Read Online: The Science of Being Well by Wallace D. Wattles

The Science of Being Well-Chapter I

2009-11-30T12:14:00.000-08:00

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The Principle of Health

In the personal application of the Science of Being Well, as in that of the Science of Getting Rich, certain fundamental truths must be known in the beginning, and accepted without question. Some of these truths we state here: The perfectly natural performance of function constitutes health, and the perfectly natural performance of function results from the natural action of the Principle of Life.

There is a Principle of Life in the universe, and it is the One Living Substance from which all things are made. This Living Substance permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. It is in and through all things, like a very refined and diffusible ether. All life comes from its life is all the life there is.

A human being is a form of this Living Substance, and has within him a Principle of Health. (The word Principle is used as meaning source.) The Principle of Health in a person, when in full constructive activity, causes all the voluntary functions of his life to be perfectly performed. It is the Principle of Health in a person which really works all healing, no matter what system.

Or remedy is employed, and this Principle of Health is brought into Constructive Activity by thinking in a Certain Way.

I proceed now to prove this last statement. We all know that cures are wrought by all the different, and often opposite, methods employed in the various branches of the healing art. The allopath, who gives a strong dose of a counter-poison, cures his patient. And the homeopath, who gives a diminutive dose of the poison most similar to that of the disease, also cures it. If allopathy ever cured any given disease, it is certain that homeopathy never cured that disease. And if homeopathy ever cured an ailment, allopathy could not possibly cure that ailment.

The two systems are radically opposite in theory and practice, and yet both cure most diseases. And even the remedies used by physicians in any one school are not the same.

Go with a case of indigestion to half a dozen doctors, and compare their prescriptions. It is more than likely that none of the ingredients of any one of them will also be in the others. Must we not conclude that their patients are healed by a Principle of Health within themselves, and not by something in the varying remedies?

Not only this, but we find the same ailments cured by the osteopath with manipulations of the spine, by the faith healer with prayer, by the food scientist with bills of fare, by the Christian Scientist with a formulated creed statement, by the mental scientist with affirmation, and by the hygienists with differing plans of living.

What conclusion can we come to in the face of all these facts but that there is a Principle of Health which is the same in all people, and which really accomplishes all the cures; and that there is something in all the systems. which, under favorable conditions, arouses the Principle of Health to action?

That is, medicines, manipulations, prayers, bills of fare, affirmations, and hygienic practices cure whenever they cause the Principle of Health to become active, and fail whenever they do not cause it to become active. Does not all this indicate that the results depend upon the way the patient thinks about the remedy, rather than upon the ingredients in the prescription?

There is an old story that furnishes so good an illustration on this point that I will give it here. It is said that in the middle ages, the bones of a saint, kept in one of the monasteries, were working miracles of healing. On certain days a great crowd of the afflicted gathered to touch the relics, and all who did so were healed.

On the eve of one of these occasions, some sacrilegious rascal gained access to the case in which the wonder-working relics were kept and stole the bones, and in the morning, with the usual crowd of sufferers waiting at the gates, the fathers found themselves shorn of the source of the miracle-working power.

They resolved to keep the matter quiet, hoping that by doing so they might find the thief and recover their treasures, and hastening to the cellar of the convent they dug up the bones of a murderer, who had been buried there many years before. These they placed in the case, intending to make some plausible excuse for the failure of the saint to perform his usual miracles on that day; and then they let in the waiting assemblage of the sick and infirm.

To the intense astonishment of those in on the secret, the bones of the male factor proved as effective as those of the saint, and the healing went on as before. One of the fathers is said to have left a history of the occurrence, in which he confessed that, in his judgment, the healing power had been in the people themselves all the time, and never in the bones at all.

Whether the story is true or not, the conclusion applies to all the cures wrought by all the systems. The Power that Heals is in the patient himself, and whether it shall become active or not does not depend upon the physical or mental means used, but upon the way the patient thinks about these means. There is a Universal Principle of Life, as Jesus taught a great spiritual Healing Power and there is a Principle of Health in every human being which is related to this Healing Power. This is dormant or active, according to the way a person thinks. He can always quicken it into activity by thinking in a Certain Way. Your getting well does not depend upon the adoption of some system, or the finding of some remedy; people with your identical ailments have been healed by all systems and all remedies. It does not depend upon climate; some people are well and others are sick in all climates. It does not depend upon avocation, unless in case of those who work under poisonous conditions; people are well in all trades and professions.

YYour getting well depends upon your beginning to think and act in a Certain Way.

The way a person thinks about things is determined by what he believes about them. His thoughts are determined by his faith, and the results depend upon his making a personal application of his faith.

If a person has faith in the efficacy of a medicine, and is able to apply that faith to himself, that medicine will certainly cause him to be cured. But though his faith be great, he will not be cured unless he applies it to himself. Many sick people have faith for others but none for themselves. So, if he has faith in a system of diet, and can personally apply that faith, it will cure him. And if he has faith in prayers and affirmations and personally applies his faith, prayers and affirmations will cure him.

