Denying
disease accomplishes next to nothing; it does little good to cast out the devil
and leave the house vacant, for he will presently return with others worse than
himself. When you enter into full and constant mental relations with health,
you must of necessity cease all relationship with disease. The first step in
the Science of Being Well is then, to enter into complete thought connection
with health.
The best
way to do this is to form a mental image or picture of yourself as being well,
imagining a perfectly strong and healthy body; and to spend sufficient time in
contemplating this image to make it your habitual thought of yourself.
This is
not so easy as it sounds; it necessitates the taking of considerable time for
meditation, and not all persons have the imaging faculty well enough developed
to form a distinct mental picture of themselves in a perfect or idealized body.
It is much easier, as in "The Science of Getting Rich," to form a
mental image of the things one wants to have; for we have seen these things or
their counterparts, and know how they look; we can picture them very easily
from memory. But we have never seen ourselves in a perfect body, and a clear
mental image is hard to form.
It is
not necessary or essential, however, to have a clear mental image of yourself
as you wish to be; it is only essential to form a CONCEPTION of perfect health,
and to relate yourself to it. This Conception of Health is not a mental picture
of a particular thing; it is an understanding of health, and carries with it
the idea of perfect functioning in every part and organ.
You may
TRY to picture yourself as perfect in physique; that helps; and you MUST think
of yourself as doing everything in the manner of a perfectly strong and healthy
person. You can picture yourself as walking down the street with an erect body
and a vigorous stride; you can picture yourself as doing your day's work easily
and with surplus vigor, never tired or weak; you can picture in your mind how all
things would be done by a person of full of health and power, and you can make
yourself the central figure in the picture, doing things in just that way.
Never
think of the ways in which weak or sickly people do things; always think of the
way strong people do things. Spend your leisure time in thinking about the Strong Way, until
you have a good conception of it; and always think of yourself in connection
with the Strong Way
of Doing Things. This is what I mean by having a Conception of Health.
In order
to establish perfect functioning in every part, man does not have to study
anatomy or physiology, so that he can form a mental image of each separate
organ and address himself to it. He does not have to "treat" his
liver, his kidneys, his stomach, or his heart.
There is
one Principle of Health in man, which has control over all the involuntary
functions of his life; and the thought of perfect health, impressed upon this
Principle, will reach each part and organ. Man's liver is not controlled by a
liver- principle, his stomach by a digestive principle, and so on; the
Principle of Health is One.
The less
you go into the detailed study of physiology, the better for you. Our knowledge
of this science is very imperfect, and leads to imperfect thought. Imperfect
thought causes imperfect functioning, which is disease. Let me illustrate:
Until quite recently, physiology fixed ten days as the extreme limit of man's
endurance without food; it was considered that only in exceptional cases could
he survive a longer fast.
So the
impression became universally disseminated that one who was deprived of food
must die in from five to ten days; and numbers of people, when cut off from
food by shipwreck, accident, or famine, did die within this period. But the
performance of Dr. Tanner, the forty-day faster, and the writings of Dr. Dewey
and others on the fasting cure, together with the experiments of numberless
people who have fasted from forty to sixty days, have shown that man's ability
to live without food is vastly greater than had been supposed.
Any
person, properly educated, can fast from twenty to forty days with little loss
in weight, and often with no apparent loss of strength at all. The people who
starved to death in ten days or less did so because the believed death was
inevitable; and erroneous physiology had given them a wrong thought about
themselves.
When a
man is deprived of food he will die in from ten to fifty days, according to the
way he has been taught; or, in other words, according to the way he thinks
about it. So you can see that an erroneous physiology can work very mischievous
results.
No
Science of Being Well can be founded on current physiology; it is not
sufficiently exact in its knowledge. With all its pretensions, comparatively
little is really known as to the interior workings and processes of the body.
It is
not known just how food is digested; it is not known just what part food plays,
if any, in the generation of force. It is not known exactly what the liver,
spleen, and pancreas are for, or what part their secretions play in the
chemistry of assimilation. On all these and most other points we theorize, but
we do not really know.
When man
begins to study physiology, he enters the domain of theory and disputation; he
comes among conflicting opinions, and he is bound to form mistaken ideas
concerning himself. These mistaken ideas lead to the thinking of wrong
thoughts, and this leads to perverted functioning and disease.
All that
the most perfect knowledge of physiology could do for man would be to enable
him to think only thoughts of perfect health, and to eat, drink, breathe, and
sleep in a perfectly healthy way; and this, as we shall show, he can do without
studying physiology at all.
This,
for the most part, is true of all hygiene. There are certain fundamental
propositions which we should know; and these will be explained in later
chapters, but aside from these propositions, ignore physiology and hygiene.
They tend to fill your mind with thoughts of imperfect conditions, and these
thoughts will produce the imperfect conditions in your own body. You cannot
study any "science" which recognizes disease, if you are to think
nothing but health.
Drop all
investigation as to your present condition, its causes, or possible results,
and set yourself to the work of forming a conception of health.
Think
about health and the possibilities of health; of the work that may be done and
the pleasures that may be enjoyed in a condition of perfect health. Then make
this conception your guide in thinking of yourself; refuse to entertain for an
instant any thought of yourself which is not in harmony with it. When any idea
of disease or imperfect functioning enters your mind, cast it out instantly by
calling up a thought which is in harmony with the Conception of Health.
Think of
yourself at all times as realizing conception; as being a strong and perfectly
healthy personage; and do not harbor a contrary thought.
KNOW
that as you think of yourself in unity with this conception, the Original
Substance which permeates and fills the tissues of your body is taking form
according to the thought; and know that this Intelligent Substance or mind
stuff will cause function to be performed in such a way that your body will be
rebuilt with perfectly healthy cells.
The Intelligent
Substance, from which all things are made, permeates and penetrates all things;
and so it is in and through your body. It moves according to its thoughts; and
so if you hold only the thoughts of perfectly healthy function, it will cause
the movements of perfectly healthy function within you.
Hold
with persistence to the thought of perfect health in relation to yourself; do
not permit yourself to think in any other way. Hold this thought with perfect
faith that it is the fact, the truth. It is the truth so far as your mental
body is concerned.
You have
a mind-body and a physical body; the mind-body takes form just as you think of
yourself, and any thought which you hold continuously is made visible by the
transformation of the physical body into its image. Implanting the thought of
perfect functioning in the mind-body will, in due time, cause perfect
functioning in the physical body.
The
transformation of the physical body into the image of the ideal held by the
mind-body is not accomplished instantaneously; we cannot transfigure our
physical bodies at will as Jesus did. In the creation and recreation of forms,
Substance moves along the fixed lines of growth it has established; and the
impression upon it of the health thought causes the healthy body to be built
cell by cell.
Holding
only thoughts of perfect health will ultimately cause perfect functioning; and
perfect functioning will in due time produce a perfectly healthy body. It may
be as well to condense this chapter into a syllabus:
Your physical
body is permeated and filled with an Intelligent Substance, which forms a body
of mind-stuff. This mind-stuff controls the functioning of your physical body.
A thought of disease or of imperfect function, impressed upon the mind-stuff,
causes disease or imperfect functioning in the physical body. If you are
diseased, it is because wrong thoughts have made impressions on this
mind-stuff; these may have been either your own thoughts or those of your
parents; we begin life with many sub-conscious impressions, both right and
wrong. But the natural tendency of all mind is toward health, and if no
thoughts are held in the conscious mind save those of health, all internal
functioning will come to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner.