Right And Wrong Thinking And Their Results
	The Relation Of Thinking To Health <  Previous Contents Next  >

The relation of thinking to every bodily action from the smallest to the greatest is that of cause to effect, therefore the same is true of the relation of thinking to health and disease. Harmonious thinking is the cause; health is the effect. Discordant thinking is the cause; disease is the effect. Each person has built as he would; each person may build as he will.

This becomes broadly apparent if the statement of President Hall be accepted, that there is no change of thought without a change of muscle. Still more clearly does this appear in Professor James's declaration that mental states always lead to changes in breathing, general muscular tension, circulation, and glandular or other visceral activity. These point directly to the statement by Professor Gates that anger, jealousy, hate, or any malevolent thinking causes the secretion in the system of various injurious substances, including poisons. The circulation of the blood and all other bodily functions are interfered with by passion or emotion. Laughter and tears are physical conditions involving changes of muscles and of glandular secretions, and their causes are purely mental. The same is true in all bodily conditions.

But, objects one, I did not think of a headache, yet I woke with it in the morning. Very true. Neither did the thief think of stealing when he began to wish for his neighbor's property; nor did the mother, weeping over her lost son, think of shedding tears; nor did the man in a convulsive fit of laughter plan to laugh. Had there been no thought of the ludicrous, there would have been no laughter. Had there been no thought of grief in the mother's mind, there would have been no tears. Had there been no desire for what was another's, there would have been no stealing; and had there been no discordant thought, there would have been no headache.

Professor Gates's experiments show the direct influence of thinking upon the health. He found that anger produced a brownish substance which appeared in the breath. He continued his experiments until he had obtained enough of that substance so that he could give it to men and animals as medicine is administered. In every case it produced nervous excitability or irritability. In his experiments with another kind of thinking he obtained another substance from the breath which he injected in the veins of a guinea-pig, and the pig died in a very few minutes.

After saying that hate is accompanied by the greatest expenditure of vital energy, he enumerates several of its chemical products, all poisonous, and concludes by saying: "Enough would be eliminated in one hour of intense hate, by a man of average strength, to cause the death of perhaps fourscore persons, as these ptomaine’s are the deadliest poisons known to science."

He experimented with two young ladies. They were first tested in various ways to ascertain their general condition. One was then required to make a list of all the delightful, pleasant, enjoyable, or fortunate incidents in her life. The other made a list of all the events of a directly opposite kind in her life. He kept each thinking upon her own list as continuously as possible for thirty days, and then they were tested in the same manner as at the beginning. The first had gained most remarkably, while the second lost in nearly the same proportion.

All bodily actions and conditions, whether intended or not, are consequences of thinking, and since disease is a bodily action or condition, the rule holds good for all diseases. Thoughts of grief, regret, anxiety, or fear which follow bad news often find their physical consequence in a disturbance of the nerves of the stomach; and, in exact proportion to the intensity of these thoughts, they bring about such a disordered condition of that organ as to impair or even suspend digestion. We say, "It struck to the stomach."

This expression is figurative, but accurate; and nearly every one has had a similar experience. If we examine ourselves, we find that "it" was a thought or a group of thoughts. The disturbed condition of the stomach caused by "it" varies with the variation of the other attendant mental and physical conditions. The disordered stomach may affect the head, causing dizziness or headache, or it may disturb the optic nerve so as to cause dimness of vision, or it may act upon other portions of the body in discordant ways, causing debility, weakness, pain, or suffering of many kinds and of longer or shorter duration, according to the intensity, continuance, or frequency of the repetition of the discordant thinking.

It is not necessary, as has been asserted by many, that one should think of a special disease in order to produce it. On the contrary, disease is seldom caused by direct thought of the particular disorder which afterward appears, although it may be so caused and sometimes is; but discordant thoughts of some kind set the train in motion. Sometimes the train is a long one, with many physical and mental actions and conditions existing between the initial thought and the disease in which the series culminates.

Although the incident which appears to be the immediate cause of the disease may be purely physical in character, yet that incident must itself have had its cause which, if sought, will at last be found in some mental action or condition. Too small or improperly shaped shoes may be worn until the feet become distorted, diseased, and painful, and this will change the whole attitude and action of the person.

