150 Years of Healing Americas Great New Thought Healers R. L. Miller, Ph.D.

2000 Abib Publishing Company Portland, Oregon

ISBN: 0-945385-04-8 Paperback edition; 144 pages In Appreciation Every work is a product of many interacting minds and experiences; I am grateful for them all. Special thanks for this project go to: Helen Perkins for remembering, Vici Derrick and Suzan Hill for creating a context, and Bob Stensland for making it real. 150 Years of Healing is about a few great American leaders, men and women who have stepped out beyond the religious and medical expectations of their time and dared to live life in a new way. These men and womenfrom Phineas Quimby in 19th century New England to Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson in 20th Century Los Angelesare the founders and leading practitioners of Americas unique religious tradition: New Thought. Their teaching and practice is simple: our current experience is the result of assumptions and beliefs that we have held in the past; our future is a product of what we are thinking today; and we can change those thoughts. 150 Years of Healing provides an overview of their lives and practice and goes on to provide current scientific evidence and theory that explains how and why what they have done works.

INDEX FOREWORD PHINEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY

A Clockmaker Heals Himself Exploring Mesmerism Beyond Hypnosis Spiritual Understanding MARY BAKER EDDY An Invalid is Healed A Church is Born EMMA CURTIS HOPKINS Ready Students Sometimes Health Requires Moving On Teacher of Teachers The Message CHARLES AND MYRTLE FILLMORE Hearing the Word Unity Practicing Principles Myrtle Fillmores Ideas Charles Fillmores Ideas Mastering the Money Idea H. EMILIE CADY Physician, Heal Thyself Teaching Truth NONA BROOKS Seeing the Light Sharing the Way Omnipresence ERNEST HOLMES A New Science The Practice of Healing An Institution

LOUISE HAY Healing as a Way of Life AIDS and beyond . HEALING THE PLANET: BARBARA MARX HUBBARD & MARIANNE WILLIAMSON . Planet-Healing EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ACCUMULATES A New Look at Placebos A New Vision for Medicine UNDERSTANDING HOW What They All Have in Common 20th Century Science A New World View New Ways of Perceiving Cause and Effect Are Not What They Seem Consciousness and Cognition Archetypal Behaviors Managing Consciousness Relationship and Consciousness Relating as Cognitive Choice Healing Through Cognition Transforming Ourselves Putting It All Together

Foreword For two thousand years, our Western European culture has developed in the context of the works and teachings of Yshua ben Yosef of Nazareth, called by most, Jesus Christ. For most Europeans and Americans today, the miraculous
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healings ascribed to Jesus are considered either mythical impossibilities arising out of the biographers ignorance and adoration, or the result of powers unique to Jesus as the One God, incarnate. For a few hundred thousand people around the world, though, the words these things and greater shall you do, ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament, have been taken literally. For this group of people, the Gospel is more than the story of Jesus life; it is a manual for livingand healing. This is the story of the founders and leaders of that movement, the people who have dared to heal themselves and others, living and teaching a New Thought about who we really are and what we are capable of doing. More, this is an exploration of what they did and how they did it. It is an attempt to understand why hundreds of thousands of people experienced healing and relief from troubling symptoms in their presence. Recent scientific studies and theories shed useful insight on the processes and ideas that these people have used and taught over the last 150 yearsinsight that may provide a model for therapy in the future. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby A Clockmaker Heals Himself In the 1830s, tuberculosis, or consumption, as it was known then, was a common malady, whose cause and cure were not at all understood. One common treatment was calomel a compound that poisoned the patient as often as it reduced the symptoms. For Park Quimby, a clockmaker in Belfast, Maine, the combination of the disease and its cure had caused him to give up his business and all hope of recovery by his early thirties. But he had a friend who was freed from the disease, and that friend insisted he had cured himself by horseback riding. Determined to find relief, but too weak to ride, Quimby rented a carriage. A few hours out in the countryside, he indeed began to feel better, but then his horse shied and refused to pull the cart up a long, muddy hill. Still very weak, Quimby had no choice but to get out of the carriage and lead the horse to the top, which seemed impossible until a farmer obligingly helped him get the horse going again. And go, they did! The horse took off and Quimby held on to the reins, riding at a mad pace through the hills all the way back home. Once there, Quimby was amazed to find that he felt as strong as ever. He soon resumed his business, and continued it, reflecting on the hows and whys of the incident, for some years. Exploring Mesmerism

Quimby had a scientific approach to his inquiries. Having learned the clockmaking business as an apprentice, he was something of an engineer, as well. And he really wanted to understand how he had been cured of consumption. So, when in 1838, a Dr. Collyer arrived in town with a lecture and demonstration of the strange new European phenomenon called mesmerism (known today as hypnosis), Quimby was in the audience. He was fascinated, immediately began to read whatever he could on the topic, and practiced it on any willing subject. Not surprisingly in that relatively small community, he soon began to develop a reputation. One doctor, for example, wrote to a colleague that he had performed an operation using only Quimbys hypnosis as an anaesthetic, and the patient had given no sign of feeling pain. A local paper described him as a gentleman, small in stature, . . . with a power of concentration surpassing anything we have ever witnessed." It was during this period that Quimby began to work with a young man named Lucius Burkmar, who was a remarkably easy subject. Over several months, he experimented with Lucius, attempting to discover both the nature and the scope of this new technique. It seemed that Lucius, once mesmerizedthat is, in an hypnotic trancewas able to describe events and conditions that were not visible to those in the waking state. Initially, as an entertainment, Quimby would have Lucius tell people about their past, or the whereabouts and condition of someone or something dear to them but not in the room. Then, as people began to ask, Lucius began describing their illnessoften prescribing a cure. Soon, Quimby and Lucius were working with local doctors in the diagnosis and prescription of cases, with apparently considerable success. Quimby was curious about these prescriptions, however. Writing in a Portland, Maine, paper some years later, he said that sometimes Lucius would prescribe a simple herb that could do no harm or good in itself, yet the patient recovered. It seemed that any medicine would have the same effect. He began to wonder if the recovery were more a function of the patients confidence in the doctor or Lucius than of the particular treatment prescribed. The turning point for Quimby appears to have been an incident when Lucius, under hypnosis, spontaneously began to describe Quimbys own recurring pain and its cause. Quimby had a lifetime habit of pushing himself beyond his physical limits and while the consumption of his earlier years was no longer a problem, he had felt, for some time, that his kidneys were failing. The hypnotized Lucius confirmed this opinion and went further, telling him that one kidney was half gone and the other was hanging on by a string. When Quimby asked if there was a remedy, the entranced Lucius said, I can put the piece on so it will grow, and you will get well, and put his hands on Quimbys back. A
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day or two later, Lucius pronounced him well and, wrote Quimby in his manuscripts some 20 years later, from that day I have never experienced the least pain from them. Quimby was committed to understanding what had happened. Had Lucius only read his mind, telling him what he, himself, had been thinkingas Lucius had done so often with others? Was his own assessment of his condition mistaken? Had Lucius indeed done something with his hands? Was the trouble only mental in the first place? Had he simply believed what the doctors had told himand experienced increasingly severe symptoms because of their statements that they knew of no cure? He began to pay more attention to the diagnoses and cures in his work. And, after a number of cases not unlike his own, he began to mistrust doctors completely, believing that the doctors often created their patients disease through their own beliefs, with the outcome determined by their own faith in their prescriptions and the patients capacity for healing. As he worked with Lucius, Quimby became aware that, under hypnosis, the young man would often act before Quimby actually stated what he wanted. In fact, after a few experiments, Quimby began to regularly direct Lucius by concentrating on what he wantedgoing so far as to cause him to laugh by thinking of an amusing situation, or express fear by vividly imagining a ferocious animal in the room. He reached the point where anything he could give form to in his mind, Lucius would respond to. Abstract thoughts, however, were apparently not graspedat least not in a way Lucius could describe when in trance. These experiences caused Quimby to feel even more strongly that, in their own way, doctors were often creating the disease in the patient. It also caused him to denounce the increasingly popular Spiritualistson the grounds that the medium could easily be implanting the experience of spirits in those present just as he created the experience of a wild animal in Lucius mind. Beyond Hypnosis Based on all these experiments, Quimby finally came to believe that all experience is essentially mentalthat a disease is a wrong belief and a cure is the correction of that belief. His goal from that time forward was to change the mind of the patient, so that the undesirable physical condition would no longer be manifested. At that point, he stopped using mesmerism and focused on reasoning with the people who came to him, until they substituted a new belief for the old. For several years he went from town to town throughout Maine and upper New England working with patients. His pamphlet read Dr. P.

P. Quimby would respectfully announce to the citizens of ______ and vicinity, that he will be at the _________ where he will attend those wishing to consult him . . .. gives no medicine, and makes no outward applications . . . tells them their feelings and what they think is their disease . . . then his explanation is the cure; . . . This part of the pamphlet ended with The Truth is the Cure. In 1859, Quimby was working in Portland, Maine and writing frequent articles in the local paper. They all followed the same theme: disease is essentially mental. . . . an individual is to himself just what he thinks he is, and he is in his belief sick. If I believe I am sick, I am sick, for my feelings are my sickness, and my sickness is my belief in my mind. Therefore all sickness is in the mind or belief . . . . . . the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in . . . if your mind has been deceived . . . into some belief, you have put into it the form of a disease . . . By my theory or truth, I come into contact . . . and restore you to health and happiness. This I do partly mentally, and partly by talking till I correct the wrong impression and establish the Truth . . . . . . Dr Quimby, with his clairvoyant faculty, gets knowledge in regard to the phenomena, which does not come through his natural senses, and by explaining it to the patient gives another direction to the mind and the explanation is the science or the cure. Based on his letters and notes, Quimbys method appears to be simple. He sat down next to a patient, allowed himself to become completely passive and focused on the patients feelings. He then reported to the patient what he understood about them and explained to them the error of their belief, impressing on them his own belief concerning their true conditionhealth and strength. Over time sometimes several sessionspatients would begin to accept Quimbys statements in place of their previous beliefs, and their body no longer displayed the unwanted symptoms. Only if the patient required some physical action to accept his explanation did Quimby touch them or recommend an activity. Over the years, Quimbys patients numbered in the thousandshis notes indicate that he sat with 12,000 people while in Portland, some of them many times before they were free of symptoms. Among his successes were Julius Dresser, a Harvard Ph.D. and Swedenborgian minister whose son later edited and published Quimbys notes and manuscripts, Mary Baker Patterson, who later became Mary Baker Eddy, and Warren Felt Evans, the first major writer to define the New Thought movement. He also worked with people through the exchange of letters. (Since his work with mesmerism and Lucius had shown him that time and space were not relevant to the mind, he had no problem accepting the efficacy of such absent treatments.) He would write to them what he perceived about them as he held their letter of request and
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persuade them to accept a different understanding of their condition, often describing himself as being present with them through the medium of the letter. Usually, he would encourage them to find a comfortable place and read his letter several times a day for several days. Among the conditions he listed in his manuscripts as having cured are cancer, lameness, back pain, consumption, heart disease, fever, small pox, cold, brain fever, lung fever, neuralgia, and diphtheria. Although smallpox was recognized by the medical establishment as an infection, with vaccination was an accepted cure, Quimby was consistent in his approach declaring it a superstitious idea . . . Their diseases are the effect of the community . . .. In ignorance of causes people are satisfied with someones belief . . . Small-pox is a lie . . . Spiritual Understanding While having developed his approach through hypothesis and experiment and having carefully separated his healing activities from any religious dogma, Quimby nonetheless felt there was a spiritual explanation for his process. The editor of his Manuscripts, Horatio Dresser, noted that at least half of Quimbys notes were filled with references to religious problems and the Bible. In part, that was because Quimby had found that many of his patients conditions were the result of fears and beliefs bound up with religious creeds and experiences. And, in part, Quimby was himself, attempting to reconcile his experience with the faith in which he was raised. In apparent drafts of articles he wrote: God made everything good, and if there is anything wrong it is the effect of ourselves . . . . . . there is no intelligence, no power or action in matter itself . . . the spiritual world to which our eyes are closed by ignorance or unbelief is the real world, . . . in it lie all the causes for every effect visible in the natural world . . . truth which shall set men free must explain both disease and sin . . . the cure of both was Wisdom, which relates not alone to the life of the flesh, but also to the life within. . . . mans happiness is in his belief, and his misery is the effect of his belief . . . Establish this and man rises to a higher state of wisdom, not of this world. . . all human misery can be corrected by this principle . . . The sting of ignorance is death. But the Wisdom of Science is Life eternal . . . . All the religion I acknowledge is God, or Wisdom, I will not take mans belief to guide my barque [boat]. I would rather stand at the helm myself. . . . every man is part of God, just so far as he is Wisdom . . . what we call man is not man, but a shadow of error. Wisdom is the true man, and error the counterfeit. In all these statements, he seems to echo the spiritual ideas of the Transcendentalists, though theres no evidence that he
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encountered them. That group of Unitarians in Massachusetts, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman, were defining a new American ideology. And, in fact, one historian of the period has said, Dr. Quimby may be called the scientist of Transcendentalism because he demonstrated visibly on human organisms the operational validity of Emersons hypotheses. Quimby stated clearly that he believed he was doing what Jesus had tried to teach the disciples to do, but which teachings had not been passed on in the Church. He believed that Jesus knew that illness and death were a function of our individual and collective beliefs and both demonstrated and tried to teach that Wisdom. You ask if my practice belongs to any known Science. My answer is No, it belongs to Wisdom that is above man as man. The Science I try to practice is the Science that was taught eighteen hundred years ago, and has never had a place in the hearts of man since . . . He believed that false understandings of the Bible were the cause of half the diseases from which his patients suffered. So to cure, I have to show by the Bible that they have been made to believe a wrong construction. His interpretations were often allegorical: He would say that Jesus calling of the disciples, for example, caused them to abandon their netsthat is, old beliefsand their shipserrorand follow HimWisdom. P.P. Quimby died in 1866. His body, weakened by overwork and lack of rest, gave in to a serious illness when he was 64 years old. His family believed that had he been willing to limit his work, even to take some time off, he would have continued to ward off disease as he had for the preceding 30 years. His son George kept his notes and manuscripts and passed them on to the Dresser family for editing and publicationwhich was finally accomplished in 1921. Reflecting on Quimbys philosophy in his own book, Health and the Inner Life, Dresser stated: According to Mr. Quimby, it was the natural man whose life is moulded by belief. The moral of Mr. Quimby's discovery is not self-affirmation but the profoundest selfunderstanding. Man has long tended to circulate about his own little collection of beliefs. To free him from that bondage, Mr. Quimby directed man's attention to his true self. Now that true self is not mental but spiritual. It is as a son of God that one should go forth to practice the new principles, not as an agent of mere thought. Far more important than the discovery that man is susceptible to manifold hidden influences and tends to build his own little world of beliefs from within, is the fact that man is recipient of a higher wisdom and superior power. The discovery of these subtle influences enabled Mr. Quimby to explain disease to his own satisfaction, but this knowledge was not sufficient to produce the remarkable cures without which Mr. Quimby
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would never have been heard of . . .. That man is spiritual and possesses spiritual senses is of far more consequence than the proposition that "mind is spiritual matter." That the spiritual man can become open to and use spiritual power is of more consequence still; . . . Therefore [1] the fundamental consideration for Mr. Quimby was the existence of the omnipresent Wisdom, the God of peace and goodness, who created man to be sound and sane. [2] The second great principle was that of the Christ within, or the principle of divine sonship . . . . each of us is to discover the true God within our own consciousness. Most of the material on Quimby is drawn from The Quimby Manuscripts, as edited by Horatio Dresser, and from Charles Braden's Spirits in Rebellion. Quimby Manuscripts, p. 30. This was before the placebo something with no medicinal value that is given to a patient as if it were medicationwas understood. Studies have shown that a significant proportion of people (in some cases 50-60%) receiving the placebo experience relief from the symptoms. Mrs. Eddy founded the Christian Science church based in large part on what she learned from Quimby. This and other quotes are taken from The Quimby Manuscripts. S. Holmes, in New England Quarterly, Vol. XVII, quoted in Charles Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, pp. 85-88 MARY BAKER EDDY Mrs. Eddys contribution to the healing work of the New Thought movement is profound. She personally performed several hundred documented healings, and she taught her thinking and techniques to hundreds of others. Her Church of Christ, Scientist (known as Christian Science), based in Boston, has chapters all over the country, most of them with Reading Rooms in commercial districts where anyone can tap into the Christian Science literature, including The Christian Science Monitor, on a daily basis. Following her guidelines, Christian Science practitioners and nurses have accomplished thousands of well-documented healings all over the world. Yet it is, perhaps, in her opposition to anything other than her own teachings that she has most profoundly influenced this peculiarly American religious movement. Mrs. Eddy and her church have isolated themselves from all other approaches to this work. Under her direction, Christian Science members and practitioners have relied solely on Mrs. Eddys writingsmost notably her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesas the only source of understanding to be followed regarding this approach to healing. She adamantly opposed all else as misguided at best and charlatanry at worst. She was born Mary Morse Baker in Bow, New Hampshire, in July, 1821, to
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deeply religious parents. Young Mary Baker was an earnest student of the Bible. She received most of her early education at home from her brother, much of it focused on interpreting the Old and New Testaments. She later wrote: From my very childhood I was impelled, by a hunger and thirst after divine thingsa desire for something higher and better than matter, and apart from itto seek diligently for the knowledge of God as the one great and ever-present relief from human woe. She married George W. Glover in 1843, but was widowed shortly afterward. During her single years, Mary apparently was associated with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony following the First Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. She was on her own in a society that regarded women as naturally frail and prone to illness. This view, combined with the primitive and harsh medical treatments of the day, prompted women to seek alternative approaches to healthcare. Gentler therapies such as homeopathy, hygiene, and hydropathy became popular among womenespecially those taking up their right to a profession and Mary Baker Glover became a homeopathic physician Like Quimby, Mary saw early on that treatments were not quite what they seemed, as evidenced in this description of an experience during her training: A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed.... I prescribed the fourth attenuation of Argentum nitratum with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, and learning that her former physician had prescribed these remedies, I began to fear an aggravation of symptoms from their prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine while she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain.... She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets, - and receiving occasional visits from me, - but employing no other means; and she was cured. Marys practice was reasonably successful. She married again in 1853 to an itinerant dentist named Patterson and traveled with him, practicing alongside him in the small towns of New England. She, however, was not well. Chronically ill from childhood, she searched alternative therapies for a relationship between thought and physical effecta mind/body connection. At the same time, she deepened her study of the Bible for its promises of comfort and healing. An Invalid is Healed

