[331] “Currents of
thought,” says Davis,
“like the tidal waves of the
sea, may often be traced, outlined,
measured, and foretold.”
Again: “The suggestions made
through the five channels of sense
are carried to the receptive centers
of the brain, and there recognized
and utilized for the purpose of
carrying on the progress of
evolution, which is slowly, but
surely, lifting man from an ignorant
past to an intelligent future.
Through these avenues the human mind
is receiving nourishment. Through
these senses, force is entering into
the conscious ego, and the result is
change, wisdom, growth. With this
knowledge we must then admit that
thoughts are entities, or
manifestations of force. It has
always been observed that when the
nervous system is calm and quiet,
ideas are most easily transmitted to
the seat of consciousness, and when
so transmitted, make the most
powerful and lasting impressions.
Hence, if we desire to make a sudden
and lasting impression on the mind,
we first soothe, or tranquilize it,
and literally drive the thought (we
wish to give the patient)
in.”
The point to be deduced from the
above quotation is that thought is
not a nothing, but an actual force;
and if an actual force, then it is a
substance.
And this is true. Thought is one
of the finest and most powerful
substances on earth--probably the
most powerful substance in the
universe. A substance in comparison
with which all other substances are
negative. Of course all thought is
not equally positive. Thought that
has its rise in a belief in evil is
negative to thought founded on a
belief in universal good.
Thought, then, is a substance, and
when charged with the will of the
individual goes forth to perform the
mission with which it is entrusted.
It is in this way that thought
heals.
If the healer is treating himself
he wants to convince himself that he
is not sick. Every joint in his body
may be racked with pain, but he
abstracts his thoughts from the pain
as much as he can, and begins to
reason with himself on the subject.
He says: “Now, here my body is,
right down among the old negative
beliefs; beliefs that my growing
intelligence has taught me to deny as
not belonging either to my desire or
my will. What am I to do? Am I to
remain down in the body which is
simply a bundle of inherited beliefs,
all of which are negations of my
newer and higher thought, or shall I
rise into the thought-chamber above
the old negative beliefs and see
whether I cannot find an antidote for
them?” Now there is only one
way of getting into this higher
chamber, and that is by calling up
the proofs of your own mastery until
you perceive that you are a living
spirit or will, and then
concentrating your thought on the
fact that you are a living will, and
as such you are the greatest power on
earth, and nothing can come against
you.
[332] When you perceive the mighty
power vested in the will--a power
that really controls all things--you
will be in a position of true mental
creativeness. It is from this
position that you speak the creative
word. You can now affirm, in perfect
consistency with your high
intellectual attitude: “I am
well. I have no pain. I am strong and
vital. I am in glorious
health.”
Now, do you see the two positions
here indicated? If this assertion is
made from the lower brain, the brain
which has given birth to our beliefs
just as they are recorded in these
present bodies, they would seem
untrue; we ourselves could not accept
them; we should feel that we were
lying. But by ascension into the
idealistic brain, through the course
of reasoning embodied in these
lessons, we can make these statements
and perceive that they are true. Just
as certain as we go up to this high
place and remain there in the full
possession of our reasoning powers
long enough to see for a fact that we
are not sick, and that we do not have
to accept the statement of the lower
intelligence, we will be well. The
upper condition of thought, or the
thought born of the higher brain, is
positive to the thought born of the
lower brain, and it literally sets it
aside and takes possession.
Then our thoughts may descend
again to the everyday brain and
pursue the ordinary trend of things,
and there will be no more pain. But,
the pain may come again several
times--the old habit of thought being
too strong to be wiped out in one
treatment--and each time it will be
necessary to destroy it in the same
way. Presently it will cease to
come.
In treating a patient the healer
wants to place the patient in a
position where he can secure for him
the most negative condition possible.