Faith, personally applied, cures. And no matter how great the faith or how persistent the thought, it will not cure without personal application. The Science of Being Well, then, includes the two fields of thought and action.

To be well it is not enough that a person should merely think in a Certain Way. He must apply his thought to himself, and he must express and externalise it in his outward life by acting in the same way that he thinks.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter II

2009-11-30T12:08:00.000-08:00

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The Foundations of Faith

Therefore a person can think in the Certain Way which will cause his diseases to be healed, he must believe in certain truths which are here stated: All things are made from one Living Substance, which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. While all visible things are made from It, yet this Substance in its first formless condition is in and through all the visible forms that It has made. Its life is in All, and its intelligence is in All.

This Substance creates by thought, and its method is by taking the form of that which it thinks about. The thought of a form held by this substance causes it to assume that form; the thought of a motion causes it to institute that motion. Forms are created by this substance in moving itself into certain orientations or positions.

When original Substance wishes to create a given form, it thinks of the motions that will produce that form. When it wishes to create a world, it thinks of the motions, perhaps extending through ages, which will result in its coming into the attitude and form of the world and these motions are made.

When it wishes to create an oak tree, it thinks of the sequences of movement, perhaps extending through ages, which will result in the form of an oak tree and these motions are made. The particular sequences of motion by which differing forms should be produced were established in the beginning; they are changeless. Certain motions instituted in the Formless Substance will forever produce certain forms.

The human body is formed from the Original Substance, and is the result of certain motions, which first existed as thoughts of Original Substance. The motions which produce, renew, and repair the body are called functions, and these functions are of two classes: voluntary and involuntary.

The involuntary functions are under the control of the Principle of Health in a person, and are performed in a perfectly healthy manner so long as a person thinks in a certain way. The voluntary functions of life are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. These, entirely or in part, are under the direction of a persons conscious mind, and he can perform them in a perfectly healthy way if he will. If he does not perform them in a healthy way, he cannot long be well.

So we see that if a person thinks in a certain way, and eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in a corresponding way, he will be well. The involuntary functions of a persons life are under the direct control of the Principle of Health, and so long as a person thinks in a perfectly healthy way, these functions are perfectly performed, for the action of the Principle of Health is largely directed by a persons conscious thought, affecting his subconscious mind.

A person is a thinking center, capable of originating thought, and as he does not know everything, he makes mistakes and thinks error. Not knowing everything, he believes things to be true which are not true. A person holds in his thought the idea of diseased and abnormal functioning and conditions, and so perverts the action of the Principle of Health, causing diseased and abnormal functioning and conditions within his own body.

In the Original Substance there are held only the thoughts of perfect motion, perfect and healthy function, complete life. God never thinks disease or imperfection. But for countless ages people have held thoughts of disease, abnormality, old age, and death. And the perverted functioning resulting from these thoughts has become a part of the inheritance of the human race.

Our ancestors have, for many generations, held imperfect ideas concerning human form and functioning, and we begin life with racial sub-conscious impressions of imperfection and disease. This is not natural, not a part of the plan of nature. The purpose of nature can be nothing else than the perfection of life. This we see from the very nature of life itself. It is the nature of life to continually advance toward more perfect living; advancement is the inevitable result of the very act of living. Increase is always the result of active living; whatever lives must live more and more.

The seed, lying in the granary, has life, but it is not living. Put it into the soil and it becomes active, and at once begins to gather to itself from the surrounding substance, and to build a plant form. It will so cause increase that a seed head will be produced containing 30, 60, or a hundred seeds, each having as much life as the first.

Life, by living, increases. Life cannot live without increasing, and the fundamental impulse of life is to live. It is in response to this fundamental impulse that Original Substance works, and creates. God must live, and God cannot live except as God creates and increases. In multiplying forms, God is moving on to live more. The universe is a Great Advancing Life, and the purpose of nature is the advancement of life toward perfection, toward perfect functioning. The purpose of nature is perfect health.

The purpose of Nature, so far as a human being is concerned, is that he should be continuously advancing into more life, and progressing toward perfect life; He is referring to the human race and to our collective consciousness, sometimes called race thought, and that he should live the most complete life possible in his present sphere of action. This must be so, because That which lives in a person is seeking more life.

Give a little child a pencil and paper, and he begins to draw crude figures. That which lives in him is trying to express Itself in art. Give him a set of blocks, and he will try to build something. That which lives in him is seeking expression in architecture. Seat him at a piano, and he will try to draw harmony from the keys. That which lives in him is trying to express Itself in music.

That which lives in a person is always seeking to live more, and since a person lives most when he is well, the Principle of Nature in him can seek only health. The natural state of a human being is a state of perfect health, and everything in him and in nature tends toward health.

