "All right, God, now I can look after myself; you won't need to bother about me any longer." Remember that in healing, as in all other things, only the consciousness of unity with spirit can quicken within the personal will that serene mastery which says, "Let there be health," and it is so. Never allow yourself to drift into the belief, no matter how successful you may be in mastering your body, that you are now independent of Infinite Love and Wisdom and Power. For it is only as these work in and through you, only as you become one with these spiritual elements, that your word can continue to go forth with power.

Keep yourself in the thought-currents of Infinite love, wisdom, and power. Keep yourself in the frame of mind which assures you that you are master of your body, environment and conditions.

Someone has well said:

In like manner a man may say, "I am health," and go on sleeping in an unventilated room, neglect to take proper exercise, or feed his body on an unbalanced diet, and in general fail to observe dietetic, hygienic, or other laws of health, and wonder why his "thought" doesn't create a perfectly healthy body. "Faith without works is dead," said St. James, a noted healer of the early church. Health without observing its laws is impossible.

Thomas Parker Boyd, the eminent authority on mental science, knows whereof he preaches when he says in "The Voice Eternal":

No scheme of the spiritual philosophy of health can be complete which leaves out a due consideration of the material means that make for the welfare of the physical body which is the temple for the life of God that for a time dwells here. The body is a fact on hand and no amount of mental jugglery can alter that fact. Its welfare is tremendously influenced by the materials that we take into it. It is the life of God expressed in material form just as the soul is the life of God expressed in immaterial form. The life of God is governed by certain laws of expression which vary according to the form of life. If the

Infinite life is expressed in spiritual form then it flows into that form by direct spiritual contact of the individual life with the spirit of all life. If life is expressed in material form then it is constantly maintained by life imparted through material forms, as the living soil imparts its life to vegetation, and vegetation to the animal, and likewise both of these to man's body. In other words the human body receives living energy- from various material forms such as food, water, air, etc., while his spiritual body receives its energy direct from God, and even here the process is greatly helped by certain symbols and material forms. No sane man expects his body to be fed by purely spiritual means without the agency of material forms. And there are certain laws by which these material agencies are made to minister their energy to the body most efficiently. To know these laws is the first duty of man. No reference is made here to materia medica because its use is assumed, and the physician is regarded as God's man dealing in divine forces which many people need at times to use. The author is not a physician and is writing for the people who do not need material remedies, and whose attention needs to be turned rather to the menial and spiritual forces in and about them.

I have emphasized with all the power at my command, both in writing and in my public lectures and classes that to be healed the patient must urgently want to be healed and will try to assist the healer, or try to help himself. Do you really want to stay healed? That's the question right now. Do you want to be well or not to be well, that's the big problem for your subconscious mind to answer. If you want to be well, rest assured that the subconscious mind will make you well and keep you well. You are healed now, you can hear people speak, your pains are gone, the aches are no longer there, life is different from what it has been. Now, play fair with yourself, take account of your mental stock, be honest in making an inventory of your mental states. Do you want to remain healed?

No one can answer this but yourself. No one can keep you well but yourself.

To keep your healing, therefore, remember that these few simple things must be adhered to.

First. Positively desire to remain well.

Second. Forever keep away from negative and inharmonious thinking.

Third. Continue charging the subconscious mind with affirmations when you go to sleep at night, awake in the morning and during the day.

Fourth. Practice the Silence.

Fifth. If discord, inharmony or association with individuals or groups of negative people have come into your life, cleanse the aura.

Sixth. Do not give a thought to past afflictions until you become so grounded in your health that by referring to your old troubles you are strong enough to prevent them from returning.

Seventh. Associate with people who have like minds, who believe in mental healing and the power of mind over all conditions, both bodily and environmental. Do not allow yourself to associate with people who are skeptical and who scoff and speak lightly of mental science. Remember you are now but a babe in the new life. Negative thinking from skeptics may flash into the subconscious mind and stick there. You may begin to doubt that you are healed, that you will remain healed, that you have been healed by the right means. It is most necessary, therefore, that you have proper association.

Until you become strong and very positive that nothing can shake your faith, enter into no arguments with people who tell you that there are methods of healing other than those which you have become acquainted with. Bear in mind that there are all kinds of envious or self-seeking teachers in this wonderful new age who are un- psychological to such an extent that they may deliberately or unconsciously poison your mind by leading you to believe that yon have not the truth.

I have known many and many a person who has had a complete healing by one healer, then some other, either ignorant or jealous practitioner, has told the former sufferer that he was not healed by God or that his healing could not be permanent because it was not right, or that there is only one way to be healed and this practitioner has it, so that those who have been healed have lost their anchorage. They begin to question whether they are really healed or not and of course, they revert.

Remember this is a new movement we are in--mental science--less than three-quarters of a century old, as we moderns understand it, and that we may expect all kinds of angles of truth to be added to that which we have.