To do this he would better place the
patient on a chair in front of
himself. He must not touch the
patient. Let him sit quite close to
the back of the patient’s
chair. Then he must see the argument
for himself that will lift him up
above the realm of disease
beliefs--which is the realm projected
by the everyday brain. He must go up
into his ideal brain just as he did
in self-treatment. In this higher
brain he will realize his own will,
or spirit, and he will see that no
power can stand against it. Up to
this point his treatment of the
patient has been precisely like
self-treatment. Indeed it is
self-treatment. But now, while in the
place of clear recognition of his
will, where he makes the assertion of
his own power over all the beliefs
and conditions projected by the lower
brain, he perceives the universality
of the Law that makes all men
brothers; and through this fact he
recognizes the will, or spirit, of
his patient; and so with the firmest
conviction of his power to create,
not only for himself, but for all who
will become conjoined in thought with
him by a belief in him, he pronounces
the patient well.
But suppose the patient does not
respond; suppose that he is not well.
What then?
It often happens that the healer
cannot pronounce the word of healing
with a clear conviction of its truth.
He may not have reached the high
place of positive power; and if he
has not, the work will not be done,
although the beginning of the cure
will have been made. The healer even
in making an imperfect attempt has
set the Law in operation, and some
good has been effected.
Again, the healer may have
pronounced the perfect word from that
high understanding of positive truth
that cannot be refuted, and yet the
patient will not appear changed much
for the better; and now, what is in
the way? It is the patient himself
this time; he has not held himself
receptive; he has not come into
conjunction with the healer’s
thought. And yet, some good has been
accomplished. The word of positive,
lifegiving truth never returns to its
originator void. It does produce
effect, even though that effect seems
slight. And the efforts of the healer
in both cases I have mentioned [333]
must be repeated again and again
until the patient is cured. For the
cure is absolutely sure to follow if
both patient and healer work
diligently and in faith. No effort in
this direction ever goes
unrewarded.
The healer has to believe in his
own creative power before he can heal
successfully in all cases. But a
faithful study of these lessons will
establish him in the firm conviction
of his own creativeness. And oh, what
a position it is! I shall not attempt
to describe the greatness and power
of this position. It will gradually
dawn on the student’s
perception as he goes diligently over
these lessons again and again.
I do not guarantee this power to
any student who is not willing to
bend all his energies to an
understanding of this subject. Study,
study, study, is what he needs. The
whole meaning of this wonderful
subject will unfold itself only as it
unfolds the student’s intellect
to a comprehension of it. The second
reading of these lessons will produce
an entirely different effect on the
student from the first reading. The
third reading will develop strange
truths that he had not discovered
before. And so it is, the lessons
will grow and grow, disclosing more
and more of the true bread of life as
the student grows and strengthens in
power to receive it. It will be like
the babe’s coming on this
planet; milk is all that the world
holds for him at first; just a
spoonful of milk out of all the
bountiful earth’s fullness, of
which he does not even dream in his
sleepy content.
I have now given years of faithful
study to the subject of these
lessons, and yet I feel that I have
reached only the threshold of the
infinite knowledge about to be
discovered and made applicable to the
coming needs of the race. I know that
I cannot finish the subject of these
lessons when the present set of
twenty lectures is completed. I know
that each new thought in unfolding
sends out shoots for further
unfolding, and that after a time--a
very short time, possibly--I shall be
writing other lessons.
A few words more in relation to
healing. The helplessness and
weakness that we almost constantly
feel is incarnated in the coarser,
deader atoms of our bodies. It is
impossible to remain in this strata
of lethargic intelligence and
proclaim our freedom from the beliefs
inherent to the condition itself. Or,
if we do proclaim them, it will be
like the babble of children, who do
not realize the truth they are
speaking. Our affirmations of
freedom, under the circumstances, are
hedged in by the old beliefs, and to
a great extent they are smothered by
the old beliefs. Therefore it is
necessary to go up into the ideal,
and make our affirmations from the
high place of our understanding,
because it is here alone in the
present stage of our growth that we
can make ourselves believe to the
full the high meaning and the force
of our statements. It is here alone
that we can establish our intelligent
will power.
In ascending into the ideal our
thoughts are building in a higher and
lighter and more ethereal and vital
atmosphere, and do not meet the
opposition that they do in attempting
to build on a lower plane. In this
atmosphere there is less deadness, or
inertia, to overcome. The forces that
our thoughts attract through the
correlation between our desires and
the external substances are more
vital, more pliant, and more obedient
to our will. In the ascension I speak
of, the thoughts are more powerful
than when on the horizontal plane of
development, and the external
substance that clothes them is more
obedient and more highly vitalized.