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In 1862, Mary Baker Patterson, by then almost a total invalid, sat with Phineas Quimby. By all accounts, (and evidenced by her later activities) she experienced total recovery from her symptoms through his verbal treatments. She was delighted, and there is ample documentation that Mary Baker Patterson subsequently held well-publicized lectures on the efficacy of The Quimby Method in the towns around Maine and upper New England. According to Quimbys notes, she met with and corresponded with him many times over several years, studying his system. In 1866, a spinal injury, occasioned by a fall on an icy street, left Mrs. Patterson "in a very critical condition," according to an account in the Lynn Reporter. According to the Dressers journals, she immediately sought out Quimby for assistance and ended up coming to the Dressers when she found he had died. This time, she was healed by working not only with the healer, but also with her own inner process, relying heavily on the Bible as a source of inspiration and guidance. She recovered fully and went forward to teach and heal others. Although she had relied heavily on his thoughts and approach, Eddy eventually rejected Quimby's healing method, because through her own experience, she came to believe that healing came through the power of God, not the human mind. (Apparently Quimby had not shared with her his own ideas on the subject.) She attributed this belief, and the discovery of her new Science, to the spiritual revelation she had while reading the Bible in 1866 during her convalescence from the fall. She asserted that her quick recovery, and the restoration of her health in general, resulted from her understanding of the spiritual truths that formed the basis of Jesus' healing ministry. It was in Massachusetts, in February, 1866... that I discovered the Science of divine metaphysical healing which I afterwards named Christian Science. The discovery came to pass this way. During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon. My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so. Even to the homeopathic physician who attended me, and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the modus of my relief. I could only assure him that the divine Spirit had wrought the miracle - a miracle which later I found to be in perfect scientific accord with divine law." She spent the next few years studying Biblical healing and testing what she was learning by healing "incurable" cases. She named her discovery Christian Science and began to teach it to others. An account of one of her
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healings was attested by Margaret E. Harding from Lynn, Massachusetts: Sometime during...1866 Mrs. Norton drove her young son, George, to Lynn beach for a day's outing. At the time, George was about seven years of age and had been carried on a pillow since birth, having been born with a deformity commonly known as club feet, both feet being turned backward, and consequently he had never walked. Mrs. Norton laid the child upon the pillow on the sand and left him alone while she hitched the horse and went for water. On her return shortly the child had disappeared and the mother searched bewilderedly about only to find him down by the water and walking with a woman holding his hands, which she released a moment later and George stood alone. Later he took a few steps and from that time was able to walk. The strange woman and the mother both looked into each other's eyes a little and thanked God for this seemingly miraculous healing. I need not add that the strange lady was Mrs. Mary B. Glover, who afterwards became Mrs. Eddy, and the founder of Christian Science. Mary experienced considerable success and became an important part of the alternative healing community in the region, dominated by women at that time. She described some of her experiences in her books. About the year 1869, I was wired to attend the patient of a distinguished Md., the late Dr. Davis of Manchester, N.H. The patient was pronounced dying of pneumonia, and was breathing at intervals in agony. Her physician, who stood by her bedside, declared that she could not live. On seeing her immediately restored by me without material aid, he asked earnestly if I had a work describing my system of healing. When answered in the negative, he urged me immediately to write a book which should explain to the world my curative system of metaphysics. Through four successive years I healed, preached, and taught in a general way, refusing to take any pay for my services and living on a small annuity. At one time I was called to speak before the Lyceum Club, at Westerly, Rhode Island. On my arrival my hostess told me that her next-door neighbor was dying. I asked permission to see her. It was granted, and with my hostess I went to the invalid's house. The physicians had given up the case and retired. I had stood by her side about fifteen minutes when the sick woman rose from her bed, dressed herself, and was well. Afterwards they showed me the clothes already prepared for her burial.... This scientific demonstration so stirred the doctors and clergy that they had my notices for a second lecture pulled down, and refused me a hearing in their halls and churches. During the 1870s Mary taught her religious system in Lynn, Massachusetts. She had one
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student in her first class, but was clearly well known in the community. I was called to visit Mr. Clark in Lynn, who had been confined to his bed six months with hip-disease, caused by a fall upon a wooden spike when quite a boy. On entering the house I met his physician, who said that the patient was dying.... I went to his bedside. In a few moments his faced changed; its death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids closed gently and the breathing became natural; he was asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his eyes and said: 'I feel like a new man. My suffering is all gone...' I told him to rise, dress himself, and take supper with his family. He did so. The next day I saw him in the yard. Since then I have not seen him, but am informed that he went to work in two weeks. The discharge from the sore stopped, and the sore was healed. A Church is Born In 1873, happily settled in Lynn, Mary Baker divorced Dr. Patterson. Then, in 1875, the first version of her most important book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, was published. The preface sets the tone for the work: Theology and physics teach that both Spirit and matter are real and good, whereas the fact is that Spirit is good and real, and matter is Spirit's opposite. . . . Sickness has been combated for years by doctors using material remedies, but the question arises, is there less sickness because of these practitioners? A vigorous No is the response. The author has not compromised conscience By thousands of wellauthenticated cases of healing, she and her students have proved the worth of her teachings these mighty works are not supernatural but supremely natural. In 1877, Mary Baker married Asa Eddy, a follower of her new religion. In 1879 she obtained a state charter for the Church of Christ, Scientist. She opened the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston in 1882 to provide systematic training in her doctrine. The College taught studentsboth women and mento practice healing and to teach others. The college was closed in 1889 and was later replaced by the church's Board of Education. Having a healing practice provided independence and a selfsufficient income for many women in a time when most were dependent on the men around them, making Mrs. Eddy very popular among members of the emerging suffragette movement. Her students were taught to rely solely on the Bible and her own Science and Health for inspiration and understanding. Using these tools and deep prayer, Christian Science Practitioners were taught to treat those who came to them for any physical, emotional, or financial
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difficulties. By this point, Mrs. Eddy consistently denied having had anything to do with Quimby, saying that the technique developed by that mesmerist had nothing in common with her own revelation, and that anyone who followed his ideas was teaching falsehoods. They regard the human mind as a healing agent, whereas mind is not a factor in the Principle of Christian Science. This denial has caused more than a little distress in the movement and contributed to the isolation of the Christian Scientist churches from other New Thought schools and churches. In 1892 Mary reorganized the church in Boston, creating a central administration for the rapidly growing movement, and renamed it The First Church of Christ, Scientist, familiarly The Mother Church. Christian Science church services were based on readings from the Bible with Mrs. Eddys commentary from Science and Health and, on Wednesday evenings, were supplemented by testimonials of individuals who had experienced relief from symptoms. Medical doctors were to be avoided completely, and special Christian Science facilities were built, with licensed nurses and practitioners, to permit her followers to be treated without medical intervention. If the disciple is advancing spiritually, he constantly turns away from material sense and looks toward the imperishable things of Spirit Jesus taught the way of Life by demonstration Through demonstrating his control over sin and disease He worked for their guidance, that they might demonstrate this power as he did and understand its divine Principle Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul. The theories I combat are these: 1) that all is matter; 2) that matter originates in Mind and is as real as Mind, possessing intelligence and life. When Mrs. Eddy retired she left management of the church to a board of directors, who govern under guidelines established in her Manual of The Mother Church (1895, final revision 1908). She maintained a role in church affairs as pastor emeritus until shortly before her death. Following her retirement from the church, Eddy founded the Christian Science Publishing Society in 1898 and organized and edited various Christian Science publications. In 1908 she launched the Christian Science Monitor, still a highly regarded international daily newspaper. Among her other writings are Christian Healing (1886), the autobiographical Retrospection and Introspection (1891), Unity of Good (1887), and Miscellaneous Writings (1896). Today, the Church continues to practice what Mary Baker Eddy taught. From the Christian Science (MBE) web site, we read: Christian Science healing comes through scientific prayer, or spiritual communion with God. It is specific treatment. Such
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prayer recognizes a patient's direct access to God's love and discovers more of the consistent operation of God's law of health and wholeness on his behalf. It knows God, or divine Mind, as the only healer. It brings the transforming action of the Christ, the idea of divine Love, to the patient's consciousness. A transformation or spiritualization of a patient's thought changes his condition (see Science and Health, p. 194:6). Christian Science treatment and medical treatment proceed from opposite standpoints. Christian Science is based on the laws of God that all cause and effect are spiritual. Medicine primarily deals with matter as both cause and cure. To try to heal from opposite systems may be unfair to the patient and could be counterproductive to healing. A Christian Science nurse is an experienced Christian Scientist prepared to provide skillful physical care and spiritual reassurance consistent with the theology of Christian Science. Christian Science nursing does not include any form of medical treatment, such as diagnosing, drugs, or therapy. It does include practical bedside care, such as bathing, dressing wounds, turning, lifting, modification of food, etc. Anyone who is depending solely on God for healing and who is applying the principles of Christian Science, as explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, may engage a nurse at home or go to a Christian Science nursing facility. Practiced effectively for more than 100 years in some families, Christian Science has been a means of healing and care for five generations. During the past 112 years, more than 50,000 authenticated testimonies of healing have been published in the monthly and weekly Christian Science periodicals. Many of these have medical verification. In addition, thousands of accounts of healing are given each week at Wednesday testimony meetings in Christian Science churches around the world. The exclusive reliance on Mrs. Eddys form of Christian Science principles and on Christian Science Practitioners required of church members has been a great source of controversy over the last century, among both the medical and the legal professions. Today, there are several court cases in process around the country having to do with parents rights to withhold medical treatment for their children, in favor of Christian Science practices. Mary Eddy clearly felt the need to isolate and defend herself, her church, and her ideas. Nonetheless, her extension of Quimbys approach and her language describing her own experience have had a major influence on those who followed. Much of the biographical data is taken from the Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000 from Retrospection and Introspection, p. 31. Mary
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apparently attended the famous Seneca Falls conference, at which the Womens Suffrage movement was launched in the U.S. One of the outcomes of that conference was a declaration of womens rights to develop a profession. Theres some evidence that the use of corsets, which greatly reduce lung capacity and distort internal organs, may have been a factor in this perception. from Science and Health, p. 156 from Retrospection & Introspection, p. 24 Christian Healer, p. 43 from The First Church of Christ Scientist and Miscellany, p. 105 from Retrospection & Introspection, p. 40 from Science and Health, p. 192 from the Preface to Science and Health. From Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the chapters: Atonement and Eucharist and Science of Being. Emma Curtis Hopkins Ready Students When Quimby passed on, he left no successor. However, Julius Dresser and his wife, who had been his patients, took his notes and set up as mental healers using his system. They worked directly from Quimbys notes, seeing individual patients with some success, for many years. In 1883, they began to teach classes, based on those notes, calling them The Quimby System of Mental Treatment of Diseases. Many of their students were patients who, having been healed, wanted to understand how it was done. Some were former (or rejected) students of Mary Baker Eddy, through whom the Dressers came to understand that the system Quimby had called Christian Science was being taught by her as a personal revelation. The Dressers responded to her claims with a circular: . . . [It is] natural and right to be well, and the simple truth understood and applied destroys the error of disease. There is a truth not generally known, the understanding of which tends to avoid sickness and leads to health and happiness. It is no man's belief; it is an eternal truth. One student of Mrs. Eddys who apparently read that circular was Emma Hopkins. Having participated in the Christian Science practitioner class of December, 1883, she was, by September of 1884, appointed the editor of the Christian Science Journal. Although theres no clear account of what happened, piecing together a few references from later issues gives us a hint. From Mrs. Eddys writings, it looks as if Emma was in some sort of difficulty when she took that first class, and, it appears, began working on the Journal in lieu of paying tuition. Being an able thinker and ready reader, she probably shone in that work, and was quickly promoted to the editorship.

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Sometimes Health Requires Moving On That Emma thought highly of her teacher during this period is made clear by the tone of her articles and editorials, one of them praising Mrs. Eddy as late as September, 1885. But she made the mistake of reading other metaphysical writers (and referring to them in the Journal), which practice was not acceptable in Mrs. Eddys church. By the next issue, she had been summarily dismissed as editor. There is no record describing the event or her reaction to it, but it cannot have been pleasant. To have been on a path and suddenly be shifted off it is always a challenge. But Emma practiced what she wroteand soon began to teach it, as well. In the years to come her sweet spirit of charity . . . with never a word of criticism of any sect or any school would become a model for many. Spring of 1886 found Mrs. Emma Hopkins in Chicago, setting up on her own to teach the principles and practices of this method, Popularly known as Christian Science. (Mrs. Eddy was not pleased, and wrote several articles against her teachings over the next few years, declaring her incapable of teaching Christian Science and lumping her with the Dressers as spreading false compendiums of my system.) In time, Emma began to receive patients, advertising in the Chicago papers and inviting a select few to stay in her home for board and treatment. She also gave public lectures on various topics of Christian Science. In 1887, she opened the Christian Science Theological Seminary in Chicago, with a board of directors and faculty, and daily healing services. Its statement of purpose included the following: The Bibles of all times and nations are compared; their miracles are shown to be the result of one order of reasoning, and the absence of miracles shown to be the result of another order of reasoning . . . . We perceive there is one judgment in all mankind alike. It is restored by the theology taught here. With its restoration we find health, protection, wisdom, strength, prosperity. Later that year, she began a series of lectures in other cities around the country, the first of many such tours. That she was a beloved teacher in San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Kansas City, as well as Chicago, is well documented. In later years, she worked in London, as well. Teacher of Teachers Initially, Emma called her classes Christian Science, as had Quimby and Eddy before her. Later, she began to use the term Higher Mysticism to describe her work. Under whatever name she used, though, she was remarkable. In an article in Modern Thought announcing one of her classes in Kansas City, she is described as Undoubtedly the most successful teacher
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in the world, her instruction not only gives understanding to the student by which he can cure the ills of himself and others, but in many instances those who enter her classes confirmed invalids come out at the end of the course perfectly well. . . . all who listen to her are filled with new life. Successful, indeed. Though she made it a point not to speak of her successes, her classes touched far more lives than even those who attended the lectures could imagine. Virtually all of the founders of New Thought schools and churches were Emma Hopkins students. In San Francisco, her 250 member classes included Melinda Cramer, who with Nona Brooks of Pueblo, Colorado, founded the Church and School of Divine Science, which later ordained the popular writer and New York minister, Emmet Fox (to whom Norman Vincent Peale attributed much of his understanding). In Kansas City, the classes included Myrtle and Charles Fillmore, who went on to found the Unity School of Practical Christianity, with its worldwide ministries of Silent Unity, Unity churches, and the monthly reader, Daily Word. Attending classes in New York was Emilie Cady, the physician who wrote Lessons in Truth, which has become the fundamental text for Unity students around the world. Even Religious Science, founded in the 1930s, is based in part on Emmas teachings, for Ernest Holmes managed to persuade her to work with him in the last years before her passing in 1925. We know little of her past or her private life, but in all her work, one thing is clear: Mrs. Hopkins was remarkably well read and comfortable with a wide range of classical and early historical philosophies. For example: Plotinus (A.D. 250) lost himself seven times in a trance of ecstasy by thinking over the word God in his mind. The use of the word by Plotinus, Porphyry, and Spinoza did not solve the mystery of life for them, however Jesus Christ had quite a different idea from these men, In my name preach the gospel, in my name heal the sick. It has been taught from the remotest times that we have the Name stored within us as concealed energy. The Zend-Avesta tells us that it is by the Divine Word that the sick are most surely cured. Cornelius Agrippa of Cologne (1486), ascribed to numbers an efficacy. But no mathematician is a healer because of his mathematics. He must use the Healing Word, or the reasoning which brings down somewhat of the power of the Healing Word. Her supporters suggest she was something of a genius, saying that at 15, having entered Woodstock Academy in Connecticut as a new student, Emma Curtis was appointed to the faculty within the year.