The differences and the contentions and the jealousies and the backbitings of the modern teachers of mental science are analogous to the growth of the Christian church. One branch of the Christian church claimed that they had all of the truth, then up sprang another branch and said, "You are wrong, I have it." One branch said, "There's only one royal way to heaven and that's mine." Another said, "No, you are wrong, God has given into my keeping the only way to get into heaven. You must tread my narrow path or be lost." One branch of the Christian church said, "You must be baptized by immersion." Another said, "No, you must be sprinkled," etc., ad lib infinitum. This made all kinds of strife and contention. Then comes along another branch and said "you don't have to have any kind of baptism except spiritual." Each church claimed that it had the only truth. That has been going on now for some 600 years or more, I suppose we could say, 2000 and be nearer right.

This modern movement of mental science though still in its infancy is splitting up the same way. One man says, "I have all the truth." A woman says, "I have all there is," the next teacher declares, "There can be no truth unless you get it from me.'' Up springs another leader who contends that God has put the pass key of success, health and happiness into his keeping and the lock cannot be opened unless he lends you his magical pass-key opener.

This is all wrong. It should not be. It must not be. If you are to keep your healing, you will not listen to any narrow-minded bigoted doctrinal mental science practitioner who tries to under- mine your faith and ruin your health by saying you have not the truth, that you need his teaching and his healing, and that of nobody else.

Remember the truth can come from any place. Truth is truth no matter where it is and what livery it wears. How do you know that you have pure law, pure science, pure psychology, pure mental science, pure healing? How do you know when you have the truth?

That's easy. If you have been healed, whether of physical afflictions or mental disturbance or domestic inharmony or business perplexities, or worry, doubt, fear or anything, all is well. Your healing is evidence that a Simon pure law or method was used--you have the truth for you.

One person gets his healing from a Christian Scientist. Another gets his healing from a Psychologist and someone else gets his healing from another mental practitioner, but if you are healed, there can be nothing but truth in that particular mental science which you have taken hold of--for you!

To be healed is to have received the truth, no matter from whom you got it, who administered it, where it came from, whereof it is born.

If you are healed, you are healed and it must of necessity be a true healing; it must be the law of truth which has healed you. God doesn't deal in falsities or trickery or sham, and everyone who has been healed has been healed by some natural law, whether that law has been well understood or not. That law is God given law, hence it is the God power. Why should you care who has healed you, how you have been healed, where you have been healed, what system was used, what method was manipulated, so long as you have been healed?

To be healed is to know the truth. To be healed is to have been helped by natural law. I grant you that some people only have an inkling of this law, some get nine-tenths of the law wrong and one-tenth of it right, but when you are healed, you have had the one-tenth of a law that is true. That is power, that is Godly.

So, let no one disturb your mind, perturb your soul, or upset your physical condition by telling you that you have not the truth. God is God and God is Truth and all healing is the operation of a God given law and where God is, there can be nothing but Truth. Flee as from a plague from that bigoted individual who would tell you you have not the truth--that he has all there is.

Eighth. Do you associate not only with people of vigorous minds, but attend meetings where you will hear various angles of mental science ex- pounded. If you have firmly grasped what has been stated in the foregoing paragraphs, about Truth, you can hear a lecture or discussion on mental science anywhere without uprooting your faith.

Ninth. Exercise.

Tenth. Breathing.

Eleventh. Eating.

Twelfth. Fresh air.

Thirteenth. Rest.

Fourteenth. Work--hobby.

Fifteenth. Bathing and cleanliness.

We cannot, of course, pretend to include everything relative to sickness and health, anatomy, physiology and hygiene in a book of this size. In fact that is not necessary. The thing of chief importance is to admonish our readers to keep the main channels of health open.

The fundamental demand of nature in the physical, mental, psychic and spiritual planes is for cleanliness. In the physical plane this law is as rigidly enforced by nature's police as anywhere. She permits no latitude here. She is inexorable!

Regular, thorough and easy cleansing of the system can easily be incorporated in one's habit complexes, although the practical details of method can be taken up more advantageously in the classrooms of sane and progressive teachers.

Be as scrupulously attentive to the matter of cleanliness, internally and externally, as you are in following the injunctions of your prayer book.

Psychological good sense speaks thus:

Surround yourself with cleanliness and helpfulness; they are suggestions. Fill yourself, and be filled with cleanliness and helpfulness. It will provide a powerful suggestion for the subconscious mind and will prepare a good channel through which may flow a realizing of your aspirations toward further knowledge, wisdom and power. It will form for you a glowing internal constellation which, with its stellar or cosmic correspondences, will bend to beneficent and fruitful purposes your growing knowledge of all that is helpful.

In the matter of bathing one should avoid extreme temperatures. The water should be neither too hot nor too cold.

Use the temperature of the water which you most enjoy. Do not take a daily cold plunge just because someone tells you to take it. How do you know but that it is too much of a shock for your body? Moreover, do not devitalize your strength by staying in hot water too long or entering it too often.

