is a principle of health but none of disease, and there is a principle of abundance but none of poverty.
The affirmative method was chose by the author for use on his sister who was to be operated on for the removal of gallstones in a hospital in England. The condition described was based on the diagnosis of hospital tests and the usual X ray procedures. She asked me to pray for her. We were separated geographically about 6,500 miles, but there is no time or space in the mind principle. Infinite mind or intelligence is present in its entirety at every point simultaneously. I withdrew all thought from the contemplation of symptoms and from the corporeal personality altogether. I affirmed as follows: “This prayer is for my sister Catherine. She is relaxed and at peace, poised, balanced, serene and calm. The healing intelligence of her subconscious mind, which created her body, is now transforming every cell, nerve, tissue, muscle and bone of her being according to the perfect pattern of all organs lodged in her subconscious mind. Silently, quietly, all distorted thought patters in her subconscious mind are removed and dissolved, and the vitality, wholeness and beauty of the life principle are made manifest in every atom of her being. She is now open and receptive to the healing currents which are flowing through her like a river, restoring her to perfect health, harmony and peace. All distortions and ugly images are now washed away by the infinite ocean of love and peace flowing through her, and it is so.”
I affirmed the above several times a day and at the end of two weeks my sister had an examination, which showed a remarkable healing and the X ray proved negative.
To affirm is to state that it is so, and as you maintain this attitude of mind as true, regardless of all evidence to the contrary, you will receive an answer to your prayer. Your thought can only affirm, for even if you deny something, you are actually affirming the presence of what you deny. Repeating an affirmation, knowing what you are saying and why you are saying it, leads the mind to that state of consciousness where it accepts that which you state as true. Keep on affirming the truths of life until you get the subconscious reaction, which satisfies.
The Argumentative Method
This method is just what the word implies. It stems from the procedure of Dr Phineas Parkhurst Quimby of Maine. Dr Quimby, a pioneer in mental and spiritual healing, lived and practiced in Belfast, Maine, about one hundred years ago. A book called The Quimby Manuscripts, published in 1921 by Thomas Y Crowell company, New York City, and edited by Horatio Dresser, is available in your library. This book gives newspaper accounts of this man's remarkable results in prayer treatment of the sick. Quimby duplicated many of the healing miracles recorded in the Bible. In brief, the argumentative method employed according to Quimby consists of spiritual reasoning where you convince the patient and yourself that sickness is due to his false belief,, groundless fears and negative patterns lodged in his subconscious mind. You reason it out clearly in your mind and convince your patient that the disease or ailment is due only to a distorted, twisted pattern of thought, which has taken form in the body. This wrong belief in some external power and external causes has now externalized itself as sickness, and can be changed by changing the thought patterns.
You explain to the sick person that the basis of all healing is a change of belief. You also point out that the subconscious mind created the body and all its organs; therefore, it knows how to heal it, can heal it and is doing so now as you speak. You argue in the courtroom of your mind that the disease is a shadow of the mind based on disease-soaked, morbid thought imagery. You continue to build up all the evident you can muster on behalf of the healing power within, which created all the organs in the first place, and which has a perfect pattern of every cell, nerve and tissue within it. Then, you render a verdict in the courthouse of your mind in favor of yourself and your patient. You liberate the sick one by faith and spiritual understanding. Your mental and spiritual evidence is overwhelming; there being but one mind, what you feel as true will be resurrected in the experience of the patient. This procedure is essentially the argumentative method used by Dr Quimby of Maine form 1849 to 1869.
The Absolute Method Is Like Modern Sound Wave Therapy
Many people throughout the world practice this form of prayer treatment with wonderful results. The person using the absolute method mentions the name of the patient, such as John Jones, then quietly and silently thinks of God and His qualities and attributes, such as, God is all bliss, boundless love, Infinite Intelligence, all-powerful, boundless wisdom, absolute harmony, indescribable beauty and perfection. As he quietly thinks along these lines he is lifted up in consciousness into a new spiritual wave length, at which times he feels the infinite ocean of Bod's love is now dissolving everything unlike itself in the mind and body of John Jones for whom he is praying. He feels all the power and love of God are now focused on John Jones, and whatever is bothering or vexing him is now completely neutralized in the presence of the infinite ocean of life and love.
The absolute method of prayer might be likened to the sound wave or sonic therapy recently shown by a distinguished physician in Los Angeles. He has an ultra sound wave machine, which oscillates at a tremendous speed and sends sound waves to any area of the body to which it is directed. These sound waves can be controlled, and he told me of achieving remarkable results in dissolving arthritic, calcareous deposits as well as the healing and removal of other disturbing conditions.
To the degree that we rise in consciousness by contemplating qualities and attributes of God, do we generate spiritual electronic waves of harmony, health and peace. Many remarkable healings follow this technique of prayer.
A Cripple Walks
Dr Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, of whom we spoke previously in this chapter, used the absolute method in the latter years of his healing career. He was really the father of psychosomatic medicine and the first psychoanalyst. He had the capacity to diagnose clairvoyantly the cause of the patient's troubles, pains and aches.
The following is a condensed account of the healing of a cripple as recorded in Quimby's Manuscript's:
Quimby was called on to visit a woman who was lame, aged and bedridden. He states that her ailment was due to the fact that she was imprisoned by a creed so small and contracted that she could not stand upright and move about. She was living in the tomb of fear and ignorance; furthermore, she was taking the Bible literally and it frightened her. “In this tomb,” Quimby said, “was the presence and power of God trying to burst the bands, break through the bonds and rise from the dead.” When she would ask others for an explanation of some passage of the Bible, the answer would be a stone; then she would hunger for the bread of life. Dr Quimby diagnosed her case as a mind cloudy and stagnated, due to excitation and fear, caused by the inability to see clearly the meaning of the passage of the Bible, which she had been reading. This showed itself in the body by her heavy and sluggish feeling, which would terminate as paralysis.
At this point Quimby asked her what was meant in the bible verses: Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto Him that sent me. Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come. John 7:33-34. She replied that it mean Jesus went to heaven. Quimby what it really meant by telling her that being with her a little while meant his explanation of her symptoms, feelings and their causes; i.e. he had compassion and sympathy for her momentarily, but he could not remain in that mental state. The next step was to go to Him that sent us which, as Quimby pointed out, was the creative power of God in all of us.
Quimby immediately traveled in his mind and contemplated the divine ideal; i.e. the vitality, intelligence, harmony and power of God functioning in the sick person. This is hwy he said to the woman, “Therefore, where I go you cannot come, for you are in your narrow, restricted belief, and I am in health.” This prayer and explanation produced an instantaneous sensation, and a change came over her mind. She walked without her crutches! Quimby said it was one of the most singular of all his healings! She was, as it were, dead to error, and
