Being and Doing: The ABCs and XYZs of Spiritual Healing

By Thomas Parker Boyd

The first six lessons in this little book were published in the Pacific Churchman [Episcopal] and were so well received by church men and women that it seems wise to give them more widespread circulation. They are statements of truth adapted to people of any church, or for those who are interested in truth, who are not in the church.

The remaining lessons, the XYZs of Spiritual Healing, are for those who have studied and are ready for a more advanced statement of the principles of universal truth. They are sent out with the prayer that they will bring faith to see and courage to use the inherent powers of life given us of God.
The Author

Mixing Common Sense with Truth

"Come now and let us reason together," is a very ancient challenge of the Almighty. It is a call to be open-minded. Analysis of our troubles will usually dissolve them, and save us from discouragement, while the same process applied to our successes will save us from pride and its falls.

The closed mind has always been a tragedy. The open mind finds the way to all progress. We might try it occasionally on the subject of "healing," of which we talk so much.

Some people get sick and get well and some do not. Some who are healed get it immediately and others get it very gradually. Is God any respecter of persons? Not at all. The principle of health is universal. Its operation is by law and order. Things do not operate by whim or impulse. "He is without variableness or shadow of turning."

Niagara thunders on over its precipice and makes a noise and a display. We turn a small part of it through turbines and produce light, heat and power. The idealist wants to see it thunder on and waste its forces in mist and noise. The utilitarian wants to harness it up to further man's progress. Apparently there is enough to satisfy all for a while.

There is one God. He is manifest in His universe and is worshiped historically. He manifests in personality and is worshiped as person. He manifests in form and symbol and is worshiped though the senses. He manifests within the spirit of man and is worshiped directly without any intermediary. Neither one exhausts all the possibilities of worship.

There is one power. Primarily, it is mind or spirit. Secondarily, it manifests as material form and through material agents. One has to use it as he can. If he cannot see without glasses, let him use them until he learns that God made eyes to see with. If one cannot walk without a cane, let him use one until he learns that God made legs to walk with. If one cannot gain strength without cod liver oil, let him use it until he learns to go to the Maker of the codfish.

We all agree that there is no life, truth or intelligence in matter — except possibly tea, coffee and tobacco. Why not add quinine, aconite, digitalis and a few other material forms? We all agree that no material substance can grow a lump, have a pain, an irritation, an inflammation, or produce any other such result of itself. It can only produce these things as the life forces directed by intelligence acts in and through it. And so acting, it does produce these forms.

If mind, directing the life forces in their action through material substance can form these abnormalities, then it follows that mind, rightly directing these processes can remove them, and can prevent their ever coming in the first place.

If mind thus produces wrong conditions, it does so by holding wrong ideas about the realities of Being. It also allows itself to picture wrong conditions, and so sets in motion the power which manifests what it has thought.

The deep-seated consciousness of materiality prevents the power of Spirit working out its perfect work. He whose consciousness is filled with sick ideas will sooner or later express that sickness in his body. He who is conscious of the truth of Being, and knows that God in him is health, will find the same power working out the expression of health in his body.

Happy is he who can so clearly "Look unto Him" as to see naught else, for he is in the order of finding instantaneous healing, and permanent health. One without that singleness of vision will see the truth at times, the error at other times, and will come far more slowly to the expression of health.

He who merely believes the truth is at the beginning of manifestation. He who knows the truth has found the secret of demonstration.

A man believes in his conscious mind. A man knows in his superconscious mind. His beliefs are something he thinks. His knowledge is something he is.

The truth, which makes us free from all material limitations, is right here. "It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do." Get a clear idea of the I AM of Him and the I AM in you, and you have it. This, in tabloid form, is the remedy for every ill. It is just like the doctor's medicine — it will not do you any good unless you take it.

The Healer Himself

To be or not to be — that is the question with most of us. It may sound selfish, but it is essentially altruistic. The keynote of Christian obligation is service, and it is hardly open to argument that we can better serve in effectiveness and joy when we are well. The people who still "enjoy" poor health are usually lonesome. No one enjoys it with them. The desire to be well is inherent and natural. Satan almost told the truth when he said "Skin for skin, yea all that a man hath will he give for his health." One who enjoys poor health is sick in more ways than one.

The widespread interest in Spiritual agencies as a means of health is being reviewed in the church. One is tempted to ask if we really mean it because we are convinced of the truth upon which it rests, or if it is merely an ecclesiastical gesture, calculated to entertain the attention of church people and keep them from wandering into dangerous cults.