Sixteenth. Elimination

Elimination means "to drive out, to dispel, to discharge." The body eliminates its waste matter in four ways.

First, through the breath; second through the skin in perspiration; third through the kidneys in urine; fourth through the bowels in the feces.

Mental practitioners are coming to see that the wise "first aid" to all sickness is the method of the sensible doctor, namely to see that the kidneys and bowels act freely. The mind will have a whole lot better chance to heal the body if the four avenues of elimination are well taken care of.

When the cause of constipation is removed, the original cause of a great majority of ills that flesh is heir to is removed, and the symptoms of many diseases will disappear. Do not overlook this all important request of nature--that you are scrupulously attentive to the elimination of bodily waste.

Seventeenth. Reading.

And finally, be sure that you read, read, read, along these lines. Inoculate your mind with a taste for mental science study. Saturate your consciousness with constructive mental science reading. Concentrate while you read.

The maxim of the ancient Greek philosopher, communicated to the pupil who would become a great orator, was action, action, action. Modern psychologists will tell you that one of the surest ways to become well and to remain well is by reading, reading, reading.

We cannot afford to remain ignorant of these laws or to neglect to put ourselves in alignment with them as the first measure in maintaining health or in regaining it when we have slipped through temporary carelessness. If we neglect these basic laws--as one might put it, the Master Suggestions of the Eternal Mind--then the successful working out of our subsequent suggestions can hardly be expected.

As Doctor Sidney Murphy says:

Certainly all experience declares and all physicians will admit that where vital power is abundant in a man he will get well from almost any injuries short of complete destruction of vital organs, but where vitality is low, recovery is much more difficult, if not impossible, which can only be explained on the principle that vitality always works upward toward life and health to the extent of its ability under the circumstances, because, if it worked downward, the less vitality, the more surely and speedily would death result.

Disease, in its essential nature, has a deeper significance than simply abnormal manifestations. It is really a remedial effort, not necessarily successful, but an attempt to change, or have changed existing conditions. And for this reason any improper relation of the living organism to external agents necessarily results in an injury to that organism, which by virtue of its being self-preservative, immediately sets up defensive action, and begins as soon as possible to repair the damages that have accrued. This defensive or reparative action, of course, corresponds to the conditions to be corrected, and hence is abnormal and diseased; and its severity and persistence will depend upon the damages to be repaired, and the intensity and persistence of the causes that produced it. Serious injury present or impending will demand serious vital action; desperate conditions, desperate action. But in all cases the action is vital, an attempt at restoration, and the energy displayed will exactly correspond to the interests involved and the vitality that is available.

Whenever a pain is felt, this is the red light danger signal which God is flashing in front of the on-rushing man doomed to sickness. Pain is a "stop, look, and listen" signal. "Wise is the individual who, immediately upon recognition of any kind of pain, stops, takes account of stock studies the situation, his condition, and right about faces. There has been a breach of natural law somewhere.

We have given in this series of the Fundamentals of Practical Psychology, enough so that any rational human being can be his own physician, his own prescription writer, his own medical compounder, and his own healer.

After you have been healed, the slightest pain should inspire you to immediately look into the inner chambers of your being and see what is the cause of these pains. I reiterate, by again consulting the first volumes of this series, you will become your own doctor, save untold suffering, much money and loss of time.

Pain is your best friend. When he makes a call, get busy.

After Healing What? Conform to Nature's Laws

Listen to the admonition of Thomas Parker Boyd in "The Voice Eternal":

For as surely as obedience to the law of heat banishes cold, and obedience to the laws of knowledge eliminates ignorance, and to the law of prosperity ends poverty, and to the law of Christ ends sin, so also obedience to the laws of health emancipates from sickness, and we shall lay aside our crutches and walk forth as the sons of God, without spot or stain or any such thing.

After healing what? Adhere strictly to the laws of God.

I have met many upright, honest, conscientious and religious people who wonder why they are sick. Sometimes they compare themselves with people who are living far from moral lives. The reason is obvious. It is a matter of moral perception of moral standard.

The man who lies without compunction or con- science, who thinks there is no wrong in stealing, who approves of betting on a horse race, has a different standard of morals from the godly person. He may, therefore, without psychological or physical harm, do many things which according to Christian convention are reprehensible. Because he does not believe he is doing wrong, his acts have no ill effects on his mind and body.

On the other hand one who has a higher standard of morals, who pursues an honest, upright life, who does unto others as he would have others do unto him, is so conscientious that he is affected by even an approximate violation on his part of any of the moral laws by which he orders his life.

What is not wrong to one is distinctly wrong to another, and the significance to its perpetrator of a doubtful act depends mostly on how far he has gone toward violating his own accepted principles of right living. The "roughneck" may lie and think he does no wrong. But with you, just one falsehood may affect your consciousness sufficiently to lower greatly your sense of physical well being. Do not regret the high standards you have set for yourself. Thank God for them. It is you, not the evildoer, who will get the Best out of life in the end.