Theosophy - The Power to Heal - by Anon
THE
POWER TO HEAL
Anon [H.P.B.]
(REPRINTED FROM THE " THEOSOPHIST," APRIL,
1883.)
reprinted
from “Theosophical Siftings” Volume - 3 -
[Page 15] IT is a striking
commentary upon the imperfection of our modern system of
medicine that an almost unanimous scepticism prevailed among
physicians as to the power of healing the sick by mesmeric
methods.
By most the thing is declared impossible, and those who
maintain its reality are set down as little better than charlatans.
The majority are
not satisfied with this exhibition of petty spite; they
do their best to intimidate and ostracize the more candid
minority. And they find more than willing allies in the
theologians who stand for their especial prerogatives;
and, while claiming to heal by Divine commission, denounce
all lay mesmeric healers as either humbugs or sorcerers.
It is saddening to read in the literature of mesmerism so
many plaintive protests against the prejudiced injustice
of the medical profession towards such able scientists as
Gregory, Ashburner, Elliottson, and Von Reichenbach. One
cannot restrain one's indignation to see how an instinct
of narrow selfishness carries professional men beyond all
bounds, and warps the moral sense. The case of Newton, the
American healer, whose mesmeric cures are recorded by the
thousand, and embrace examples of the most desperate ailments
instantaneously relieved, is striking. This man has healed
in public halls in many American cities as well as in London,
not scores, but hundreds of sick people by the simple laying
on of hands. His power was so great that he could, by a word
and a gesture, dispel the pains of everybody in the audience
who stood up when he called upon those who were suffering
from any pain to do so. Seventeen years ago he publicly stated
that he had up to that time cured one hundred and fifty thousand
sick persons. What his present total is — for he is
still curing — we cannot say, but it must be larger
than the aggregate, of all the instantaneous cures effected
by all the "Holy Wells" and shrines and professed
healers within our historical period. A book ["The
Modern Bethesda”;
or “The Gift of Healing Restored.”Edited by A.E.
Newton, (New York; Newton Publishing Company.) by Mr. A.
E. Newton, [Page 16] a respectable
gentleman of Massachusetts, which appeared in the year 1879,
contains the record of some thousands of cases which yielded
to Dr. Newton's tremendous psychopathic power. From a public
address of the latter (see pp. 113-4) we learn that "in
healing there must be faith on one side or the other. A healer
should be a person of great faith, great energy, sympathetic
and kind; a man who is true to himself; a muscular man,
with a fixed, positive, and determined will. One possessing
a good share of these qualities will be successful".
The discourse finished, he gave a practical illustration
of his healing power. Said he: "Now I ask any in the
room that are in pain to rise — only those who are
in acute pain". About
twenty rose, and the Doctor threw his arms forcibly forward
and said, "Now your pain is gone". He then
requested "those whose pains were cured to sit down",
and they all sat down. His power has been sometimes so superabundant
that he had only to touch a paralytic, a club-foot patient,
a deaf or blind person, to cure them on the spot, and there
he has touched and healed 2,000 in one day. The Curé d'Ars,
a good French priest, who died in 1859, healed like Newton
for thirty years; during which period he had been visited
by 20,000 patients, of all ranks, and from every country
in Europe. Dr. Ennemozer, in his most interesting "History
of Magic", tells about Gassner, a Romish priest of
the latter half of the 18th century, who cured his thousands
by the following artifices. "He wore a scarlet cloak
and on his neck a silver chain. He usually had in his room
a window on his left hand and a crucifix on his right. With
his face towards the patient, he touched the ailing part
* * * * calling on the name of Jesus * * * * Everyone that
desired to be healed must believe * * * covered the affected
part with his hand, and rubbed therewith vigorously both
head and neck". In our days the Roman Catholics
have revived the business of miraculous cures on a grand
scale; at Lourdes, France, is their holy well, where hundreds
of cripples have deposited their sticks and crutches as tokens
of their cures; the same thing is going on at the parish
church at Knock, Ireland, and last year there were symptoms
that the same trump-card was to be played by the fish-collecting
priests of Colombo, Ceylon. In fact, the Church of Rome has
always claimed a monopoly and made the simple psychopathic
law to play into their hands as testimony in support of their
theocratic infallibility.
