Chapter 26 The Will-Cure, Active and Passive

Through the grand system of ganglionic and sympathetic nerves, each organ in the body is connected with every other, and the whole with the mind. There is no part or function which cannot be affected just as certainly, though perhaps not as sensibly, by the will-force, as the muscles of the arm. To do this requires no straining, no struggle, as if we were going to lift a mountain from our condition, than it does to move one fingcr without the others. The pneumogastric nerve, which is distributed to all the organs within the cavity of the trunk, is the appointed conductor through which the mantel force is communicated to them, and influences their functional action. This important nerve seems to be in sympathetic connection with the organ of vitativeness, which, when fully developed and normally active, renders one tenacious of life, and afffords a healthful cerebral stimulus to the vital organs. We have only to concentrate the mind’s force open any of the internal organs, as the stomach, liver, or intestinal canal, and through the pneu-mogastric nerve, its vital movements will be influenccd. It is the divine order of our existence, that the mind should be the body’s sovereign. Spirit is superior to matter; it is a higher and diviner force. The one is positive; the other negative; one is an active principle; the other a passive recipient.

The will and the love we have shown to be identical, and love is the life of man. To direct the will, therefore, to an organ, determines the vital force to it, and increases its sensibility. It is a truth demonstrated by our experience, that the more our thoughts can be diverted from a part that is the seat of painful sensation, the less we feel of it. On the other hand, the continual concentration of the mind upon any portion of the system in a state of inflammation, increases the sensibility and adds to our sufferings. The successful practice of the will-cure must be based upon a sufficient degree of the knowledge of our pathological state, to enable us to judge when it is desirable to concentrate the mind’s action upon a diseased part, or when to divert the spiritual force from it. If the stomach has become exhausted of its nervous force, so that its vermicular movements have ceased, and the food in it is a motionless and fermenting mass, it can be made to obey the behests of the sovereign mind. Concentrating the mind upon it, converging our spiritual force to a focus, we may calmly and powerfully will it to proceed to business and attend to its proper work, and it will obey us as readily and as promptly as a good servant yields to the orders of his employer. The same effect may be produced upon the action of the intestinal canal. If the blood and vital heat do not circulate through the extremities, which feel a deadly coldness, it is because the spiritual life does not permeate the tissues. We may send the spiritual principle there, by the will-force, to distribute to the negative parts their share of the vital flame. For it is ever to be borne in mind, that the negative, weakened state of an organ is not caused so much by a want of blood in it, as it is by the absence from it of a more subtle element. The spiritual principle does not circulate freely through it.

The active will-cure is peculiarly adapted to all negative, devitalized states of the organism. But the mind should never be directed to any organ of the body while under the dominion of depressing emotions and feelings, as those of fear, anxiety, or melancholy, but we should convey to a diseased part only the healthy life-giving current of our positive and normal mental states. A little practice will render the will-cure easy and natural, and we can become our own physician. Blessed is the man, who, in sickness or trouble, has a skillful and sympathetic physician for soul and body, in whom he may trust. But he has attained a far higher blessedness, who, by his knowledge of the laws that govern the action of the mind upon the body both in the generation of health and disease, is able to do without both physician and medicine.

There is a less active state of the will-power which we have often found equally efficient, and even more so, in the removal of diseased conditions, especially with those whose nervous energies are much exhausted. Many patients exhibit a morbid inclination to watch their symptoms and sensations. The general law of health reluires that the thoughts should be abstracted as much as possible from the action of all the organs which perform their appropriate functions involuntarily. They should be left to act in their own way without any interference with their movements. In all forms of dyspepsia attended by a too sensitive condition of the reticular membranes and mucous surface, the mind should not be directed to the stomach, but attention should be diverted from any uneasy sensations in that region. The reason of this we will explain.

In addition to a principle previously stated, that to concentrate the mental force upon an inflamed part intensifies its sensibility, we may observe that all involuntary movements and processes are attended with no fatigue, or loss of nervous energy. Illustrations of this may be seen in the respiratory movements, and the systolic and diastolic motions of the heart. When we breathe involuntarily and without directing the mind to the act, the movement, though continued day and night, occasions no weariness, for then the spiritual force, which impels the respiratory apparatus, is received by inflhx from the all-surrounding spiritual world, with which we are in vital sympathy. But when we direct the attention to our breathing, and it becomes artificial and voluntary, it is fatiguing. It is less wearisome to ride in a coach, than it is to draw it ourselves. The same law operates in regard to the stomach and all the involuntary organs. When we direct the attention to an involuntary organ, it exhausts its force and makes the discharge of its functional action all the same as a voluntary morement. Persons can walk a great distance a day if they are not thinking of their movements. They then walk spontaneously and involuntarily, and the more they approach an involuntary action of the muscles concerned in their march, the further they can go without fatigue. This is the main secret in walking a hundred miles a day, a feat some have accomplished with less weariness than others experience in going the same number of roads. Availing ourselves of this law, we have sometimes walked many miles with invalids, and they have returned from their seemingly miraculous feat of pedes-trianism more invigorated than when they started. By constantly diverting the attention of the patient, so that he takes no notice of his movements, nor the distance gone over, he can be made to go for miles, when before he has not thought himself able to leave the confined limits of the court-yard of his dwelling.

