Blavatsky H.P. - Christian Science: Difference between revisions

However this {{Page aside|35}}{{Style P-No indent|may be, the application of the principle to the treatment of disease, if not actually new, is here presented to us in a novel form, and with a view to rendering its practice popular. It is philosophy reduced to its simplest expression. It is the physician’s highest art made common property. It is another claim to a “secret unveiled,” the secret of man’s being. And if, as the writer states, the present treatment of disease is the result of man’s belief in the reality of matter, it is doubtless necessary to begin by a somewhat lengthy chain of reasoning in order to convince him of his error, for man cannot understand what he really is so long as he pronounces upon himself as he sees only. “Not until he brings his higher powers into action, his discernment and perception, will he begin to perceive the truth about himself, which stands opposed to his own belief of himself. And never till he so perceives and understands will he reverse his decision upon himself. And never till he reverses it, will he grow into the consciousness of what he really is.”<ref>Section III, p. 18.</ref> He will remain, as the author puts it, in the Adam-state, subject to the law of matter, making to himself “graven images,” and falling down and worshipping them. And as “Adam is the model of man as we see and know him to-day, Jesus is the model of what he is to become—consciously, as he is in reality—through his own work of regeneration and redemption.” . . . . “It was this consciousness which was perfect realization, which gave him (Jesus) the power he manifested over sin, sickness and death, by which he healed the halt, the sick and the blind; by which he cast out devils and raised the dead.”<ref>Section VIII, p. 6.</ref> This consciousness is the chief point insisted upon in this stage of the work, for until this is realized, there is no possibility of the exercise of the healer’s power, except perhaps in a weak or partial manner. It is not therefore till we arrive at Section X that the treatment of disease is actually touched upon. In this section we are told that “what man in {{Page aside|36}}his ignorance calls health is as much a belief as what he calls sickness,” and that “putting medicine into a stomach never yet changed a man’s conception of himself; but he has changed one conception or belief of his for another in consequence of his belief in the power of the medicine.” Conditions of ill-health are said to be nothing “but mental pictures which man creates for himself and believes in religiously.” We must therefore learn to dominate all those conditions to which we believe our bodies to be subject. Denial of the false, affirmation of the true, constantly in thought if not in word, is to be the first process for bringing about a change in man’s own body first, subsequently in that of others. If we deny sickness and suffering and all kinds of evil as no-things, nonexistent, not proceeding from the Infinite Mind, both as regards ourselves and all surrounding us, for all are parts of one Universal Whole (which is another purely Vedanto-Buddhistic tenet), we shall, by this transformation of the inward gradually act upon and cause a transformation of the outward, and overcome all discordant conditions, be they called sin, or suffering, or sickness. And as man is the creator of every form of sin and suffering, so is he also the transmitter of these through “Thought Transference”; diseases are communicated by this means “instead of through physical germs.”<ref>Section XI, p. 12.</ref> The healer by means of “Christian Science” must attack the root of all disease, man’s belief about himself and others; he must treat the sufferer for his faults and for sin, of which his diseases arc but the extreme expression, one disease being the same as another to a scientific healer. In treating little children, it is mainly the parents who have to be dealt with, their beliefs about the child, their fear and their anxiety.}}