That useful compiler
of valuable psychic facts, the Chevalier G. Les Mousseaux,
scrapes on this papal violoncello with great zeal. With
him all mesmeric healings are effected by the devil. "When
the magnetic agent operates upon the evils of the body,
experience proves as an infallible truth, that it does
not heal them without causing acute pains, or [Page
17] without risk to life,
which it often destroys! Its cures are exasperatingly brief;
perfect ones are the exception; the evil that it expels from
one organ is often replaced in another organ by an evil still
more desperate, and the sicknesses it dissipates are liable
to cruel relapses. [ “La Magie au XIXme,
Siècle”, p.327. (Paris:
1864 Henri Plon.)] His several volumes contain hundreds
of reports of cases in which the devil has shown his Satanic
power by healing the sick and doing all sorts of wonders.
And that we may have the most unanswerable proof that the
mesmeric fluid has manifested itself similarly in all ages,
he collects from the writings of the ancients the testimonies
which they have left on record. Nothing could be more sarcastic
than his arraignment of the Academies of Science and the
medical profession for their stupid incredulity as to the
occurrence of these marvels. Verily this is an author to
be studied by the intelligent psychologist, however much
he may be disposed to laugh at his Catholic bias and his
blind resort to the theory of a non-existent devil to explain
away the beneficent power to heal disease which so many philanthropic
men in all epochs have exercised. It is not in the least
true either that mesmeric cures are impermanent or that one
disease disappears only to be replaced by a worse one. If
the operator be healthy and virtuous, and knows his science
well, his patients will be effectually restored to health
in every instance where his or her own constitution is favourably
disposed to receive the mesmeric aura. And this leads us
to remark that Dr. Newton has not sufficiently explained
the curative action of faith nor its relation to the mesmerizer's
healing power. The familiar analogy of the law of electric
and magnetic conduction makes all plain. If a metallic body
charged with + Electricity be brought into contact with a
body negatively electrified, the + fluid is discharged from
the first into the second body. The phenomenon of thunder
and lightning is an example in point. When two bodies similarly
electrified meet, they mutually repel each other. Apply this
to the human system. A person in health is charged with positive
vitality — prana, Od, Aura, electro-magnetism, or whatever
else you prefer to call it; one in ill-health is negatively
charged; the positive vitality, or health element, may be
discharged by an effort of the healer's will into the receptive
nervous system of the patient; they touch each other, the
fluid passes, equilibrium is restored in the sick man's system,
the miracle of healing is wrought, and the lame walk, the
blind see, deaf hear, dumb speak, and humours of long standing
vanish in a moment.
Now, if besides health, power of will, knowledge of science,
and benevolent compassion on the healer's part, there be
also faith, passivity, and the requisite attractive polarity on that of the patient, the effect is the more [Page
18] rapid and amazing. Or, if faith be lacking
and still there be the necessary polaric receptivity, the
cure is still possible. And again, if there be in the patient
alone a faith supreme and unshakable in the power of a healer,
of a holy relic, of the touch of a shrine, of the waters
ot a well, of a pilgrimage to a certain place and a bath
in some sacred river, of any given ceremonies or repetition
of charms or an amulet worn about the neck — in either
of these or many more agencies that might be named, then
the patient will cure himself by the sole power of his predisposed
faith. [That excellent journal, the Times of Ceylon,
in its number for February 7th, prints the following facts,
which illustrate the recuperative power of the imagination: "I
have recently read an account of what is termed 'a faith
cure', which took place with the famous Sir Humphrey Davy
when quite a young man. Davy was about to operate on a paralytic
patient with oxygen gas, but before beginning the inhalation
Davy placed a thermometer under the patient's tongue to record
his temperature. The man was much impressed with this, and
declared, with much enthusiasm, that he was already much
relieved. Seeing the extraordinary influence of the man's
imagination, Davy did nothing more than gravely place the
thermometer under his tongue from day to day, and in a short
time he reported him cured. I can relate a perfect faith
cure of a desperate case of dysentery in one of our planting
districts, by a medical practitioner well known at the time,
Dr. Baylis, who practised on his own account in the Kallibokke
Valley and Knuckles district. He had just returned from a
visit to India, having left his assistant in charge and on
his return was much distressed to learn that a favourite
patient of his, the wife of an estate manager, was desperately
ill with dysentery, and not expected to live more than a
day or two, being almost in extremis. She had been gradually
sinking under the debilitating effects of the terrible disease,
and there was nothing more to be done, as the doctor found
the treatment to have been all that he could have adopted.