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The Message Emma had developed a system for presenting her material, based on what she called the twelve doctrines of Jesus Christ which she later compiled in a book, Scientific Christian Mental Practice. Her goal in all was that each student (or reader) would Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). In her teachings, the first doctrine, or lesson, is called The Statement of Being. Hopkins says, The first lesson in Truth is the word God. She tells us that most people have an inadequate understanding of the nature of the divine, as indicated by the use of the term God. She tells us not to be confused by Jesus use of the phrase in my name: . . . that Name . . . is certainly not the word God, for these men who used that word continually were not mighty healers. . . . The first lesson finds out what your mind is seeking and names it. . . . The naming of what the mind of the whole world is seeking is the foundation thought . . . It is the GOOD. . . . . . . the Good which you are seeking is your God. . . . The Good which you are seeking created you. . . . The honest statement that My Good is my God has the power . . . The first name of God is Good, and the first name of Good is God. There is Good for me and I ought to have it, says the unconscious instinct . . . When you look at the worm . . . the drunkard, or miser, you will say he is seeking his Good. His heart will be better satisfied the instant you speak . . . If he should say so, his life would come nearer to being a satisfying one. To acknowledge God is to admit we are seeking our Good. It is well to give one day a week to acknowledging that we are seeking for our Good. . . . When you speak for yourself you speak for the world. . . . You can name your Good as free health. . . . The moment you feel this truth, and speak it, . . . You catch a new breath of health and your neighbor catches a new breath of health. Sometimes when you say to the sick man, mentally, that the Good he is seeking is his God, and God is free health, he will get well in five minutes. . . . Mind speaking truth through the lips, or thinking Truth consciously, can bring all the satisfaction to the world which the world is seeking. No material process can bring health. By a metaphysical process health will quicken and thrill mankind. Another name for God is support. . . . It is not Truth to say that man depends on any kind of work for his support. His work is not the Good he is seeking. He must tell the Truth and God will work for him. Support is another name for substance. All metaphysicians have called God the One Substance. . . . If you name
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your Good, do not fail to say: My Good is my unlimited support, my unfailing support. The Good will soon bring you marvelous support . . . your old business will not be interesting to you. It will leave you, yet you will have your living. By and by you will have great and wonderful miracles of support come to you. . . . . . . Metaphysicians, in tracing the cause of evil conditions, have all agreed that fear of evil is the only evil. . . . in every place where we proclaim that defense, there is the Good we are seeking. . . . God is our love. . . . Love is another name for life. . . . Do not forget to say The Good I am seeking is Love. How shall we get hold of our Good? Not by working with our hands, for countless ages of labor have failed. . . . The Jesus Christ method brings the fulfillment of all our expectations. . . . To expect Good and to be very definite in the mind that it IS coming, is to see it coming. . . . The word Good is the only word that can make all things. . . . Let the magic name Good be the name of all names in your mind. It is the name that Jesus Christ comes to be understood by. . . . The Statement of Being was continually in the mouth of Jesus Christ. Let it be in your mouth also. . . . Expect to see it work quickly. Truth is not slow. . . . With Truth, all is NOW. Truth does not have to make things new for you. In Truth it was so from the beginning . . . All Truth is waiting for you to say plainly what is your Good. The speaking out continuously what we have felt and thought intuitively, is the first movement toward demonstration, toward manifestation, toward satisfaction. . . . These excerpts summarize the first, foundation lesson in Emma Hopkins classes. From there she went on to explain the use of denials of illusions and affirmations of Truth. She explained that Faith is in the expectation of the Good, the realization of the Truth in spite of any temporary illusions. Our way of believing deep down in our convinced mind is our faith. We are sure to speak out from that faith. If we . . . do not quite believe that the health principle is most powerful and yet we keep on talking for health and will not admit that we are afraid of the sickness, we surely will find our faith coming around to the side of omnipotent health. . . . If . . . everything seems against us and everything hurts us greatly, we must put great vehemence into our saying, I do not believe in sickness, I believe in health. I do not believe, or think, that misfortune has any power whatsoever. I believe in prosperity and success. Drawing heavily on the Bible as well as historical philosophers and well-chosen anecdotes, Emma broke through old, culturally accepted, expectations and planted in the student new ideas about the reality of being. . . . our reasonings based on the premise of matter being real, are not enduring . . . The sixth lesson . . . is all about
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the quickening power of the Spirit in understanding. . . . We speak of that Spirit within ourselves which is exactly like His Spirit, and of it we say, I understand the Secret of Jesus Christ. . . . We abide in the light by acknowledging only our Christ nature. We are torn in the conflict of change, and ups and downs, by acknowledging two natures. We abide in the darkness by yielding to the idea that we are matter and intellect. . . . Spirit is all in all and the only Reality. . . . As Spirit I perceive that all is Good. In her references to the Bible, Emma used a metaphorical interpretation. This practice was based in part on the fact that Hebrew is a language of images and multiple meanings, and in part on the realization that inspired writing is always communicating at the unconscious, as well as the conscious, level. Her approach was developed even further by her student, Charles Fillmore. Like most masters of metaphysics, Emma chose not to document her life. She believed that talking about her practice would weaken it. She even avoided writing down her teachings for many years, until, toward the end of her life, she realized she was being recorded anyway. Then she selected and formulated the most effective combination of words and ideas for calling forth the experience her students would need to be effective. This material comes from H.W. Dressers Health and the Inner Life. There is no definitive biography and no known autobiography for Emma Curtis Hopkins. This material is extracted from Charles Bradens Spirits in Rebellion. Vol. 1, No. 7, as quoted in Charles Braden, Spirits in Rebellion. Scientific Christian Mental Practice, ch.1. from the Foreword to Scientific Christian Mental Practice. This experience, however, was not all that unusual at the time, when many bright teens were appointed teachers for the primary students while pursuing their own studies. This description of Emma Hopkins teachings is taken from her book Scientific Christian Mental Practice. From Scientific Christian Mental Practice, pp. 17-27 p. 90 pp. 130-131. Ursula LeGuin says, in an essay in Language of the Night, the language of the arts speaks from unconscious to unconscious in a way that is understood. In The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, which all Unity students are encouraged to use whenever they read the Bible. Charles and Myrtle Fillmore Hearing the Word In the late 19th Century, Middle America was flourishing economically. The railroads were bringing people and goods beyond anyones expectationbut, somehow, the churches were not filling the spiritual hunger of the people. During those years a tradition of lay-led meetings and church societies was
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established that became one of the defining characteristics of life in the Midwest through the 1950s. It was in that context that one of Emma Hopkins students came to speak in Kansas City, Missouri. And it was in that culture that Silent Unity and the Unity School of Practical Christianity was founded. [30] Charles Fillmore was a self-made man. Coming from a broken home, he went to work on the railroads at an early age. During those years, he injured a leg so badly that it was shrunkenrequiring him to walk with a crutch or cane. No longer able to work as a laborer, he went into real estate. He met with some success in Pueblo, Colorado, where he and his wife met the Brooks sisters (who later founded the Church of Divine Science with Melinda Cramer). Then, when the boom wore out in Pueblo, he moved his family to Kansas City. Things went well there too until, again, the market busted and he and his wife Myrtle were left struggling. Myrtle Fillmore was the collegeeducated daughter of a family with a history of consumption, which we call tuberculosis. She was well read and opinionateda strong woman for the timesuntil the family illness struck and she was weakened by its symptoms. Nothing they tried seemed to help, and the downturn in their finances was aggravating the condition. Then a friend recommended that the couple go listen to the lectures of Dr. E. B. Weeks, whom Emma Hopkins had sent to teach in Kansas City. While Charles found nothing useful in the talk, Myrtle heard one sentence that, she said in later years, turned her life around: I am a child of God, and therefore I do not inherit sickness. Although it took nearly two years for the healing to be complete, Myrtle was sure from that moment that she would be healed. She was a changed person and people around her wanted to know what had made the difference. She began sharing her new insight and understanding, and others began to experience healings as a result. In a matter of months, she had established a reputation in the area as a healer and teacher. In her own words: I was once an emaciated little woman, upon whom relatives and doctors had placed the stamp "T.B." And this was only one of the ailmentsthere were others considered beyond help, except possibly the changing of structures through an operation. There were family problems too. We were a sickly lot, and came to the place where we were unable to provide for our children. In the midst of all this gloom, we kept looking for the way out, which we felt sure would be revealed. It was! The light of God revealed to usthe thought came to me firstthat life was of God, that we were inseparably one with the Source, and that we inherited from the divine and perfect Father. What that revelation did to me at first was not apparent to the senses. But it held my mind above negation, and I began to claim my birthright and to act as though I believed myself the child of God, filled with His life. I
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gained. Others saw that there was something new in me. They asked me to share it. I did. Others were healed, and began to study. My husband continued his business, and at first took little interest in what I was doing. But after a time he became absorbed in the study of Truth too. Charles, the businessman, took over a year to be convinced, but the evidence of his own wifes increasing health and that of those she worked with began to bring him around. They began to study with another of Emmas students, Joseph Adams, and in time, left their children with a relative for a few weeks and went to Chicago to study with Emma, herself. At that point, Charles began applying the principles to his own withered leg, and felt considerable improvement as a result. Unity By 1889, these ideas were the center of the Fillmores life. Charles continued to maintain his real estate business, but his heart, and much of his time, was devoted to these teachings. He launched the magazine Modern Thought, in which he wrote about all the metaphysical schools as forms of a new, Christian, Science, referring to Mrs. Eddys Christian Science as one of many. During these years, Myrtles success with her neighbors led her to the conviction that it was possible to bring about healing at a distance. So, in 1890, she launched Silent Unity. Initially, it was a group of Kansas City residents (Myrtle and a few neighbors and friends) who had agreed to meet in silent communion every night at ten oclock all those who are in trouble, sickness, or poverty, and who sincerely desire the help of the Good Father. She invited the readers of the magazine, Modern Thought, to join the group, and sit in a quiet retired place if possible, at the hour of ten . . . for not less than fifteen minutes, and hold in silent thought the words that shall be given every month . . . in the magazine. Silent Unity was a quick success. Letters poured in from people seeking help. The hour was changed from 10 p.m. to 9, to make it easier for people to gather and participate, and Charles and Myrtle began responding to the letters they received, providing counsel and advice. People were invited to form their own prayer groups, starting with as few as two people, for Two persons in perfect harmony will do more than a hundred in discord. And still, today, people all over the world meet in Unity prayer circles or sit quietly at home and repeat the months Silent Unity prayer. At Unity Village, a prayer team works 24 hours a day for the good of all who call or write and ask for support. About 150 people are needed to respond to the many requests. The Fillmores worked closely with other metaphysical groups in the area, sharing offices and developing a library. They began holding
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informal, participatory, prayer-and-song gatherings on Sunday afternoons and evenings (so as not to interfere with regular church) at which different metaphysical leaders would speak. And they invited speakers from out of town, including Emma Hopkins. In 1893 they went to the Chicago Worlds Fair and the World Parliament of Religions, with its concurrent New Thought Congress. They participated in the International Divine Science meeting there in 1895, as well. By 1898 the donations from their spiritual activities were large enough to support the family, so Charles finally gave up his real estate business, and in 1905 the organization built their own building in Kansas Cityusing what was left of Charles resources to finance it. The building included a vegetarian lunchroom, a meeting hall, and offices. Employees could count on ample coffee and tea and free seconds at the nominally priced meals. They also were provided recreational facilities. By the end of World War I, it was clear that more space was needed. The Fillmores sons worked with them to find and develop a small farm outside of Kansas City, in the town of Lees Summit. Through gifts and volunteer efforts, that farm has since grown to 1300 acres, with a seven-story office tower, printing facilities, residences, a swimming pool, golf course, tennis courts, picnic places, and a hotel for students to stay in while taking courses. Its incorporated as Unity Village, and is the home of Unity Press, publishers of Unity magazine, the Daily Word, and numerous books, the Unity Association of Churches, Silent Unity, and a flourishing school for students, ministers and teachers from around the world. Practicing Principle With the formation of Silent Unity, Charles and Myrtle had turned a corner in their lives. From this point forward, they understood religion not as something separate from daily life, but integral to it. The important thing in their life was seeking, sharing, and living by Truth, wherever it might be found. They studied the Bible diligently, and Charles developed his Metaphysical Bible Dictionary as a tool to understand the allegorical meaning behind the surface stories. They were also open to other teachings. They met with Yogananda and Krishnamurti, read the Vedas and The Quran, and Charles was well acquainted with developments in atomic physics, even writing a book on the subject. They spent a minimum of 30 minutes a day in prayer and meditationas they recommended to all who came to them. This silence or stillness was a source of Wisdom and Peace for them, and they knew all could benefit from that daily practice. Both of them wrote and taught and they worked with individuals seeking help. Their classes were held in Kansas City
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and Colorado, and by correspondenceat first for ones own spiritual unfoldment, then later to train teachers and ministers. Their books and collected writings comprise dozens of volumes and continue to form the bulk of publications sold through the Unity Press. Besides the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, Charles Twelve Powers of Man and Christian Healing continue to be important resources for Unity students, teachers, and ministers. Myrtle Fillmores Ideas Myrtles writings were the letters she sent to the many people asking for help or offering thanks. Some of these were published in a book, Myrtle Fillmores Healing Letters. In one letter she responds to a close co-worker: You call me the mother of Unity! Well, now, I know of nothing that would give me greater joy than to feel that God could work so perfectly through me But in reality, I feel that I am only the soul who caught the first vision of this ministry, and who nurtured that vision until others came along It is my great joy to perceive somewhat of the mother side of Godthe divine love that never fails and that is equal to the drawing of souls to itself. It is my prayer to be able to radiate the qualities of this divine love to all. You too are the mother of Unity, because in your heart you have the same ideals, and the same great generous spirit, and the endless and tireless service, and the love that never fails! The mother of Unity is the universal mother. How happy we are, to represent this mother! And, as the letter proceeds it includes rare, personal insight into Myrtles experience and thought. I work here every day, and receive a salary, just as several hundred other workers do. I think a very capable businessman or woman would not consider working for this salary. But it meets my personal needs; and usually I have a little each week with which to do what my heart prompts. we have always had to launch out on faith without visible evidence of the ultimate success. We know that God is in His work, and that it is the Spirit of God operative in a given service that provides whatever is required in doing that work. I'm going to tell you a secret: I don't get to keep house as much as I should like. I'm not supposed to have time for itfolks demand so much of my time. So I have a woman to keep house for us. But do you know, I like to carry the dishes away from the table at the close of the meal; and make a nice hot suds and wash the dishes, wipe them, and put them away in nice rows in the china closet! So if sometimes you find yourself doing work that isn't supposed to be desirable, remember that there are other good folks doing the same sort of work, and that
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still others would like to be doing it, even though circumstances have placed them at something else. Whatever you undertake, do it the very best you can. Folks will note your good work, and soon you will be given more important positions. I often think that we are all in too much of a rush trying to do too much, and failing to discern and do the things that would mean most. So much that we think and do, surely, would not be done by one in the Jesus Christ consciousness. Like her teacher, Emma Hopkins, Myrtle Fillmore was committed to a mystical relationship with the power she called God. I know that God would not have me struggle with unknown things, or talk of that which I have not proved. I realize that that which God would have me do God inspires in me, that it is very easy to do God's will, and that when I thus conduct myself, a great peace and friendliness comes and abides. We must have quiet and opportunity for inward searching, for we must go beyond what we have heretofore attained. There is nothing in hearsay or in observation or in the evidence of the senses, apart from spiritual discernment, that can take us beyond our present footing. Myrtles religious background was, she felt, a hindrance to her life in the early years. I was very religiously trained and suffered a lot from the theology taught But I am rejoicing in the doctrine of our wise and loving heavenly Father who chooses that none shall perish but that all shall have eternal life. Part of Myrtles practice was to limit the things she owned. Know this, dear, that I know I must be beautiful within, and in my fellowship with others, and in my sharing with them the good things of life if I am to become beautiful without. Anything that makes me have the feeling of selfishness cannot result in more beauty to me. Anything that awakens in me the loving desire to have others happy and adorned with beautiful things, and anything that helps me to express this loving desire in my living is sure to bring forth its fruit in my life. Now, I am sure that you understand, and approve my passing on to another the use of the beautiful gift that you with so much love sent to me. You did mean for me to use it in the way it would give me most joy, didn't you? Charles Fillmores Ideas If Myrtle was the relationship side of this couple, Charles was the idea side. Throughout his writings, Charles held to a few basic principles. These were based on his interpretation of the Bible, in the light of the understanding he gained working with Emma Hopkins. First among these is that thought
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expressed as the spoken word creates our experience according to a fundamental, divine law of the universe. Every idea originating in Divine Mind is expressed in the mind of man; through the thought of man the Divine Mind idea is brought to the outer plane of consciousness. Following the creative law in its operation from the formless to the formed, we can see how an idea fundamental in Divine Mind is grasped by the man ego, how it takes form in his thought, and how it is later expressed through his spoken word. If in each step of this process he conformed to the divine creative law, mans word would make things instantly, as Jesus made the increase of the loaves and fishes. But since he has lost, in a measure, knowledge of the steps in this creative process from the within to the without, there are many breaks and abnormal conditions, with more failures than successes in the products. However, every word has its effect, though unseen and unrecognized. A weak thought is followed by words of weakness. Through the law of expression and form, words of weakness change to weakness the character of everything that receives them. . . . Talking about nervousness and weakness will produce corresponding conditions in the body; on the other hand, sending forth the word of strength and affirming poise will bring about the desired strength and poise. . . . The usual conversation among people creates ill health instead of good health, because of wrong words. Charles second principle is that the Bible is to be understood as metaphor or allegory more effectively than as literal accounts or fact. Over and over again, he would state that a high place or mountain was a reference to a higher state of consciousness, or that a storm or flood was a reference to our internal storms and floods when we lose sight of Truth, or God. For example, When Moses was instructed by the Lord to furnish the tabernacle, the command was, See . . . that thou make all things according to the pattern that was shown thee in the mount. The mount is the place of high understanding in mind, which Jesus called the kingdom of God within us. The wise metaphysician resolves into ideas each mental picture, each form and shape seen in visions, dreams, and the like. The idea is the foundation, the real; when understood and molded by the power of the word, it creates or recreates the form at the direction of the individual I AM. . . . Esau represents the natural man. Jacob represents the intellectual man supplanting Esau; hence Jacob is called the supplanter. Historically, he seems a trickster, taking advantage of those of less wisdom, but this incident merely shows how the higher principle appropriates the good everywhere. Imagination
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was the leading faculty in Jacobs mind. He dreamed of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. This is prophecy of union between Spirit and body; . . . Farther along in his development Jacob awakened all his faculties, represented by his twelve sons. Next, there are twelve qualities, or powers in humanity, as illustrated by the twelve sons of Jacob (the tribes of Israel) and the twelve disciples of Jesus. Each of these powers, Fillmore believed, corresponded to what the Hindus call chakras or energy centers in the body. The following outline gives a list of the Twelve, the faculties that they represent, and the nerve centers at which they preside: FaithPetercenter of brain. StrengthAndrewloins. Discrimination or JudgmentJames, son of Zebedeepit of stomach. LoveJohnback of heart. PowerPhiliproot of tongue. ImaginationBartholomewbetween the eyes. Understanding Thomasfront brain. WillMatthewcenter front brain. Order James, son of Alphaeusnavel. ZealSimon the Cananaeanback head, medulla. Renunciation or EliminationThaddaeusabdominal region. Life ConserverJudasgenerative function. The physiological designations of these faculties are not arbitrarythe names can be expanded or changed to suit a broader understanding of their full nature. For example, Philip, at the root of the tongue, governs taste; he also controls the action of the larynx, as well as all vibrations of power throughout the organism. So the term "power" expresses but a small part of his official capacity. Like the other faculties, faith has a center through which it expresses outwardly its spiritual powers. Physiologists call this center the pineal gland, and they locate it in the upper brain. . . . The physiologist sees the faculties as brain cells, the psychologist views them as thought combinations, but the spiritual-minded beholds them as pure ideas, unrelated, free, all-potential. . . . Peter (faith), James (judgement), and John (love) were the three disciples who were very close to Jesus, and they are more prominent in His history than any of the other disciples. This indicates that these three faculties are developed in advance of the others, also that they are closely associated. Another of Charles major principles was the importance of Love as the divine idea of unity and its expression as both natural and essential for the healthy functioning of any body or group. Among the faculties of the mind, love is pivotal. Its center of mentation in the body is the cardiac plexus. The physical representative of love is the heart, the office of which is to equalize the circulation of blood in the body. As the heart equalizes the life flow in the body, so love harmonizes the thoughts of
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the mind. . . . We connect our soul forces with whatever we center our love upon. If we love the things of sense or materiality, we are joined or attached to them through a fixed law of being. In the divine order of being, the soul, or thinking part, of man is joined to its spiritual ego. If it allows itself to become joined to the outer or sense consciousness, it makes personal images that are imitations. . . . One should make it a practice to meditate regularly on the love idea in universal Mind, with the prayer, Divine love, manifest thyself in me. Then there should be periods of mental concentration on the love center . . . Think about love with the attention drawn within the breast, and a quickening will follow; all the ideas that go to make up love will be set into motion. This produces a positive love current, which , when sent forth with power, will break up opposing thoughts of hate, and render them null and void. . . . The love current is not a projection of the will; it is a setting free of a natural, equalizing, harmonizing force that in most people has been dammed up by human limitations. . . . And perhaps the most revolutionary principle that Charles held, with his wife Myrtle, was that abundance is part of Gods plan for all beings, and those people whose consciousness is filled with abundance both give and receive abundantly, without effort. The love of money, not money itself, is the root of all kinds of evil. Money is a convenience that saves men many burdens in the exchange of values. . . . Trusting in God, we have faith in Him as our resource, and He becomes a perpetual spiritual supply and support; but when we put our faith in the power of material riches, we wean our trust from God and establish it in this transitory substance of rust and corruption. . . . The man who blindly gives himself up to money getting acquires a love for it and finally becomes its slave. The wise metaphysician deals with the money idea and masters it. Mastering the Money Idea The Fillmores had, early on, made a commitment to prove this last idea, providing whatever services they could freely, with no price, according to the principle that as ye mete, it shall be measured unto you. The price for the magazine was the minimum the law would allow. Food served in the lunchroom was based on donation until they realized people were embarrassed to give too little, so they put nominal prices on the dishes and freely served seconds. They never charged for their healing workand Unity still does not, to this day. Gifts were gladly accepted, but never requested. Over a hundred years later, their work proceeds. With no grants or contracts or fees for
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service, it supports a staff of several hundred people and the infrastructure for a whole village. All based on the Principle that we reap what we sow. Like their teacher, Emma Hopkins, the Fillmores made it a point not to talk about their intentions or their successes. The extent of their commitment, the secret of their success was found in Myrtles papers after she died in 1942. It reads as follows: We, Charles Fillmore and Myrtle Fillmore, husband and wife, hereby dedicate our selves, our time, our money, all we have and all we expect to have, to the Spirit of Truth, and through it, to the Society of Silent Unity. It being understood and agreed that the said Spirit of Truth shall render unto us an equivalent for this dedication, in peace of mind, health of body, wisdom, understanding, love, life and an abundant supply of all things necessary to meet every want without our making any of these things the object of our existence. In the presence of the Conscious Mind of Christ Jesus, this 7th day of December, 1892 AD. Some time after Myrtles death, Charles married a woman named Cora and they continued the work. Charles wrote, preached, met with clients, and did radio shows well into his 90s, when, according to Unitys poet-laureate James Dillett Freeman, he still said I reserve the right to change my mind. Most of the biographical material on the Fillmores comes from Charles Bradens Spirits in Rebellion. From Myrtle Fillmores Healing Letters from Myrtle Fillmores Healing Letters from Myrtle Fillmores Healing Letters from Myrtle Fillmores Healing Letters from Myrtle Fillmores Healing Letters. This and the following quotes are from Charles Fillmore, Christian Healing, a series of twelve lessons he started teaching in 1897 and compiled for publication in the 1920s. This one is from Lesson Six, The Word. From Fillmores Christian Healing, Lesson Nine. From Fillmores Twelve Powers of Man, ch. 1. From Fillmores Christian Healing, Lesson Eight. From Charles Fillmores Christian Healing, Lesson Twelve. H. Emilie Cady When Emma Hopkins went to New York to speak in the late 1880s, she was met by an enthusiastic crowd. Among those who were affected by her words was a struggling schoolteacher whose family had fallen on hard times. Emilie Cady heard Emmas lectures and decided to become a physician in order to better practice the principles. She knew that as a physician she would be able to see and help more people who were suffering than in any other form of work available to an educated, middle class woman of the time. It was a leap of faith, for money and her own stamina were limited, but she chose to put her