Certainly the church cannot be committed to any scheme of healing, nor even simulate an interest in such an undertaking unless it is clearly lawful and right. If we are still convinced that sickness and other ills are the will of God and are sent by Him for our correction, then how can a Christian, who is committed to follow his Lord in doing the Father's will, consistently engage in the use of any means whatever to get well, if it is the will of God for him to be sick? Strangely enough, when a Christian gets sick, he first takes home remedies until he can get a doctor, goes to a hospital, sends for a clergyman, and uses every known means trying to evade this supposed divine visitation.

We turn to the law and the testimony as given us by the great head of the church. He declared by word and work that healing sickness and forgiving sins was lawful and right. When he straightened the woman who was bent double, he spoke of her as one "whom Satan hath bound," yet many earnest Christians have given the Lord credit for what Jesus plainly says Satan did.

Summing up his ministry of healing and forgiving, Jesus said, "I came to destroy the works of the devil." That ought to settle the matter to most minds, and if it does not, another consideration is worthwhile. When Jesus healed, he clearly denied doing it himself by saying, "Of myself I can do nothing — the Father in me He doeth the works — the works I do are His — the words I speak are His."

God is the healer. This is the high note of his own triumph over all manners of sicknesses and disease. Not a word about God sending sickness, but everything about His healing His people. Not a word about His will for them to be sick, but everything to show that it is His will for them to be well.

"Which of you," says Jesus, "being a father, if his son shall ask bread will give him a stone, or a fish will he give him a serpent, or an egg will he give him a scorpion?" Not one of them answered. Not one of them would wait for his son to languish and suffer the torment of disease, and keep waiting while the son besought his father's aid.

Any human father would want to help before the son asked. When Jesus had paused long enough for them to catch the full force of his question, he added, "And if ye being imperfect know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father."

Judged by the Master's teaching and example, it is lawful and right for God's children to use any and every lawful means, whether material, mechanical, mental or spiritual to eliminate sickness and serve Him in perfect health. The church, ever seeking the highest welfare for her children, can do nothing less than to learn anew the principles underlying spiritual healing, find the methods by which divine power works, and develop a technique for carrying the work on, which will embody scientific method and spiritual power.

The Healing Power and its Agents

The first lesson set forth the teaching that it must be God's will for His children to be well, for by that they are better able to serve Him. This lesson deals with the question of the Healer Himself. Because of its ancient date of announcement and because of its essential truth, the statement, "I am the Lord that healeth thee," settles the question of the primacy of healing power and authority. It does not matter what name may be used, be it God, Mind, spirit, principle or what not, God is the only Healer. Neither does it matter what means may be used, not who may be the agents employed — God alone heals.

“God is the only Healer.” – T.P. Boyd

History is replete with the records of fakirs, charlatans, voodoos, medicine men, charms, shrines, healing waters, faith cures in bewildering variety, which have large accredited lists of cures. Also we have eminent physicians of many schools and methods, mental practitioners of many names, ministers of religion of many denominations, all carrying on healing work and getting results that cannot be gainsaid.

In prophetic times, we have one spiritual practitioner using a fig poultice to cure the king's carbuncle. We have Elisha using the principle of the modern pulmotor to restore respiration to the Shunamite woman's son. We have the same healer prescribing seven baths a day in the muddy Jordan to the oriental Naaman the leper, as a cure for his leprosy. We have Daniel prescribing open air living, vegetarianism and walking on all fours to cure the king of the results of high living.

We have Jesus, the great healer, using an ointment of clay and spittle on a blind man's eyes ad sending him to wash in the pool of Siloam. Keeping all the facts in mind, the incident pictures the blind man setting up a powerful mechanical stimulation, which in conjunction with the idea of a cure implanted by the words of Jesus, brought back his sight.

We need not discuss the medicinal value in that sticky clay. It was probably as devoid or full of healing virtue as "Denver mud," which we signify with the name of Antiphlogistine [Kaolin clay poultice]. We have also the case of St. James healing by smearing with oil, laying on of hands, and prayer. We have the history of the therapeutic triumphs of the church for three hundred years, together with the sporadic cases of healing in every age since. Any sort of analysis of these cases will reveal that underneath them all, no matter their nature or method, they depend on a common principle for the results, which cannot be doubted.

One with the slightest idea of scientific method would not care to deny the specific chemical action of many medicines used for healing, nor the chemical constituents of food, which may work helpfully or otherwise as rightly or wrongly used. Nor would he deny the actual effect of the emotions upon the chemistry of bodily secretions. Neither would he care to deny the value of stimulating the circulation of the blood and lymphatics, and the quickening of nervous action through manipulation.

Nor would he deny the good effect of relieving pressure on nerves and nerve centers through mechanical adjustment. Neither does he minimize the value of the impact of one personality on another in creating a new mental attitude for the patient. These are all essential and valuable, but they are incidental to the main fact, which is that through them or because of them the power that heals is given a chance to work.

