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The Science of Mind, by Ernest Shurtleff Holmes [1926], at sacred-texts.com
Sickness is an experience but not an Ultimate Reality; it is an effect and not a cause. The body, devoid of mentality, could neither know nor have sensation; it is entirely an effect. The body is made of the same unthinking stuff from which all Creation is formed.
Instinctive Man is Perfect, but his individual use of Life and Law enables him to cover a perfect idea with an apparently imperfect cloak.
Man comes into objectivity with the tendency of the race already subjectified within him, through race-suggestion. The race believes in sickness and limitation, and this suggestion is more or less operative through all people. This suggestion works through the field of the subjective state of the race thought, and will operate through any individual who is receptive to it.
As man becomes individualized, he consciously thinks and continuously pours suggestions into his subjective thought which is the silent builder of the physical body. Through the field of subjectivity thought always works out to a logical conclusion.
Man does not, necessarily, consciously think that he is to have a certain type of physical trouble, but the physical correspondent is a logical outcome of what he thinks.
Disease, of itself, is neither person, place nor thing; it is an image of thought, consciously or unconsciously held somewhere in Mind and will externalize wherever it finds an avenue of operation.
Disease is entirely mental in its origin, since no person could be sick unless he had intelligence; it is the result of thinking about, and believing in duality, or a power apart from God.
Disease can be healed through reversing the thought and turning to the Spiritual Realization of Life. It is impossible to divorce real mental healing from true Spiritual Realization, since God is ALL.
The use of mental argument in healing rests upon the theory that we are surrounded by a Universal Mind which reacts to our thought.
Right mental practice is the constructive use of Mind, i.e., a mental argument given for the purpose of presenting the Spiritual Truth about man. Wrong mental practice is the destructive use of Mind, i.e., a mental argument given for the purpose of presenting a false claim about man.
Right mental practice is called the Spirit of Christ. Wrong mental practice is called the spirit of Antichrist; it is malpractice and may or may not be consciously used. To think of any one in a negative way is some form of malpractice and is harmful. Malpractice may be ignorant, innocent or malicious. It is always some form of suggestion.
Man is known in Mind by the name he bears, and any statement made in Mind about his name will cause some action to take place through Law towards him. This is the basis of all mental healing.
A practitioner is one who recognizes Man as a spiritual reality. Since there is but One Mind, the practitioner does this within himself. Through the medium of the One Mind these statements rise to objective conditions in his patient, according to the practitioner's belief and according to the ability of his patient to receive the Truth. Healing is accomplished through the act of setting Subjective Law in motion. The more Spiritual or Godlike the mentality of the practitioner, the more powerful the treatment.
A mental treatment begins and ends within the thought of the practitioner because he is in the same Mind in which his patient lives. Treatment is inducing right concepts within the subjective side of life.
Absent and present treatments are the same; for there is no absence in the One Presence.
One disease would be as easily healed as another if the thought were as sure of itself in one case as another.
There is no personal responsibility in healing; the practitioner directs the Power and lets It work. One does not hold thoughts in mental healing; he looses thought. A practitioner does not try to suggest, hypnotize or mentally influence; he
simply knows that man is now a spiritual being and holds to that belief,--no matter what the appearance may be. Right mental treatment does not tire the one giving it.
Personal magnetism has nothing to do with mental healing. The whole basis of the possibility of mental healing rests upon the premise that we all live in One Creative Mind which reacts to our belief. It is as though there were a Universal Ear listening to, and hearing, everything that we say, feel or think, and reacting to it.
Healing is not a process, but a revelation; for the revealing of the perfect man always heals. The process is the time and thought that it takes to arrive at the correct understanding of man's perfect state in Spirit.
Any one can heal who believes that he can, and who will take the time to put that belief in motion through the Law.
To daily see the perfect man and to daily declare for his objective appearance is correct mental practice and will heal.
A treatment recognizes that all is Mind and that everything is mental; it resolves all disease into thought; neutralizes the false thought and recognizes the true. Nothing can stop it from operating except a lack of faith in the reality of the Truth and man's ability to use It.
In giving mental treatment the practitioner first realizes his own being as spiritual; he then recognizes the perfect state of his patient's being; then he attacks the false claim and brings the evidence of Truth to bear against it, thinking in such a manner as to completely destroy the false claim and to realize the Truth.