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trust in the new way of thinking and take the leap. At that time, there were several accepted forms of medical practice, and she chose the least invasive, homeopathy. She completed the course and set up a practice there, in New York. Physician, Heal Thyself Combining her understanding of metaphysics with traditional homeopathic remedies, she was quite successful. And, as she worked with her patients, she continually stretched her own understanding and capacity to use Truth, trying various experiments in her own life to prove the theories. That she applied them to her own health challenges is shown in the following: After days of excruciating pain from a badly sprained ankle, the ankle became enormously swollen, and it was impossible for me to attend to my professional work as an active medical practitioner. Ordinary affirmations of Truth were entirely ineffectual, and I soon struck out for the very highest statement of Truth that I could formulate. It was this: There is only God; all else is a lie. I vehemently affirmed it and steadfastly stuck to it. In twenty-four hours all pain and swellingin fact, the entire liehad disappeared. Perhaps the most telling of these experiments was her attempt to follow the principle of abundance and stop charging fees for her services. I had a good profession with plenty of patients paying their bills monthly. But there were also people whose visible means of support were gone. These were like cases of gnawing cancer or painful rheumatism. There-fore, there must be a way out through Truth, and I must find it. As always, instead of rushing to others for help in these tight places, I stayed at home within my own soul and asked God to show me the way. He did. He gave me the clear vision of Himself as All Sufficiency in All Things; and then He said: Now prove it, so that you can be of real help to the hundreds who do not have a profession or business on which to depend. From that day on, no ministry or work of any kind was ever done by me for pay. No monthly bills were sent, no office charges made. I saw plainly that I must be working as God works, without expectation or thought of return. Free gift. For more than two years I worked at this problem, never letting a human being know what I was trying to prove. More than once the body was faint for want of food, and yet, so sure was I of what God had shown me that day after day I taught cheerfully and confidently to those who came to my office the Truth of God as the substance of all supplyand there were many in those days. At the
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end of two years of apparent failure I suddenly felt that I could not endure the privation any longer. I went direct to God and cried out; Why, why this failure? His answer came flashing back in these words: God said, Let there be light: and there was light. It was all the answer He gave. I did not understand. I kept repeating it again and again, the words God said becoming more and more emphasized, until at last they were followed by the words Without Him [the Word] was not anything made that hath been made. That was all I needed. I saw plainly that I had not once spoken the word: It is done: God is now manifested as my supply. Suffice it to say that the supply problem was ended that day for all time and has never entered my life or mind since. Teaching Truth Dr. Cadys first attempt to document these experiments and their results was in a small pamphlet called God, A Present Help Referring to her work in the third person, Dr. Cady was able to show the effectiveness of her practice in a clear and readable (for the time) fashion. An early version of the booklet attracted the attention of Myrtle Fillmore, who persuaded her husband Charles to invite Dr. Cady to write for their magazine. Neither Do I Condemn Thee appeared in the magazine in 1892, and other articles appeared frequently in the issues that followed. In that first article, she issued a challenge: Even among Truth students who know the power of the spoken wordand because they know it, so much greater is that powerthere is a widespread tendency to condemn the churches and all orthodox Christians, to criticize and speak disparagingly of students of different schools ), and even to discuss among themselves the failings of individuals ... Let us stop and see what we are doing. Why should we condemn the churches? Did not Jesus teach in the synagogues? He did not withdraw from the church and speak contempt-uously of it. No, He remained in it, trying to show people wherein they were making mistakes, trying to lead them up to a higher view of God as their Father, and to stimulate them to live more truly righteous lives. He remained with them and taught them a more excellent way Shall not we, whom the Father has called into such marvelous light, rather help those sitting in darkness, even in the churches, than utter one word of condemnation against them? Strong thoughts of condemnation about anyone by any person will give him the physical sensation of having been hit in the pit of the stomach with a stone. If he
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does not immediately throw off the feelingas he can easily do by looking to the Father and saying over and over until it becomes reality, God, approve of meit will destroy his consciousness of a perfect life, and he will fall into a belief of weakness and discouragement unless there is something within us that responds to sin in others we shall not see it in them The moment we begin to criticize or condemn another, we prove ourselves guilty of the same fault Cadys articles were well received, and in 1894 Charles asked her to write a series of lessons that others might use to duplicate her success. She was hesitant at first, but finally agreed to the project. She pulled together her notes from her classes with Emma Hopkins, and the first Lesson in Truth appeared in the October, 1894 issue of the magazine. A total of twelve lessons were published over the next year, and they received an enthusiastic response. So many requests came in for back copies of the issues that Charles had the articles printed up in little bookletsof four lessons each. In later years, these were combined into one book, Lessons in Truth, which has become the fundamental text for membership in all Unity schools and churches. Unfortunately, Cady was not pleased with Charles editing and publishing of her work as a textbook. He had taken her articles and divided them up into numbered paragraphs with subheadingsa format that she felt interfered with her intention in the writing of it. This disagreement caused a breakdown in their relationship for some time, such that no more of her articles were published, but it seems to have been healed when Cady presented the Fillmores with a sequel to Lessons in Truth, a collection of her earlier articles called How I Used Truth. In the Foreword to this second book, she writes The papers that make up this volume have been written from time to time as a result of practical daily experience. In none of them is there anything occult or mysterious; Truth is that which is so, and it can never change. Every true statement here is as true and workable today as it was when these papers were written. Prove all things for yourself; it is possible to prove every statement in this book. Every statement given was proven before it was written. And, in a letter inserted by the editors of more recent editions, we learn about Cady and her experience, for the first time in the first person. Almost every one of the simply written articles . . . was born out of the travail of my soul after I had been weeks, months, sometimes years, trying by affirmations, by claiming the promises of Jesus, and by otherwise faithfully using all of the knowledge of Truth that I then possessed to secure deliverance for myself or other from some distressing bondage that thus far had defied all human help. In this we see that Emilie Cady followed the same
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prescription as Myrtle Fillmore: I know that God would not have me struggle with unknown things, or talk of that which I have not proved. There is little biographical information available, so this section is drawn from references and hints in her books. While most physicians today practice allopathic medicine, homeopathy was very popular during the late 19th century and continues to be the main form of healthcare used by many British, including the royal family. Its based on the work of Samuel Hahnemann in the 1820s, who found that providing a patient with extremely small doses of a plant that induced the same symptoms could reduce and even eliminate those symptoms. The practice has recently been making a comeback in the U.S. from Why? in Cadys How I Used Truth. Originally in a letter to Lowell Fillmore, this story is now published in the essay, Why? in Cadys How I Used Truth, published by Unity originally published by Rogers Brothers, New York, in 1908, this booklet was revised and republished by R. F. Fenno & Co. in 1912, and is currently published by Unity. How I Used Truth was originally published in 1916 as Miscellaneous Writings