The nature of the power that heals, when analyzed, brings us a variety of opinion. The medical man at once retires into Latin and talks of the Vis Medicatrix Naturae, or the healing power of nature. The mental practitioner boldly proclaims that it is Mind, spelled with a capital M. The spiritual healer declares that it is God. All are correct. Whatever their terms, they are talking about the same thing.

From these observations, we warrant the following deductions:

1. A fundamental and changeless principle of healing is present in all successful methods.

2. The nature of this power principle is unseen or spiritual.

3. The use of any and all methods and agencies as a channel is indicated in the vast variety of personalities, each with its own way of approach.

4. The fact that the power that heals is spiritual indicates the cooperation and coordination of all healing methods and agencies.

5. Not the slightest ground for bigotry in this exists. The only reason that one method or agent is more effective than another is that it enables the patient to contact the healing power more perfectly.

We may illustrate the modern and popular attitude toward dealing with sickness in an ancient incident, in which it is said that "Asa the king was sick unto death. Asa the king in his sickness did not call on the Lord, but had recourse to the physicians. And Asa the king was gathered unto his fathers." [See 2 Chronicles 16:12-13.]

This last terse sentence, which records the results, has been taken by some to be a joke on the doctors. Yet if there was a joke, it was on Asa.

Any man who calls on the doctor, but does not simultaneously call on God, has deprived the doctor of his chief assistant, and robbed himself of at least 50 percent of his chances for recovery.

The reverse is equally true. Many a mental and spiritual practitioner would have a smaller private cemetery if he or she called in a trained physician.

Something of course depends on the consciousness of the patient. About twenty-four people have to take cod liver oil to get strength to the one who can go directly to the Maker of the codfish.

Paraphrasing a sentence from St. Paul finds the best solution. "I use all means with all men if haply thereby I can heal some." In any event, do not lose sight of the Healer Himself.

Faith, the Recognition of Reality

"Have the faith of God." The declaration that faith saves and heals, and that everything else is achieved according to one's faith, leaves not the slightest doubt about what the agent is by which the healing principles are set in motion.

Whatever term is used, whether faith, trust, belief or confidence, faith is seen to be a state of consciousness. Although it seems to be an act of consciousness, the state of consciousness must exist before we can exercise the act.

Faith is the spiritual perception of reality, the discernment that the thing I hope for is now real. The faith of God is the perception of that which is, as contrasted with things as they appear. Faith is the perception that God is, that God cares, and that God acts. We hold this in consciousness as the reality, regardless of the appearance.

The great Healer held this as essential in all his work. The necessity of faith confronts any mind capable of motived action. Nothing could be done without it. In the case of the Canaanitish woman, and the Centurion, he commended their faith as great because they could perceive beyond all reports of their senses.

When Jesus said repeatedly, "thy faith hath made thee whole," he recognized not only that faith was the agent by which the healing principle was se in motion, but also that it was a power within, whose action depended on them. This does not mean that a man can make himself exercise faith, but he can so let the truth fill his consciousness that it is at least as easy to exercise faith in the unseen as it is to exercise belief in the things seen.

The statement of Jesus, "The Father in me doeth the works," and that of St. Paul, "It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do," indicates that the healing power that is set in motion by faith is also inherent in everyone.

The power that heals is within us by virtue of our oneness with God. The agent that sets it in motion is a state of consciousness within. Clearly realizing this, we stand at the threshold not only of healing but of living so that we are kept in perfect health.

This may seem to sweep aside the magical and the miraculous, and no better service can be done us than to get our health and welfare out of the world of chance and whim into the realms where God reigns by law and order. The power to conform to that law and order is within us. Doing this, health follows as effect follows cause.

Confessedly, the attainment of this state of consciousness is not easy. Often it is not immediate. We are hampered with age long ignorance of the nature of life and the life forces, of mind and its laws, of attributing reality to seen things while relegating the unseen realities to the realm of imagination and unreality, and finally, by the false notion that God sends our ills us as a punishment for our sins. This is an immense load to get rid of, but we may do it by applying scientific method to our mental and spiritual life as we do to our material affairs.

Sometimes a single act of faith will bring wonderful relief, then we have the same old battle to keep up to that high level. It only took forty days to get Israel out of Egypt, bit it took forty years to get Egypt out of Israel. The realization that God is spirit, and that true worship is in spirit, can set one free from these limitations.

Have the faith of God. Without it, half the doctor's effectiveness is lost. Without it, the laying on of hands at the altar becomes an empty and impotent form. Without it, any spoken word falls on stony ground. With it, any agent or means will be attended with the movement of the power that heals.

Imagination, the Supreme Architect

"My imagination is stayed on perfection." With these words, the psalmist accounted for the rise and glory of himself and of Israel.

