Chapter III
THE MEDICINE OF MIND
W. John Murray
Mental
Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.
[92] From time
immemorial the power of thought to effect bodily changes has been known
to such studious minds as have taken the trouble to seek a reason for
the sudden effect of fear to produce pallor, and of joy to produce that
glow which athletes speak of as "The pink of condition." The ordinary
observer sees these changes but beyond saying, "She was as pale as a
ghost," or "She blushed like a rose," he has no concern; yet it is only
as we peer back of these phenomena that we are able to enter into that
world of causes where we learn that "Thoughts are Things."
Through the New
Psychology and kindred studies, medicine is no longer confined to
noxious drugs or unnecessary experimentation in the field of surgery,
for the most [93] advanced thinkers in the healing art are becoming
more than ever aware that the state of the mind is not only the
precursor of disease, but that it may also be used to prevent and heal
disease. No longer is it necessary for the modern physician to stand
helpless before the modern Macbeth. Shakespeare was not addressing
himself to one particular person at one particular time when he said,
through Macbeth, to the Doctor:
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"
Neither was the
Doctor addressing himself to any particular person when he answered:
"Therein the patient must minister to himself."
The
helplessness of this particular Doctor still exists, but fortunately it
is disappearing. [94] The most progressive men in the so-called science
of medicine are not so despairing, for when medicine and surgery and
diet have all been resorted to without any result, save a certain
lowering of the vitality of the patient, there are those who resort to
mental therapeutics in one form or another. If these progressives do
not practice mental healing themselves, they recommend it, meanwhile
lending all the assistance they can in their own way. This is one of
the most reassuring signs of the times, and an indication of the
tendency to set aside all tradition in the interest of the sick.
Psycho-analysis, in its cleanest form, is an effort to account for
present ills in the individual as the result of some long forgotten
shock, which, unless it is uprooted from the unconscious or rather
subconscious mind, will continue to manifest itself in some form of
bodily disease; much as a weed will continue to appear, and reappear,
so long as it is merely cut down by the lawnmower and not completely
uprooted.
[95] In the New
Psychology we know that there will be no real and lasting healing
unless we do "pluck from the memory (subconscious mind) a rooted
sorrow" and put in its place a seed of joy; and we know that it is as
easy to do this as it is to uproot a noxious weed and put a pansy seed
in its place. A noted physician and surgeon has given it as his opinion
that a very large percentage of abnormal tumors and uterine cancers are
due to "long suppressed grief and anxiety." This being the case it is
wise for us to consider the effect of the emotions on the bodily
organism, and then seek by every means at our command to overcome all
such as are debilitating emotions.
Every thinking
person knows that anger can make one nervous, or result in a headache,
or both; but that grief can so lower the vitality as to leave the
individual in such a state as to invite, if not actually to create, a
malignant malady, is not yet a matter of such common knowledge as to
put people on their guard against their worst enemies, [96] which are
not outer conditions but inner states of consciousness. When Jesus
said, "A man's enemies are they of his own household," He established
negative thinking as the source of all physical as well as mental
inharmony. It is not our wives, or husbands, or children, or even
mothers-in-law who are most injurious to us. It is our fears, and
doubts, and hatreds, and suspicions, and lusts. These are the enemies
of our own household (mental); the inner guests which make for
inharmony and ill-health. As long as these enemies of purity and peace
and prosperity remain in the mind, we cannot reasonably expect relief
or restoration. A wise physician, knowing the law of correspondences,
had a visit from a man who had gone the rounds of the best specialists
but without any lasting benefit. In addition to his original malady
there was a rapidly increasing melancholia with suicidal tendency. Our
wise physician knew that if the best specialists had been on the case,
everything had been done from the [97] purely medical point of view;
therefore a little psycho-analysis might be in order. Through loving
understanding he gained the man's confidence and trust, and presently
the cat was out of the bag. He had misappropriated funds belonging to
his brother, who could never have found this out even if he had been
inclined to investigate. Notwithstanding that years had gone by, the
man had never been able to forgive himself; nor could he return the
money without being discovered. It was not fear of legal punishment
that tormented him, but the possible loss of his brother's affection;
otherwise he would have confessed long before and thus eased his soul.