Sickness can have no place in the thought of Original Substance, for it is by its own nature continually impelled toward the fullest and most perfect life therefore, toward health. A human being, as he exists in the thought of the Formless Substance, has perfect health. Disease, which is abnormal or perverted function motion imperfectly made, or made in the direction of imperfect life, has no place in the thought of the Thinking Stuff. The Supreme Mind never thinks of disease. Disease was not created or ordained by God, or sent forth from God. It is wholly a product of separate consciousness, of the individual thought of a person. God, the Formless Substance, does not see disease, think disease, know disease, or recognize disease. Disease is recognized only by the thought of humanity; God thinks nothing but health.

From all the foregoing, we see that health is a fact or TRUTH in the Original Substance from which we are all formed, and that disease is imperfect functioning, resulting from the imperfect thoughts of people, past and present. If a person’s thoughts of himself had always been those of perfect health, a person could not possibly now be otherwise than perfectly healthy. A human being in perfect health is the thought of Original Substance, and a human being in imperfect health is the result of his own failure to think perfect health, and to perform the voluntary functions of life in a healthy way. We will here arrange in a syllabus the basic truths of the Science of Being Well: There is a Thinking Substance from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. It is the life of All.

The thought of a form in this Substance causes the form; the thought of a motion produces the motion. In relation to humanity, the thoughts of this Substance are always of perfect functioning and perfect health. A person is a thinking center, capable of original thought; and his thought has power over his own functioning. By thinking imperfect thoughts he has caused imperfect and perverted functioning; and by performing the voluntary functions of life in a perverted manner, he has assisted in causing disease.

If a person will think only thoughts of perfect health, he can cause within himself the functioning of perfect health; all the Power of Life will be exerted to assist him. But this healthy functioning will not continue unless a person performs the external, or voluntary, functions of living in a healthy manner.

A persons first step must be to learn how to think perfect health; and his second step to learn how to eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in a perfectly healthy way. If a person takes these two steps, he will certainly become well, and remain so.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter III

2009-11-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

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Life and Its Organisms

The human body is the abiding place of an energy which renews it when worn, which eliminates waste or poisonous matter, and which repairs the body when broken or injured. This energy we call life. Life is not generated or produced within the body; it produces the body.

The seed which has been kept in the storehouse for years will grow when planted in the soil; it will produce a plant. But the life in the plant is not generated by its growing; it is the life which makes the plant grow. The performance of function does not cause life; it is life that causes function to be performed. Life is first; function afterward. It is life that distinguishes organic from inorganic matter, but it is not produced after the organization of matter.

Life is the principle or force that causes organization; it builds organisms. It is a principle or force inherent in Original Substance; all life is One. This Life Principle of the All is the Principle of Health in a person, and becomes constructively active whenever a person thinks in a Certain Way.

Who-ever, therefore, thinks in this Certain Way will surely have perfect health if his external functioning is in conformity with his thought. But the external functioning must conform to the thought; a person cannot hope to be well by thinking health, if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps like a sick person.

The universal Life Principle, then, is the Principle of Health in a human being. It is one with original substance. There is one Original Substance from which all things are made; this substance is alive, and its life is the Principle of Life of the universe. This Substance has created from itself all the forms of organic life by thinking them, or by thinking the motions and functions which produce them.

Original Substance thinks only health, because It knows all truth. There is no truth which is not known in the Formless, which is All, and in all. It not only knows all truth, but it has all power. Its vital power is the source of all the energy there is. A conscious life which knows all truth and which has all power cannot go wrong or perform function imperfectly. Knowing all, it knows too much to go wrong, and so the Formless cannot be diseased or think disease. A human being is a form of this Original Substance, and has a separate consciousness of his own, but his consciousness is limited, and therefore imperfect. By reason of his limited knowledge a person can and does think wrongly, and so he causes perverted and imperfect functioning in his own body. A human being has not yet known enough not to go wrong. The diseased or imperfect functioning may not instantly result from an imperfect thought, but it is bound to come if the thought becomes habitual.

Any thought continuously held by a person tends to the establishment of the corresponding condition in his body. Also, the human being has failed to learn how to perform the voluntary functions of his life in a healthy way. He does not know when, what, and how to eat. He knows little about breathing and less about sleep. He does all these things in a wrong way, and under wrong conditions, and this because he has neglected to follow the only sure guide to the knowledge of life. He has tried to live by logic rather than by instinct. He has made living a matter of art, and not of nature. And he has gone wrong.

His only remedy is to begin to go right, and this he can surely do. It is the work of this book to teach the whole truth, so that the person who reads it shall know too much to go wrong.

The thoughts of disease produce the forms of disease. A person must learn to think health; and being Original Substance which takes the form of its thoughts, he will become the form of health and manifest perfect health in all his functioning. The people who were healed by touching the bones of the saint were really healed by thinking in a Certain Way, and not by any power emanating from the relics. There is no healing power in the bones of dead men, whether they be those of saint or sinner. The people who were healed by the doses of either the allopath or the homeopath were also really healed by thinking in a Certain Way; there is no drug which has within itself the power to heal disease.

The people who have been healed by prayers and affirmations were also healed by thinking in a certain way; there is no curative power in strings of words.