Nona Brooks Seeing the Light In the 1870s, when Nona Brooks was a little girl growing up in the countryside outside Louisville, Kentucky, she had an amazing experience. Alone in the garden one afternoon, she became aware that everything around her was bathed in a radiant light, glowing much brighter than the afternoon sun, and yet in some way, comforting. The experience seemed to last forever, though in fact it was somewhat less than half an hour, and even then was over too soon. A few years after, the family fortunes had a downward turn, and they found themselves starting over with friends in the frontier town of Pueblo, Colorado. Life was much harder, there, but the family was together, and Nona and her sister managed to keep up with the work that the new house required and still be active members of the local Presbyterian church. When she was in her late teens, Nona began having difficulty swallowing. By eighteen, her throat was so scarred and swollen that she could barely eat or drink. The local doctors had no hope for her. Her pastor was sympathetic but equally unhelpful. Slowly starving to death, Nona was persuaded by a neighbor, Mrs. Bingham, to attend a class that might help her. Mrs. Bingham had also suffered from an incurable illness, had gone to Chicago and studied
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under Emma Hopkins, was freed of her symptoms, and now was teaching everyone she knew all that she had learned. Nona and her sister Alethea were finally persuaded to attend when they understood that nothing being taught was contrary to their own Presbyterian doctrine. They went to classes once a week for three weeks. In between times, they did their homework faithfully, reciting affirmations of wholeness and praises to God as they went about caring for their home and its inhabitants. Unable to feel God is my health, I cannot be sick, Nona chose to repeat God is everywhere, God is all, God is here. On their way to the third class, Nona and her sister stopped at the physicians to get a new prescription for Nonas throat. Her condition had not improved, and the doctor was losing hope. They went on to the class, and, as they sat listening to Mrs. Bingham and repeating what she told them to, Nona felt the room fill with light. Looking around her, everything glowedand she knew her throat was healed. Of course, when she told her sister and classmates, they thought she was just affirming health. But that night, for the first time in months, she ate everything that the family ate. Sharing the Way Coming home from class one day, the sisters found Alethea's daughter, a hemophiliac, bleeding. Nona, you treat the child, Alethea said, and Ill treat you. Nona was unwilling, at first, believing she didnt know how. But she followed Mrs. Binghams directions and the child stopped bleedingnever to do so again. Nona had difficulty accepting what was happening. It took several more such incidentsof her own and Mrs. Binghamsto convince her. Then, she was concerned about how all this fit with the Presbyterian doctrine in which she had been raised. The sisters called on their pastor to tell him of their experiences. He immediately invited them to share with the Wednesday prayer meetingonly to rescind the invitation at the request of his more conservative board of elders, who went on to remove Nona and Alethea from their posts as Sunday School teachers. Rejected by her church, Nona nonetheless participated in several more healings in Pueblo, as she prepared for a career as a primary school teacher. After a few years, she accepted a post in Denver, where her other sister, Fannie James, was teaching to classes in her home what they had learned from Mrs. Bingham. Fannie was also corresponding with a woman in San Francisco, Malinda Cramer, who was teaching similar ideas and publishing a magazine called Harmony. Mrs. Cramer visited Denver in 1889-90, teaching well-attended classes and deepening their friendship. She called her teachings Divine Science, which Fannie appreciated and adopted as the title for her own classes. Alethea came
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to Denver and taught these ideas, as well. Soon, the sisters classes outgrew Fannies home and they were offered rooms in a downtown building by a grateful client. Nona was, again, hesitant, but she spent one summer vacation teaching there with her sisters and knew it was time to change jobs. She devoted the rest of her life to teaching and healing. The practitioner withdraws his thought from outward things and gives his full attention to what he knows to be the Truth, that Gods Presence is about and within the one he is asked to help, as Life and Light and Love. He affirms this until he himself becomes so conscious of the truth of his statement that to him there is no other presence but the One. This ends the treatment for that time. Treatments are given usually twice a day until there is perfect recovery. Sometimes the healing is instantaneous. Miss Brooks quickly became well known throughout the region as a competent healer and teacher. For the most part, people would come to her only after traditional medical treatments had failed them, and, if at all possible, she would sit with them until they were free of symptoms though her full schedule often required breaking the process up into several sessions. Once or twice, someone would come in at the end of a series of sessions, and she would simply look at them or touch them and their pain, boil, or whatever, would be gone. On the few occasions when a patient died in spite of her treatment, she was very upsetuntil she realized that she treated for Life, and a full life for the soul included moving on from material bodies into immortal, everlasting life. By 1895, all three sisters were teaching and healing regularly in the Monroe Street building, and in 1898 they incorporated as the Divine Science College, with Nona (the only one who had been to college) as the President. Initially, Nona was overwhelmed by the idea of supporting the building and the people, but she started treating for money and other resources when they were neededfor herself and for the schooland the supply invariably came to meet each request. After several years of this just in time process, she realized she could simply treat for full support and supplyand did so, relieving herself of any further concern for any kind of resource. Several of the students and alumni met regularly Sunday evenings and during the week, and wanted to meet Sunday mornings in a regular church service. As usual, Nona was hesitant: they would be in competition with orthodox churches; she would have to be ordainedwhich required a trip to California for Mrs. Cramer to doand (in those early days) there was no money. But all such reasons melted away, and the Church of Divine Science of Denver, Colorado, held its first services on January 1, 1899, with Nona Brooks serving as minister. Her sermons were original, and evolved with her own understanding. I am asked over and over again. How can we
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accomplish without planning? Plans come to me, but I never decide on my movements until I have let the matter rest without argument. I take it into the silence and lay my plan before Infinite Intelligence. The inner conviction will come. Follow it. Do not argue. Trust. Maintain the quiet, trustful attitude. Eliminate the personal wish. Do not be afraid to follow the inner conviction. There is the guiding Voice in every experience. How shall I know when I am led? You will hear the guiding Voice, if your motive is for the good of the Whole, not for the good of the self, you will know that the Spirit is leading your choice. Go ahead with the utmost confidence. She continued to teach and preach and heal in Denver until her retirement in the mid-1930s. In 1917 she substituted for John Murray at the large Church of the Healing Christ, which met at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, and incorporated it into the Divine Science association. By 1925, there were also Divine Science churches in Boston, Portland, California, Seattle, Spokane, Topeka, Ohio, Oklahoma, Illinois, District of Columbia, Maryland, and in other Colorado cities. In 1922 a new church had been built and dedicated in Denver, and it was paid off in 1925. In 1927 Nona was given a trip abroad by her friends. A few years later, she decided to resign as minister of the church (they would only agree to a leave) and she took off for Australia for a year. She also spoke at centers in Illinois and Minnesota. In 1938 she returned to the presidency of the college, which post she held until 1943. She died in her sleep a few days before her 84th birthday, in March, 1945. Omnipresence Throughout all her work and teaching, Nona held to the idea of Omnipresence as a core understanding. Divine Science healing is based upon the Omnipresence of God. Divine Scientists understand Omnipresence to be just what it implies, the full Presence of God in all places at all times. What God is must be present everywhere. God is Life, and Love, and Strength and Power; God is in each soul, and will be called into fullest expression as the soul recognizes this truth and lives by it. Man has not known this truth, and has believed himself to be mentally, spiritually, and bodily weak, subject to many ills and inharmonies. As soon as one becomes conscious of this Life and Strength within him, he is healed. It is the part of the practitioner to affirm the truth of this Presence, this Light within the one seeking healing, until the consciousness of Wholeness, Health, comes to the patient. All true healing begins within, and brings a double blessing
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spiritual upliftment and bodily harmony. This commitment to the idea of Omnipresence energized and guided all of Nonas work, all her life. In 1918 a young student named Ernest Holmes approached her at a New Thought conference and said I want to discover where you get your power, and later, understanding, he said, You continually hark back to Omnipresence. Much of the material for this chapter comes from Hazel Deanes Powerful is the Light, supplemented with Charles Bradens Spirits in Rebellion. From In the Light of Healing, a collection of writings by Nona L. Brooks. From In the Light of Healing, a collection of writings by Nona L. Brooks, Why We Should Not Formulate Our Desires. From In the Light of Healing, a collection of writings by Nona L. Brooks. Ernest Holmes Ernest Shurtleff Holmes was born in rural Maine in the winter of 1887. His family was poor and moved often, making it difficult for him to acquire an education, but they were a wholesome, healthy group. In addition to the Bible and an illustrated Story of the Bible, his family had one other book: Henry Drummonds Natural Law in the Spiritual World. In spite of this relative poverty, Ernest was a great reader. He read, early on, Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and listened to many Chautauqua lecturessufficient to inspire him to become a public lecturer, himself. Though Ernest never made it to college, his brother Fenwicke graduated and became a Congregational minister in Venice, California. Ernest came for a visit and stayed for a lifetime. He helped his brother with the church and, together, they won a political campaign. Ernest continued to read voraciously, emphasizing the New Thought writers and Transcendentalists. He also read Eddys Science and Health and asked every practitioner he met to share their teachings with him. Another important writer was Thomas Troward, a British judge who had served in the Punjab, India. In 1917 Fenwicke and Ernest formed the Southern California Metaphysical Institute, with a magazine they called Uplift. They lectured in Los Angeles and Long Beach, and published their first books in 1919. The next year they went to New York and offered a series of lectures and classes. The lectures, offered for free, drew large crowds, many of which paid as much as $25 for the course of lessons that followed.

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In 1925 the brothers went their separate ways, with Fenwicke returning to the East Coast and Ernest putting down roots in California. That was the year that Ernest discovered Emma Curtis Hopkins and experienced her teachingafter which he ranked her with Meister Eckhart as the greatest of the mystics. The next year he published his Science of Mind, the foundation for all his teachings, and for the Church of Religious Science, which he founded decades later. A New Science Both of the Holmes brothers were fascinated by the metaphysical. They both observed and experienced many miraculous events and wonderful mystical connections. They immersed themselves in metaphysical literature. And they both, almost simultaneously, came to the conclusion that metaphysics has to be practiced as a science. Ernests goal was to make it possible for anyone, with any background, to practice it. We think of metaphysics, perhaps, as something that only the most profound thinkers have known about, but we should remember that we also are thinkers. Let us then approach the Science of Mindthe Science of Spiritual Psychologywith awe, but not with fear; with truly a humble thought, but not with a sense that we are unworthy. There is nothing supernatural about the study of Life from the metaphysical viewpoint. That which today seems to us supernatural, after it is thoroughly understood, will be found to be spontaneously natural. We all know that many have been healed of physical disease through prayer. Let us analyze this. Why are some healed through prayer while others are not? It is superstitious to believe that God will answer the prayer of one above another. Since some people have been healed while others have not, the answer is NOT that God has responded to some and not to others, but that some have responded to God more than others. Holmes developed a model of consciousness to explain how such things happen. He said that the mind had two modes, the objective or conscious state and the subjective or unconscious state, and that the subjective mind is
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connected to the creative force of the universe, creating the thoughts present in the conscious mind. The sub conscious (or subjective) state of mind is that part of mind which is set in motion as a creative thing by the conscious state. man has at his disposalin what he calls his Subjective Minda power that seems to be Limitless. This is because There is but one Subjective Mind, and what we call our subjective mind is really the use we are making of the One Law. Each individual maintains his identity in Law, through his personal use of it. And each is drawing from Life what he thinks into It! our thoughts go into a medium that is Infinite in Its ability to do and to be. Man, by thinking, can bring into his experience whatsoever he desiresif he thinks correctly, and becomes a living embodiment of his thoughts. This is not done by holding thoughts but by knowing the Truth. It is impossible to plumb the depths of the individual mind, because the individual mind is really not individual but is individualized. Behind the individual is the Universal, which has no limits. we all use the creative power of the Universal Mind every time we use our own mind. Since this is true, it follows that we cannot say that one thought is creative while another is not. We must say that all thought is creative, according to the nature, impulse, emotion or conviction behind the thought. The conscious mind is superior to the subjective and may consciously use it. From this model, Holmes synthesized a set of principles and practices from the many teachings he had studied over the previous decades. From Emerson, for example, he drew never think about that which is not desired, and from Hopkins, deny the reality of anything that is not desirable, especially sickness, pain, and poverty. These principles and their practice he described at length in The Science of Mind. The Practice of Healing Over the years, Holmes had studied with hundreds of healers, including Emma Hopkins and her students, several Christian Scientists, various yogis and gurus, and anyone else he could persuade to teach him. From all these

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lessons, he distilled a basic approach to healing, which he explained in The Science of Mind. A treatment is an active thing, if we are going to reduce spiritual treatment to a mental science, then there is a method, a technique and a procedure in mental treatment. Start with this simple proposition: The nature of God, of man and of being is perfect, harmonious, wholePerfect God, Perfect Man, and Perfect Beingand in treatment conform your thought to this idea. Then let the treatment be a moving thing, a series of thoughts or statements followed by realization. Gradually a conviction dawns that God is all there is, and as this conviction grows the work is done more easily, and with a greater degree of acceptance When this truth takes hold of our consciousness, and we contact what appears to be imperfect we shall better know that the manifestation of imperfection has no right to exist. In actual practice, this becomes a series of statementsarguments perhapsbut a series of statements which finally culminate in the mental evidence being in favor of Perfect God, Perfect Man, and Perfect Being. The way to learn how to treat, is to treat. At first one has the feeling in treating of wondering if anything is really happening, until he finally realizes that this apparent nothingness with which he deals is the only ultimate something out of which tangible things could be made. In mental and spiritual treatment, the practitioner endeavors to enter into the consciousness of a state of unity of all life, in which unity exists past, present, and future the person for whom he is working and the unborn but potential possibility of the condition for which he works. He does not seek to force an issue, but rather permits a Creative Intelligence to perform a certain act. Holmes goes on to explain that this state of unity is comparable to what quantum physicists began to understand during his lifetime. He says, all forms are theoretically resolvable into a universal energy and substance made manifest through vibration. Holmes makes it clear that the Science of Mind does not deny physical form, but, rather, seeks to explain itand, having explained it, consciously direct it. Yet, he is adamant that our job is not to force the change but to allow the