There is a passive cure of diseased conditions of the body and inharmonies of mind. We may become quiescent, assuming an easy position, perhaps reclining with the head to the north, to bring the body into an attitude agreeing with the magnetic poles of the earth. Then we may transfer our mental life to the organ of the involuntary thoughts and affections, as we have directed in inducing sleep. This is the middle state between sleeping and waking. In it the senses become unusually acute, especially that of touch or feeling, and become in a degree independent of their bodily organs. It is referred to by Paul, (2 Cor. xiii. 3), and he describes his experience while in it. In this state we become receptive of the better spiritual life of a higher sphere, which flows first into the interior organism and through this into the body. By inverting and suspending the action of the cerebrum, we are brought to that mysterious borderland situated between the two realms of being. Taking position on the mystic boundary-line between the material and spiritual worlds, the soul suspends active thought, and becomes the recipient of passive knowledge or intuition. This is a thousand times more accurate than that which is the result of active thought and reasoning. Knowledge becomes a spiritual intinct — an influx from tile superior range of life. A bee will construct a cell with perfect mathematical exactness, so as to contain the greatest quantity in the smallest compass. Yet it knows nothing of geometry. Its knowledge is an instinct, or a passive intelligence, received from the spiritual world. We can become the recipients of passive knowledge. Then we gain truth not by the slow and laborious process of reason, but as the diamond imbibes the light of the sun. In this state, the mind becomes perceptive of the spiritual causes of our diseases, and of the laws of life and health — a return to which is a necessary prerequisite to a permanent cure under any method of treatment.

This condition of the brain and mind has been denominated by some the “superior condition,” but we choose to call it the interior state. The Swedish seer speaks of it as the “self-evidencing reason of love.” It is eminently a spiritual and happy state. Anxieties, griefs, regrets, fears, doubts, self-condemnation, and all disturbances that have their seat in the external degree of the mind, are left behind, as the soul retires inward upon itself. For what men call evil, never invades the interior degrees of the mind. All unhappiness exists on the lowest plane of our spiritual nature. It becomes admissive not only of the light of the celestial climes, but also of the affectional states of the angels. Their sphere of peace, purity and love, their calm and tranquil bliss, the soul imbibes, and is made to vibrate in concord with heavenly harmonies.

In the interior state, the spirit retains its consciousness, and its memory, and on its return to the external condition it brings down its higher knowledge, and the recollection of its exalted perceptions, and comes back laden with celestial spoils, as the spies returned to the desert encampment of Israel bearing with them the rich clusters of the grapes of the promised land. The tranquil soul drinks in life from perennial fountains. Oftentimes in the interior state, which is so sensitive to psychological impressions from the land of the blest, the lost harmony in the distribution of the vital forces, which constitute our pathological condition, is in a few minutes restored, and alll morbid affections of mind and body are dispersed by the influx of a healthier spiritual life. Before thus approaching the boundaries of the other realm of being, it is important that we be in charity, the love of use, and in purity of intention. For like attracts its like in the spiritual world. Approaching that realm in any other moral attitude, we shall expose the susceptible inward man to the peril of imbibing the miasm of the Stygian pool, and the poisonous effuvia of disorderly spirits. The foul emanations of their surronuding sphere will serve to make our condition worse, mentally and physically.

But no evil spirits, in this world or the next, can do us harm if we approach them in the moral attitude of charity, and with a desire to do them good. Jesus went and preached to spirits in prison, or to those who were in bondage to disorderly and unharmonized passions, and the purity of his soul received no stain. And a good man might explore that mythic region, called an orthodox hell, and remain as uncontaminated as a sunbeam in an infected hospital. When we approach the higher realm of being, where all is calm, and pure, and loving, and the outward scenery seems pervaded with the life of its inhabitants, and to be only the chrys-talization of their thoughts and affections, carrying with us an immortal desire to bless all mankind, and a consecration of all our activities to the good of universal being, our individual soul mingles its spark of vital force with the abyss of life in the heavens, and we receive back more than we contribute to the common stock. We come into vital sympathy with all that is pure, and healthful, and living, in the land where sickness and sorrow, pain and death are unknown.

The interior state is one in which, like healthful sleep, the spiritual world comes consciously near, and angelic influences are thrown around us, and we return to our usual external condition better in mind and body. Men are only just beginning to entertain some feeble conceptions of the value and importance of our relations to the inner world, both in the generation of disease and its cure. In the interior state, when the mind retires inward upon itself, and becomcs abstracted from all sensnous images and impressions, it rises to a higher plane of activity. Its intuitions are quickened, and nobler thoughts are evolved. The profoundest problems are solved by an intuitive flash of a higher light, and the deepest mysteries are unveiled. It feels a more vivid consciousness of its relations to the inner world, and of our vital connection with its immortal intelligences. It is rendered more sensitive to psychological impressions and influences from the supersensu-ous realms. It becomes receptive of the intellectual and affectional states of the angels. It is temporarily an inhabitant of the spiritual world, and so, appers to those who dwell above.

The spirit thus abstracted is actually seen by the angels, as if it had come among them by the normal process of death, which is only a complete and permanent state of introversion. This appearance of the soul among the angels, when in a state of abstraction, takes place in harmony with the same laws by which men have appeared visibly to their friends at a distance, in this world. Many well authenticated facts of this kind are on record. This temporary invertion of our partially freed spirit into the society of the celestial plains, must be productive of the happiest results, and an efficient remedy for those mental inharmonies, and spiritual disturbances, that are the cause of our bodily diseases. And many persons, while in a complete trance, have been cured by the reception of the angelic sphere of life, when their friends have deemed them dead. With the inner nature harmonized and renewed, and its spiritual forces augmented, it has come back to consciousness in the body, which soon receives the influx of life from the restored spirit, and many years of health and usefulness have been added to their earthly existence.

The spiritual world is real and living. Its objects and inhabitants are not like the fantastic creations of a dream, unsubstantial and transient. It is not the abode of shadows and phantoms. It is the home of life, the seat of causation, the habitation of reality. To approach that healthful shore, is to inhale the atmosphere of immortality.