All the sick who have been healed, by whatsoever system, have thought in a Certain Way; and a little examination will show us what this way is. The two essentials of the Way are Faith and a Personal Application of the Faith.

The people who touched the saints bones had faith, and so great was their faith that in the instant they touched the relics they SEVERED ALL MENTAL RELATIONS WITH DISEASE, AND MENTALLY UNIFIED THEMSELVES WITH HEALTH.

This change of mind was accompanied by an intense devotional FEELING which penetrated to the deepest recesses of their souls, and so aroused the Principle of Health to powerful action. By faith they claimed that they were healed, or appropriated health to themselves, and in full faith they ceased to think of themselves in connection with disease and thought of themselves only in connection with health.

These are the two essentials to thinking in the Certain Way that will make you well: first, claim or appropriate health by faith, and, second, sever all mental relations with disease and enter into mental relations with health.

That which we make ourselves, mentally, we become physically, and that with which we unite ourselves mentally we become unified with physically. If your thought always relates you to disease, then your thought becomes a fixed power to cause disease within you. And if your thought always relates you to health, then your thought becomes a fixed power exerted to keep you well.

In the case of the people who are healed by medicines, the result is obtained in the same way. They have, consciously or unconsciously, sufficient faith in the means used that they sever mental relations with disease and enter into mental relations with health. Faith may be unconscious. It is possible for us to have a sub-conscious or inbred faith in things like medicine, in which we do not believe to any extent objectively, and this sub-conscious faith may be quite sufficient to quicken the Principle of Health into constructive activity. Many who have little conscious faith are healed in this way, while many others who have great faith in the means are not healed because they do not make the personal application to themselves. Their faith is general, but not specific for their own cases.

In the Science of Being Well we have two main points to consider: first, how to think with faith, and, second, how to so apply the thought to ourselves as to quicken the Principle of Health into constructive activity.

We begin by learning What to Think.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter IV

2009-11-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

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What To Think

In order to sever all mental relations with disease, you must enter into mental relations with health, making the process positive, not negative one of assumption, not of rejection. You are to receive or appropriate health rather than to reject and deny disease. Denying disease accomplishes next to nothing; it does little good to cast out the devil and leave the house vacant, for he will presently return with others worse than himself. When you enter into full and constant mental relations with health, you must of necessity cease all relationship with disease.

The first step in the Science of Being Well, then, is to enter into complete thought connection with health. The best way to do this is to form a mental image or picture of yourself as being well, imagining a perfectly strong and healthy body, and to spend sufficient time in contemplating this image to make it your habitual thought of yourself.

This is not so easy as it sounds. It necessitates the taking of considerable time for meditation, and not all persons have the imaging faculty well enough developed to form a distinct mental picture of themselves in a perfect or idealized body. It is much easier, as in The Science of Getting Rich, to form a mental image of the things one wants to have, for we have seen these things or their counterparts and know how they look. We can picture them very easily from memory. But if we have never seen ourselves in a perfect body, a clear mental image is hard to form.

It is not necessary or essential, however, to have a clear mental image of yourself as you wish to be; it is only essential to form a CONCEPTION of perfect health, and to relate yourself to it. This Conception of Health is not a mental picture of a particular thing. It is an understanding of health, and carries with it the idea of perfect functioning in every part and organ. You may TRY to picture yourself as perfect in physique that helps and you MUST think of yourself as doing everything in the manner of a perfectly strong and healthy person. You can picture yourself as walking down the street with an erect body and a vigorous stride. You can picture yourself as doing your days work easily and with surplus vigor, never tired or weak. You can picture in your mind how all things would be done by a person full of health and power, and you can make yourself the central figure in the picture, doing things in just that way.

Never think of the ways in which weak or sickly people do things; always think of the way strong people do things. Spend your leisure time in thinking about the Strong Way, until you have a good conception of it, and always think of yourself in connection with the Strong Way of Doing Things. That is what I mean by having a Conception of Health. In order to establish perfect functioning in every part, a person does not have to study anatomy or physiology so that he can form a mental image of each separate organ and address himself to it. He does not have to treat his liver, his kidneys, his stomach, or his heart. There is one Principle of Health in a human being, which has control over all the involuntary functions of his life, and the thought of perfect health, impressed upon this Principle, will reach each part and organ. A persons liver is not controlled by a liver-principle, his stomach by a digestive principle, and so on. The Principle of Health is One. The less you go into the detailed study of physiology, the better for you. Our knowledge of this science is very imperfect, and leads to imperfect thought. Imperfect thought causes imperfect functioning, which is disease.

Let me illustrate: Until quite recently, physiology fixed ten days as the extreme limit of a human beings endurance without food. It was considered that only in exceptional cases could a person survive a longer fast. So the impression became universally disseminated that one who was deprived of food must die in from five to ten days. And numbers of people, when cut off from food by shipwreck, accident, or famine, did die within this period. But the performances of Dr. Tanner, the 40-day faster, and the writings of Dr. Dewey and others on the fasting cure, together with the experiments of numberless people who have fasted from 40 to 60 days, have shown that a humans ability to live without food is vastly greater than had been supposed.

