Mental Healing Made Plain E-Book

Kate Atkinson Boehme

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of Kate Atkinson Boehme with this unforgettable book.

Leseprobe

Mental Healing Made Plain

Kate Atkinson Boehme

LESSON I

SUPPOSE we take it for granted that you know nothing of Mental Healing, and have come to me to ask what it is and how it works. You say you cannot possibly understand how it is that the thought of one person can have any effect upon the body of another person, although you are ready to admit that your own thought has its influence upon your own body. You do not question that in the least. You know that your hand moves in obedience to thought, and so with all the members of your body. This has gone on so long, and you are so accustomed to it, that it seems a simple fact enough. It is, however, really a very complex and mysterious process. Merely taking it for granted does not explain it. What is thought, that it should act on the nerves and muscles of your body, and produce motion? Who ever saw a thought when it so acted on nerve and muscle? No one has ever been able to explain the mystery, and yet we accept it as a fact. Do we do this because physiologists tell us it is so? No. We know it through our own inner experience.

For instance: I see a book on the table. I think I would like to examine it. I am conscious of that thought. Then I think I will take it up. I am conscious of that thought also. Then I do take it up, and I know—or am conscious, which means the same thing—that my taking up of that book is the result of my first thinking that I would like to see the book, and afterward thinking that I will see it.

I know that my thought has somehow extended my hand toward the table, and caused the fingers to close about the book, and then my hand has drawn the book toward me. Hundreds of nerves and muscles have been brought into action, and yet I do not know how it was accomplished. I may have it explained to me how muscles contract and expand, and I may see that the entire network of nerves and muscles throughout the body is controlled by thought; but that is not seeing how it is done.

That, it seems, must remain a mystery. But for that reason do we deny it? Not at all! I know of no one who does not acknowledge that thought controls the body; that is, that his thought controls his own body.

I shall therefore take it for granted that you will acknowledge that; but when I ask you to go a step further, and accept the fact that my thought can act on your body, I am not surprised when you shake your head incredulously and say it cannot be done.

But suppose I point to a hundred instances where it has been done. Again you shake your head and say—Coincidence.

Well, I am determined, if possible, to convince you. How shall I proceed? I want to prove that a more wonderful healing power has come to the earth than was ever vested in drug or other curative agent. All the drugs and healing agencies in the world have failed to give you perfect health, and that is why this new power is knocking at the world’s door to-day. It has done more than that: it has entered, but has not been hospitably received by all, and has been rejected by many who needed it most, and rejected because they could not understand, from a scientific viewpoint, how thought can produce the results in healing which are claimed for it.

I can well remember how hard it was for me to realize in the early days of my healing that I was accomplishing anything with my thought. It seemed such an airy, impalpable nothing. I could not see it going forth upon its healing mission, and it was, not until the work was done that I had any proof of its having gone forth. Even then I was inclined to think it was a coincidence that the patient improved when I began treatment. It was only after many cures that I gave up the idea that the patient just happened to get well anyway. Finally, the coincidences became so numerous that there seemed a law in action, and I was at last convinced that it was indeed my thought that was doing the healing.

My faith in the transmission of thought from one person to another was often strengthened by a simple experiment. Perhaps you have tried it. If not, I advise you to, for it is very significant. Get together a few of your friends. Blindfold one and place him in the middle of the room, after having shown him a key or some other object which you intend that he shall find. Surround this person in a closed circle with joined hands, while all of you think steadily of the key in the place where it is deposited. After a time the blindfolded person, with slow and uncertain steps, will begin to move toward the key, and will ultimately find it.

This is the sensation of the one blindfolded as I experienced it. First my mind felt utterly vacant. All thought seemed to vanish. Then in a few seconds I felt pushed as by unseen hands in a certain direction. So strong was the inclination of my body in that direction that I would have fallen had I not put out one foot to save myself. Then another push and another step, and so I gradually approached a chair on which the key had been placed. When I reached the chair, instead of veering away from it or going around it, as I might have done, my whole body relaxed, and I drooped over it with arms listlessly hanging until one hand touched the key. On another occasion the key was hung upon the wall, and when I reached the wall I felt a desire to stretch upward with one arm. I did so, and touched the key where it hung upon a nail.

Now, had the action of those minds been directed to my mind, I might have had a definite idea of the position of the key. I would probably have thought, The key is on the chair, or, The key hangs on the wall; but I had no such definite thought. It seemed more like a blind, instinctive movement for which I could not account. I was impelled to move, I knew not why. It therefore seemed as though the thought acted directly upon my body without passing through the medium of my mind. Still, had it first passed through the mind it would have confirmed the fact of thought transmission. The position of the key would have been conveyed to my mind without spoken word, and the thought itself must have been transmitted directly and without the usual medium of speech.

The law of telepathy or thought transmission is now accepted by scientific men the world over. But I am assuming that you do not know this, and that the subject is entirely new to you, in which event you have a simple experiment at hand. It is easy to try it and convince yourself, for personal experience goes a long way toward conviction, in fact conviction seldom comes without it.

There is a large hospital in Paris called La Salpetriere. It is one of the oldest and largest hospitals there, covering an area of seventy-four acres, and consisting of forty-five large blocks. In that hospital the patients are treated almost entirely by the power of thought. The doctors there do not call it mental healing, however; they call it hypnotic suggestion; but thought power is the agent just the same. They do some queer things there which you would hardly believe did not the reputation of the physicians and the standing of the hospital back up the statements.