Therefore a growth from the ideal
faculties when once established is
going to be much more rapid than at
present.
I will abide in the high place of
my aspiration in hope and free from
fear. Why, this high place is the
abode of hope. It is the only place
where it is possible to actualize
freedom from the [334] bonds that
tighten about us so painfully in the
lower place of thought--the place
from which the race is now
living.
The body builds the brain, but the
brain shapes the body. Everything
pertaining to the body, all its
faculties and appetites and powers,
all its senses, all its limitations,
all its diseases, and all its belief
of every description have been
planted in it and shaped by the brain
from which it is now living; the
brain that today rules the affairs of
man through all the various
departments of life.
This brain from which the race is
living is a better and nobler brain
than the merely brute brain that
ruled it ages ago when men were
simply untamed animals; but this
improved brain from which we live
today, is as much inferior to the
idealistic brain as the brute brain
is inferior to it. And there will be
as much difference between the men
projected by the idealistic brain,
and the men projected by the brain
from which we are now living, as
there is between the men of today and
the animals from which they
sprung.
It is the character of the brain
that gives shape and power to the
body. The higher the quality of
thought generated by the brain, the
higher the quality of mental
atmosphere will the man breathe into
his body, and the more will he become
refined, concentrated, purified, and
beautified.
Death and disease and every manner
of bodily decay are caused by the
earth’s gravitation drawing to
herself all substance that does not
sufficiently resist her attraction.
The only way a man can resist her
attraction is by recognizing his
spirit, and by learning that his
spirit, or will, is superior to her
attraction, and indeed superior to
all things.
And this is just what these
lessons have been teaching. They are
a constant denial of that unconscious
power vested in the earth’s
bulk; the power that draws all things
within the radius of her influence
toward her bosom. They are a constant
affirmation of the fact that an
intelligent recognition of the will
by the individual overcomes this
blind attraction of mere bulk and
weight. This idea, carried into
practical results, will first
overcome disease and weakness; after
this it will overcome old age and
death, both of which are simply the
yielding of the individual to the
earth’s attraction, simply
because he does not know that
“he don’t have to do
it.”
Oh, the value this little sentence
has been to me! “I don’t
have to.” It is the first
thought that comes when I feel the
pressure of any environment. “I
don’t have to stand it.”
I am a free citizen of the universe.
I have demonstrated the power of my
own will in the breaking of bonds,
and “I don’t have
to” put up with anything I
don’t want. It fills me with
strength, not of brute resistance,
but of the understanding of the law;
the law to which I have attached
myself by my understanding of it.
A patient has just been here. And
because this is a lesson on practical
healing I shall give an account of
her case, and of the way in which I
conducted her treatment. When I first
saw her she was diseased all over.
Her liver and kidneys were almost
inoperative; her digestion was bad;
and there was something the matter
with both her ovaries, so that her
abdomen was greatly distended and
hard, and she suffered in almost
every imaginable way.
After treating her for a month her
digestion was better. She then had a
bilious attack that kept her in bed
three days. After this she seemed
quite improved. Then came what the
doctors would call a relapse, but
which was an advancement instead of a
relapse. She was taken with severe
pains in the back, and could hardly
stand alone for a week. I knew what
this meant. It was an effort of
nature to arouse the kidneys to
renewed action, just as the liver had
been aroused to action.
After this she seemed in pretty
fair health for a month, and was
greatly [335] encouraged. I knew she
had another bridge to cross before
she would be well, but I did not tell
her so. One morning she came to me in
a very discouraged frame of mind. The
abdomen was harder than ever, and
there was a constant bearing down in
the region of the womb, the pain of
which went through all the pelvic
region, and even made her limbs ache
like rheumatism. I saw instantly that
the treatments had taken effect at
last in the most diseased part of the
body. The first thing the treatments
had done was to induce a better state
of the digestive system by which more
and richer blood had been generated.
The second effect was the waking up
of the torpid liver and kidneys and
compelling them to do their duty
again. After this, more and better
blood was made for a month, and her
system grew a good deal stronger.
Then the whole force of her renewed
system began to be directed toward
the removal of the difficulty in the
ovaries.