Any person, properly educated, can fast from 20 to 40 days with little loss in weight, and often with no apparent loss of strength at all. The people who starved to death in ten days or less did so because they believed that death was inevitable. An erroneous physiology had given them a wrong thought about themselves. When a person is deprived of food he will die in from 10 to 50 days, according to the way he has been taught, or, in other words, according to the way he thinks about it. So you see that an erroneous physiology can work very mischievous results.

No Science of Being Well can be founded on current physiology; it is not sufficiently exact in its knowledge. With all its pretensions, comparatively little is really known as to the interior workings and processes of the body. It is not known just how food is digested. It is not known just what part food plays, if any, in the generation of force. It is not known exactly what the liver, spleen, and pancreas are for, or what part their secretions play in the chemistry of assimilation. On all these and most other points we theorize, but we do not really know.

When a person begins to study physiology, he enters the domain of theory and disputation. He comes among conflicting opinions, and he is bound to form mistaken ideas concerning himself. These mistaken ideas lead to the thinking of wrong thoughts, and this leads to perverted functioning and disease.

All that the most perfect knowledge of physiology could do for a person would be to enable him to think only thoughts of perfect health, and to eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in a perfectly healthy way. And this, as we shall show, he can do without studying physiology at all.

This, for the most part, is true of all hygiene. There are certain fundamental propositions which we should know, and these will be explained in later chapters, but aside from these propositions, ignore physiology and hygiene. They tend to fill your mind with thoughts of imperfect conditions, and these thoughts will produce the imperfect conditions in your own body. You cannot study any science which recognizes disease, if you are to think nothing but health.

Drop all investigation as to your present condition, its causes, or possible results, and set yourself to the work of forming a conception of health. Think about health and the possibilities of health, of the work that may be done and the pleasures that may be enjoyed in a condition of perfect health.

Then make this conception your guide in thinking of yourself. Refuse to entertain for an instant any thought of yourself which is not in harmony with it. When any idea of disease or imperfect functioning enters your mind, cast it out instantly by calling up a thought which is in harmony with the Conception of Health.

Think of yourself at all times as realizing this conception, as being a strong and perfectly healthy personage, and do not harbor a contrary thought. KNOW that as you think of yourself in unity with this conception, the Original Substance which permeates and fills the tissues of your body is taking form according to the thought, and know that this Intelligent Substance or mind stuff will cause function to be performed in such a way that your body will be rebuilt with perfectly healthy cells.

The Intelligent Substance, from which all things are made, permeates and penetrates all things; and so it is in and through your body. It moves according to its thoughts, and so if you hold only the thoughts of perfectly healthy function, it will cause the movements of perfectly healthy function within you. Hold with persistence to the thought of perfect health in relation to yourself. Do not permit yourself to think in any other way. Hold this thought with perfect faith that it is the fact, the truth. It is the truth so far as your mental body is concerned.

You have a mind-body and a physical body. The mind-body takes form just as you think of yourself, and any thought which you hold continuously is made visible by the transformation of the physical body into its image. Implanting the thought of perfect functioning in the mind-body will, in due time, cause perfect functioning in the physical body.

The transformation of the physical body into the image of the ideal held by the mind-body is not accomplished instantaneously. We cannot transfigure our physical bodies at will as Jesus did. In the creation and recreation of forms, Substance moves along the fixed lines of growth it has established, and the impression upon it of the health thought causes the healthy body to be built cell by cell.

Holding only thoughts of perfect health will ultimately cause perfect functioning, and perfect functioning will in due time produce a perfectly healthy body. It may be as well to condense this chapter into a syllabus: Your physical body is permeated and filled with an Intelligent Substance, which forms a body of mind-stuff. This mind-stuff controls the functioning of your physical body. A thought of disease or of imperfect function, impressed upon the mind-stuff, causes disease or imperfect functioning in the physical body.

If you are diseased, it is because wrong thoughts have made impressions on this mind-stuff. These may have been either your own thoughts or those of your parents; we begin life with many sub-conscious impressions, both right and wrong. But the natural tendency of all mind is toward health, and if no thoughts are held in the conscious mind save those of health, all internal functioning will come to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner. The Power of Nature within you is sufficient to overcome all hereditary impressions, and if you will learn to control your thoughts, so that you shall think only those of health, and if you will perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way, you can certainly be well.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter V

