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The Secret Science Behind Miracles, by Max Freedom Long, [1948], at sacred-texts.com
Instant healing is a miracle in terms of religion, and is something before which we stand in awe, not understanding how such healing is performed, or by what agency or under what determining conditions. We can only say, "God did it."
Most miracles are supposed to come in answer to prayer. To pray effectively, one is thought to need to be "pure," else the prayer will not be answered. However, those we consider purest and most holy, usually get no better answers to their prayers than the worldly.
This state of affairs has plagued theologians and laymen alike for many years. It was evident that something was missing in the philosophy, but no one could decide just what. Even prayers to the saints to request them to pray to God for us, and the practice of all Christians of addressing their prayers to God in the name of Jesus, have resulted in no better scores.
The first glimmer of light on the age-old problem came from the discovery of mesmerism. This would seem very odd at first glance, but not so odd on remembering the way religions tend to crystallize into inflexible dogmas and rebuff any slightest effort to change rituals, beliefs or theories.
Mesmerism was a healing agency of sorts, but soon after its discovery, Mesmer's followers were driven by their many failures to look for other measures to augment treatment by the transfer of vital force alone. In Europe and America they began to experiment. Dr. Freud eventually discovered the secret of the subconscious and of the nature of suggestion, although he was far from understanding, as did the kahunas on the opposite side of the world, that the low self was a separate and independent spirit, and that suggestion was the planting of thought forms in the low self and the causing of them to be accepted and acted upon.
Surprising as it is that Freud came this close to rediscovering the ancient psychological lore, it is even more surprising to find that, some years earlier, an American watchmaker named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, turned to the use of mesmerism in healing, and discovered the kahunas’ High Self and high voltage of vital force. Had the two men lived in the same land and had their studies been combined, they might have reconstructed the basics of miraculous healing. However, they worked apart, and the discoveries of each remained short of the mark.
The story of Freud is fairly well known, but that of Quimby is not. The latter's one authentic history is to be found in Horatio W. Dresser's book, The Quimby Manuscripts.
Quimby learned mesmerism from a traveling Frenchman around the year 1840, in New England. He gave exhibitions here and there, doing healing on the side. His favorite subject was a young man named Lucius Burkman. Lucius, when under mesmeric influence
would announce that he could see the cause of a patient's illness, and would then prescribe a remedy, usually medicinal. The results were uncertain at best.
However, with practice, Lucius improved, or the mesmerist improved, or both. In any event the lad had increasingly frequent moments of strange lucidity. He had long been able to see things at a distance, but now he came to catch glimpses of the future. One day, while mesmerized, he said unexpectedly to Quimby, "I can see your kidneys. They are wasting away, but if you will come here and let me place my hands over them, I can heal you."
Quimby had been suffering for some time from kidney trouble. Willing to try the experiment, he allowed Lucius to place his hands over his kidneys. After a time the hands were removed and the lad declared the cure complete. And, in so far as Quimby could see, it was complete. All pains and symptoms vanished.
This instant healing of his own painful condition greatly impressed Quimby. He became convinced that Lucius had touched some invisible and unknown source of healing, and he argued that what his subject could touch, he should be able to touch. He set about experimenting, displaying fine persistence and a touch of real genius.
From the records of his work it appears that, with considerable expenditure of time and effort, he eventually learned to make contact with the Thing that Lucius had found, and get it to heal, now and again, at his request. He was unable to learn what the Thing was, but sensed a presence at times of contact. The presence did the healing almost miraculously, and impressed
him as being the very embodiment of wisdom. Knowing no other name for it, and feeling that it was too personal and close by far to be God, he took to calling it simply "the Wisdom."
His method of contacting the Wisdom was based on a silent call or prayer. It was a method learned after much practice. When contact was made, it was accompanied by a sense of great force or power which was used in healing. This he came to call, "the Power."