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Creative Mind to bring order and harmony and life and intelligence into a situation where it has not been perceived before. An Institution The Science of Mind was rewritten and re-released in 1938 and has been the foundation text for students, practitioners, and ministers of Religious Science, since. Not that Holmes ever wanted to found a church. Like Emma Hopkins, Nona Brooks, and Charles Fillmore before him, he founded a schoolthe Institute of Religious Science and Philosophy, in 1927and was only later, with difficulty, persuaded to form a church. And, like the Unity and Divine Science organizations, his offered a monthly magazine. His intention: to promote that universal consciousness of life which binds together all in one great whole to show that there is such a thing as Truth, and that it may be known in a degree sufficient to enable the one knowing to live a happy useful life The magazine, called Science of Mind continues to tie together the several associations of churches and institutes that call themselves Religious Science. And, though Ernest passed on in 1960, his articles are still regularly printed in italong with others by currently active and popular spiritual teachers and leaders. Much of this material is taken from Fenwicke Holmes biography of Ernest in The Voice Celestial, co-written by the two of them, and from Charles Braden's Spirits in Rebellion From Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, in the chapter The Thing Itself. From Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, in the chapter The Thing Itself. From Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, in the chapter The Practice of Spiritual Mind Healing. From Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, in the chapter The Thing Itself. Science of Mind, Vol. I, No. 1, p.21. Louise Hay Healing as a Way of Life The name, Louise Hay, is for many people, synonymous with mental and spiritual healing. With her popular books and regular question-answer columns, Ms. Hay has opened millions of minds to the possibility of healing,
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and provided an effective process for us to follow on our own. Born into a troubled family in Los Angeles in 1927, Louise had an unimaginably difficult childhood. Her parents divorced at a time when divorce was almost unheard of; her mother left her with others for weeks at a time when she was less than 2 years old, in order to find work, and then married a man who was verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive. Then the Great Depression hit and Louise endured the stigma of extreme poverty in a school with predominantly middle class students while her home life was a cycle of heavy labor and abuse. Louise ran away from home and found work as a waitress at 15. She gave a child up for adoption soon after her 16th birthday, which served to convince her even more of her own worthlessness, and she left L.A. soon after. After a few menial jobs in Chicago, she went on to New York and landed a job as a fashion model. Still self-critical and totally unaware of her beauty, she nonetheless married well, and lived the jetsetter life until her husband asked for a divorce, fourteen years later. It was a chance visit to a Religious Science church that started Ms. Hay on the path of spiritual and mental health. She became a practitioner and teacher and studied for the ministry, and prepared her signature work, the little book of conditions and associated beliefs that so many people rely on. A bout with cancer helped her to clear her mind and body of the toxins from the past. Then she moved back to Los Angeles and began the teaching and healing work for which she is so well known around the world. Today, Ms. Hay has a farm and a publishing company and writes books and a column for Science of Mind and other magazines. Through these she continues to bring people into awareness of the ideas and practices of New Thought. All the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by your thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past. They were created by the thoughts and words you used yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 10, 20, 30, 40, or more years ago, depending on how old you are. However, that is your past. It is over and done with. What is important in this moment is what you are choosing to think and believe and say right now. For these thoughts and words will create your future. Your point of power is in the present moment and is forming the experience of tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and so on. The only thing we are ever dealing with is a thought, and a thought can be changed. So goes the introductory chapter to Hays many-times best selling guide: You Can Heal Your Life. Written in 1984, in response to the thousands of requests she was receiving from AIDS victims and their families, this simple book has become the mainstay of many households seeking to improve their health and wellbeingregardless of whether they are familiar with the
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ideas and institutions of New Thought. Drawing on her own training in Religious Science and insights gained from A Course in Miracles, Hays book takes the reader through many of the twelve lessons taught by Emma Hopkins and Emilie Cady, and applies those ideas to problems of health, wealth, and the experience of success. She starts with our belief aboutand attitude towardourselves. When people come to me with a problem, I dont care what it ispoor health, lack of money, unfulfilling relationships, or stifled creativitythere is only one thing I ever work on, and that is LOVING THE SELF. Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. She believes that virtually all our ills and problems stem from the attitude toward ourselves that was programmed when we were tiny children. Almost all of our programming, both negative and positive, was accepted by us by the time we were three years old. Our experiences since then are based upon what we accepted and believed about ourselves and about life at that time. The way we were treated when we were very little is usually the way we treat ourselves now. The person you are scolding is a three-year-old child within you. Hays relationship to Holmes and other New Thought teachers comes through in her use of affirmations and in her explanation of the role and power of the mind. There is an incredible power and intelligence within you constantly responding to your thoughts and words. As you learn to control your mind by the conscious choice of thoughts, you align yourself with this power. Do not think your mind is in control. You are in control of your mind. You use your mind. You can stop thinking those old thoughts. She draws on other New Thought teachers as well, using, for example, Emmet Foxs exercise for dissolving resentment. Yet, Hays extends traditional New Thought teachings with considerable use of the ideas presented in A Course in Miracles. Whenever we are ill, we need to search our hearts to see who it is we need to forgive. The Course in Miracles says that all dis-ease comes from a state of unforgiveness and that whenever we are ill, we need to look around to see who it is that we need to forgive." I would add to that concept that the very person you find it hardest to forgive is the one YOU NEED TO LET GO OF THE MOST. Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. Its just letting the whole thing go. Through her work with others and the example of her own life, Ms. Hay has brought into the latter half of the 20th Century, the teachings and practices that began nearly 100 years before she was born.
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AIDS and beyond For six and a half years, I spent time working with people with aids. It began with six men in my living room one evening, and in a couple of years grew to a weekly meeting of 800 people. This was such a growing period for me. My heart was constantly being stretched. Several of the Hayride people went on the Oprah show with me, and we put out positive messages about aids. The same week, I appeared on Donahue with Dr. Bernie Siegel. I was in constant awe of how Life was moving me in so many directions. Who would have thought that the epidemic called AIDS would cause so many people to re-think their relationship to their bodies and their health? Through her well-publicized work with gay men, Ms. Hay brought New Thought healing into the mainstream. In her book You Can Heal Your Life, Hay describes her process. It starts with an interview and close observation: Whenever I ask a new client what is going on they really think they know the problem. But I know these complaints are only outer effects of inner thought patterns. I listen to the words they use as I ask some basic questions ... I watch the body postures and the facial movements. But mostly I really listen to the words they say. Thoughts and words create our future experiences. As I listen to them talk, I can readily understand why they have these particular problems. At this point, Hay uses a listing exercise to get at some of the clients underlying thoughts. She asks them to write on the top of a piece of paper, I Should and make a list of five or six ways to finish that sentence. You see, I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. many of the things they thought they should do are things they never wanted to do, and they were only trying to please other people. The problem has now begun to shift releasing the feeling of being wrong because they are not fitting someone elses standards. The cornerstone of Hays approach is, truly, loving oneself. She says, Love to me is appreciation to such a degree that it fills my heart to bursting and overflows. So, after the I should exercise, she has people look into a mirror and say I love and accept you just the way you are. This relatively simple action is more than most people can do, and a clients reaction to it provides the last clue for Hays assessment and treatment plan. And the first step of treatment is for the client to experience and understand the core thought driving all the others: I am not good enough. The second is discoveringand letting go ofthe limiting beliefs learned in childhood and continuing to shape the clients life. The next
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step is to become willing to change, again using the mirror to experience whatever resistance might come up, and affirming that willingness regularly. She says, Be aware that where you DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE is exactly the area where you NEED to change the most. As with Hopkins and Holmes before her, the use of affirmations is central to Hays approach. The Universal Intelligence is always responding to your thoughts and words. Things will definitely begin to change as you make these statements. So, once the client develops awareness of the need to change, the release of old thought patterns begins with the repetition of new ones. Then, as old programming begins to assert itself, Hays recommends that we recognize it and simply focus on the new thought. Learn to think in positive affirmations. Too often we think in negative affirmations. Negative affirmations only create more of what you say you dont want. Saying I hate my job, will get you nowhere. Continually make positive statements about how you want your life to be. However, Always make your statement in the PRESENT TENSE, such as I am or I have. Your subconscious mind is such an obedient servant that if you declare in the future tense I want, or I will have, then that is where that idea will always stayjust out of your reach in the future! Ms. Hay has been very successful in getting these ideas into a broader segment of our society, but even with this success, she has hopes for these ideas becoming part of more peoples experience, earlier on: It is my deep desire that the topic How Your Thoughts Work would be the very first subject taught in school. we could teach them important subjects such as How the Mind Works, How to Handle Finances, How to Be a Parent and How to Create and Maintain Self-Esteem and Self-worth. Can you imagine what a whole generation of adults would be like if they had been taught these subjects in school along with their regular curriculum? From Louise Hays You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter called What I Believe. A Course in Miracles was published by The Foundation for Inner Peace in the early 1970s, with no author cited. In later years, it was made known that a pair of agnostic psychotherapists had written down the words as they were dictated to one of them, Helen Shucman, each day by an inner voice. Over the decades, literally millions of copies of the three volumes have been printed and sold, and thousands of groups have formed to study and practice the principles. From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter What I Believe." From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter Resistance to Change." From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter How to Change." From You Can
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Heal Your Life, the chapter What I Believe." From You Can Heal Your Life, Afterword. From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter What Is the Problem?" From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter What Is the Problem?" From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter What Do We Do Now?" From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter What Do We Do Now?" From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter Building the New. From You Can Heal Your Life, the chapter Is It True? Healing the Planet: Barbara Marx Hubbard & Marianne Williamson Imagining the futureand a healthy planet with healthy, loving human beings living well on ithas been the essence of Barbara Marx Hubbards work for the last several decades. Born of Jewish agnostic parents in 1929, Barbara experienced her mothers death and World War II while in her teens. Her response was to study world religions, questioning the assumptions and exploring the boundaries. When she graduated from college she met Dwight Eisenhower and asked him the purpose of our power, to which the newly elected President replied I dont know. She married, had children, and studied the emerging writers of the 1960s. In 1966 she had a mystical vision of the evolution of the universea vision which has guided her work ever since. Hubbards books, including Positive Futures, Conscious Evolution, and Revelation, have consistently provided visionsand methods for achieving those visionsfor a way of life and governance that honor individuals and the ecosystems they depend on. She even ran for Vice President of the United States in 1984 on such a platform. Currently, she is head of the Center for Conscious Evolution in Northern California. Recently, Ms. Hubbard has been joined by New Thought minister (her church is in Warren, Michigan) Marianne Williamson, whose many popular books, including Illuminata, A Womans Worth, and A Return to Love have brought these ideas to a new level of acceptance in this country. Williamson, a babyboomer, grew up in a traditional 50s home with a lawyer father and a stay-at-home mother. She explored a number of careers, including cocktail waitress and lounge singer, before she began lecturing on A Course in Miracles in the 1980s. Her recent book, The Healing of America, has synthesized New Thought principles with A Course in Miracles and ecosystem management practices to provide a whole-system approach to transforming American culture. Together with a dozen or so other New Thought leaders, these remarkable women are working to create a new American renaissancefounded in a shift in consciousness and new kinds of relationships. They have helped to form an international network of people committed to a way of relating based on acknowledgement
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that we are all part of one great whole. From the Introduction to the new edition of Healing of America: Love is its own brand of genius. Our only true enemy is neither people nor institutions, but fear-laden thoughts that cling to our insides and sap us of our strength. Yet love casts out fear, the way light casts out darkness. Our greatest political power, now, is to fear nothing and love everything; then all things will heal. Love is the only power powerful enough to lift the chains of bondage off the human race and cast them off for good. When the material world has been won by the opponent, go otherworldly to find your victory. From the Preface: The principles that apply to our personal healing apply as well to the healing of the larger world. First, all healing principles are universal because they come from God. And second, there actually is no objective outer world, for what's out there is merely a projection of what's in our minds. The laws of consciousness apply to everything. Anything, when truly seen for what it is and surrendered to the higher mind, begins to self-correct. But what is not looked at is doomed to eternal re-enactment, for an individual or for a nation. A new, spiritually based social activism is beginning to assert itself. It stems not from hating what is wrong and trying to fight it, but from loving what could be and making the commitment to bring it forth. A nonviolent political dynamic is once again emerging, and it is a beacon of light at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Its goal, as in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., is "the establishment of the beloved community." Nothing less will heal our hearts and nothing less will heal the world. Planet-Healing The Global Renaissance Alliance, which Williamson co-founded with Neal Donald Walsh, has Ms. Hubbard and Depak Chopra on the board, along with other similarly minded leaders. The Alliances program called Healing 2000 is specifically created to encourage the application of New Thought principles to global issues. Using the principles outlined by all New Thought healers, they have led activities in consciousness that have helped to turn around massive societal processes overnight. For example, when a second war with Iraq seemed inevitable, Hubbard and Williamson and their network went to work to create a new idea in consciousnessone that didnt include the possibility of war. Their work paid off; against all odds and expectations, the tension fizzled out at the last minute and there was no conflict. Since then, numerous events have been redirected or de-fused when the people around the world
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who make up their network have denied the reality of anything other than peace, harmony, love, and wellbeing for alland affirmed the supremacy of those qualities in the situation. When people pray or meditate particularly in numbers, and particularly in concertan invisible field of intention begins to vibrate within the regions of human possibility. Spiritual power converts the patterns of limitation and fear into channels of love and breakthrough. The more we do this around the globe, and the more of us join in, the greater the lifting of the vibratory veil. To bear witness to human suffering, to pour forth our love upon the regions and situations in the world where pain and even torture rule, to pray for both victim and perpetrator FOR IN SPIRIT THEY ARE ONE, is to foster the materialization of a more peaceful, loving world. This is a powerful opportunity for the creation of a global spiritual intention. As we spiritually join with each other, and thus align with the love of God, we co-create a space in which miracles happen naturally. In A Course In Miracles, it is written that while we think we have many different problems, we actually only have one: our separation from God. So it is that while the problems of the world seem extraordinarily complex, the answer to all of them is profoundly simple: that we return en masse to the love in our hearts. One month, for instance, we will perhaps concentrate our meditations and prayers on Northern Ireland, another month on race relations in the United States, another month on global warming, another month on the children of the world.... but always with the same spiritual intention: that there be love raining down from the consciousness of heaven, permeating every molecule and redeeming every heart, that peace might prevail on earth. ... Thus we will literally be agents of healing for all the world. This is how we deal with "issues," from a spiritual perspective. These women and their friends are teaching us that the principles and practices developed and used by the great healers of the New Thought tradition work for societies as well as individuals; for the planet as well as the person. Theyve demonstrated that healing is far more than overcoming individual disease. Originally called the Association for Global New Thought, their group is now the Global Renaissance Alliance. From the Global Renaissance website, the Healing 2000 page. Experimental Evidence Accumulates In 1988, at the coronary care center of the San Francisco General Hospital, Dr. Randolph Byrd changed the way scientists talk about healing. Dr. Byrd took
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393 heart patients and randomly assigned them to 2 groups. One group, of 192, were prayed for by outside intercessors informed of the patients names and clinical status and who committed to pray regularly. The second group, of 201 patients, did not receive prayers. The experiment was set up using a double blind method where neither the patients nor the staff caring for them knew who was receiving prayer and who wasnt. The results were remarkable: Prayed for Not Had repeat of heart failure 4% 10% Required diuretics 3 7 Experienced Cardio-arrest 2 7 Had pneumonia 2 7 Required antibiotics 2 9 Required intubation 0 6 Since then, hundreds of similar experiments have been performed, with similar results. It seems that it doesnt matter how the prayer is formed or by whom, or whether the person praying even believes in God. Consistently, the results have shown that patients who are prayed for have loving, hopeful, thoughts expressed for them by someone on a regular basishave recovered faster and with fewer complications than those who are not. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a group at McGill University in Montreal did a series of tests of the effects of laying on of hands. They had a self-proclaimed healer hold containers in which mice whod been surgically wounded were placed and found those mice to heal significantly faster and with fewer complications. They had the same person hold containers of water that would be used to water barley sprouts and found the plants to grow stronger and taller than control groups. Later, they had other people hold the water containers and found that the plants watered with solutions held by people diagnosed with significant psychological problems seemed to actually do more poorly than those whose water containers had been held by normal healthy people. Since then, books like The Secret Life of Plants have documented hundreds of cases in which plant growth or behavior has been significantly affected by the thoughts and words of the people around them. Hands-on healing techniques like Reiki and Dolores Kreiger's Therapeutic Touch have been taught to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, many of them registered nurses, rigorously trained in the rules and principles of traditional, chemical and mechanical medicine. And in clinical studies and many documented cases, most of those nurses have seen significant results from the use of such tools. As one nurse has put it I started practicing TT 15 years ago and used it for a few years before I began to sense energetically. Even now, I don't consider myself very kinesthetic, although this capacity has developed to some degree over time. I don't sense many of the things my beginning students do. So why did I keep on practicing? Because I could see that people I worked with were experiencing the relaxation response, pain relief, accelerated wound healing, mental clarity, emotional balance, and/or spiritual
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connection. Several studies of hands-on healing have been randomized, double blind, and with a large subject size. In the best known such study, results strongly supported the use of non-contact therapeutic touch in accelerating the rate of healing for deep skin wounds. There are thousands of anecdotesstories of individualsdescribing cases of severe illness whose symptoms have disappeared. Deepak Chopra, a western-style endocrinologist who discovered ancient Hindu healing traditions well along in his career, tells many such tales in his books. And he tells reverse tales, such as the following: I saw a lung-cancer patient who had lived comfortably with a coin-sized lesion in his lungs for five years. He did not even suspect it was cancerous, and since he was in his sixties, the lesion was growing quite slowly. However, as soon as I told him that the lesion was consistent with a diagnosis of lung cancer, he became terribly agitated within three [months] he was dead. This patient could live with his tumor, but he couldnt live with the diagnosis. He explains this story, and many othersboth positive and negativesaying that the cells receptors are always willing to cooperate with the minds instructions. The whole body, he says is a thinking body, the creation and expression of intelligence. He points out that chemicals called neuropeptides, described by their discoverer as molecules of emotion, appear in countless cells throughout the body almost simultaneous with whatever stimulus is affecting the body or mind. He concludes that they must be quantum eventsnon-matter brought into matter by the thought. Healing, therefore, has been demonstrated to be a function of the pattern of thoughtsand the specific neuropeptides those thoughts induce in the body. A New Look at Placebos In his groundbreaking book, Anatomy of an Illness, the well-known writer Norman Cousins set forth a theory of medicine that earned him a place on the UCLA Medical School facultybut is largely ignored. Cousins had experienced a serious illness that had baffled his medical doctors, but which he was able to overcome through a series of actions that made sense to him, though they had little medicinal value in themselves. When he described his treatment in a later article, more than one noted physician jeeringly ascribed his results to the placebo effect. Cousins was intrigued by the notion and did some research, coming to the conclusion that the history of medicine is actually the history of the placebo effect. As he reviewed the grim array of potions and procedures that medical practitioners have applied to illnesses over the centuries, he began to see that people were able to overcome
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these noxious prescriptions, along with the assorted malaises for which they had been prescribed, because their doctors had given them something far more valuable than the drugs: a robust belief that what they were getting was good for them. They had reached out to their doctors for help; they believed they were going to be helpedand they were. Its interesting to consider this statement in light of the fact that, in tests where a new medicine is being tried, the goal is always to find out how many more people experience relief from their symptoms with the medicine than with a sugar pillthe placebo. In fact, according to some studies, the normal relief rate with the placebo is 30-40%which is a better rate than some approved medicines. A New Vision for Medicine Physician Larry Dossey, in his book Meaning and Medicine, summarizes dozens of studies relating thought and body-condition. Over and over again, the difference comes down to belief. People who remain healthy (or become healthier!) under stress believe they have control over their situation. People who die without apparent medical cause believe they are dying. Immune systems are weakened (and often, death soon follows) in widows and widowers who believe they are forever separated from their beloved. Citing numerous other studies, and some quantum mechanics, Dossey goes on to suggest that not only is the patients belief a factor, but so is that of the doctors and those around the patient as well. He proposes a new Era in medicine, which he describes as follows: Mind a factor in healing both within and between persons. Mind not completely localized to points in space (brains or bodies) or time (present moment or single lifetimes). Mind is unbounded in space and time and thus ultimately unitary or one. Healing at a distance is possible. In this model, healing is no longer a function of finding the potion or procedure that both the patient and the physician can believe in. With such a view of healing, the two work together not to develop a program for treating or minimizing symptoms, but rather to change the patients belief about their conditionas did P. P. Quimby, a hundred-fifty years ago. These experiments are documented in a series of articles by Bernard Grad in the International Journal of Parapsychology through the 1960s. Diane Steins Essentials of Reiki is a useful description of the technique and its history. Taken from a Therapeutic Touch website discussion of a recently published, poorly designed test of the method. Wirth's 1992 study was en titled "The Effect of Non-Contact Therapeutic Touch on the Healing Rate of Full Thickness Dermal Wounds" Quantum Healing and