2009-11-30T11:50:00.000-08:00

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Faith

The Principe of Health is moved by Faith. Nothing else can call it into action, and only faith can enable you to relate yourself to health, and sever your relation with disease, in your thoughts. You will continue to think of disease unless you have faith in health. If you do not have faith, you will doubt. If you doubt, you will fear. And if you fear, you will relate yourself in mind to that which you fear. If you fear disease, you will think of yourself in connection with disease, and that will produce within yourself the form and motions of disease. Just as Original Substance creates from itself the forms of its thoughts, so your mind-body, which is original substance, takes the form and motion of whatever you think about. If you fear disease, dread disease, have doubts about your safety from disease, or if you even contemplate disease, you will connect yourself with it and create its forms and motions within you. Let me enlarge somewhat upon this point. The potency, or creative power, of a thought is given to it by the faith that is in it. Thoughts which contain no faith create no forms. The Formless Substance, which knows all truth and therefore thinks only truth, has perfect faith in every thought, because it thinks only truth, and so all its thoughts create. But if you will imagine a thought in Formless Substance in which there was no faith, you will see that such a thought could not cause the Substance to move or take form. Keep in mind the fact that only those thoughts which are conceived in faith have creative energy. Only those thoughts which have faith with them are able to change function, or to quicken the Principle of Health into activity. If you do not have faith in health, you will certainly have faith in disease. If you do not have faith in health, it will do you no good to think about health, for your thoughts will have no potency, and will cause no change for the better in your conditions. If you do not have faith in health, I repeat, you will have faith in disease. And if, under such conditions, you think about health for ten hours a day and think about disease for only a few minutes, the disease thought will control your condition because it will have the potency of faith, while the health thought will not. Your mind-body will take on the form and motions of disease and retain them, because your health thought will not have sufficient dynamic force to change form or motion. In order to practice the Science of Being Well, you must have complete faith in health. Faith begins in belief; and we now come to the question: What must you believe in order to have faith in health? You must believe that there is more health-power than disease-power in both yourself and your environment; and you cannot help believing this if you consider the facts. These are the facts: There is a Thinking Substance from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. The thought of a form, in this Substance, produces the form; the thought of a motion institutes the motion. In relation to the human being, the thoughts of Original Substance are always of perfect health and perfect functioning. This Substance, within and without a human being, always exerts its power toward health.

A person is a thinking center, capable of original thought. He has a mind-body of Original Substance permeating a physical body, and the functioning of his physical body is determined by the FAITH of his mind-body. If a person thinks with faith of the functioning of health, he will cause his internal functions to be performed in a healthy manner, provided that he performs the external functions in a corresponding manner. But if a person thinks, with faith, of disease, or of the power of disease, he will cause his internal functioning to be the functioning of disease.

The Original Intelligent Substance is in a human being, moving toward health and it is pressing upon him from every side. The human being lives, moves, and has his being in a limitless ocean of health-power, and he uses this power according to his faith. If he appropriates it and applies it to himself it is all his, and if he unifies himself with it by unquestioning faith, he cannot fail to attain health, for the power of this Substance is all the power there is.

A belief in the above statements is a foundation for faith in health. If you believe them, you believe that health is the natural state of humanity, and that a human being lives in the midst of Universal Health that all the power of nature makes for health, and that health is possible to all, and can surely be attained by all.

You will believe that the power of health in the universe is 10,000 times greater than that of disease, in fact, that disease has no power whatever, being only the result of perverted thought and faith. And if you believe that health is possible to you, and that it may surely be attained by you, and that you know exactly what to do in order to attain it, you will have faith in health. You will have this faith and knowledge if you read this book through with care and determine to believe in and practice its teachings.

It is not merely the possession of faith, but the personal application of faith which works healing. You must claim health in the beginning, and form a conception of health, and, as far as may be, of yourself as a perfectly healthy person. And then, by faith, you must claim that you ARE REALIZING this conception. Do not assert with faith that you are going to get well; assert with faith that you ARE well. Having faith in health, and applying it to yourself, means having faith that you are healthy. And the first step in this is to claim that it is the truth.

Mentally take the attitude of being well, and do not say anything or do anything which contradicts this attitude. Never speak a word or assume a physical attitude which does not harmonize with the claim: I am perfectly well..

When you walk, go with a brisk step, and with your chest thrown out and your head held up. Watch that at all times your physical actions and attitudes are those of a healthy person.

When you find that you have relapsed into the attitude of weakness or disease, change instantly: straighten up, and think of health and power. Refuse to consider yourself as other than a perfectly healthy person. One great aid perhaps the greatest aid in applying your faith you will find in the exercise of gratitude. Whenever you think of yourself, or of your advancing condition, give thanks to the Great Intelligent Substance for the perfect health you are enjoying. Remember that there is a continual inflow of life from the Supreme, which is received by all created things according to their forms, and by every person according to his faith. Health from God is continually being urged upon you, and when you think of this, lift up your mind reverently, and give thanks that you have been led to the Truth and into perfect health of mind and body. Be, all the time, in a grateful frame of mind, and let gratitude be evident in your speech. Gratitude will help you to own and control your own field of thought. Whenever the thought of disease is presented to you, instantly claim health, and thank God for the perfect health you have. Do this so that there shall be no room in your mind for a thought of ill. Every thought connected in any way with ill health is unwelcome, and you can close the door of your mind in its face by asserting that you are well, and by reverently thanking God that it is so.