Little by little Quimby learned to work better with the Wisdom and its Power. He learned that he could sit beside a patient and silently ask the Wisdom to diagnose the case and do the healing. He was given to know by some inward process of mind what the course of the healing would be. Sometimes the healing was to extend over a period of several days and he was told how the patient would feel from day to day. The patient might be much worse on the morrow, but completely healed on the day after. Often he sensed the message that a patient could not be cured, and it was always a wonder to him that anything should lay beyond the healing power of the Wisdom. He searched his mind for possible reasons, and decided that mesmeric suggestion had possibly been given inadvertently by doctors when they had diagnosed the ills of patients who later came to him uncured.
In an effort to counteract this suspected suggestive influence he taught his patients to believe that the disease itself had been caused by the suggestion of the doctors. While this teaching was blatantly illogical, it seemed to get results, and so was continued. (In this step he seems to have anticipated a trend beginning to
appear only now in the post World War II days—the trend toward the practice of giving the patient a fictitious or artificial complex and causing him to believe that it is the source of his ills. This artificial complex is then drained off, and cures often result.)
Not yet satisfied, the inveterate experimenter sought for ways by which he could use the patient's deeply fixed religious beliefs to help along the healing. Noting that logic was not demanded by most of his patients, he soberly propounded to them a doctrine that God, being Himself perfect, could have created no imperfect things in His creation. For this reason, all disease and all troubles and imperfections must be creations of the human mind, and therefore unreal, impermanent and imaginary. It followed that, once one could come to know and believe this great truth, his healing would be bound to follow. The patients were urged to deny the reality of their ills, and were helped in the denials by mesmeric suggestion. (This was a really amazing angle of attack on the fixed beliefs of the low and middle selves. He got around the ordinary guilt or "sin" complexes, even when not fully aware of their nature, by including all of the patient's sins and guilts with the other evil and imaginary things created by the human mind. When all imperfect things were denied actuality during the treatment, the guilt complexes were automatically included and rendered inactive in causing disease.)
The term "telepathy" had not yet been coined, but the phenomenon was known as "rapport." Quimby found that after once contacting a patient, he could follow him by the same means by which he kept touch
or rapport with a mesmeric subject. He also found that he could in this way send healing suggestions, obtain reports on the progress of the healing, and even seem to furnish a channel by which the Wisdom could use its Power to heal. This form of healing he dubbed "absent treatment."
As his practice grew, Quimby wrote out his explanations of the perfection of God and the unreality of all imperfections. He elaborated on the explanations from time to time, and had several copies to lend to patients to study and to read over and over until they came to accept the doctrine.
One of his patients was Mrs. Patterson (later Eddy). She was healed, but her old nervous afflictions had a way of returning and the treatment would have to be repeated. She became very familiar with Quimby's methods and his written explanations of his doctrines.
Quimby died in 1865 and Mrs. Patterson's spinal or nervous affliction again returned, but with no healer to whom she could turn. In her efforts to use his system to heal herself she was successful, and, it is to be noted, without benefit of mesmeric suggestion. Seeing that the system would work with only the Quimby doctrines of the unreality of evils as its basis, she began to elaborate the doctrines, to teach others to heal, and to organize a new cult which she called "Christian Science." To the original doctrine of Quimby she added the idea of "malicious animal magnetism," which, because of the lack of a working knowledge of the complex, was forced to cover a multitude of otherwise unexplained healing difficulties. (Under this heading, also, came
all the difficulties caused by spirit attacks on the living, even if not recognized as such.)
Quimby's teaching that all disease was the result of bad human thinking was partly right. The resulting denial of all physical matter and existence was most preposterous, but could not be avoided if the first premise was to be made to work in a healing system devoid of a full knowledge of the complex and the methods of dealing with it.
Christian Science, perforce, remained illogical in this respect, but the concept was one that could be readily grasped, and by repeated readings of the instruction books the low self could be brought to accept the belief in the unreality of all things physical. It was a system that worked sufficiently well, in the hands of the practitioners who learned to touch the Wisdom and Power, to attract many followers. Unfortunately, because the system is so incomplete, its failures are as notable as its successes.