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Ageless Body, Timeless Mind are two of his more popular works. In Quantum Healing, Chapter 2. In Quantum Healing, Chapter 5. Candace Pert, in her book so titled. In Anatomy of An Illness, Chapter 2. In Meaning and Medicine, Chapter 17. Understanding How What They All Have in Common If we consider all the great healers of the New Thought movement, with all their different styles, we can see some consistent patterns. First, they all have let go of the belief that we are stuck with our bodies and its symptoms. Each and every one of these healers has understood that our bodies are the reflection or manifestation of our mental processes. Second, they all have believed that its possible to change the condition of the body by changing those mental processes. When Quimby reasoned with someone or Nona Brooks went into the light or Louise Hay encourages new affirmations, they have been working to change the mental processes of the person as a means to change the bodys condition. Third, they all believe in a higher power, a spiritual presence that is infinite intelligence and wisdom, whose body is the universe and so who is present throughout the universein the smallest and in the greatest parts of it. Fourth, they all trust that power to be a loving, supportive force for good in the life of the individualand in humanity as a whole. They have believed that its our own thinking that creates the problems of our lives and the world, and that if we can shift those thoughts, we can eliminate many of the problems. Fifth, they all rely on the capacity of the individual to let go of old patterns of thought and replacing them with new onesthus manifesting a life based on the new thought patterns. And they recommended focusing on the perfect idea of the divine as a way to maintain the new pattern. Sixth, they all experienced a capacity to touch others minds through their own thoughts. They believed there is a connection between individuals that underlies the verbal and physical connection, and they worked at that level to help shift the thoughts of the people who came to them. So, each and every one of these healers has worked to change their own thoughts about their own bodies, and in doing so to change the thoughts of those who come to them so that they, too, can experience wholeness and wellbeing. 20th Century Science Seekers of knowledge (the meaning of the word scientist) have, in the past 75 years, found ways to observe the infinitessimally small and the
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tremendously huge. Theyve measured the infinitessimally small patterns of the molecules and atoms and sub-atomic particles that make up the matter around us. And theyve charted the tremendously huge patterns of stars and galaxies and clusters of galaxies that swirl around us over distances we cant even count, much less comprehend. Scientists such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Stephen Hawking have developed whole new understandings of the way the universe is structured. Others, such as James Watson, Francis Crick and Candace Pert, have explored the many patterns of our human bodies, from the first pair of molecules that come together in the womb through the complex web of nerve cells and chemicals that allow us to feel and move and speak and listen to each other. And folks like Rachel Carson, Howard and Eugene Odum, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis have helped us understand the complex patterns that make the earth a place where we can live and thrive and make homes for generations to come. Nearly all of what we know about the vast expanses of outer space and the inner space of the atom has been discovered in the twentieth century. Most of what we know about how the human body develops and maintains itself emerged over the same years. Our understanding of the earthits climate patterns and the floating plates of rock that our continents rest onhas come together in the years since World War II. All of our communications technologiesour worldwide telephone links and radio networks, our televisions and calculators and computer networkswere put in place in the last three decades of the century. And all of those understandingsand the technologies that derived from themare the result of a few individuals looking for patternsor seeing them where others did not. Identifying A New Pattern For nearly three hundred years, ever since Isaac Newton developed his fluxions to explain how the planets move around the sun, scientists and engineers have known how to calculate the shape of the arc that the ammunition would take once it was fired. Its a well-known pattern, with a familiar calculus, or set of equations, to describe it. So, in World War II, the Allied military forces decided that the way to prevent German bombs from destroying England was to hire a bunch of people who understood those equations and connect them, by radio, with the men aiming the guns at the planes. One of those people was Norbert Wiener, an American of German descent, with Jewish relatives who were suffering under the Nazi government. Every night, with dozens of others, he would take his place at the radio, slide rule in hand, ready to take the numbers the gunners would give him. Over and
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over again, he would calculate the differential between the curve of the ammunition being fired and the flight of the plane and give the gunner the specific directions to point the gun so that they would hit the planes. At the end of the war, Wiener went home to his first love. He wanted to know how plants hold their shape and grow. As he observed them, he noticed that, contrary to most peoples assumption, plants are in constant motion: the leaves and blossoms change their position according to the position of the sun. He was fascinated. Here were simple plants, without even a brain, tracking the sun the same way that his gunners had used his calculations to track the planes! He saw that, somehow, the plants were able to perceive the movement of the sun, communicate that to the cells that held the leaves and blossoms in position, and so control their position. Wiener derived from this the idea that we could take a description of one thing and use it to describe a similar behavior in a totally different situation. Just as he used the same set of equations to describe both an anti-aircraft gun and a plant, he used other sets of equations to describe other previously unrelated systems. He called this new pattern cybernetics, from the Greek term cybernetes meaning steersman or helmsman (which the Romans turned into gubernator, in Latin, which became governor in English). He defined it as the science of communication and control in living and machine systems. With the publication of these ideas, Wiener launched a whole new way of thinking in the natural and social sciences, creating an opening for others to explore similar patterns. A series of conferences was held. A neurologist from Scotland shared his descriptions of how communication happens within an individual brain and between two people. A team of anthropologists shared how common patterns could be described in very different cultures. An economist shared how cycles in the economy of a country could be described as similar patterns of communication and control. And dozens of others put forth ideas and possibilities that became the basis for everything from thermostats to cruise-controls, from automatic pilots to Cruise missiles, from micro-chips to the internet, from bio-feedback to genetic engineering, and from factory robots to planetary climate control theories. A New World View Prior to Wieners discovery, scientists were looking for patterns in the structure of things. They looked at things like skeleton and skin and blood when considering a body. Or things like bark and branches and roots and leaves when considering a plant. They looked at how one plant was similar to another, or one animal was like another, or two stars had similar
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characteristics, or two cultures had similar language or political process, to develop taxonomies of relationships between them. With the introduction of cybernetics, people began to look for patterns in the behavior of things. A baby human behaves similarly to a baby dolphin or elephant. A family of chimpanzees acts in many of the same ways as a family of humans. Water flowing through a system of dams and reservoirs can be described in the same terms as electricity in a system of capacitors and switches. A boat on a river, avoiding obstacles and correcting its course as it makes its way to a dock, is the same as a robot navigating its way across a cluttered floor and correcting its course as it moves to a particular spot. The most important behavior that Wiener identified was the mechanism by which the plant fed back information from the light sensor cells to the position cells, telling them which direction to move. This feedback control system is the basis for the robots ability to move across the floor, as well as the thermostats to regulate the temperature in a room or engine. Its the basis for an airplanes (or rockets or missiles) autopilot, an automobiles cruise control, a bodys blood pressure (and temperature and hormone level) control, a factorys production control, and countless other systems in our world. The underlying concept, called circular causalitythe outcome of one event affecting the next eventprovided a launching pad for the fields of ecology, computer modeling, and psychoneuroimmunology, to name a few. And, as those fields were explored, new patterns of behavior were identified. The concept of system was refined, to a set of elements interrelating to function as a whole. Some systems, like factory robots or cruise controls, are controlled from the outside. Others, like plants, societies, and the planet as a whole, seem to be controlled from within. These latter were called self-maintaining systems. First defined by Magoroh Maruyama, an anthropologist from Japan, such systems have multiple feedback loops. Rather than having a goal or ideal set from the outside, each element of the system relates to the others in ways that sustains the whole set of relationships over time. A forest, for example, with all its different plants, animals, and micro-organisms, maintains itself through the balance of the interactions between all those elements. A city is maintained through the interaction of people, products, wastes, and systems to manage them. In such a system, some of the relationships form loops: the initial element is affected by its relationships with others (e.g., an increase in number of people increases modernization increases immigration increases number of people and a decrease in number of people ultimately leads to a further decrease). Each element acts in its own interest, but together, they form a system of balances and reinforcing activities. In time, some systems were seen to come into being without any outside direction. Like
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groups of students forming a new club, they not only maintain themselves, they organize themselves. These self-organizing systems have their own common patterns, primary among them being cognition, or the development of new processes out of a comparison of the results of old ones with the environment around the system. If we look at the development of life, we can see that single-celled organisms organize themselves from a set of information coded in their DNA molecules, with new processes developing out of old ones until the cell matures and moves into the process of creating new cells. If we look at the development of communities, we can see that individual households meet together periodically and, as the population increases, take on new processes and structures to support those processes, organizing themselves according to some agreed-upon standards of morality and political behavior. These new patterns provide a view of the world as a dynamic set of processes, rather than a static structure. Constant motion and change are seen as underlying what used to be seen as fixed and unchanging objects. Where once we described roots and branches and leaves, now we see oxygen-producing, moisture-collecting, and soil-transforming processes. Where once we described fixed continents on a solid ball of rock, now we see tectonic plates drifting on a semi-liquid core, sometimes scraping each other and sometimes moving apart. Where once we described human bodies with fixed characteristics, now we see multiple systems of cells that are constantly being replaced and regenerated. New Ways of Perceiving In this world of patterns of processes, we somehow continue to perceive structure and form. We see a tree, not a soil-transforming process. We see a river, not a water-moving process. We see a body, not self-maintaining systems of cells. The fact that we see these things says more about who we are in relation to them than it does about the objects we are seeing. As human bodies, we have developed as a part of and along with these processes and our five senses have developed in cooperation with them. We are, in a sense, part of a self-organizing system called the world I live in. Having evolved and matured on this planet, we cannot perceive the forests, rivers, air, water, light, dark, stars, sun, etc. around us as anything other than our senses have evolved to see them as. It serves us to experience a tree as a solid object that gives us shade and shelter. It serves the tree, as well. If we didnt, we might walk through it or otherwise interfere with its processes (more frequently than we already do). We cannot, that is, except through our imaginationand the tools we invent that extend our sensory input. We cannot, for example, see a single
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cell just by focusing our vision in the direction of our skin or a drop of water, but we can imagine what it might take to do so and invent a microscope that allows us to see it. We cannot see a subatomic particle. We can, however, imagine what it might take to be able to do so and build the equipment that tracks, and provides us images of, an electrons or even smaller part of an atoms behavior. If we do these thingsif we allow our imaginations to consider what the universe might be like beyond the range of our senses and then build equipment to help us test our imaginings with our senseswe find that, everything that we once thought was static, is changing. More, everything we once thought was solid is mostly empty space! Time, Space, and Distances. How can this be? Consider, for a moment, the size of the Sun and solar system. The Earth is about 8,000 miles across or 25,000 miles around. It would take about 13 million Earths to fill the Sun, which is about 93 million miles away. Venus is slightly smaller than Earth and about 63 million miles from the Sun. Mars is even smaller, and about 105 million miles from the Sun. And Pluto is about 100 times further out, most of the time. The next nearest star is 4 light-years awaythat is, 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days x 4 years x 186,000 miles. Thats a lot of space! And were in a relatively crowded section of the galaxy! Now, consider the structure of an atom. The electrons in an atom are proportionately as far from the nucleus as Pluto is from the Sun, and even smaller in comparative size. So theres far more space per unit of matter in an atom than in the solar system. Whats more, the electrons arent very often more solid than a cloud of energy, reducing the amount of matter even more. If we step up in scale from an atom to a molecule, we find overlapping electron clouds connecting distant nuclei. If we were the size of a neutron and could travel around inside even the most complex molecules, it would be like traveling from star to star in our galaxy: lots of empty space and not much solid to stand on. Not Material Structures, But Energy Systems In fact, it seems that the most useful way to think about atoms and molecules is not as solid structures, at all, but as ever-changing patterns of energy that tend to come together in a particular way more often than not. Once a pattern, or system, of energy has formed, there may be shifts in the flows within it, as well. So Wieners causal loop model may be used to explain our new, nonsolid world, as well as the old solid one that our physical senses and Mother Culture taught us to perceive. In the presence of constantly changing or
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increasing flows of energy, an energy system may increase in complexity, may simply let the energy flow through, or may push itself apart by amplifying the energy flows through itself faster and faster. Cause and Effect Are Not What They Seem. In the world in which most of us grew up, the rules, put forth by Renee Descartes and Isaac Newton in the 1600s, were that, if one knew the original cause, one could always determine the effectand that if one knew enough about the effect, one could, ultimately, determine the cause (the basis for detective stories!). With enough information, we were told, we could predict any past, or any future, from the present. These ideas were called determinism. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the scientists and engineers who had to work with this model were finding that, regardless of their calculations, over time, all their carefully designed systems would no longer function as predicted. An engine breaks down. A weather system changes direction. Tires wear out. While the rest of us continued to be taught a deterministic view of the world, the builders and designers of it were learning about something called entropy. Briefly stated, entropy is the tendency for a mechanical system to lose energy in the form of heat every time something in it moves. This means you can never go back to where you started. We cannot simply do everything backward and have the same system we started withweve lost energy in going forward: parts have been worn down, theres less power (fuel, electricity) available in the storage, etc.. Its why a car (or refrigerator or dishwasher), no matter how well designed and maintained, ultimately breaks down. This idea was so disturbing that some folks extended it to everything. They predicted that the universe must ultimately break down (in billions of years) into a vast, homogeneous mass of cooling dust, called thermal equilibriumthe heat death of the universe. There was no way to stop it. Entropy, they believed, was absolute, and all structures must ultimately decay into heat. Flemish Chemist Ilya Prigogine didnt accept this model. According to Prigogine, mechanical structures and systems still tend to break down, of course, but the process can be slowed even reversedin certain situations. Those situations are systems that are way off balance far from equilibriumthrough which energy constantly flows. Then, what he called dissipative structures form and are sustained by the energy available in their environment. So organisms and organizations become more complex and simple systems like the simple funnel at the drain of the bathtub maintains and, for a time, increases, the order in its own structure by increasing the disorder (using the energy) in the moving water
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around it. Its almost as if the universe were a flowing stream of energy, in which small turbulences become matter, become stars, become galaxies and solar systems, become life forms, become ecosystems and biospheres, become self-organizing beings. And each of these structures may increase in complexity or decay into dust, depending on their own internal structure and the shifts in energy-flows through and around them in the universal stream. Prigogine went further and showed us that all living organisms and systems maintain or increase their own order by creating disorder in the environment around them. The cell, developing into a baby, increases its internal order by increasing the disorder around itinside the womb and its mothers body. Cities increase and maintain their internal order by increasing the disorder (in the form of eradicated forests, garbage dumps, etc.) around them. Unpredictability This tendency toward order in dissipative structures is almost completely unpredictable. The complexity of the feedback loops within them makes them super-sensitive to small changes in the environment around them: the slightest fluctuation in available energy can lead to a breakdown in the system or a transformation to a new level of order. The introduction of a catalyst in some chemical formulae, the increase in available sunlight in some plant communities, the addition of a branch to a fast-moving stream, the addition of a word or image to an ideaall may lead to the formation of whole new structures, or to the breakdown of existing structures into chaotic behaviors or heaps. We cannot know in advance, which. In such structures the law of cause and effect (as we were taught it) no longer applies. Potential Instead, we now have a picture of the universeand ourselvesin which a particular event need not necessarily lead to any particular outcome. In this universe, we only have probabilities of an event. A diagnosis of cancer, for example, or economic collapse, rather than being a prediction with a clearly determined outcome, may instead be a critical fluctuation leading the systemour culture, our livesto restructure into a new form. The energy and information flowing in and moving through and between various elements are constantly increasing our systems complexity. As the complexity of the interactions between these elements increases, changes in the energy and information entering the system have more impact on the systemtheres less room to adjust and continue on as before. Like a very delicately balanced
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house of cards, a tiny nudge can cause major changes. The complexity of the interactions means that the slightest shift can lead the system to collapse or reform into a new set of elements and interactions. The shift may be a word or idea, a food or chemical, a form of light, or the sudden absence of any of these. Which direction we, as systems, take at such bifurcation points depends, in part, on our awareness of ourselves and our environment (our consciousness) and on our knowing of the possibilities in the moment (our cognition). Consciousness and Cognition Energy in its pure form is a flow of wave-particles. These wave-particles have demonstrated some interesting characteristics in the laboratories of quantum physicists. If a physicist sets up an experiment to find out how many particles are emitted by an energy source, they act like particles. If the experiment is designed to test for waves, they act like waves. Even if the experiment is changed after theyve started on their way to the measuring device, they appear in whichever form that the device can measure. And, if the wave/particles are split into pieces, then all the pieces respond to anything that happens to one of them, instantaneouslyhowever far apart they are. Consciousness These subatomic wav-iclesthe smallest thing we knowseem to be making choices about how to show up in these experiments. They seem, therefore, to have a form of mind, or consciousness. These things that are too small to be seen by even the most powerful equipment seem to be aware of how an experiment is set up and adjust their behavior accordingly. If we look at a much larger systema single cell, like an amoebawe find that, though it lacks eyes, still it perceives light and dark and threatening shapes and substances. And though it lacks a brain, still it behaves purposefully It gathers food, moves in the direction of food and away from danger, and reproduces when it has begun to fail or the environment is supportive of new life. And if we look at the other end of the spectrum, say our own Industrial Culture, we see a system that takes in matter, information, and energy to maintain itself, moving to where those things are located, avoiding immediate dangers, etc.. Consciousness, it seems, is present throughout all systemsall energy patternsfrom the smallest and simplest to the complexities of humanity and our cultures. In terms of awareness and purposive behavior, the atomic structure of a car may be said to have all the consciousness of its human
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counterpart. Consciousness is even present in a quantum vacuum (a space from which all atoms and particles and energy has been removed) causing new wave-particles to pop into it at seemingly random intervals, usually to pop out just as quickly, but sometimes to join up with other wave-particles in the area. We can say, therefore, that the universe has consciousnessis a field of infinite possibility out of which all matter and energy take formand that this consciousness is present in and through all space and time. This universal consciousness shows up in various forms and patterns of matter and energy, including the particular form we call human beings. It enables the patterns we are part of to maintain themselves and it provides the matter and energy for new patterns to be formed. We can say, then, that in order for a system to maintain itself, it must be conscious; that is, aware of itself in its environment and behaving in alignment with its purpose to maintain itself. Cognition Cognition, however, goes beyond awareness and purposive behavior into knowing and knowing that we know. Cognition in its rudimentary form is what leads a single cell to develop into an infant in the womb and the cells of a fingertip to know when to curve around and meet the other side. In order for a system to create itself, to be self-organizing, it must knowit must perceive itself and its environment and remember that pattern. But it also must perceive its options; it must act not only in alignment with its own maintenance, but with the achievement of the possibilities those options represent. Cognition is essential to becoming a self-organizing system and essential to remaining selforganizing. It is the fundamental distinction between a living system and a nonliving system. Cognition in a more advanced form is what causes a mother to know how to love a child. It is an emergent property of the relationship between them and, as such, it increases as the relationship becomes more complex. Its a process of emergence, of discovering from one step, the next step. Cognition results from complexity and leads to increasing complexity. It requires a complex set of interactions in order to emerge and its emergence creates more complexity in those interactionsas well as increased potential for new interactions. Cognition is a process that includes the activity of the brain but is not located in the brain. Its located everywhere in the organism at once. Energy Systems with Cognition