Soon the old thoughts will return no more. Gratitude has a twofold effect: it strengthens your own faith, and it brings you into close and harmonious relations with the Supreme. You believe that there is one Intelligent Substance from which all life and all power come, you believe that you receive your own life from this substance, and you relate yourself closely to It by feeling continuous gratitude.

It is easy to see that the more closely you relate yourself to the Source of Life the more readily you may receive life from it. And it is easy also to see that your relation to It is a matter of mental attitude. We cannot come into physical relationship with God, for God is mind-stuff and we also are mind-stuff. Our relation with God must therefore be a mind relation. It is plain, then, that the person who feels deep and hearty gratitude will live in closer touch with God than the person who never looks up to God in thankfulness. The ungrateful or unthankful mind really denies that it receives at all, and so cuts its connection with the Supreme. The grateful mind is always looking toward the Supreme, is always open to receive from it, and it will receive continually.

The Principle of Health in a human being receives its vital power from the Principle of Life in the universe, and a person relates himself to the Principle of Life by faith in health, and by gratitude for the health he receives. A person may cultivate both faith and gratitude by the proper use of his will.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter VI

2009-11-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

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Use of the Will

In the practice of the Science of Being Well, the will is not used to compel yourself to go when you are not really able to go or to do things when you are not physically strong enough to do them. You do not direct your will upon your physical body or try to compel the proper performance of internal function by will power.

You direct the will upon the mind, and use it in determining what you shall believe, what you shall think, and to what you shall give your attention. The will should never be used upon any person or thing external to you, and it should never be used upon your own body. The sole legitimate use of the will is in determining to what you shall give your attention and what you shall think about the things to which your attention is given.

All belief begins in the will to believe. You cannot always and instantly believe what you will to believe; but you can always will to believe what you want to believe. You want to believe truth about health, and you can will to do so. The statements you have been reading in this book are the truth about health, and you can will to believe them. This must be your first step toward getting well. These are the statements you must will to believe: That there is a Thinking Substance from which all things are made, and that a human being receives the Principle of Health, which is his life, from this Substance.

That a human being himself is Thinking Substance a mind-body permeating a physical body, and that as a persons thoughts are, so will the functioning of his physical body be.

That if a person will think only thoughts of perfect health, he must and will cause the internal and involuntary functioning of his body to be the functioning of health, provided that his external and voluntary functioning and attitude are in accordance with his thoughts.

When you will to believe these statements, you must also begin to act upon them. You cannot long retain a belief unless you act upon it, you cannot increase a belief until it becomes faith unless you act upon it, and you certainly cannot expect to reap benefits in any way from a belief so long as you act as if the opposite were true.

You cannot long have faith in health if you continue to act like a sick person. If you continue to act like a sick person, you cannot help continuing to think of yourself as a sick person. And if you continue to think of yourself as a sick person, you will continue to be a sick person.

The first step toward acting externally like a well person is to begin to act internally like a well person. Form your conception of perfect health, and get into the way of thinking about perfect health until it begins to have a definite meaning to you. Picture yourself as doing the things a strong and healthy person would do, and have faith that you can and will do those things in that way. Continue this until you have a vivid CONCEPTION of health, and what it means to you.

When I speak in this book of a conception of health, I mean a conception that carries with it the idea of the way a healthy person looks and does things. Think of yourself in connection with health until you form a conception of how you would live, appear, act, and do things as a perfectly healthy person. Think about yourself in connection with health until you conceive of yourself, in imagination, as always doing everything in the manner of a well person until the thought of health conveys the idea of what health means to you. As I have said in a former chapter, you may not be able to form a clear mental image of yourself in perfect health, but you can form a conception of yourself as acting like a healthy person.

Form this conception, and then think only thoughts of perfect health in relation to yourself, and, so far as may be possible, in relation to others. When a thought of sickness or disease is presented to you, reject it. Do not let it get into your mind. Do not entertain or consider it at all. Meet it by thinking health, by thinking that you are well, and by being sincerely grateful for the health you are receiving.

Whenever suggestions of disease are coming thick and fast upon you, and you are in a tight place, fall back upon the exercise of gratitude. Connect yourself with the Supreme, give thanks to God for the perfect health God gives you, and you will soon find yourself able to control your thoughts, and to think what you want to think. In times of doubt, trial, and temptation, the exercise of gratitude is always a sheet anchor which will prevent you from being swept away.

Remember that the great essential thing is to SEVER ALL MENTAL RELATIONS WITH DISEASE, AND TO ENTER INTO FULL MENTAL RELATIONSHIP WITH HEALTH. This is the KEY to all mental healing; it is the whole thing. Here we see the secret of the great success of Science. More than any other formulated system of practice, it insists that its converts shall sever relations with disease, and relate themselves fully with health. The healing power of Science is not in its theological formulae nor in its denial of matter, but in the fact that it induces the sick to ignore disease as an unreal thing and accept health by faith as a reality. Its failures are made because its practitioners, while thinking in the Certain Way, do not eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in the same way.

