CHAPTER IV.

THE UNCHANGING I AM IN US. OR THE DIVINE AND TRUE IDEA OF MAN.
The great question, " What must I do to be saved?" or healed, in the full sense of the word, is best answered by saying, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou art saved." (Acts xvi : 30, 31.) But the Lord, and the Jesus, and the Christ, are all in man as the centre of his being. They constitute the first triad, or first three of the ten Seph- iroth, or divine emanations, and are the realm of pure spirit, of which my spirit is a personal limitation. To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as in me, is equivalent to the intuitive recognition of the truth, that I was never lost except to the consciousness of nry lower soul. And thus the Christ within is exalted to be a Prince and a Savior to give repentance unto Israel (or a change of mind or thought, as the word in the original means) for the remission of sin, or the putting away of the errors of understanding. (Acts v : 31.)
There is a region of my conscious being that is not subject to change, and to those ever-varying appearances which characterize the existence of what we call matter, and con- sequently is not subject to disease or dissolution. I call up in my memory an event of my early childhood. Though my bod}' has wholly changed once a year ever since, and I have passed through a great many vicissitudes of fortune and condition externally, sickness and health, sorrow and joy, yet that which I call Ego, the I, the self, is the same I now that it was then. The inner I, the ever-identical Self, has persisted unchanged through all. My thoughts, my sensa-
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tious, my feelings, desires, volitions, and my environment or surroundings, may have varied at eveiyr passing moment of my existence, but i" have remained the same. This unchang- ing, undying, and identical self is my spirit, that which Jesus calls in himself the / am, and it is that alone which can say of itself, I Am. He who spake as never man spake, says, " I go to prepare a place for you ; and if I go and pre- pare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where / Am, there ye may be also — not where I was before my incarnation, nor where I shall be after my ascension, but where I Am." (John xiv : 1-3.) Again he says: "I will, therefore, that those whom thou hast given me, be with me where / Am, not where I was, or shall be, but in that spiritual state which ever predicates of itself, I Am." (John xvii:24.) From this region of his being, which knows no past or future, he affirms, " Before Abraham was, I Am." (John viii : 57-59.) Now it is evident that Jesus said this of himself as man, for he knew what was in man. (John ii : 25.) This inner unchanging Ego is to us a fact of consciousness the most certain of all truths ; for no man ever doubted, or can doubt, that his personal or indi- vidual identity has remained the same from infancy to age. But that in which our personal identity consists and perpetu- ally persists through all external changes and revolutions, and even successive incarnations, or renewals of the body, is not, and never was, diseased or lost. My sicknesses do not belong to one Ego, and my present state of health and blessedness to another. I am the same I, now and forever, and I Am not sick or unhappy. Of Jesus the Christ it is affirmed, that he is the same yesterday, to-cla}*, and forever. (Heb. xiii : 8.) It is the Christ within us, whose divine name is Ehejah, or I Am, that is the One and the Same. The Un- known God comes to personal manifestation in the spirit of man. God taught this great lesson which belongs to the
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greater mysteries, to Moses. In the sacred books of the Persians, the Supreme, the Most High, gives to the seer who asks his name, the answer, Ahmi, I Am ; and in another place, Ahmi yat Ahmi, I Am that I Am. This is an old truth. Everything which can predicate of itself, / am, is divine, and the highest expression of Divinity, and can never say of itself, / am sick or unhappy, for the Ehejah of the Kabala, the Ahmi of the Persians — which is our own inner and divine self — may always affirm of itself perfect health and blessedness in the present tense.
If to cure disease is to restore the spiritual life of man, then everything which tends to accomplish that grand result must be considered as the best remedy. I know of nothing, and can conceive of nothing better adapted to this, than the formation in ourselves of the diviue and true idea, both of ourselves and of the patient. One of the most marked effects of this method of cure is the development of the spiritual life of the patient, which has long been dormant. Under it we often witness a marked change in his freedom from the dominion of the senses, and the dawning in him of a more spiritual mode of thought and feeling. "When a man gains a glimpse of the divine idea of his humanity, and intui- tively perceives that the self is immortal and undying, and is not and cannot be diseased, he feels an impulse in himself towards the externalization of that idea, or, as Paul would say, "to put on Christ." The Christ within, when discov- ered to the consciousness of the soul, seeks to clothe itself with a body that perfectly fits it. So when a person thinks that he is a king, he feels an irresistible impulse to act like a king. We may call him insane, but it is only a recogni- tion of what he really is. So as soon as we get the true idea of our real Self, the unchanging and undying I Am, and that the real man is not sick, we cannot avoid the consciousness of an impulse to act out the idea and play the part of health.
