LECTURE 05: THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY MINDEDNESS -- PART 2

Let me now pass from these abstracter statements to some more concrete

accounts of experience with the mind cure religion. I have many answers

from correspondents the only difficulty is to choose. The first two whom I

shall quote are my personal friends. One of them, a woman, writing as

follows, expresses well the feeling of continuity with the Infinite Power,

by which all mind cure disciples are inspired.

"The first underlying cause of all sickness, weakness, or

depression is the human sense of separateness from that Divine

Energy which we call God. The soul which can feel and affirm in

serene but jubilant confidence, as did the Nazarene, 'I and my

Father are one,' has no further need of healer, or of healing.

This is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other foundation for

wholeness can no man lay than this fact of impregnable divine

union. Disease can no longer attack one whose feet are planted on

this rock, who feels hourly, momently, the influx of the Deific

Breath. If one with Omnipotence, how can weariness enter the

consciousness, how illness assail that indomitable spark?

"This possibility of annulling forever the law of fatigue has been

abundantly proven in my own case; for my earlier life bears a

record of many, many years of bedridden invalidism, with spine and

lower limbs paralyzed. My thoughts were no more impure than they

are to day, although my belief in the necessity of illness was

dense and unenlightened; but since my resurrection in the flesh, I

have worked as a healer unceasingly for fourteen years without a

vacation, and can truthfully assert that I have never known a

moment of fatigue or pain, although coming in touch constantly

with excessive weakness, illness, and disease of all kinds. For

how can a conscious part of Deity be sick? since 'Greater is he

that is with us than all that can strive against us.' "

My second correspondent, also a woman, sends me the following statement,

"Life seemed difficult to me at one time. I was always breaking

down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous

prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of

insanity; besides having many other troubles, especially of the

digestive organs. I had been sent away from home in charge of

doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been fed

up, and in fact knew all the doctors within reach. But I never

recovered permanently till this New Thought took possession of me.

"I think that the one thing which impressed me most was learning

the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation or mental

touch (this word is to me very expressive) with that essence of

life which permeates all and which we call God. This is almost

unrecognizable unless we live it into ourselves actually , that

is, by a constant turning to the very innermost, deepest

consciousness of our real selves or of God in us, for illumination

from within, just as we turn to the sun for light, warmth, and

invigoration without. When you do this consciously, realizing that

to turn inward to the light within you is to live in the presence

of God or your divine self, you soon discover the unreality of the

objects to which you have hitherto been turning and which have

engrossed you without.

"I have come to disregard the meaning of this attitude for bodily

health as such , because that comes of itself, as an incidental

result, and cannot be found by...