When the shoes were selected, this result was not thought of, least of all was it intended. It may be said that the cause of this suffering was purely physical, yet certain ideas regarding the size and appearance of the shoes governed their selection, and, causing that, caused all that followed, including the suffering. Thus, the origin of it all was thinking, even though remote from its consequences to the health. Sometimes diseases of maturity and old age may be clearly traced to some thinking of childhood or youth which had long disappeared from the consciousness of the person.

History is full of illustrations of diseases directly caused by mental conditions, many of them noted in the records of the medical profession. Dr. John Hunter, the great English surgeon, suffered from disease of the heart which he himself ascribed to his fear of having contracted hydrophobia when dissecting the body of a patient; and it is said that his own death was the result of a fit of anger.

Although it is possible that in some instances there may be such a combination of known circumstances with known thinking as to show beyond question that a particular disease was the result of some special kind of thinking, yet it does not necessarily follow that this disease is always the result of this particular thinking, nor that this thinking always produces this particular disease. We do not know anything about the unnoticed or subconscious thinking and not very much about that which is undirected ; that is, we do not know anything of the specific character of some of the causes, and of others very little, consequently our knowledge is too insufficient to enable us to draw special conclusions which shall necessarily be correct.

It may be beyond question that a certain headache was caused by anger, but it does not necessarily follow that every headache has anger for its cause, nor even that anger causes headache in a majority of cases. There are more than a score of other mental conditions which might result in headache, and there is a large number of physical conditions besides headache which may be caused by anger. Hence, it is not possible to demonstrate that any given disease is always produced by some one particular kind of thinking.

This is illustrated by the fact that one man turns pale from anger while another flushes. In one of these cases the blood is sent away from the surface by the same mental action which in the other sends it to the surface. That the blood may take these opposite directions in two different persons under the impulse of the same kind of thinking indicates clearly the erroneousness of singling out any one particular set of discordant thoughts as the cause of any special infirmity. The attempt to banish certain thoughts for the purpose of securing immunity from a particular disease might be successful in eradicating the disease in one person, but it might not have that effect in another. The whole brood of discordant thoughts should be banished, and the eradication of any erroneous thought will be followed by good results even if it does not terminate the particular disease in question.

To stop wrong or discordant thinking for the purpose of securing good health is not the highest motive. The moral considerations are the primal and most important reasons for doing it, but to do it for reasons of health is better than to continue the wrong thinking, and physical health is greatly to be desired. The destruction of all wrong thoughts would eradicate all disease as well as all erroneous actions, and would purify the whole man.

The principles under consideration clearly explain the cause of relapse, or the recurrence of a disease once cured. If the healing is followed by the requisite change in the mental habits of the person cured, that is, by the avoidance and eradication of the thinking which caused the disease, then it will not return. If there is no change in these habits, the thinking which produced the disease in the first place will produce it again. This explains why Jesus told persons whom he had healed to go and sin no more. It also explains why he told his disciples both to heal and to preach. Instruction (preaching) should accompany every case of healing so that the cause may be avoided in the future and then, of course, there will be no recurrence of the disease.

But some one asks about those diseases which were caused by physical excess; are they also results of thinking? The answer is that they are, either directly or indirectly, because every excess has for its cause, back of all else, some mental action or condition. This might have been changed in its beginning or in its course, and then the consequences would have been different. Delirium tremens follows excessive use of alcoholic stimulants. It may be claimed that drinking was the cause, and so it was; but the drinking was itself the result of thinking and would not have occurred had the man ceased thinking those thoughts which led to it.

The condition is not changed even if drunkenness is the consequence of heredity, or inherited tendencies. In that case the series of thoughts and circumstances is merely lengthened by removing the causative thinking farther away from the resultant disease. Those inherited tendencies were the results of ancestral thoughts and consequent actions. If the ancestor had avoided those thoughts he would not have bequeathed "the legacy of damnation" to his children. Yet, even when such an inherited tendency exists, because thinking caused it rigid control of one's own thinking will destroy it. Such conditions may require greater effort than in most other cases, but sufficient effort is possible, and if it is continued steadily and firmly, the final triumph is certain.