Another seer of that people, seeking the secret of the downfall of Israel, found it in the temple in a special chamber that he called the "chambers of imagery." (Ezekiel 8:12). Among the images mentioned was "the image of jealousy."

If the way the imagination was directed accounted for the weal or woe of a whole nation, materially and spiritually, then it is worthwhile to inquire into the role that imagination plays in the economies of living.

Every experience and achievement is the outward expression of the inward urge or desire to express. The first step of this urge is to be fashioned in the chambers of imagery. The picture of the form it will take is fashioned there, after which the creative drive of mimicry, which is present in every phase of life, moves to give the picture form.

Every relationship in life depends on the power of the imagination for its value and permanence. Most men would, unless gallantry intervened, confess that the most wonderful qualities with which they had endowed the angelic creature of their dreams faded under the contacts of daily life.

Most women would be willing to say that the qualities of manliness and almost divinity with which they had clothed the picture of their future husband, somehow faded when life's daily humdrum dispelled the glamor cast by imagination. What a pity that imagination is not allowed to keep us illusioned through life.

Even in religion, the imagination plays a tremendous part. The picture of God one holds in mind determines very much the character and effects of his religious life. If God is a being to be feared, and He is that with nine-tenths of people, then religion with a fear motive becomes the dominant force in life. This fear element in religion destroys a large part of its effectiveness.

The high note of Benedictus was "that we should serve him without fear." In spite of that brilliant flash of truth, Christians are still filled with fear of God, fear of death, fear of old age, fear of poverty and a whole extended family of fears. The results, in sickness and various ills, are so evident that we cannot doubt their causes.

Only by the trained imagination can w catch the inner significance of much of Jesus' teaching, and the high symbolism of the church. When he spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, they were unable to see beyond the literal meaning. Well might they ask, "How can we eat his flesh?" The same literalism, the same lack of imagination binds us.

He meant to tell them that unless the truth, which had been made flesh and blood in him, be made flesh and blood in them, they could have no life in them.

That truth was the atonement, the oneness with God. To hold this truth clearly in mind and realize it fully in consciousness was to have life in them. In other words, the imagination must picture a great spiritual reality when we receive the symbols of his body, or else we "do not discern the Lord's body." We fail to receive the benefits of realizing that every moment of the day and night the life of God is being imparted to and expressed in us.

This appeal to the imagination was very evident in the healing missions of Mr. James Moore Hickson. He was constantly telling people that he did not heal but that Christ stood back of him and reached out spiritual hands and did the healing. It is a safe assumption that the people who received the greatest benefits from his laying on of hands were the people who most clearly saw the image of the healing Christ.

Therefore, the value of keeping the imagination stayed on perfection is unquestionable. Let your imagination picture a perfect physical body for you. Leave out all pictures such as "there is no health in us," "the days of our years are threescore and ten," etc., and a few more phrases that hold a destructive picture in the imagination.

Let your imagination clothe your body with the health of the Christ himself, and you have the highest authority for the statement that by doing so, you will be like him. Th next lesson will set forth just why imagination plays so great a part in health.

Mimicry, the Method of the Hidden Power

The rapt cry of an illumined soul was, "We shall be like him" when he shall be perfectly manifested to our consciousness. This is the ideal, the picture in the background of the imagination when we think of Christian living. This likeness, by any fair interpretation, refers not only to our spiritual states, but to our relations with our fellows, to our material affairs, to our physical well-being and in fact to anything that rightly belongs to life.

The devout believer accepts this without question and all goes well until there comes a time when it does not work. Then he begins to wonder why it doesn't. It seems that a better way is to ask how it does work and if a scientific method backs it, by which we can know that it always works when we know the law and keep it.

The lover of nature has wandered in the woods and noticed the strange facts that the little animals, birds and insects become like the leaves, bark, and other forms and colors that surround them. He becomes aware that a power in life, an unconscious mimicry, produces this similarity in every form.

In larger animals it even more marked. The polar bear is white because he is forever surrounded by white. The deer is white in winter and darker in summer to correspond with nature's changing color scheme.

This unconscious mimicry is seen marked degree in the cuckoo bird. Ornithologists assure us that the cuckoo practices imitation to the extent of laying eggs of identical size, color and shape in a strange nest after looking intently at the eggs already laid there.

The two men of ancient time, Jacob and Laban [Genesis 30], who practiced on each other, have left the record of a known power of mimicry in nature, by which Jacob was able to determine the color of the lambs, calves and kids.

When we come into human life, we discover the power to imitate both unconsciously and consciously. We preserve children's well-known tendency to imitate in the proverb, "Monkey see, monkey do."

Every exhortation ever made on the power of example and the value of right associates has depended upon this power of mimicry for its fulfillment. Few parents would care to name their child Cain, Judas, Ananias, or for Aaron Burr, because they intuitively seek to avoid the possible contagion carried in such a name.