I had no idea what was the matter
with the ovaries. They were very much
enlarged, and that was the extent of
my knowledge. But I did know that
when that constant bearing down pain
was there, her strengthened blood had
made up its mind to remove the
impediment, whatever it was, and I
knew that it would be done in one or
two ways. It would cease to feed the
tumors, if they were tumors, and
would cast them out by liquefying
them and discharging them through the
womb. If there were no tumors there,
but only an inflamed condition of the
ovaries, with a permanent
enlargement, I knew that the
absorbents would gradually take up
the foreign substances and pass them
off with the other wastes of the
system. In a few days there began to
be a discharge from the womb; the
pain grew less and less; the abdomen
softened and became smaller. This
went on for two months, and the
patient quit treatment. I had treated
her nearly five months. She was well
enough to be abandoned to nature
alone. Before long she was perfectly
sound.
Now I have described this case
from a purely “physical”
standpoint and yet I never once
recognized the patient’s
conditions from this standpoint. In
treating her I would place her in a
chair before me and immediately relax
my body, and raise my thoughts into
the idealistic realm. Here in this
high place I would concentrate the
whole argument embraced by these
lessons into the compass of a few
sentences, and would bend my
intellect to the effort of realizing
their truth and force. Now, this
whole truth being purely
idealistic--that is to say, projected
from the high, ideal faculties--I
could never have realized it if I had
remained in the horizontal or
everyday brain. I had to raise my
thoughts above the ordinary level of
thought from which our present lives
are projected, into the realm of the
high, the unconfined, the spiritual
sphere, where I could feel myself
fetterless; could feel my mastery;
where I positively knew my power to
create.
Create what?
I answer, to create thought that
was positive to the thought of my
patient. My patient’s thoughts
all took the form of beliefs in her
own helplessness. My thoughts took
form in beliefs of her own
power--which she knew nothing of at
the time.
Thought being actual substance,
and substance of untold force, and
her thought being a weak, negative
character of thought-substance, was
overborne or conquered by my thought.
But remember, in conquering her
negative thought I had not conquered
my patient’s will, as our
enemies accuse us of doing. I had
simply helped her to vindicate her
own will by conquering those
negations to her will as expressed in
beliefs of disease. Therefore I had
strengthened her individuality
instead of weakening it.
I am sure my students will want to
know just what I said to my patient
when I addressed her mentally as she
[336] sat before me in perfect
silence; and it is going to be
difficult for me to tell this. The
fact is I say so little. I seem to be
in a state of such supreme
consciousness of the truth that
disease is a mistaken statement of
being--that the thought is seldom
formulated in words in my mind. And
when the words do shape themselves in
my mind they are so few and so simple
that they would mean almost nothing
to the person who is not lifted into
the realm of the ideal from which the
thoughts proceed. I can scarcely
recall anything except, “You
are not sick. You are mistaken. What
you call your sickness is a mere
negation of your will, or spirit; a
mere denial of its power by your
foolish, inherited beliefs. You do
not have to live in the statement of
life you inherited from your mother.
I will make a new statement for you,
based upon a higher knowledge of the
power vested in a human being. And
this is my statement: You are well;
you are strong; you are happy and
hopeful and good and noble and true.
You stand fully equipped for meeting
every emergency in life. I see such
beautiful seeds of promise unfolding
in you; seeds that are going to burst
open in full bloom and fruitage from
the simple power of one person to
recognize them.” This, and more
to the same effect, is what comes to
me in treating a patient. These words
when analyzed from the low plane of
everyday intelligence seem absurd and
exaggerated; but from the high place
to which the healer’s thoughts
ascend they do but feebly represent
the noble, unfettered character of
the truth she speaks.
And they are creative. They do
create. Here is the great fact. They
invade the body of the patient, and
they change his beliefs in disease to
beliefs in health.
It often happens that a patient
will begin to take treatment and soon
become discouraged and quit. A few
months afterward I will hear from, or
see him, and he is entirely well, and
occasionally I am informed by one
that he got well without the
treatments when the treatments failed
to cure him.
