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[The following is a typewritten lesson file][What Is It That Heals?]
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What Is It That Heals?
Weekly
Charles Fillmore
The question is asked, “What is it that heals?” If you should ask a medical doctor that question, he would very quickly answer it by saying, “Why, drugs, of course”; but, if you should ask an osteopath, he would tell you that it was fixing the muscles and nerves and bones in right relation; a magnetic healer would tell you that healing comes from getting the life forces equally distributed throughout the body. Whatever school of practice you might ask, you would be answered according to the teaching of the school.
This would be true of our answer. But the answer we would give is of a character that cannot be paralleled by some other systems of healing. There would be no difference in the answer of many metaphysical schools, because they would all have to refer the cause back to the one Source.
If you ask the doctor if drugs really do the healing, he will have to beg the question, and say, “Well, of course, they don’t really heal; but they help nature to do the healing.” With all the schools, there is a final resting of the case upon an invisible, unknown Cause. Then, if you ask them if God is a good name for that Cause, they will say, “Certainly. You can name it what you wish; but it is the Creative Power, and it does the healing.”
If you consult the Scripture, you will find that the healing is nearly always attributed by the healer to God. In the Old Testament, it was Jehovah. The healing methods were adapted to the understanding of the patients. Moses healed the children of Israel of the bites of the serpents, by having them look at a brazen serpent, elevated so all could see.
We know that this must have been symbolical; it must have had at the foundation the lifting up of the mind, looking to the Source which helps, God.
When Elisha healed the Canaanite woman’s son, the record says that he stretched himself upon the boy, touched his lips to the child’s lips, his hands to the child’s, his feet to the child’s feet; he breathed upon him, and life came back to the boy. When he healed the captain of Naaman’s host, he told him to go and bathe seven times in the Jordan. But Naaman was wroth at being asked to do so simple a thing. He finally obeyed the command, and his leprosy was healed. Elisha was the prophet of God, and Naaman had to be receptive to the stand of the prophet.
We come down to the times of Jesus Christ. In his healing, he laid special stress upon faith as the cause, as the healing power.
“According to your faith be it done unto you.” “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” “Sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee.”
All metaphysical healers recognize faith, as the principal agency of healing. James says, “The prayer of faith shall save him that is sick.”
Coming down to the present day metaphysical healing systems, you will find in the writings of Dr. Quimby this statement, “It is the Truth that heals.” Dr. Quimby taught Mrs. Eddy, and Mrs. Eddy teaches the doctrine of healing through Truth. She says that it is the understanding of the Truth that heals, or that it is Christian Science that heals.
We hold a position almost identical with that of Dr. Quimby. It is the understanding of the Truth of man’s being, that heals. All auxiliary teaching is but the application of that Truth.
The old applications were good in their season; they were doubtless necessary to the people of those times, because they could not conceive of the spiritual healing agent. They required a symbol of some kind. They lived in the realm of forms wholly.
Abstract reasoning, and the ability of the mind to lay hold of the power of an abstract proposition, had not yet evolved in them. But we have arrived at a place where we can feel the Spirit; where we know that a certain proposition is true, because the substance of Truth forms itself in our minds and expresses itself in our bodies.
We frequently have to work our minds up to the proposition. At the first presentation of the simple Truth that heals, we rather doubt. We are not sure that we can be healed in that way; but the more it is brought to our consciousness, the more we pray over it, the more we meditate over it, the more we repeat the healing word, the more our hope becomes conviction and conviction, faith. It is like taking a substance into the mind, working it first in the mind and then in the hands. If we can join the two we will quickly get the connection between the idea of Substance and the manifestation [of] Substance. When we can work the idea in the mind and in the body, we have laid hold of faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for;” it is the substance of an idea, a segment of the imagination worked over and over in the mind, and thought out until it becomes a real healing force.
We bring the great Mind of the universe into our healing system, and that Mind becomes a tangible reality to us. Those who have not worked with this healing Principle have no concept of its tangibility, of the reality of the force, of the intelligence that it manifests. This Divine Mind that makes the natural world, is also capable of making your body. Science tells us that the same elements, the sane forces enter into our bodies that enter into the bodies of all nature; that there is a universal unity. But what molds it? The universal Mind. Then it is that sustaining, perfecting Mind that makes a perfect body!
Is not that a simple proposition? How can anyone oppose the doctrine? How can anyone get away from it? And the proof is just a matter of applying it.
There are steps in the application of the Truth. I might tell you in a broad way that the Truth heals; but you ask, “How shall I get the results? How shall I get the benefit of the healing?” You get the benefits through the application of the Truth. Application of the Truth comes first in a realization. When the Mind has received an explanation of what Truth is, and how it works; what God is, and what man is, there is a great aggregation of forces acting in the mind, and that aggregate produces wholeness.
In the healing of the body, food has its place. That is one of the auxiliary points; but the main issue is to get the understanding that you are really now whole and well. There is not a solitary thing the matter with the spiritual body which God implanted in you in the very beginning; but you must give it substantiality by your thoughts of Truth.
Healing is done with the mind. The substance of health is gathered by the mind and realized. We must know that God is Life, Strength, Power, Substance, Intelligence, All Good; that there never was a diseased God in the universe, and that God never made a diseased man; that there is no reality in sickness or disease; that the Truth, the all-creative, pure, holy Substance of God is manifesting right here and now. It takes away all the errors, all the sins, all the sickness, all the foolishness, all the ignorance of man’s imagination, and leaves him the healing Principle, the Spirit of Wholeness. Once we understand that, and work it into the mind, we are healed; we are healed permanently. There are no relapses. Health, is not here today, and away tomorrow. It abides.
In order to get a consciousness of the Truth that heals, we must practice every day; we must practice the presence of God. Our minds must become filled, saturated with the thought of the one Mind being here at all times, and that it is expressing itself in us; that we are its perfect manifestation.. In this way we charge our minds with the thoughts that make us whole.
[The following is handwritten text from Charles Fillmore]
Transcribed by Belinda Longoria on June 26, 2018.Why Should We Give Thanks?
There seems implanted in all beings a sense of gratitude for kindness or service. This is not confined to man but all animals have it in degree. The horse, the dog, the elephant, and even wild animals evince gratitude when kindness is shown them. A touching story is that of the Roman slave Androcles, who took refuge from the cruelty of his master in a cave in Africa. When a lion enters the cave suffering intensely with a thorn in his paw, Androcles extracts the thorn and they at once become friends and for a time