Yet we have multitudes of Johns, Peters, Matthews, James and Pauls, and for the same reason. People recognize that there is some power in life that holds out the hope that such a name may result in evoking qualities in the child, which were present in some famous bearer of that name.

The ancient stigmatists gazed on the image of the pain-wracked and tortured body of the Lord on the cross, and they eventually produced the stigma or marks of the nails in their hands and feet. This is well-attested as are other historical statements from that time. The pity of it is that they did not fill their minds with the image of his risen and glorified body.

Jesus called twelve uncouth and crude men to be the Apostles. They grieved him with their unspirituality. Yet three years of seeing his wonder works, hearing his glorious message of truth, and drinking in the matchless grace of his personality, and the unconscious mimicry had made them enough like im to carry forward his work.

After he was gone, they went out and painted word pictures of him. Men heard and saw the pictures, and soon afterward the disciples found men in the marketplace avowed followers of Jesus. They took knowledge that they had been with him and learned from him. Probably they had never seen him, but they had seen a mental picture of him and the creative power of mimicry had done the work.

St. Paul gives the scientific formula for making a man a Christian, "For we all, with open face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory after his image." In other words, as a man holds before his mind an image of perfect life as it was in the Lord, he finds this hidden power within making him into the likeness of the image.

Here then is the formula, whether it is for your spiritual life, your physical health, your material prosperity or the expression of your God-given gifts — hold before your mind the image of the perfect and finished work, and the creative mimicry of the spirit within you will bring it to pass.

How to Do It

Settle your mind to the basic truth that God alone does or can heal. Great as may be the value of a surgeon, a physician, a mechanical doctor, a practitioner or a minister of religion, they are at most but agents of Him who forever says, "Look unto Me and be ye saved," or healed or whatever you want to be.

When you can do this with singleness of vision, then God's health will come riding in on the visual track and bring about your healing. "If thine eye be single," if thou canst look and see God alone, then thy whole body shall be full of light and health. Yet if thy vision be doubled — if you see both good and evil, both sickness and health, both pain and ease, then you will alternate in experience between these dualities.

Shut the doors of sense perception and stand face to face with God alone. Behold Him as infinite peace and health, and you will come forth out of the silence filled with His health and peace.

Remember that your healing does not depend on whim or chance, but on changeless principle. A man with a cut finger in such widely separated places as San Francisco, Cairo and Hong Kong would wisely have the finger cleansed and bandaged, at which point the doctor stops and the eternal principle of healing begins. The same principle of healing operates everywhere in just the same way.

Remember that this principle of life works without variableness or shadow of turning. The law of the Lord is perfect. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. If regard not the laws of the body, mind or spirit, the law will not work for me. If you perceive that the law in any realm is but God's habit of action, then the divine order is established in all things. How can God work for us if we do not keep His law? That law is written in us and goes into operation when we live up to the highest light within us.

The state of consciousness, from which rises the act of consciousness called faith, by which we can know the invisible reality and command its powers, is attainable by anyone. Belief appertains mostly to things objective to us, while faith pertains to things subjective to us, whether they are within or outside us. One deals largely with the world of appearances, while the other grasps the unseen realities out of which appearance comes.

Belief is intellectual recognition of truth, while faith is the intuitional realization of it. One is seeing, the other is knowing. One says, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God," the other says, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Belief keeps us vibrating on the level of objective things, while faith raises us to vibrate on God's level of reality, where all is health and peace.

"Keep thy imagination with all diligence, for out of it are the treasures of life." – Proverbs 4:23. "I have set the Lord always before my face." – Psalm 16:8. "Ever looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." – Hebrews 12:2.

These and many other scriptures point out the value of having the imagination form the picture of what we want to attain. We cannot attain the righteousness of God by filling the mind with pictures of earthly evil. We cannot fill our spirits with peace by dwelling on the turmoil of earth. We cannot fill our bodies with health by letting the imagination build pictures of ill health.

The obverse is equally true. We become Godlike by picturing Him forever as the God of love. We become partakers of His health by building ourselves into the picture of His wholeness.

Mimicry is that marvelous power in all life unconsciously to take on the form, color and qualities of those things that are always before us or about us. "We shall be like Him,"depended on His being perfectly held in the grasp of our inner vision.

Many of those who have learned the unseen side of life, "the deep things of God," declare that every outward manifestation starts from some inner picture of mind. They also tell us that the various ills of life are but outward expression of the inner pictures we have allowed ourselves to build and hold. Enough ground for such thinking exists to cause us to build in our imagination pictures of only that which is perfect.

Being: The XYZs of Spiritual Healing

You have now had six lessons in the most simplified form of truth. The remaining lessons give, in highly condensed form, the essence of the most advanced statements of truth as known by the thinkers and teachers of all ages. Some sentences contain a whole volume. They are not to be used as a simple affirmation, but are to be meditated upon until something of their full meaning comes to the student.