The physician advised, and then commanded him, to confess it all to his
brother and thus do the thing he feared to do, and by so doing relieve
the pressure. Three days of awful dread and three nights of insomnia
brought him to the state where he concluded it was better to confess
than to go through another night. The brother threw his arms about him
and rejoiced with [98] him that the cloud, the only cloud in their
lives, had disappeared. The atmosphere was clear again and his
restoration to health was miraculous to those who did not understand
the situation. Through the application of true psychology, he was able
to do what Jesus commanded the woman to do when He said, "Go thy way
and sin no more." The rooted sorrow having been plucked from his memory
or subconscious mind, his conscious mind was able to divert the force
of thought into other and more healthy channels, and the cure was
effected. There was nothing miraculous about it; it was the natural
consequence of natural law, operating on a higher plane than the usual,
that was all. Its very simplicity bewilders us. We cannot persuade
ourselves that this is the explanation, and yet it is.
Why should we
marvel that a cure is effected by merely removing the pressure which
causes the malady? We do not marvel that a person breathes when the
pressure on his throat is removed; and in a similar manner we ought not
to be surprised [99] nor regard it as miraculous, when the pressure of
fear and anxiety is removed by Truth and Love, that the patient should
be made free from all disease.
These are well
authenticated cases to prove the disastrous effects of fear, sudden and
otherwise. Sudden fear has been known to stop all functioning so that
death has taken place without any physical reason for it. In the case
of an epidemic, the very suggestion of the presence of a certain
contagious malady is enough to prepare susceptible mentalities for the
"catching" of it.
Dr. Evans asks,
in his "Divine Law of Cure," "If a condemned criminal, from the
trickling of warm water over the arm, and supposing or imagining or
fancying it to be blood from a divided artery, actually died without
the loss of a drop of blood, why may not thought act with the same
efficiency in prolonging life and in effecting those organic and
functional changes that constitute the cure of what we call bodily
disease?" This question was asked fifty years ago and since [100] then
the answer has come, for the New Psychology declares that thought
does act with the same degree of efficiency in prolonging life and
healing disease. All true mental healing is based upon the fact that
thought has been tried as a therapeutic agent, and has been found to be
the most reliable and dependable remedy in the world. It was the only
thing Jesus ever used. His method was the substitution of a sanative
idea for a sickly one, and the cure was established on the principle
that opposite ideas cannot occupy the mind at the same time.
The Scriptures
declare that, "Perfect Love casteth out fear," and we can grasp this
idea when we remember that fire dries up water; but in both cases there
must be enough. If there is enough fear, any
negative condition can be produced, whether it is sickness or
unhappiness or poverty; contrariwise, where there is enough faith any
positive condition can be evolved, whether it be health or happiness
[101] or prosperity; for in this, as in nature, it is the seed which
determines the character and the color of the thing which is to be, and
this according to natural law. "The supernatural is
only the divinely natural not yet understood." Why should it not be
understood?
Custom, that
monstrous obstacle to all progress, is constantly saying, "Thus far and
no farther," and we stand motionless, when we should leap over every
barrier that would interpose itself between us and the things which
belong to us by divine decree. It is not the will of God that man, made
in His image, should be sick and unhappy; therefore if he is either or
both, it is because he has departed consciously or unconsciously, from
natural law, to which he must consciously return,
if he is to be healed of his infirmities.
When we say
that the invalid must consciously return to natural
law and an intelligent co-operation therewith, it is because it is not
enough for him to console himself with [102] the notion that he will
"get well anyway in time," for this is taking a chance: it is ignoring
what ought to be destroyed speedily, lest it grow in consciousness and
increase in ferocity. Weeds do not tend to remove themselves in time:
either we remove them or they increase, and it is none the less true of
negative thoughts, which are weeds in the garden of human life where
nothing should be permitted to grow but the flowers and fruits of
healthy and happy thinking.
Until now the
great majority have grown up like Topsy, and some have grown very
poorly, but the evolutionary process which has brought them to their
present state of development, requires now this conscious working with
Law, if they are to reach that "fullness of stature of manhood" which
includes all that is really worthwhile, and excludes all that makes for
limitation and ineffectiveness.