To become an accepted practitioner one must develop what amounts to a deep fixation of belief in the doctrine. This makes it all but impossible for new ideas to gain consideration, and while it is probably impossible for practitioners of Christian Science to accept in any slightest way the more complete system of the kahunas, it is to be seen that, as a body, the practitioners have made the nearest approach to the high magic that has been made in the West. Many have learned to make contact with the High Self, call it what they may. Many have learned to make the correct thought form prayer and to "hold the thought" through thick and thin and
with fine faith. Without being aware of it, they may furnish the High Self sufficient vital force to use in materializing in the future the healed or financially bettered condition of the patient. Absent treatment has taught many the trick of telepathic connection with patients and so has enabled them to send the patients thought forms of healing. If they could also learn to drain off the guilt and related complexes through the use of rituals and physical stimuli, accompanied with a projected set of thought forms and the proper enforcing charge of vital force as suggestion, their success might be greatly enhanced. As a final touch they might study the methods of countering spirit attack and obsession.
Another cult came into being as a direct result of Quimby's discoveries and teachings. This was New Thought. This loosely organized group had various branches and leaders. Almost at the beginning the illogical doctrine of the unreality of matter was dropped and attention was centered on an idea borrowed from India and promoted largely by Judge Troward. The idea was that if one holds the thought of what is desired, one exerts a form of suggestive influence over a "Universal Subconscious" which is forced to materialize the things or conditions represented in the thought forms. "Affirmations" or positive statements of the "here and now" reality of the desired condition became popular. Few practitioners developed, and it was generally a case of "every man for himself." Results were surprisingly good, considering the small segment of magic which was used.
Theosophy, which had borrowed thought-holding
and thought-form theories from India, largely through the agency of Mme. Blavatsky, also borrowed the doctrines of karma and reincarnation, the result being that little attempt was made to heal either body or purse.
It is plain to see that modern religious thought has been leaning toward the assimilation of the discoveries of Psychology, but has been too prone to crystallization to remain sufficiently fluid to keep up with psychological discoveries. Nothing gets hardening of the arteries as fast as a religion, once its book has been written and its dogmas established.
Among the revealed religions of the last century we find Mormonism and Oahspe. Mormonism contains nothing superior in the line of magic to what is to be found in the older Christianity. Oahspe, on the other hand, is tantalizing in its hint of hidden magical meanings and mechanisms buried in what appears on the surface to be a history of all men and all gods—under a Supreme God—since the time of Creation. In many ways the teachings of the Oahspe Bible agree with that of the ancient Huna, and, because of the intricate and as yet not completely understood teachings along several lines of psychological and scientific thought, it has not yet crystallized its dogmas. It is possible that members of this group may yet do yeoman service in running experimental checks on Huna beliefs, theories and practices. If the prophesies contained in the Oahspe Bible are fulfilled, it is certain that men will again learn to cooperate with Higher Beings for healing and other purposes, as well as to receive guidance in many things of personal, national and world importance.
Huna lore throws a great light on the moot subject
of FAITH. Christians and other religionists have speculated endlessly on the exact nature of faith. It was taught that faith was necessary if prayer was to be answered. Even a small amount of faith would be enough. On the surface of the matter, faith is complete belief. However, we now learn from the kahunas that belief on the part of the middle self is not enough. That alone is not faith. Only when the low self also believes is there genuine and workable FAITH. This is simply a different way of saying that if the low self has a fixation or even slightly complexed (stubbornly held) belief which is contrary to the one held at the moment by the middle self, the low self will refuse to obey orders. For instance, if I, the middle self, am convinced that telepathy is a possibility and set out to teach the low self to send and receive telepathic or thought-form messages, I can succeed only if the low self has not, earlier in my life, been taught that telepathy is a figment of superstition.
It is very difficult for the individual to find out whether or not he has a fixed belief of a certain kind lodged in his low self. As we are unaware of such fixations, we naturally conclude that we have none. The test is best applied by watching the results we get after. a period of faithful daily practice. If there are no results at all, hunt for a complex.