The incipient causes of those physical conditions which are occasioned by accidents will always be found in thinking, or in lack of thinking, which is in the same domain. A man falls and breaks an arm because he is thinking of something else than his footsteps. The defective building falls and crushes the occupants because the builder was thinking of the greater gain he might make by less careful construction or by the use of defective or cheaper materials. The railroad wreck was the result of a misplaced switch, and this in turn was caused by lack of the attention of the switchman who thought the train had passed, or that it was not due. And so on through the entire chapter. When followed to the ultimatums, however much accidents may at first appear to result from wholly physical causes, yet mind and its action will at last be found to have been their occasion in every instance. Even in a wider and deeper way than all this, the very possibility of breaking the bone or crushing the limb may be the result of the habitual thought that the race has entertained from time immemorial.

The catalogue of the diseases of immorality is a very long one, and every day careful observers in the medical profession are adding other names not heretofore suspected of belonging in that list. Thinking is always the beginning of immorality, and therefore thinking is the ultimate cause of all those diseases occasioned by it. Immorality merely intervenes between the thinking and the disease. Immoral thoughts cannot be indulged in without producing their mental and physical consequences. They not only have their evil results in the disturbed or diseased physical system, but they write their record where it may be read by all men.

Those who recognize the causative character of thinking sometimes say that all sickness is the result of sin. While it is true that all sickness is the result of error, it is also true that not all error is sin. Error arises out of not knowing, and that is ignorance; but though ignorance may be reckoned as erroneous, it could hardly be classed as sinful. It is therefore cruel, and very often unjust, to charge those who are suffering from physical infirmity with being sinners.

This is condemnation, and all condemnation is to be avoided because it is discordant; but, more than that, in this place the condemnation may be misplaced and wholly undeserved. If the good man who is sick only knew that wrong thinking is as bad as wrong actions, he would stop his discordant thinking as effectually as he checked his erroneous actions. He may be ill because of ignorance and error, but not necessarily because of sin. Self-control, through control of the thinking, may be the healing of every conscientious person who has hitherto controlled his actions, but who has only repressed his thinking.

Herein may be seen the reason why so many persons are afflicted with disease even though their "daily walk and conduct" is above reproach. The good man who is always ailing may persistently keep his discordant thoughts in mind but conceal them. He knows he ought not to injure his neighbor, yet, because of his ideas about what is right, he may think it is his duty to condemn and despise him in his heart. By sheer force of will such men control the tongue, the hand, and all outward actions, but leave the cause which would otherwise produce those actions to prey unchecked and uncontrolled upon themselves.

Discordant thoughts when repressed, like the fire that is smothered but not extinguished, rankle within all the more fiercely for their restraint, straining and torturing the nerves, preventing the normal and rightful glandular and visceral activity, ruining the muscles, sapping the strength of the bones, generating those harmful secretions which create every variety of disease and infirmity, burning the man with fevers, freezing him with chills, starving him with dyspepsia, and poisoning him with their injurious chemical products.

Repressed thoughts are all the time striving for expression or outlet in some form of physical activity; and, therefore, throughout their whole duration, there exists the necessity for the counter-effort in greater degree in order to keep the body in check. The energy necessary to maintain muscular control in the repression of discordant mental activity requires strenuous and wearying exercise of the will which increases the burden and is decidedly injurious to body, mind, and morals. None of this energy would have been required had the thoughts been dropped out of the mind as soon as they appeared. Therefore, though a good man may not show it to the world, yet all the time he may be ruining his health and happiness with his discordant thinking.

Probably, in addition to all the rest, the man who thus represses his thinking has, in most respects, a high moral standard and a sensitive conscience which is outraged by the presence of such thoughts. This creates the keen mental discord of regret, self- condemnation, grief, and remorse to furnish additional, and equally discordant, and therefore equally injurious, mental elements which do their work as effectively as any others. Such thoughts may remain dormant and unnoticed in the mind for years, finally to flash out into expression at some unfortunate moment very much to his own surprise as well as to the surprise of his friends. Thus, difficulty is piled on top of difficulty until it is no wonder that such a man, though outwardly good, fails to possess healthful vigor and elasticity. The wonder is that he lives out half his days, but what might he not be if he would only drop discordant thinking.