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"Whatever mode of thinking will cure me, will, when I think it of another, tend to cure that other. My first aim should be to become perfectly well and happy myself, not from a low, selfish consideration, but from a higher motive. For one of the essential conditions of our being able to cure others by the phrenopathic or spiritual method, is that we be ourselves in health and blessedness ; because our influence, that is, the inflowing of our minds upon and into another, must of neces- sity partake of the quality of our mental states, and our inner life. Jesus represented in himself the principle of health, mental and physical. Hence his presence and his touch communicated a sanative contagion. In proportion as we are like him, we can do the same. For a sick man to practise healing, is like a man on crutches showing the world how to walk and run.
"When we form in our minds the true idea of a patient, such as he really is in spirit, if he is in any degree receptive, we inaugurate a change within him, which will sooner or later work itself outward into a bodily expression. We plant in his unconscious mind the spiritual germ, the living seed of a better condition. This will develop into con- sciousness in him.
It is a doctrine older than Plato, and an intuitive cer- tainty, that nothing can have an objective existence, or be perceived in the sense-world, before the abstract ideal of that entity is called forth in the mind. Before the mechanic constructs his machine, as a watch or a steam engine, every part of it pre-exists in his mind, and the whole is but the externalization of his ideal. Every object in nature may be reduced to a sensation (which is a feeling) and an idea (which is of the intellect) . "Without either of these, it has to us no existence. But the idea has an existence prior to the sensation, and without the former the latter could not exist in our consciousness. Hence sensation always arises
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from within, however contrary this may be to the appear- ance and the general opinion of men. Professor M Ciller lays clown the general proposition, " That external agencies can give rise to no kind of sensation which cannot be induced by internal causes exciting changes in the condition of the nerves." The sensation of smell is sometimes experienced, usually b}' persons of an excitable, nervous temperament, without the presence of any odorous substance in t'ae air. He affirms that a person blind from infancy, in consequence of the opacity of the transparent media of the eye, may have a perfect internal conception of light and colors. Every one is aware how common it is to see bright colors, and even various objects, while the eye is closed. So of hearing, we know from frequent experience that various sounds are heard, even music, which arise from within, or in the soul itself. (Miiller's Elements of Physiology, pp. 1059, 10G0.)
Vision is possible without the external organ of sight. Even the Scotch metaphysician, Reid, in speaking of the senses, and that we perceive external thiugs through them, for which we can give no reason except that it is the will of God, declares that no man can show it to be impossible to the Supreme Being to have given us the power of perceiving what he calls external objects without such organs. This is what God has done. He has given to every one of us the power to see things in idea, or with the mind independent of all organic conditions. This has been taken from the class of hypothetical or supposed things, and demonstrated to be true. On this subject Sir "William Hamilton remarks : " However astonishing, it is now proved beyond all rational doubt, that in certain abnormal (?) states of the nervous organism, perceptions are possible through other than the ordinary channels of the senses."
Before anything can exist in the world of sense, it must
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have pre-existence as an idea. We may consider this an es- tablished principle. As the mechanic forms the watch first as an ideal creation before it becomes an objective realit}' or actuality, so before we can become well we must form in the mind a distinct idea of the change to be effected in us. We must have the perfect idea of health, and this will act as a cause, for ideas sustain to all the objects of sense a causal relation. In giving treatment to another we must form in our minds a distinct conception, or idea, of the change to be effected in him, and commit this to the Universal Life Principle, the Demiurgic Intellect, the Living Intelligence that forms the world, and all that is in it, and even the human body, after the pattern of pre-existing ideas. Our idea, transferred to the soul of the patient, will become ultimated in a physiological impulse in the direction of the change we desire to inaugurate.
This method of cure conforms to the divine procedure in the formation of the human body, as described in one of the profoundest of the sacred hymns of the Hebrews. "Thou hast formed my reins : thou hast knit me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks unto thee ; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made : wonderful are thy works ; aud that my soul knoweth right well. My frame was not hidden from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth (or the sub-astral region) . Thine eyes (as the symbol of the creative intelli- gence, the divine imagination, or the idea-forming power) did see mine unperfect substance (the formless cosmic matter), and in thy book (the universal life-principle, the astral light, which contains the record of all that is thought) were all my members written, which day by day were fash- ioned, when as yet there was none of them." (Ps. cxxxix : 13-16.) This teaches that the body and all its organs were formed in idea before it was ultimated in the sense-world.
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When we conform to this method, we act in concert with God.