In the exercise of telepathic abilities, whether communication is between the High Self, another person, or a departed spirit and a living person, there is one very helpful feature in the fact that flowing vital force causes a tingling sensation. This tingle is a great assistance
in determining whether or not the low self has obeyed the order and has made contact for us.
Most people are familiar with the tingle or "raising the hair" that comes when ghostly presences are sensed. It is to be supposed that, when a spectral visitor touches us with its shadowy body, it draws from us some vital force, and that this movement of vital force causes the tingle. Very often I have begun to talk to my friends about spirits of the departed, and have soon felt a tingle, as if thinking about dead friends had called their spirits back to me.
The High Self contacts us of its own accord in our sleep, making use, so the kahunas thought, of the connecting cord of shadowy body material. Our thoughts of the day, with our plans, hopes, fears, loves and hates, are examined, taken, (perhaps as duplicated thought forms—we do not know the exact mechanism used), and at the same time vital force is taken. This vital force is stepped up to the high voltage and is used by the High Self to construct a shadowy body which will materialize as a part of our future. Such thought forms were mentioned by the kahunas as "seeds" and were symbolized as seeds which were vitalized by the High Self and grew into actualities of the future. (See the appendix for such words.)
This contact made during sleep is often to be recognized by a tingling, usually in the region of the sacral plexus, and it comes frequently at the moment of falling asleep, or even before that, if we are relaxed. The High Self not only takes from us vital force, it returns a compensating force. Little is known of this compensating
force except that it is vital to our health and well being. I have often settled myself for a nap in the afternoon and have felt the tingle as I dozed off. Immediately after feeling it, I have felt rested and refreshed and ready to rise and go on with the work of the day.
If our low self has a shame or guilt complex and repels the approach of the High Self during sleep, we face disaster. We become "lost souls" without benefit of higher guidance. We lose our vitality and become ill. As the kahunas would say, our "path" is blocked to the High Self. Happily for us, the High Self seems able in due time to force a contact—when sick or in trouble most of us pray and so open the door to help—and we return to normal. If, however, the complex is too strong, the resulting illness, or accident, may end with death. The "path" must be kept open.
Preliminary Notes:
From a number of cases of instant healing, I select the following because it illustrates so well the flow of vital force and the nature of the relation which may be had with the High Self. It is also important as a case because the individuals involved were of no particular religious belief.
The Case:
In Honolulu in the early twenties a large hotel was built. A man from the mainland was sent to put in the elevators. I became acquainted with him and found
that he had some most unusual powers. He demonstrated these to me in various ways. One demonstration agreed with the kahuna belief that a man can extend his senses along a connecting thread of shadowy body substance and find the one who is at the other end of it, then learn about him. As I had contact with the man, and, according to Huna, had made a permanent connection by way of an invisible thread or cord, it was possible for this man's trained low self to find me wherever I might be and learn what I was doing or thinking at the moment. (I explain this in terms of kahuna lore, although at that time I had yet to rediscover the mechanism of the aka threads.) For one test I arranged to be in an old house, where I had a photographic darkroom, on various nights. I was not to turn on lights or otherwise make my presence known. The man, on his part, was to visit the house after dinner each evening and use his psychic ability to tell whether or not I was there.
The test was made several times, and it worked. He would come to the door and stand there silently for a moment. If he sensed that I was inside, he would knock, otherwise he would go away. I tried once to fool him by not answering his knock, but he refused to leave, knocking repeatedly and calling out, "Open up, Long, I know you are in there and are trying to fool me, come on and open up."
This man's story is this: He had, at an earlier period in his life, a run of bad luck as an installation engineer for a large elevator manufacturing company. Men working on jobs under him were constantly being injured despite his care. At last the elevator company
discharged him. At that time he had an invalid daughter over twenty who had been bedfast for months. His wife had died a few years earlier and his daughter had kept the house. When he lost his job the times were so hard that he could not find other employment. To make matters worse, he lost his health, one ailment after another sending him to the doctor until he was compelled to remain in bed most of his time.