"Wishing
to see the patient before her death, he at once went to
the estate, and on seeing him she expressed great pleasure,
saying, in faint tones, she knew she should recover now
that he had come to attend her, as she had such complete
confidence in him. At her request he remained in the house,
but no change in her medicine was made. Strange to say,
she at once began to recover, and at the end of a week
was able to walk with him in the garden.
"Such was
the result with the patient. On the mind of the doctor
the cure had the effect of causing him to lose all confidence
in the efficacy of medicine. He abandoned allopathy as
a delusion, took to homoeopathy as the only true practice,
and necessarily lost many of his patients, and eventually
left the country and settled in California as a farmer,
where he was drowned a few years ago. The late Dr. Baylis
was a marvellously gifted man in many respects, but, like
many other clever men, very impulsive. He was inclined
to be a believer in Buddhism, and actually named one of
his children Buddha,"] And this rallying power of
Nature’s
forces goes in the medical books under the name of Vis
Medicatrix Naturae – the Healing Power of Nature.
It is of supreme importance that the one who attempts to
heal diseases should have an absolute and implicit faith — (a)
in his science; (b) in himself. To project from himself the
healing aura he must concentrate all this thought for the
moment upon his patient, and [Page 19] will with
iron determination that the disease shall depart, and a healthy
nervous circulation be re-established in the sufferer's system.
It matters nothing what may be his religious belief, nor
whether he invoke the name of Jesus, Rama, Mahommed, or Buddha;
he must believe in his own power and science, and
the invocation of the name of the founder of his particular
sect only helps to give him the confidence requisite to insure
success. Last year, in Ceylon, Colonel Olcott healed more
than fifty paralytics, in each case using the name of Lord
Buddha. But if he had not the knowledge he has of mesmeric
science, and full confidence in his psychic powers and the
revered Guru, whose pupil he is, he might have vainly spoken
his simple religious formula to his patients. He was treating
Buddhists, and therefore the invocation of Sakya Muni's name
was in their cases as necessary as was the use of the name
of Jesus to Père Gassner and the other many healers of the
Romish Church who have cured the sick from time to time.
And a further reason for his using it was that the cunning
Jesuits of Colombo were preparing to convince the simple-minded
Singhalese that their new spring near Kelanie had been endowed
with exceptionally miraculous healing powers by the Virgin
Mary.
Those who may,
after reading our remarks, feel a call to heal the sick
should bear in mind the fact that all the curative magnetism
that is forced by their will into the bodies of their patients, comes
out of their own systems. What they
have, they can give; no more. And as the maintenance of one's
own health is a prime duty, they should never attempt healing
unless they have a surplus of vitality to spare, over and
above what may be needed to carry themselves through their
round of duties, and keep their systems well up to tone.
Otherwise they would soon break down and become themselves
invalids. Only the other day, a benevolent healer of London
died from his imprudent waste of his vital forces. For the
same reason, healing should not be attempted to any extent
after one has passed middle life; the constitution has not
then the same recuperative capacity as in youth. As the old
man cannot compete with the fresh youth in athletic contests,
so he can no more hope to rival him in healing the sick;
to attempt it is sheer folly; to ask it of him simple ignorance
and selfishness. We make these reflections because requests
have been made from many quarters that Col. Olcott would
visit them and publicly heal the sick as he did in Ceylon.
To say nothing of the fact that he is now a man of past fifty
years of age, and burdened with a weight of official duty
that would break down any person, not sustained like
him by exceptional influences, we need only reflect that'
the suffering sick throughout India are numbered by the tens
of thousands, and that for him to be himself known as healer
would be to insure his being mobbed and almost torn to pieces
in every [Page 20] city. If,
in a small place like Galle, our head-quarter building was
thronged by two and three hundred patients a day, the road
was crowded with carts, litters, and hobbling cripples, and
the President was often unable to find time to get even a
cup of tea before five p.m., what would it be in our Indian
cities, those hives of population, where every street would
pour out its quota of invalids ? If, like Newton, he had
practised healing all his life, and he could cure by a touch,
the case would be different. As it is, all he can do is that
which he has been doing, viz., to teach eligible members
of the Theosophical Society the secrets of mesmeric psychopathy,
on the simple condition that it shall never be used as a
means of pecuniary gain, or to gratify any sinister motive.
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