Being is that which is. Being, which contains within itself the Is-ness of all existence, is Absolute. "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be" is not true of earthly things, but it is of God.

He is the eternal I AM. Time and spatial relationships are not attributable to Him. He is forever here and now. Things are not going to be with God — they are. He is not going to work — He works.

When Jesus said to the nobleman, "Thy son liveth," he stated facts as they are in Being. God is not going to heal — He heals. The boy is not going to get well — he is well. Being is Being.

Being includes all there is of life, and we must understand life as substance, both spiritual and material. Substance is that which underlies and upholds. It includes the Source as well as the expression of all that is or appears.

"The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." – Hebrews 11:3. "The seen things are temporal, the unseen things are eternal." "That which hath been made was life in Him." God is the life and substance of all being, from whence all becoming proceeds.

Being is eternal reality. It includes the absolute and unconditioned as it is in Spirit, as well as the conditioned and relative as it is in material appearance. Absolute reality is found only in the realm of Mind and Spirit. Relative reality is found in the realm of matter.

Common usage attributes reality to the things which we can sense. Because God is the substance of all existence, there is an element of reality in the most evanescent of things. It is therefore illogical to say that they are unreal. A thing cannot be absolutely real when all our terms concerning it are misleading.

We speak of up and down, north and south as though they were realities, when in fact they are accommodations to our objective perceptions. A thing cannot be unreal when law and order govern it and we can know and determine its nature and movements. Tested thus, reality is both spiritual and absolute and material or temporary. Matter and spirit, time and eternity meet in man at the point called "I AM," and he is therefore constituted to live in either or both realms.

Man's body and his conscious mind enable him to function in the limited reality, and to be so filled with its reports that he may and does lose sight of the great unseen reality, lying just beyond mortal sight. Or he may simultaneously so function on the higher spiritual side of reality as to see and live in its heart. This realization enables him to master the powers that operate in material appearance, and to direct and fashion his affairs as he will.

Law and order govern both realms of reality. The laws of relative reality, such as gravitation, cohesion, resistance, are as specific in the realm of relative reality as is the operation of the law of love in absolute reality.

Knowing and keeping the law of spiritual reality, we have illumination, and all power in heaven and on earth (in mind and body) is at our command. Knowing and keeping the laws of material expression enables us to live in health and to serve as becomes the sons and daughters of God.

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Unity

"Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is One Lord." Out of this fact of the Unity of Being flows everything that is, every appearance, every commandment, every obligation. Nothing comes out of nothing. God is the source and substance of all being and appearance. He is the totality of Being. There is naught beside.

Everywhere we are met with life, motion and law, the evidence of Being. These exist of either themselves or they arise from the one source of Being. Science tells us that there is no life without antecedent life, similarly no motion without antecedent motion, nor law without antecedent law.

If with one sweep of the hand we could blot out all appearance of things and men and gods, we would have either absolute empty space, and hence something would have come out of nothing, or we should have that same absolute empty space filled with Being, which is the source of all things. God is the Unity of Being in which all living have being.

He is the one absolute motion in which all motion arises. He is the one absolute law expressing Himself in definite ways called always. He is the love that arises up in us. He is the health that would express in every child of His bearing His image. He is the totality of supply in which our every need is present and ready to be accepted and used.

He is One. There are not two beings. A recent translation of the statement, "I AM THAT I AM," reads "Being is Being." And so it is. There are not two lives, just one life expressing itself in infinite individual forms. There are not two powers, one good and the other evil. There is just one power working by invariable laws, for good, health and abundance, as long as we know and keep the law, but working other results where we fail to keep the law.

When it is said that "He hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel," it is another way of saying that in the realization of oneness with God, we are partakers of His life and immortality. In that consciousness, death is abolished and all ills that lead up to it. "God only hath immortality" is a declaration that immortality is an inherent quality and cannot be imparted. It is only in the fact of the unity of being that we partake of immortality.

"I and the Father are one" is the high note of unity as the Master sounded it in his words, because he realized them in his consciousness. He prayed that all his followers might realize the same consciousness. Our oneness is an eternal fact, not caused through some external action but into the awareness of which we grow through the life and consciousness of the Christ.

Once grasping the truth of unity, the enraptured soul may truly say, "My life is one with God's life as my finger is one with my hand." All the blood and vital forces of my body are surging up into my finger, filling it to its utmost capacity without any effort, save not to impede the movement by tying a string around the finger.

His life, His health, His peace, His plenty are all expressing in me, to me, through me and as me. "All things are mine, and I am Christ's, and Christ is God's," that in the Unity of Being, "God may be all."