In desperation he tried Christian Science, faithfully reading the works of the founder and trying in all ways to follow the orders given him. Getting no results, he turned to New Thought, Unity and such other religious movements as had literature on healing.
At last, running out of funds, becoming almost completely bedfast, and quite desperate, he concluded that all religious teachings were imperfect, but that there must be a higher intelligence to which man could appeal if he could only make his appeal heard. With this in mind he spent his time and strength day after day in an endeavor to reach out and find the high intelligence.
One day he suddenly sensed the fact that he had at last contacted something. He felt an electric tingling which was sharp and short, unlike anything he had ever before experienced. Immediately he cried out for help, imploring the Something which he sensed as with him to restore his health. He cried out that he must have help at all costs, and that he was leaving his bed to demonstrate his faith by the effort. Little by little he managed to rise from the side of the bed to his feet, praying continuously. He took one uncertain step, then another. To his joy he found that he was growing miraculously stronger. His prayers turned to praise
and in a matter of minutes he seemed to be completely cured and his full strength restored.
Triumphant and thrilled at his discovery, he went to his daughter's room and told her what had happened. He urged her to try to contact the new Something. He tried to contact it again, himself, but seemed unable to do so.
Several days passed. He took up his life where he had left off, and tried almost hourly to repeat the mental processes which had enabled him to contact the Something. Soon, and again with great suddenness and with the same electric tingling, the contact was made. Instantly he began to pray frantically to the Something to heal his daughter. He rushed into her room, still praying, caught her by the hands and began pulling her to her feet. "Use your faith! Get up and show that you can!" The daughter responded, praying fervently and exerting herself to the utmost to leave her bed. As in his case, the needed strength was supplied. She rose, took a step, then another. The miracle of instant healing came to her as it had come to him. Voicing her thanks she dressed and entered a new life of health.
A few days later he again made the electric contact. He had been waiting for it and had his prayer learned by heart. Instantly he voiced it. He asked to have his former job back with the elevator construction company. Confident that his prayer would be answered, he went directly to the company office and to the man who had discharged him months before. Making no explanation of any kind, he said quietly, "I am ready for work again. Where do you need me?" The man behind the desk looked at him intently for a moment, then
took from his desk a bundle of papers which he held out to him, naming the city in which the installation job was to be done.
That was the beginning of an unbelievable career. He learned by practice to contact the Something almost at will, and never allowed a morning or evening to pass without the contact. He learned to ask to be shown any danger which lay ahead on the job, and would be warned by a strong sense of danger if there was an emergency coming up. Once having received such a warning, he would make his contact on the job and ask for guidance. Nothing came in words, but he felt urges to act in certain ways. He would find the sense of danger growing until it became almost continuous and, as he went to different parts of his jobs, the danger sense intensified around some particular place. He would station himself there, calling his trusted foreman or others to stand with him, and all would watch to prevent trouble. Accident after accident was thus caught in the nick of time and prevented.
I asked the man to let me have all details should such a danger arise and be met while he was on the Honolulu installation job. He promised, and in less than a week dropped in to see me and say that he had received a preliminary warning. The next morning, as he related afterwards, the danger sense had increased. He traced the danger spot to the top of a work elevator shaft on the roof of the new hotel. There, with his foreman and another workman who was long familiar with the warnings, he waited. Meanwhile all workmen on the job had been warned to be extra careful. Contact was made afresh and the danger came so close
that he could "almost smell it." A Filipino workman approached the head of the elevator shaft with a wheelbarrow on which had been loaded a coil of very stiff and heavy steel cable. The elevator platform was in place and the man lifted the gate. He returned to push his load onto the platform. At the instant when his barrow wheel touched the elevator platform, someone below, without ringing the warning bell, pulled the control rope and the elevator began to drop. The barrow tipped, throwing the cable coil against a part of the shaft frame and breaking the binding wire so that the cable uncoiled, lashing out like a great snake, and striking the workman from behind. He would have pitched headforemost into the elevator shaft, barrow and all, but the three watchers had already exploded into action, gripping him and his load and dragging them back to safety.
I checked on this account and had the same story from all those involved.
