Mesmerism
November 5, 1998
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.
People today regard hypnotism (or animal magnetism, mesmerism — the older terms) as a healing agent or perhaps something done in sideshow. Mary Baker Eddy felt it was entirely malefic, since it operates on the level of suggestion where all sin, sickness and death pertain. Indeed, the major thrust of Christian Science treatment is always to break the dream or mesmeric state which hides the Truth of being and its healing energies.
Our topic worked well with the Christian Science Bible Lesson this week on the subject "Adam and Fallen Man." We had all been thinking of examples where we and/or the world generally are in a hypnotic trance, floating along with the popular consensus of error. We needed often to awaken ourselves with the question — Where is my consciousness right now?
We quickly got into the area of prayer or treatment, which itself can become the arena of suggestion rather than a deep search for the Truth that heals. As we discussed last week, the best prayer might just be a question like, "I wonder what's going on or being indicated by Truth in this situation?" One doesn't solve a math problem by a lot of affirmations and denials but by seeking the applicable truth and applying it. Mrs. Eddy's article called "Principle and Practice," originally published in a Christian Science Sentinel, dated 1917 (i.e., after her departure), and reprinted in Robert Peel's Years of Authority, pp. 377-378, speaks to this problem.
Next we discussed how the mesmeric level of belief can be decoded into the Truth. Mrs. Eddy has much to say on this — see for instance Science and Health, pg. 574:27-30 and Miscellaneous Writings, pg. 60:28-3. Problems are always based on a dualistic belief about someone or something that can be deconstructed with Science into its non-dualistic original and lived out from there with healing effect.
It seemed to some of us that we may need to live the dualistic version of something until our energies are aroused and refocused on Truth. An example of this is the healing of the centurion's servant, particularly as described in Luke chapter 7. Much love between the two men (some modern scholars feel they were lovers), the Jewish community and the soldier, and finally Jesus and the supplicants supported the healing work.
We worked on the following:
- Hurricane Mitch. We noted with sadness the danger of relying on material science. We've come to call this the Titanic syndrome. While weather forecasting seems to save many lives today, the student of Science will lean on the sustaining infinite and maintain the facts of being. The work is to see that God, good, is maintaining perfect weather. As for those that died, we still must see them as infinite, eternal idea.
- One member has been studying the "Fruitage" chapter in Science and Health with its many quick and astonishing healings. He alerted us to the mesmeric mood settling over the Christian Science movement looking back on some golden age of Christian Science healing. We have to realize the ever, on-going, all-presence and all power of God in our lives.
- The constitutional amendments in Alaska and Hawaii, stripping Gay people of the right to marry, should be evaluated in the light of Science. The last section of the Lesson is useful in this regard. It contains the following statement from Science and Health, "Let the 'male and female' of God's creating appear. Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine 'powers that be.' Such is the true Science of being." (pg. 249:5-10)
Healings:
One of our members attended a day-long lecture on relationships in the Bible, presented by a teacher from Principia. In some regards it was quite tedious but ultimately very supportive for Gay relationships in the sense that it showed the historical unfoldment of the idea of intimacy based on the covenant between God and man. All the mayhem, maulings, wars, etc., based on earlier interpretations of God's will have slowly receded as more spiritual teachers, like our own Leader, have found our core values and made them available to the world.
Several real estate deals being handled by one of our members have stagnated as credit suddenly dried up after the Russian default. Working with our topic and the Lesson, he saw these delays as well as the credit crunch and attendant fear as mesmeric suggestion trying to mask the free flow of divine Love, or God — that which alone is in charge of being everyone. There is movement this week, and a meeting which could have been quite difficult turned out very harmonious.
One member greatly obsessed with money problems suddenly came into a large inheritance. The money problem has been solved but he marveled how quickly all the energy tied up in those concerns almost immediately migrated to other problems. He declared his gratitude for Christian Science; he felt that without it he'd have no clue as to the nature of what he calls free floating mesmerism and the required work to get off and stay off the mortal basis of belief.
Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
The author's own observations of the workings of animal magnetism convince her that it is not a remedial agent, and that its effects upon those who practise it, and upon their subjects who do not resist it, lead to moral and to physical death.
Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in sense it is an unreal concept of the so-called mortal mind.
As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind. It is the false belief that mind is in matter, and is both evil and good; that evil is as real as good and more powerful.
We say that one human mind can influence another and in this way affect the body, but we rarely remember that we govern our own bodies. The error, mesmerism—or hypnotism, to use the recent term —illustrates the fact just stated. The operator would make his subjects believe that they cannot act voluntarily and handle themselves as they should do. If they yield to this influence, it is because their belief is not better instructed by spiritual understanding. Hence the proof that hypnotism is not scientific; Science cannot produce both disorder and order. The involuntary pleasure or pain of the person under hypnotic control is proved to be a belief without a real cause.
Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and that he is swimming when he is on dry land. Needle-thrusts will not hurt him. A delicious perfume will seem intolerable. Animal magnetism thus uncovers material sense, and shows it to be a belief without actual foundation or validity. Change the belief, and the sensation changes. Destroy the belief, and the sensation disappears.
Human sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the unreal. We may well be astonished at sin, sickness, and death. We may well be perplexed at human fear; and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its hydra head, showing its horns in the many inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast at nothingness? The great red dragon symbolizes a lie,—the belief that substance, life, and intelligence can be material. This dragon stands for the sum total of human error.
The Revelator lifts the veil from this embodiment of all evil, and beholds its awful character; but he also sees the nothingness of evil and the allness of God.
Take away the theology of mental healing and you take away its science, leaving it a human "mind-cure," nothing more nor less, —even one human mind governing another; by which, if you agree that God is Mind, you admit that there is more than one government and God. Having no true sense of the healing theology of Mind, you can neither understand nor demonstrate its Science, and will practise your belief of it in the name of Truth. This is the mortal "mind-cure" that produces the effect of mesmerism. It is using the power of human will, instead of the divine power understood, as in Christian Science; and without this Science there had better be no "mind-cure,"—in which the last state of patients is worse than the first.
Floating with the popular current of mortal thought without questioning the reliability of its conclusions, we do what others do, believe what others believe, and say what others say.
Man is properly self-governed, and he should be guided by no other mind than Truth, the divine Mind.
The Christian Scientist is alone with his own being and with the reality of things.
Christian Scientists are not hypnotists, they are not mortal mind-curists, nor faith-curists; they have faith, but they have Science, understanding, and works as well.
What are the foundations of metaphysical healing? Mind, divine Science, the truth of being that casts out error and thus heals the sick. You can readily perceive this mental system of healing is the antipode of mesmerism, Beelzebub. Mesmerism makes one disease while it is supposed to cure another, and that one is worse than the first; mesmerism is one lie getting the better of another, and the bigger lie occupying the field for a period; it is the fight of beasts, in which the bigger animal beats the lesser; in fine, much ado about nothing. Medicine will not arrive at the science of treating disease until disease is treated mentally and man is healed morally and physically. What has physiology, hygiene, or physics done for Christianity but to obscure the divine Principle of healing and encourage faith in an opposite direction?