Reality

When we have stated all categories, postulates and axioms of Being, the mind still seeks a single term in which to include all truth. God, Mind, Spirit, principle, substance and other terms have become limited by use and interpretation. In a world of ideas of the truth, if one could attain the one idea that contains and includes all other ideas, he would in fact attain all truth. That one thing, once known, all is known.

An oriental fable tells of a rich potentate who left a fabulous fortune to his favorite servant Yusef. His will contained the proviso that each child and heir should first have the choice of some one thing of the estate and all that appertained to it.

When the assembled judges and soldiers — the probate court of that day — assembled, the eldest son chose the king's palace. Another chose the jewel-studded throne. Another selected the hanging gardens.

When all had received their heritages, the mass of the estate remained untouched. Only a boy was left to choose. Imagine the astonishment of all the judges when he said, "I choose Yusef." All that went with Yusef was his.

The Yusef idea, in a word, is reality. It includes all else. Reality is that something that in its nature is eternal and unchangeable. It underlies the universe of changing forms, shapes and conditions and is the primal cause of them.

Reality is that which exists by itself. It is the ultimate infinite and eternal principle of all existence and is th essence, nature and substance of all that is.

It is the infinite substance, life, law, energy, mind and love. It is the Source and background of all phenomenal appearing and disappearing. It s the changeless manifesting the eternal law of change. It is the unconditioned Cause of all conditioned existence.

Reality, considered as infinite Mind, created the universe and all that it contains.

All creation exists as an idea in the mind of Reality. In every phase and form of the cosmos, Reality is immanent in its creation. The created universe is the cosmic dramatization of Reality, through which it lives and plays the infinitude of parts.

Reality is immanent in each of its creations in the totality of being. In and back of each conscious being is the presence and power of Reality. Reality is immanent in man. Man is the manifestation of Reality. Man is identical with Reality in its nature, essence and substance.

The recognition of this identity by the intellect constitutes the perception of truth, or initiation. The realization of this identity by the intuition constitutes illumination. The manifestation of this identity by volitionally directing its power constitutes mastery.

Law

God is the totality of Being, including all reality and all appearance. All emanations or expressions of Being are held in indissoluble unity in Him. Law governs the relations between Being and His individual expressions, severally or as a whole. Law and order govern all things in the world of appearance in their relationships.

"The law of the Lord is perfect" in any realm of Being. We may know and keep it, and in the keeping of it is life more abundant. Law, motion and love are inherent qualities in the essence of Being. Natural laws are His habits of action.

"God is love" sounds the high keynote of the nature and character of Being. Love is the supreme motive power in His relationships with the universe and all in it. It is the supreme motive power behind all the laws governing our relationships with each other, as well as to all that belongs to life in the world.

The law is benevolent, in that knowing and keeping it results in all good. The law is invariable in that it cannot be changed. If we obey it, the law becomes our servant, to bring us every blessing of life. If we disobey it, the law becomes a tyrant to visit us with every evil.

Keeping the law, we are flooded with light, and are free from all negative darkness. Keeping the law, we are filled with harmony and peace, and no disharmony can disturb us. Keeping the law, we are filled with love, and the fear family can find no place in us. Keeping the law, we are filled with health, and the negative conditions of sickness are unknown to us.

The law works on the principle of action and reaction. If we love God and our fellows, we are filled with love. If we forgive our brother his faults, then the sense of forgiveness fills us.

If we think on "whatsoever is true, pure, just. Lovely, of good reports," then we will experience these things in our lives. By this law of action and reaction, right thinking brings us every good thing, while by wrong thinking we have brought every evil thing to us.

The highest form of law abiding is given in the words, "For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of sin and death." This refers to a state of consciousness in which we live in the constant realization of our oneness with the Father. In this realization, which we call the Christ consciousness, we are kept, as he was, in perfect peace of mind, in perfect health of body, and in fullness of joy in the spirit.

The full effects of the law are manifest in joy and peace. When Jesus promised his peace and joy to those who faithfully followed him, it was not a fiction but the most blessed of all facts. It was the essence of the gospel or good news.

Too much have we filled our minds with the ancient idea that he was "the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." Too seldom have we thought of him as setting all the joy bells ringing in the world.

Someone coined the idea of him as the man who "never smiled." Yet Scripture tells us that the little children flocked to him. Usually a child does not cling to a forbidding countenance.

He declared for his disciples, as the condition of their "joy being full," that "my joy may remain in you." What an irony unless he was indeed our great exemplar in joy. He who lives nearest the law of the Lord will find that law filling him with joy of life.

"Rejoice in the Lord all the time," for "the joy of the Lord is your strength." Nothing keeps the resistive powers of body mind and spirit up to that level where we have immunity from the invasions of diseases quite so surely as the state of joy, which is born of our love for God, love for life, love for our fellows and love for everything that His goodness has devised. "Again I say rejoice."

