Chapter 25 Healing a dying man of cancer of the stomach

HEALING A DYING MAN OF CANCER OF THE STOMACH CHAPTER 25

This is a case of healing illustrating the Idealized Process of using God's Intelligence discriminatively. Many mental theorists also object to this. They refuse to think particular ideals of details, asserting that God's general concept of truth and perfect health are sufficient. Failures in healing would be lessened if we were wise enough to realize that God Himself was unable to create anything of value in manifestation except by the use of discriminative intelligence.

God first created our world by general concept; but what was the result? It was "without form and void." Then, He used the discriminative intelligence and separated the light from the darkness, the firmament from the earth, the waters from the land, etc. Let us not be so unwise as to depend upon mere general concepts of truth. Hold them, if you will, till you are blind and gray, and your manifestations will still be "formless, and void."

During the last seventy years spiritual healing has been characterized by three distinct stages: The first stage did not truly represent even the thought taught at that time, for many persons, with but a vague idea of what it was all about and a wish to do good, set themselves up as healers. It was the stage of denial and in some cases absurd denial.

I remember well the time when -if one went to such an uninformed or misinformed healer for treatment for headache -the healer would say, "But how can you have a headache -you have no head?" Then came the second stage of spiritual healing. In this the denial became the less important and the recognition of great spiritual truths the more important. When specific application was then tried, it tended toward materialism. Now, we are idealizing every step in the process and making it spiritual. Hence it adds to, rather than detracts from, the great spiritual truths.

We now come to the third stage of spiritual healing, the recognition of particular truths and the specific application of them. We are advancing. We know that All is God in action and practice as well as in general statement.

Let me give you a case that demonstrates the effectiveness of specific application after the failure of general affirmation. It is the case of a man who was thirty-five years old when the healing took place, afflicted with cancer of the stomach and said to be dying at the time. Four specialists had treated him and at the time the case was brought to my attention he was to be operated upon in two days. It was his wife who came to me. The man himself was thirty-two miles away in a hospital; too weak even to feed himself. He had been ill for some years. First there had been medical treatment, X-rays, diet, serum and, when these had failed, he had tried suggestion, mental healing, divine healing, Christian Science.

At first it seemed impossible for me to take the case. Affairs prevented my going to the man. I realized, although his wife was trying to give the correct ideal of his mental condition, she might not know it well enough to give me the information necessary to make specific application successful. I did know, however, of two of the healers; who had been trying to help him. I called them on the telephone and found they had been treating for health, life and wholeness. Now these conditions were exactly what was desired as an end to be attained. The man wanted to be healthy; he wanted to be whole; he wanted to live. These conditions were exactly what the healers desired. He had faith and the healers had faith, and yet he had not been healed.

Hanging up the telephone, I turned to the wife and questioned her. She did not know exactly what I was driving at, and neither did I; but I found out that the phrases most frequently used by her husband were: "Oh, I'm so tired"; or, "I am too tired to do that," or, "I am so tired, I cannot try." This, then, was the stumbling block. It was fatigue. As long as this consciousness continued, it contradicted the truths of health, life and wholeness, -for one who is healthy and whole is not so burdened with fatigue. I decided to use the specific truth strength as the truth that would lead to the end desired.

This was at four o'clock in the afternoon. The wife left me and I at once spent a half hour and another half hour at midnight, idealizing God as All Energy, All Vitality and All Life, idealizing Energy and Vitality and Life and Strength as flowing through that man's body. The first result: Twenty-three hours later a tall, thin, white-faced man walked into my office. His first words were: "Mrs. W. was here yesterday to see you about a cancer case." I looked at the man, noted his white face, and thought: "Good Lord, he's evidently her brother. The husband must be dead or she would have come herself." I asked him to be seated and he said: "I am very grateful to you. My wife told me that you would center all thought upon strength, and I am astounded at the results." If he was astounded, I, myself, was dumfounded. The man had literally picked up his bed and walked, had dressed himself with little help and had come thirty-two miles by train to see me.

My treatment was not one bit more of truth than the treatment of the healers who had previously worked for him. The one difference was this, that the wife and I had made a specific application, discerned WHAT truth must first be brought to consciousness and used that truth to lead to the end desired. I am certain from this and a thousand other cases that there is never a failure when God is recognized as wisdom, when the true mental cause is discerned and the specific application of truth is made to fit the case.

As to the second result: there is no need of elaboration; it is enough to state that within ten days the man was at work and that the healing was permanent.