First of all we
must know what the Law is, for by knowing this we shall know what our
rights are under the Law. The Law is [103] Harmony, and anything that
is not harmonious is contrary to Law; and anything that is contrary to
Law, may be nullified by him who knows the Law. Again the Law of God is
the Will of God; and the Will of God is the Pleasure of God: and "It is
the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" which is the inner
consciousness of health and wholeness, peace and power. By knowing then
what is the Law, we can place ourselves under its protection as
certainly as we can have recourse to the laws of the land in case of
injustice; and more so, for these are fallible while The Law
is infallible.
Only know that
"It is not the will of my Father which is in heaven that the sinner (or
the sickly) should die, but that all should have
everlasting life"--and the rest is easy. If it is the will of our
heavenly Father that the sinner should be reformed and the sick be made
whole, then all that is necessary is for us to know this. The tragedy
has been that we have not known it, as is evidenced by the fact that
the great majority still think [104] that it is not
the will of our Father which is in heaven that we shall be well, but
that we shall be ill for "some inscrutable reason of His own" which we
are not to question.
Do we not end
our prayers for health and other necessary blessings with the
traditional proviso, "If it be Thy will, O Lord"? What other impression
does this convey than the impression received somewhere in the remote
past that it may not be the will of God that we shall receive what we
ask? And yet Jesus declares, "Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be
done unto you."
In the New
Psychology we are learning to take Jesus at His word, and consequently,
we dare to protest against everything which is opposed to the health
and happiness of man, on the grounds that discord and disease, being no
part of God's creation, lack divine authority, and, lacking this, they
are destitute of substance and reality in the true meaning of this
word. The materialist may not accept the statement that disease,
examined under the lens of a true science, the [105] Science of Christ,
is as much an illusion as is a rising and a setting sun. Learned
ignorance would repudiate this Truth in the same way that it repudiated
the discovery of Galileo, but one day every school child will know it
to be true as every child with any knowledge of rudimentary astronomy
knows today that there is in truth neither sunrise nor sunset.
Just as our
opinions have been reversed through increasing understanding of natural
laws, so that we now "know more than all the ancients" concerning some
of the most important truths in the world; so which we know the truth
about the illusions of sense which we call diseases, we shall rise
superior to them, as we now rise superior to the errors of our
forefathers in other respects.
We have learned
to deny the reality of appearances when those appearances do not
coincide with scientific discovery, and by so doing, the race has
advanced by leaps and bounds; but the appearance of disease is still
dignified with names that are terrifying and [106] appalling. A man who
can deny the rising of the sun on an early summer morning because he
knows that it is the earth which is revolving and thereby giving the
sun the appearance of rising, will nevertheless find it difficult to
deny disease. When the psychologist tells him that his malady is an
appearance, a shadow cast upon the body by some error of thought, he
will almost invariably say, "But do I not see it?" What progress could
one make with a person who would persistently reply: "But do I not see
it?" to the teacher of astronomy who strives to teach him that the
appearance of a rising sun is an illusion?
One of the
first steps in the practice of mental medicine, as in many of the other
exact sciences, is to learn to correct sense impressions by scientific
truth. When the first sign of disease appears on the body, instead of
viewing it as a forerunner of something worse, a symptom of something
with a dreadful name, we should regard it as we do any other illusion,
as something [107] which cannot be true if natural law is true and
science is correct. This mental attitude will at once prevent us from
being afraid of it; thus it will disappear, for fear aggravates until
trifles become torments. Fear is the food upon which disease thrives.
Deprive it of its food and it will starve to death. When we are well,
we are afraid we shall not remain so. When we are ill, as a result of
fear, we are afraid we shall become worse, and we do, for our fears
will always master us until they are overcome; and we can never
overcome them so long as we believe that error is true or that
appearances are real.
"To fly the boar the boar pursues,
Were to incense the boar to follow us
And make pursuit where he did mean no chase."
---Shakespeare
Chapter
4
Mental Medicine
Table
of Contents
(Formerly at Northwoods Divine
Science Resource Center)