Seeing God

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" is the Magna Carta for a troubled world. For it means that seeing God here and now is possible. It is unthinkable that God should have said, "Look unto Me," unless there is some faculty or power in man, with which to comply.

Men and women in every age have realized the experience for themselves. Sometimes after long fasting or in some tremendous shock, loss, grief or joy, the set crust of materialism holding the mind was broken up, and the inner vision of the soul rose up to greet the Majesty of God.

Yet the formula of Jesus includes none of these as essential to the experience. He meant to set the mind and heart to contemplate the purity of God steadily until the uncleanness was dissolved through steadfastly beholding Him. For one cannot steadfastly look unto Him and behold any evil. He shall see only good.

Weakness passes in the vision of the strength of God. Sickness passes in the vision of the health of God. If one cannot see God in the world, he can never see anything else in its true proportions. When he learns to see God in the world, then he is set free from all the ills of the world.

"No man can see God" and live after his former estate. No man can see God until his eye has ceased to shed tears. Unless his emotions are so completely under command that he does not waste life's powers in useless tears.

No man can hear God speak until his ear ceases to hear the report of scandal. He must find that peace of mind where he takes no pleasure in the ill-report of another.

No man can speak to God until his tongue has ceased to wound. No man can enter the kingdom and see the King until he has found that humility that is the password to the kingdom of Christ.

Learn to see God by ceasing to look with the physical eye. Learn to hear God by closing the physical ears. In like manner, close all the senses and you will learn that you have other eyes, which see the unseen reality. You will find the pathway along which Jesus and all the seers and prophets of the ages have walked and talked with him.

Remember that mind does not determine Being nor any of the truth of being. Yet Being determines mind. If we conceive Being as anything less than perfect, then mind and its states will be less than perfect. If we constantly behold Him as perfect, then we shall find His perfection rising within us.

When Jesus said, "Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," he was speaking of this very truth. If your thought of God is perfect, then your vision and experience of God will be perfect.

Methods for Using the Truth

The simplest method for unfolding the consciousness into higher realization is to take a single sentence for the day. Keep it in the back of your mind. When you unconsciously turn to any of life's problems, then mentally and audibly repeat the sentence and try to realize its full meaning. In this way, it keeps you on the high level although you are objectively busy with other things.

We give a few such sentences. There are hundreds of them in the Scriptures, and from the hearts of inspired men and women.

For specific treatment of any condition, there are several forms, which have been proven many times as effective for self use or to help others.

This formula, rightly used, will cure any earthly ill. It is the summary of these lessons.

Sit or lie down and be still. Build the following picture. Whether you use audible speech or just thought, be sure to see the picture of each phrase. It is well to commit the formula to memory so that it rises in the mind without effort.

"Back of all appearance stands the changeless Reality. That Reality is God, Mind, Spirit, Principle or Substance. That Reality is the Mind that thinks and plans. That Reality is the power that works and achieves. That Reality is the substance that becomes. That Reality is the law that governs and controls.

"That Mind is perfect. That power is perfect. That substance is perfect. That law is perfect. My body (or any part) is God's perfect idea. It is made by His perfect power. It is made of His perfect substance. It is governed by His perfect law. The divine idea, the divine power, the divine substance, and the divine law and order are established in me and I am now complete in Him."

Use the following for yourself or for others. Place your fingers on the part affected and say:

"O Lord, the great Healer who didst touch the eyes of the blind and they saw, the ears of the deaf and they heard, the tongue of the dumb and they spoke, healing the sick, the maimed, the lame, the woman bent double, the one with the issue of blood, cleansing the lepers, casting out devils, healing all manner of sickness and disease.

"Thou didst give thy servants authority and power over every human ill. Thou art the same yesterday, today and forever. Touch thy servant with the Finger of God, that all the healing power of the Spirit may rise up in him and now make him well and whole, in the name of the Lord."

The following is based on the usage of Peter and John at the beautiful gate, as recorded in the third chapter of the Acts.

Take hold of the patient's hands, have him look steadily into your eyes while you look into his, and say to him,

"I am now speaking to that divine soul within — Christ within you — in which is all power for health, the Word that is forever settled in heaven, the Word that looses and heaven and on earth, which now makes you free and whole, in the name of the Lord."

Healing Statements

"The divine order is established in me. The Lord my God in the midst of me healeth me."

"I AM the perfect child of God."

"All the channels of my body are open for the free movement of God's ideas."

"I AM now strong through Thy most gracious favor and ready help."

"My every need is supplied according to my riches in glory in Christ Jesus."

Use these or any form in which there are no negative statements. Your God is, and that positive realization is the secret of all spiritual healing.