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So, since we are not the solid beings we have believed ourselves to be, but energy systems instead, cognition is a process in the pattern of energy that we are. Much more than the consciousness of our individual wave-particle components, we are a dissipative structure of those individual consciousnessesin a synergy thats far more than the sum of its parts. We are capable of cognition. As energy systems, therefore, we are conscious of our environment and behave purposefully within it. And as cognitive systems, we are aware of the possible states of our system and of its environment, are capable of choosing one state over another, and modify our selves and our environment within the range of those possible states. Our continued development (even existence!) depends on our behaving as the cognitive systems we are. The more fully cognitive we areof ourselves, our environment, and the possibilities thereinthe more likely we are to be affected by a small fluctuation in the flow of energy and information on which we depend for our existence. As a result, the more cognitive we are, the more potential we have for transforming, rather than decaying, in the presence of a critical fluctuation in our environment. Archetypal Behaviors Like all systems, human beings generally continue to re-create what is familiarunless and until we decide that such structures no longer work for us. As a result of this tendency to recreate the familiar, certain behavior patterns have been recreated over and over again, through time and across cultures. We call them archetypes. Trying to understand repeated behaviors in businesses, Peter Senge and his group have identified eight common archetypes. In each of them, the actual outcome differs significantly from the intended outcome due to the reinforcing (or balancing) behaviorsthe multiple feedback loops in the system. One of the most common is what Senge has called Shifting the Burden. Its the classic addiction pattern. We feel uncomfortable; we find something that makes us feel better; the next time we feel uncomfortable we do the same thing; until the only way to not feel uncomfortable is to do that same thing over and over again. And, as in any addiction, the goal of the system becomes getting the fix rather than the long-term maintenance of the system. Ultimately, the system decays and the personor companydies. A variation on this one is the Fixes that Fail archetype, in which the solution used to solve a problem symptom has unintended consequences that ultimately make the problem worse. For example, taking anti-inflammatory medications reduces the discomfort of swelling for the time being, but it prevents the body from sending healing and
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cleansing fluids to the sore tissue, prolonging, and in come cases preventing, the healing process. Perhaps the most destructive pattern is the Escalation archetype. One person does something that the other perceives as a threat; the threatened party then does something defensive which causes the first party to feel threatened and act defensively, which reinforces the original assumption of threat and causes the escalation of defensive behavior. The Cold War activities of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. are the most frightening example of this archetype. Each nation built more and more destructive weapon systems in the belief that the other would be prevented from attacking them by the shear power of their defensive systems to destroy the attacking country (not to mention the rest of the world!). The most common examples can be found in the daily interactions of parents and teenagers or husband and wife. What each of these archetypes have in common is that, in the name of survival, the people doing them are actually destroying the system they are. Rather than observing the range of possibilities and choosing the one that has the greatest potential for achieving optimum well-being, they take a simple, direct action that, ultimately leaves them worse off than they started. Archetypes as Form in Consciousness The concept of archetype emerged from a psychotherapists attempt to make sense out of the patterns he saw in the thousands of dreams his patients described. Carl Jung was one of Freuds students who took off on his own. Working with patients in institutions and as individual clients, he saw the same stories repeated countless times. Then anthropologists began reporting the stories and dreams from other cultures and he saw these same themes and patterns. Themes like the wicked stepmother, the kidnapped maiden, the heros journey, the battle with a dragon, and the sometimes-comfortingsometimes-terrifying earth mother, were everywhere. One woman may consistently replay the abandoned maiden script well into her seventies. A man may be continually slaying the dragon in every new project, even when he has a home and a wife and grandchildrenand a huge pension plan. Jung called them archetypes because they were patterns, or types, that arched over individuals and cultures. Jung suggested that the existence of archetypes across cultures means there is a common field of consciousness of which we all are part, and transpersonal psychologists have developed and enhanced a variety of techniques for understanding and assisting individuals and communities. Jung suggested that, in addition to individual mind or consciousness, which is the basis for and result of our personal experience, there is a mind, or consciousness which all human beings, together, contribute
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to and are affected by. He called it the collective consciousness and, like the personal consciousness, he divided it into the collective sub-conscious and the collective super-conscious, with the sub relating to our physicality and the super relating to our ideals. Managing Consciousness Experience shows that we can, to some extent, moderate the effect of the collective consciousness on our own thoughts and behaviors by shifting our awareness elsewhere. If, for example, we concentratefocus all our awarenesson a set of words, or an image, or an idea, we can tune out the collective for a time, or filter only the super-conscious inputs into our individual consciousness. Prayer, then, would be the process of focusing our awareness on the super-conscious, filtering out the collective subconscious. And denial, as taught by Emilie Cady and other New Thought practitioners, is the process of turning our awareness away from the collective subconscious, as the Biblical Jesus did when he said Get thee behind me, Satan! On the other hand, if we dont manage our awareness, but allow it to drift without intention or direction, or if we suddenly find our old understandings of the world suddenly no longer working, were likely to feel the influence of the collective more strongly. In traditional religious terms, we might say that the collective super-conscious was the realm of God and the angels, and the collective subconscious the realm of Satan and the demons. As Jung found in his patients, if we dont discipline our awareness, we may be equally affected by both. What we allow our thoughts to be open to becomes a part of us, whether we are aware of it (conscious of it) or notthis is how archetypes happen. And what we think becomes a part of us and, because all consciousness is linked in the field of pure potentiality, part of the collective consciousness. This is why the first task of any healing practice is to manage or discipline our thinking. Relationship and Consciousness Transpersonal psychology grew out of these ideas during the 1970s. Transpersonal psychologists work on the assumption that we are part of a larger consciousness and affect each other in far more ways than we can see in our physical behaviors. They encourage meditation, visualization, and hypnosis as ways to clarify the patients patterns of interaction with each other and the collective consciousness, and have been exploring the work of shamans and other healers as ways to access and work with that level of
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experience. With the transpersonal psychologists, we can say that our patterns of behavior are our patterns of relating. Since all of us are part of one whole systemthe universeeverything is connected: we can never do just one thing; everything we do affects everything else. So there is no such thing as an action that doesnt have an impact on others. All action is relating. Relating as Cognitive Choice When we believed that each of us was an isolated individual who occasionally met or interacted with another individual, we set up behavior patterns that assumed we could act as individuals and not affect others. When we believed the world was a solid structure and plants and animals were individual solid structures and we were separate from them, we set a habit of behavior, a self-amplifying causal loop, that may be destroying the energy pattern that sustains us. Now that we know that nothing is solid, we can use our cognition to choose a different pattern, building on understandings from other times and cultures. We can create a new balance and choose to be a selfmaintaining, even a self-organizing, systemin a continuing pattern of energy exchange with the other elements of the system that we depend on. Now that we are becoming cognitive, we can choose to consider other behaviors and create different habits based on that new understanding. One branch of psychotherapy, called family systems therapy, applies these ideas within the framework of the interactions among the members of a household. Rather than treating the individual patient in isolation, these therapists call in the whole family. Their goal is to identify the patterns of behavior that encourage the problem which is being addressedpatterns that usually conform to a known archetype. Often, they find that the family member who has been identified as sick is the one exhibiting the healthiest response to the overall pattern of behaviors among the other family members. Typically, the therapist will enroll the whole family in a new set of behaviors in order to shift the dynamics and take the focus off the sick member. In some cases, more traditional therapies may go hand in hand with these behavioral approaches, but in many cases, the behavior shift is sufficient to reverse the problem situation. If we go beyond the surface interactions, though, we begin to find that the thoughts themselves are frequently a crucial part of the interaction. The behavior pattern may result from an individuals living out an archetypal scriptlike the abandoned maiden or the warrior confronting the dragon repeatedly, in the belief that, somehow, that pattern is necessary for their continued survival. Jungian therapy can help with these patterns. If we go even deeper, we may find an agreement in the collective consciousness of
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the family members that the familys survival as a unit in the larger world depends on maintaining these patterns. This is the realm of transpersonal psychology. Transpersonal counselors usually suggest shifting the patients focus from the behaviors of others in the group and concentrating on their own experience. When patients use various tools to stand outside the experience and release attachment to the events and the feelings associated with them, they begin to operate from their own super-conscious and have access to new insights from the collective super-conscious. When patients act on those insights, they begin to shift their feelings from the usual anger and blame linked with the subconsciousto new levels of love and forgivenesslinked with the super-conscious. This shift in consciousness usually results in a transformation of the pattern of interactionwhether or not the change is expressed verbally to the other members of the group. Our relationships with each other, therefore, are not just a function of our words and actions, but also our thinking and emotionswhatever is going on in our consciousness. Many of us have known this at an intuitive level, but have not been able to understand it. Some sensitives can feel a person with deep emotional issues from several feet away. Some can feel them simply by focusing their attention on them, wherever they may be. Some people can consciously affect the mind or body of another through their hands by touching themand some by just imagining they are touching them. More and more studies are showing that hospital patients who are prayed foreven when they dont know it, do much better than those who are not. And, most people can feel when someone important to them is thinking about themthen are surprised when they hear from that person or see them within a few minutes or hours. We are truly relating all the time. Healing Through Cognition In his book New Science of Life Rupert Sheldrake proposes a field of morphic resonance (morpho coming from the Greek for form or shape). Whenever something occurs in nature or in our experience, he suggests, that occurrence increases the probability of similar occurrences around the world. His classic example is the training of rats to perform a new exercise. Once it happens in New York, for example, rats in England learn the same new exercise faster. In chemistry, once one secretive scientist has, after years of effort, synthesized a new compound, others, not even knowing it has been done elsewhere, synthesize the same compound more rapidly and easily. These experiences are, Sheldrake suggests, the result of morphogenic fields (form-creating, morpho being form and genic being creating) that are
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generated by the event and magnified by its repetition. These fields seem to be electromagnetic in formlike the field around a magnet or around our bodies. They seem to be present around the world virtually instantaneously after the event. And, while they have not yet been measured, their effects have been tested many times since Sheldrake published his ideas. Jungs collective consciousness and Sheldrakes morphogenic fields appear to be different descriptions of the same system. The thought and action of an individual being occurs within the field of consciousness of all humanity, which is part of the field of consciousness of the Earth, which is part of the field of consciousness of the Solar System, which is part of the field of consciousness of the Milky Way, which is part of the field of consciousness of the Universe. Any change in the experience, or consciousness of the individual, then, is a change in the whole, which then leads to increase likelihood of such experiences elsewhere in the whole. Equally, the patterns of the whole impinge upon the individual, encouraging us to think and act in accordance with the morphogenic fields the fields of consciousnessthat are already in place. If we are merely conscious (simply maintaining ourselves as systems), we think and act in accordance with the patterns in these fields. We go along with the crowd, keeping up with the Joneses. It takes effort to act in a way that is different from the norm. Yet at every moment, we have the opportunity to step outside of the normal pattern and begin to use our cognitive ability to create a new self, with a new set of possibilities in relationship. Because most of us dont use the little opportunities, our livesthe system that is us become increasingly complex and far from equilibrium. If there are fluctuations in the system and we are simply conscious, we may experience decay and, ultimately, death as a result. Alternatively, a critical fluctuationloss of a job, a diagnosis of disease, loss of a loved onemay cause us to stop what weve been doing (and thinking and feeling) and shift to a new level of functioning as a result of that fluctuation. If we act in our capacity as cognitive, self-creating systems, we can guide that shift, transforming both our personal system and the patterns of relationship were part of. We can create new morphogenic fieldsnew patterns of consciousnessthat make it easier for us and others to act that way in the future. Transforming Ourselves When any one of us begins to become aware that we are more than the sum of activities and roles we took on as a member of our culture, we begin the process of transformation. When we begin to see the patterns of our relationships and behaviors and decide to change them, we have become
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already a different system from the person who blindly repeated the same old archetypes. When any of us begins to actively use our cognitive ability to selfcreate, we are transformed to a new level of system or beingness. When any new system or activity is formed, more *** like it are likely to be formed soon after. Ralph Waldo Emerson called it Self-Reliance and, in his famous essay by that title (written some 50 years after the Constitution had been ratified), called on every American, every human being, to create their own lives on their own terms. He asked us to do this regardless of what the people around us might say or thinkwith the realization that as we truly care for ourselves, we necessarily care for our neighbors, as well. Ways and Means Today, we have many more tools and techniques available for us to use as we begin to assess our previous patterns and select new ones. We also have a wider range of challenges to deal withif only because of the sheer number of people around us, each day. Unlike our forefathers, who depended on faceto-face meetings and slow mail systems to exchange information, we can talk with anyone, anywhere on the planet, at any time. We have watched live coverage of wars half way around the world. We eat fresh food grown on the other side of the world almost daily. We can see and feel and hear physical connections between us and the rest of the world all of the timeif we pay attention. We can also use tools and techniques developed in other times and cultures. The mental disciplines of the Hindus and Buddhists, developed thousands of years ago on the other side of the planet, are available to us to still our thoughts. The mind-altering herbs used by Indigenous Americans and Africans for millennia are available to us to break through rigid patterns of beliefs and assumptions. The physical disciplines of athletes, hunters, and warriors from time im-memorial are available to us, as well. Whats needed is to actively choose. To acknowledge that our lives have been shaped by accepting others beliefs and assumptions rather than discovering our own. To still their voices inside us long enough to discover our own. To begin to act on our own understandings and insights instead of theirs. To reinforce in ourselves the results of those actions, so we can replace the system of beliefs and assumptions that we once lived by with a new one, of our own design. And, once weve made a choice, once weve acted in the direction of our own choosing, we need to weather the stormof accusations, of apparent loss, of breakdowns all around usthat is almost always the result of letting go of a past and allowing a new kind of future. This isnt an overnight process. Most people take months, even years, to release old patterns and replace them
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with new ones. But once the choice is made, once that first action is taken, its not really possible to completely revert to the old pattern. Everything is different from that point on. And the concept of morphic resonance says that, once it has been done, the next timefor anyoneit will be easier. Putting It All Together How can this be? Based on the model of the universe and consciousness weve developed so far in this section, we can say the following: 1. consciousness pervades the universe, in all forms of matter and energy; 2. our personal consciousness operates on a continuum from sub (pertaining to matter/body) to super (pertaining to energy/idea); 3. in the moment of active choosing, our personal consciousness is unified across the continuum from sub to super; 4. when unified, our personal consciousness is fully connected with the collective consciousness of humanity at every level; 5. humanitys collective consciousness is part of and connected with all other consciousness throughout the universe; 6. throughout the universe, subatomic wave/particles of matter and energy respond instantaneously when any wave/particle theyve been connected to is changed, by thought or by action; 7. therefore, the energy/matter of the universe takes the form called for by our choicejust as energy takes the form of particles when physicists are measuring particles and waves when theyre measuring waves. So we live in a universe that, literally, answers our beck and call. We are part of a great whole that is perfectly designed to grant our every desire. In fact, our desires are not separate from the desires of that wholeall is one in consciousness and in relationship. The trick to experiencing the universe that way is to become fully cognitivethat is, to be clear about our possibilities and eliminate any beliefs or desires in our sub-conscious mind that may block our full, committed action in the direction of our preferences. In this way, by transforming our thoughts and the underlying beliefs and attitudes that sustain those thoughts, we transform our whole life experience. Transformation as Healing And so, when we transform our whole life experience we have a choice: we can continue to experience various disturbing symptoms, or not. By transforming the consciousness that we are, we manifest a new body-mind system. We can transform the body-mind system that our consciousness is manifesting into the unique, vibrantly healthy being that we were born to be, or we can continue to experience the accumulated dis-ease of our past thought
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patterns. This is the essence of Quimbys practice and teaching: change the belief structure and change the body. This is the Higher Mysticism that Emma Hopkins practiced and taught: shift awareness to a more accurate understanding of the nature of the person and that understanding becomes the experience. This is the Truth that Emilie Cady and the others so earnestly longed for us to comprehend: we are not this body, but one in being with the divine intelligence that is, throughout the universe, and we can speak the word and be healed. And so it is. from his book, Cybernetics, published in 1948. Wieners Human Use of Human Beings, 1955, provides even more useful ideas and understandings. The W.H. Macy Conferences, proceedings edited by Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian physicist trying to learn English who later founded the Biological Computer Lab at the University of Illinois. H. Ross Ashby, later the author of An Introduction to Cybernetics, with its fundamental ideas of the brain as machine and the Law of Requisite Variety. Margaret Mead, author of numerous popular texts on culture, with her former husband, Gregory Bateson, who later wrote Steps to An Ecology of Mind and Mind and Nature. Kenneth Boulding, who later wrote The Image, and Ecodynamics, and founded the Society for General Systems Research. And, based on Wieners books, a medical doctor, Maxwell Maltz, developed the ideas he published in the best-seller, Psycho-cybernetics. Bouldings classic article General Systems Theory: The Skeleton of Science lays this framework out in detail and Magoroh Maruyamas The Second Cybernetics: Mutual Causal Deviation Cycles set forth the pattern of multiple feedback cycles working within a single system to maintain it over time. Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela called this process autopoesis or selfcreation. They developed the concept of cognition in such systems in several articles and ultimately in Varelas book The Tree of Life. To imagine what this might feel like, consider Patrick Swayzes role in the movie, Ghost, when he walks through people, walls, etc. Daniel Quinn introduces the term Mother Culture in his award-winning novel Ishmael. These ideas are most clearly laid out in his Order Out of Chaos, written with Isabelle Stenger. Dana Zohar develops this idea in detail in her book, Quantum Self. An illustration of this phenomenon can be seen in the video A Brief History of Time, at the edge of a black hole. This is Deepak Chopras term for the consciousness out of which the universe, including us, takes form. Gregory Bateson raises the question; how do the cells at the tip of a finger know to curve around to meet the other cells, when all the other cells preceding them lay flat? in his book, Mind and Nature. Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana call this idea autopoesis, which is developed further in Varelas book The Tree of Life. This may be why sensitive, thoughtful people seem to experience so much
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more than their less complex brothers and sisters, even when the situation looks the same from the outside! Much of the material for this section is taken from the work of Peter Senge and others, described in his book, The Fifth Discipline. Jungs book, Man and His Symbols, is his account of these ideas. Cadys particular use of denials is outlined in her Lessons in Truth written about 1897. Or, for those who find Victorian English tedious, I have edited and updated that work, with the title Lessons in Truth for the 21st Century. Jung was very clear that such images were very much the intrusion of the collective unconscious animated in our personal conscious, as he described in his paper The Psychological Foundations of Beliefs in Spirits presented to the Society for Psychical Research in 1919. The Association for Transpersonal Psychology publishes a journal that has included articles by Angelis Arrien,Willis Harman,Jean Houston, Ken Keyes, Joanna Macy, Frances Vaughn, and Roger Walsh, among many others. Much of the material on this subject draws on the work of Virginia Satir and of Paul Watzlawic and his colleagues at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, as documented in Watzlawics Change and related titles. Called Therapeutic Touch and Reiki, these techniques are practiced increasingly by massage therapists and nurses across the country. The first one was conducted by Randolph Byrd in 1988 at the coronary care center of the SF General Hospital: 393 patients were randomly assigned to 2 groups: 192 were prayed for by outside intercessors informed of the patients names and clinical status and who committed to pray regularly. The second group did not receive prayers. It was a double blind study so neither the patients nor the staff knew who was in which group. Repeat of heart failure was 4% in those prayed for, and 10% in those not prayed for, with several other indicators affected, as well. Stuart Wildes The Force and related titles provide exercises and concepts to develop these abilities further. An illustration of choosing-as-action can be found in Neal Donald Walshs Conversations With God, in which Gods voice tells the narrator to choose something. The narrator replies all right, I choose . . . and Gods voice comes back with Im still waiting, and refuses to accept any answer but the narrators action in the direction of his choice. A growing movement of physicists and Christians refers to this quality of the universe as the Anthropic Principle." The weak anthropic principle simply states that all of the patterns of structure and behavior in the universe are perfectly balanced for human lives to existso perfectly that a small deviation in any one of them would have resulted in a universe where our bodies could not have come into being. The strong anthropic principle goes even further and says that the universe has clearly been designed to support human life and consciousness.
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the End

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