Man has a body composed of the four elements. This is not man, nor any necessary part of his existence, but be- longs wholly to the material world, of which it is a limited expression. In the South Kensington Museum, in England, there is one exhibition which equally interests all classes of visitors. It is a human body resolved into its original ele- ments, or the materials of which the body of man is made. There they all are tied up in packages, or corked up in bottles. Here are so many gallons of water, for three- fourths of the animal body is nothing but that element. But this water is the same that falls in rain and snow. It comes from the external world, and is perpetually returning to it. We have so much chloride of sodium, or common salt. But this is not man, any more than the salt on our tables is man. We have so much carbonate of lime, or marble. This is not man or anything human, any more than the marble slab we place at the head of the grave. So of the iron, the mineral phosphates, and all the solid and gaseous elements. They come from the external world and return to it. An interest- ing fact regarding them is, that the spectroscope shows the identity of these elements of the human body with the ele- ments which compose the substance of the sun and stars. This fact warrants the assertion of the ancients that man is a microcosm, or little world. The macrocosm, or great world, is only a larger human body, and we a monad or germ cell in it. The body is not man any more than a tree is a man, for a tree iu bearing is composed of the same elements.
In this transitory, ever-changing body, the higher intelli- gence, the distinctively human soul, the manas, the real and immortal man, is imprisoned and in chains. It should be our aim to free the living soul from its unnatural subjection to material limitations, and teach it to live even while on earth
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independent of the bod}-. Forgetting the composite, ever- changing, and consequently mortal body, and renouncing the idea of it as being the man, we represent to ourselves in thought another body, pure, simple, and immortal, created, as it were, within the gross material organism, with a perfect form, and all the members and organs in perfection, with disease and all deformity left out of the conception. This is not a creation of the fancy, but the recognition of a reality. It is the real man, and sustains to the other and lower body, which is no real body, the relation of a sword to the scabbard, and of a precious gem to its casket. But a sword can be withdrawn from the scabbard, and a gem removed from the casket. Until this is done, the one does not accomplish its use, nor the other displa}- its beauty. "When the real man is discovered, and we intuitively perceive that it is not what we call the body, any more than a scabbard is a sword, we begin to exercise supernatural faculties, like the newly fledged bird trying its wings. We can go where we please, see without the eye, and hear with the inner ear the sounds of the unseen world, as distinctly as you hear my voice in the phenomenal world. "We have begun to live eternal life. "We rise out of that region of illusion where disease is possible, into that higher realm where it is impossible. We have passed over that " middle ground," that dangerous region of elemental life, which was represented b}' the cherubim, which obstruct the approach to the "tree of life." We have passed the guard, and put forth the hand, and eat of the fruit, and live forever.
To emancipate the inward and real man from his imprison- ment in matter and an illusory body, is to cure disease. Disease is the translation into a corporeal expression of a wrong or false idea of man. Its cure must commence with the obliteration of that false conception, and the formation of the true idea of ourselves and of the patient. This is the
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dawning of a new day. After forming the true idea of man, we may give a tacit verbal expression to it by using the fol- lowing formula, or any form of words that will ultimate the conception.
"In our inmost and true existence and real self, we are not and cannot be diseased, for we are included in the being of the Father of Spirits. Our real life and true being are hid with Christ in God, and our spirit as a manifestation and personal limitation of the Universal Spirit is already immor- tal in its nature and essence, and disease and pain and sorrow are impossible to it. And this disease (naming the malady, if we desire to do so) is outside of our unchanging and undying personality, and we view it as to us non- existent. We pray the Infinite Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, to make us whole. In the silence and stillness of our own soul and will, we pray that Jesus, who represents the only saving, healing principle in the universe, will speak the vivifying inner "Word, the Word of life, to the soul of this person ; and cause the light of that supreme and eternal truth, which alone can make us free, to illume the darkness of his mind, and liberate the inner man from the fetters of sense and the dominion of sin."
It is important to bear in mind that as thought is the creative principle, and as everything which exists in nature as an objective realit}r must pre-exist as an idea, so what- ever is conceivable in thought is possible. Says Sir William Hamilton : "All necessity is to us, in fact, subjective ; for a thiug is conceived impossible onby as we are unable to con- strue it in thought. Whatever does not violate the laws of thought is, therefore, not to us impossible, however firmly we may be convinced that it will not occur. For example, we hold it absolutely impossible that a thing can begin to be without a cause. Why? Simply because the mind cannot realize to itself the conception of absolute commencement.
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That a stone should ascend into the air, we firmly believe will never happen, but we find no difficulty in conceiving it possible." (Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 403.)
This law, that whatever is conceivable is possible, is expressed by Jesus in this way, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." (Mark ix : 23.) That I should recover from a disease which medical science, so called, pronounces incurable, and become perfectly well, is a possible conception. It contravenes no law of thought. It may, therefore, rationally be an object of faith, and consequently become an actuality. For faith may make actual whatever is possible in thought. When we attain to the true life of faith, things which are impossible to the natural or psychical man become easy of accomplishment.
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