Now the fact is, the treatments
did cure him; and it is no uncommon
thing for this to happen. There is a
cause of this. The patient’s
attitude of thought during the
treatments had not been the right
one. He had failed to make himself
receptive to the healer’s
thought. He had in some way--not
understood by himself--locked himself
up from the healer, so that her
thought had not penetrated his
organism to any extent. And now note
this fact: the thought the healer had
given him was of a high and positive
character. Moreover it was charged
with a purpose; it had a certain work
to do, and it just went with that
patient wherever he went; hovered
around him in the atmosphere of his
own thought, and waited until the
time came when he was open to the
reception of it. Then it took
possession of him and gradually
wrought out the purpose in him
intended by the healer. Thoughts are
things; they have shape and
substance; we could see them if our
sense of sight were finer. But all
our senses are rudimentary now.
In concluding this lesson there
are some general directions to be
given. The first is that the healer
must not relax his faith in his own
ability to speak the word that
creates health; and he must not doubt
that the word he speaks will do his
bidding; for it is certain to do his
bidding if he speaks it in the
understanding of its power. Let him
be faithful and patient in standing
by the healing word after he has
spoken it.
The attitude of the patient should
be one of reposefulness. He must not
make any frantic efforts to become
reposeful, but must drop himself and
his disease out of his mind as nearly
as he can. I will furnish herewith
the text from a little printed slip I
am in the habit of giving my patients
to read, and will conclude this
lesson with it.
These directions are meant to
apply [337] to the patient only so
long as he is under treatment. After
he is well, his own will will take
the place of the healer’s
will.
Directions for Patients
Drop from your mind all
responsibility of yourself or your
own case. Feel that you have nothing
to do for yourself after you have
come into my thought. You can come
into my thought by saying to me
mentally, “In the spirit of
universal brotherhood you and I are
one. If your thoughts are more
positive than mine they will have the
effect of changing mine, and raising
them to the level of belief where
your thoughts dwell. I know and
acknowledge that my thoughts live
almost entirely in the disease realm,
and that yours do not. Therefore I
willingly surrender mine to yours. I
want you to recast them in a higher
and more truthful mold. I want you to
convince me that disease is a
powerless thing; that it cannot
create and that it yields nothing but
pain and death. I am striving to make
the thought connection with you for
no other purpose than this. I believe
your thought--educated in the power
that an understanding of man’s
master confers--will do for me just
what you claim for it. Therefore I
rely on you. I will let you do my
thinking for me until you have
corrected the errors of my inherited
belief. I accept your statement that
thought is a fluid that can be
transmitted from one brain to
another. So I am sending my erroneous
thoughts to you to have them revised
and made over in a way to benefit
me.
In this way our thoughts will form
an exchange. You will send me your
erroneous thoughts and they will lose
themselves in my own, from which all
beliefs in the power of disease have
been cast out by a greater knowledge
of the all-pervading law of life than
you yourself have as yet attained. In
this way, my thought will become your
thought; it will reconstruct you; it
will literally rebuild you by casting
out your diseased and weakened and
painful conditions, and substituting
healthful ones. You will have
exchanged the old for the new. Your
diseased body will find itself
growing well with the realization of
eternal life you have absorbed from
me. So all you need do is to rest and
be infilled with strength, and to
have faith and to enjoy all things in
the happiest manner possible. And in
a little time you will be freed; --as
one who has carried a heavy burden is
relieved and made free by casting his
load on the ground forever.
If at any time you feel that you
are not progressing as you wish to,
read these directions over again;
because not to progress will prove
that you are not resting on my power
in the proper attitude of relaxation,
or that you are not keeping your
thoughts enough off of yourself.
Patience on your part is
absolutely essential. Impatience is a
sure sign of anxiety, and anxiety
will interfere with the healing.
Nothing will so aid you in getting
well quick as to be patient.
One more direction--a very
important one--and I shall
conclude.
You will find within yourself two
attitudes of thought entirely opposed
to each other. One of them is hope or
desire; this attitude of thought
points upward and onward.
The other attitude of thought is
fear, which points downward, and
which leads to the grave.
Now, you are bound to live in one
or the other of these attitudes of
thought. You are bound to trust one
or the other of them, and your very
life depends on which you trust; for
you live in the one you trust.
Therefore you must learn to trust
your hopes and desires, and to turn
your back on your fears.
This will come easy to you after
you have practiced the habit of
relaxing yourself, and have learned
to ignore your troubles.