This man had, for a period of several years, been drawing from the company each year a very considerable premium because no men were injured on any job which he supervised. He was given the most difficult and dangerous assignments, and he never failed. His health and that of his daughter had remained excellent.
Comment:
In this case we have an example of instant healing of physical ills, also of financial troubles—healings of body and purse. The part played by the vital force is plain to see, as is the necessity of taking time to train the low self in the work of contacting the High Self. Even more important, if such a thing can be, is the fact
proved by this case that daily contact and hourly guidance may be had from the High Self IF ASKED FOR.
The kahuna theory is that we are allowed free will, and that the High Self will not interfere with our doings, no matter how we muddle our lives (except for predetermining certain vital events of life) UNLESS WE ASK IT TO COME TO OUR AID. Asking is "opening the door." The kahuna belief is that the High Self yearns over us as a parent over a wayward child, and longs to help and guide us, but is bound to keep hands off our affairs until we make the astounding discovery that there is a High Self, and that there is a way to gain its help in living.
We cannot know what law restrains the High Self from guiding our every act, but we can judge by what happens, invariably arriving at the conclusion that there must be some such law or restraint on the level of the High Self.
The story of this man who found what he called "Something" and who felt at contact an electric thrill which he called "getting the ting-a-ling," would not be complete if I failed to tell of an incident which showed plainly the part a complex plays in blocking the path of contact between the low self of a man and the High Self.
The elevator engineer became interested in photography while in Honolulu and bought a fine camera, getting instruction in its use from me and from an Australian tile-layer who worked on the building under construction. The Australian had a collection of very fine nude studies. He showed them to the elevator man and offered to give him one. The offer was accepted
and a modest enough picture selected. This picture, which was a fine example of photography, lighting, posing and tone, was placed on the dresser in the hotel room where the elevator man lived. He placed it there in the evening, and the next morning was puzzled to find that his usual contact with the Something could not be made. All day long he worried over the puzzling failure, going off alone in the new structure to try repeatedly to make contact, but without success.
That evening, upon his return to his room after a hasty dinner, his eyes chanced to fall upon the picture. He approached it questioningly, taking it up for careful examination. It was not a thing he considered wicked. It was photographic art. The picture was a thing of beauty. However, a deep suspicion grew in his mind that the picture had something to do with his puzzling failure. Taking immediate action, he returned the picture to the Australian with the explanation of what the trouble seemed to be. An hour later he was successful in making contact. He asked to be told if the picture was sinful. He got no impression of any slightest kind in reply.
In telling me of the strange affair, he pointed out that he never knew what the Something might or might not consider a sin. He could chew tobacco, and he used profanity most freely. He considered himself about as "wicked as most decent men," but experience had taught him that certain little things might most unexpectedly and inexplicably prevent his making the contact.
It is evident that in his case there was an old complex, probably from early training in sex ethics or modesty,
which remained in his low self. The nude study would have been welcomed in any art exhibition, but it served to touch off the complex even when it had not occurred to the middle self of the man that there was anything in the picture to criticize. The low self reacted to the complex and felt that the man was guilty and should be ashamed. Figuratively speaking, it hid its face like the small boy and refused to venture into the presence of its parents lest it be scolded. With the picture out of the way, the "path" of contact was again open.
Note that the picture was a physical thing. It was impressive. It could be seen and touched. It was a PHYSICAL STIMULUS, and it roused the old complex as a hundred imaginings of similar pictures could not have done. The return of the picture to the Australian was a physical stimulus sufficient to put the complex back on the mental shelf, out of the way again.
Over and over the point must be stressed that IF ONE CANNOT GET RID OF SUCH COMPLEXES AS THESE, HE MUST BOW TO THEM.
The elevator man had to give up his pretty picture. The girl who danced and drank and had the open sore on her ankle could not get rid of the early complexed belief that dancing and cocktails were a sin. She would have been wise, had she understood, to have given up dancing and drinking (for her complex was such that it was dangerously easy to re-establish) before the drastic operation became necessary.