Now, hypnotic suggestion differs from mental healing in several respects, one of which I will mention. In hypnotic suggestion it is deemed necessary to throw the patient into a peculiar state of sleep, which is called hypnosis. In mental healing we do not think that essential, for we believe it to be an abnormal or unnatural condition, and would therefore avoid it if possible.

But let me tell you what is done to these patients while in the state of hypnosis. A drop of cold water is placed on the flesh, and the patient is told that it is boiling oil. It then draws a blister. Now, how do you suppose this is done? Quite a mystery, is it not? But being done by reputable doctors in a reputable hospital, you cannot very well doubt it.

Then these doctors take a fly-blister and divide it into three parts, I, 2 and 3. Number I they place upon a patient’s right arm, number 2 upon the left, and number 3 upon the arm of a person who is not in hypnosis. This done, the doctor says of number I that it will not draw a blister, and says nothing of number 2 or 3. The result is that number I does not draw a blister. They call that negative suggestion, which means that the blistering power is all taken away from the number I piece of fly-blister, while it remains in the other two pieces, numbers 2 and 3. I say the blistering power is drawn out of number I, but perhaps it is more correct to say that the skin of the patient is made positive against it. The fly-blister becomes negative to the skin of the patient, and produces no effect upon it, although it is a good, strong blister, as may be seen by the effect produced by numbers 2 and 3.

What a wonderful power this is, to be sure, that can turn a drop of pure, cold water into a violent irritant, or a fly-blister into something as harmless as a postage stamp!

I could tell you of many other curious experiments that are performed, not only in La Salpetriere, but in other hospitals, and by many physicians in their private practice. Dr. Charcot, whose standing at the head of the medical profession no one will question, is known to have used hypnotic suggestion largely, and in preference to drugs, and the same is true of many of the most advanced physicians of the day.

I will now quote from the Medical Summary of Philadelphia, which says editorially:

“A popular writer has said that suggestion is the moving power in the treatment of disease. Experienced practitioners habitually employ it to advantage of the patient. Prudent friends and callers at the bedside practice suggestion by taking with them the assurance of better things to come. A word of cheer, the reassuring smile, inspires hope—this, too, is suggestion. Rheumatic rings, magnetic healing and divine healing all have their tap-root in suggestion. Pain, sleeplessness, neuralgia, rheumatism, headache, etc., often yield to suggestion. If, with ability to diagnose disease, and, without the aid from coal-tar sedatives and opiates, the physician can relieve such maladies as headache, lumbago, sciatica, or the anguish of rheumatic joint, duty imposes the obligation to do so.” *

This shows the trend of the more advanced and liberal in the medical fraternity, and for my part I am not at all inclined to antagonize the profession as a whole, or, indeed, at all. What if there are some illiterate physicians who are opposed to the new movement? They do not lead the van. There are others, more intelligent, who are in the lead, and the ignorant will follow. I have many regular physicians on my list of subscribers who write me for instruction. Others who actually send their patients to me for treatment, and others still who take treatment themselves, who acknowledge the inefficacy of drugs, and ask for something better. One physician in New York asked me to go in partnership with him, and if the truth were known physicians as a whole are not so prejudiced as they are represented to be.

Of course, if we go in as cranks, and order that the attending physician be turned out of the sick-room, we naturally stir up some ill feeling. That is the mistake the Christian Scientists have made, as in the case of Harold Frederic, where the doctor was discharged and the patient died. If the Christian Scientists always saved their patients it would be quite another thing ; they could then discharge doctors with impunity; but since they often fail, it were better not to attempt to carry things with so high a hand, since it serves to bring discredit upon their movement. Mental Scientists, on the other hand, are more modest in their claims, more courteous to the medical profession, and rarely fail to heal their patients.

You see the world keeps moving on, and no conservatism can stop it. One system gives place to another. Different schools of medicine have appeared, had their day, and vanished. Mental healing is here now. It is having its day. When that day has passed it will give place to something else, but that does not concern us. While we have a power for good in our hands it is best to use it, and not go about vaguely seeking for what is to follow. When Mental Healing is on the wane it will be time enough to look for something better. And it is not on the wane, but steadily rising toward the Zenith.

When you realize that a drop of cold water, when used with hypnotic suggestion, can draw a blister, can you doubt the power of thought over the secretions of the body? Moreover, the drop of water is not actually necessary in the experiment, for thought alone can produce the blister, and it has done so. On the other hand, thought alone can prevent a blister, and it has done so.

Professor Wm. James of Harvard University says that tumefaction can be produced by thought in any part of the body. By the same principle, applied in the opposite manner, tumefaction can be removed by thought.

Dr. Elmer Gates has shown that blood can be sent here and there at will throughout the body by simply thinking it there. This he can prove to you beyond a doubt. Other men of science are giving out quite as remarkable statements, and their word must go for something. You cannot shake your head forever, and doubt everything and everybody. You accept a great deal on the evidence of chemists, astronomers and naturalists, and the evidence in favor of the power of thought in curing disease is just as convincing. No one who investigates thoroughly can doubt it.

I think perhaps the greatest obstacle to our believing that thought can pass from one mind to that of another is that there does not seem to be any material agent of transmission, any vehicle for travel. But there is. It is a refined matter in the form of ether, and on this ether thought travels. There are things which we may not detect with our senses which nevertheless exist, and this is one of them.