While there is no healing power in the repetition of strings of words, yet it is a very convenient thing to have the central thoughts so formulated that you can repeat them readily, and so that you can use them as affirmations whenever you are surrounded by an environment which gives you adverse suggestions. When those around you begin to talk of sickness and death, close your ears and mentally assert something like the following: There is One Substance, and I am that Substance. That Substance is eternal, and it is Life; I am that Substance, and I am Eternal Life. That Substance knows no disease; I am that Substance, and I am Health.

Exercise your will power in choosing only those thoughts that are thoughts of health, and arrange your environment so that it shall suggest thoughts of health. Do not have about you books, pictures, or other things that suggest death, disease, deformity, weakness, or age. Have only those which convey the ideas of health, power, joy, vitality, and youth. When you are confronted with a book, or anything else which suggests disease, do not give it your attention.

Think of your conception of health, and your gratitude, and affirm as above. Use your will power to fix your attention upon thoughts of health. In a future chapter I shall touch upon this point again. What I wish to make plain here is that you must think only health, recognize only health, and give your attention only to health, and that you must control thought, recognition, and attention by the use of your will.

Do not try to use your will to compel the healthy performance of function within you. The Principle of Health will attend to that if you give your attention only to thoughts of health.

Do not try to exert your will upon the Formless to compel It to give you more vitality or power. It is already placing all the power there is at your service. You do not have to use your will to conquer adverse conditions, or to subdue unfriendly forces. There are no unfriendly forces; there is only One Force, and that force is friendly to you. It is a force that makes for health. Everything in the universe wants you to be well. You have absolutely nothing to overcome but your own habit of thinking in a certain way about disease, and you can do this only by forming a habit of thinking in another Certain Way about health.

A person can cause all the internal functions of his body to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner by continuously thinking in a Certain Way and by performing the external functions in a certain way. He can think in this Certain Way by controlling his attention, and he can control his attention by the use of his will.

He can decide what things he will think about.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter VII

2009-11-30T07:05:00.000-08:00

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Health from God

I will give a chapter here to clarify how a human being may receive health from the Supreme. By the Supreme I mean the Thinking Substance from which all things are made, and which is in all and through all, seeking more complete expression and fuller life. This Intelligent Substance, in a perfectly fluid state, permeates and penetrates all things, and is in touch with all minds. It is the source of all energy and power, and constitutes the inflow of life, vitalizing all things. It is working to one certain end and for the fulfillment of one purpose, and that purpose is the advancement of life toward the complete expression of Mind.

When a person harmonizes himself with this Intelligence, it can and will give him health and wisdom. When a person holds steadily to the purpose to live more abundantly, he comes into harmony with this Supreme Intelligence. The purpose of the Supreme Intelligence is the most Abundant Life for all. The purpose of this Supreme Intelligence for you is that you should live more abundantly. If, then, your own purpose is to live more abundantly, you are unified with the Supreme, you are working with It, and it must work with you.

But as the Supreme Intelligence is in all, if you harmonize with it you must harmonize with all, and you must desire more abundant life for all as well as for yourself. Two fantastic benefits come to you from being in harmony with the Supreme Intelligence.

First, you will receive wisdom. By wisdom I do not mean knowledge of facts so much as ability to perceive and know facts, and to judge soundly and act rightly in all matters relating to life. Wisdom is the power to perceive truth, and the ability to make the best use of the knowledge of truth. It is the power to perceive at once the best end to aim at, and the means best adapted to attain that end.

With wisdom comes poise, and the power to reckon rightly, to control and guide your thoughts, and to avoid the difficulties which come from incorrect thinking. With wisdom you will be able to select the right courses for your particular needs, and to so govern yourself in all ways as to secure the best results.

You will know how to do what you want to do. You can readily see that wisdom must be an essential attribute of the Supreme Intelligence, since That which knows all truth must be wise, and you can also see that just in proportion as you harmonize and unify your mind with that Intelligence you will have wisdom. But I repeat that since this Intelligence is All, and in all, you can enter into Its wisdom only by harmonizing with all. If there is anything in your desires or your purpose which will bring oppression to any, or work injustice to, or cause lack of life for any, you cannot receive wisdom from the Supreme. Furthermore, your purpose for your own self must be the best.

A person can live in three general ways: for the gratification of his body, for that of his intellect, or for that of his soul. The first is accomplished by satisfying the desires for food, drink, and those other things which give enjoyable physical sensations. The second is accomplished by doing those things which cause pleasant mental sensations, such as gratifying the desire for knowledge or those for fine clothing, fame, power, and so on. The third is accomplished by giving way to the instincts of unselfish like and altruism. A person lives most wisely and completely when he functions most perfectly along all of these lines, without excess in any of them. The person who lives swinishly, for the body alone, is unwise and out of harmony with God. That person who lives solely for the cold enjoyments of the intellect, though he be absolutely moral, is unwise and out of harmony with God. And the person who lives wholly for the practice of altruism, and who throws himself away for others, is as unwise and as far from harmony with God as those who go to excess in other ways.

To come into full harmony with the Supreme, you must purpose to LIVE to live to the utmost of your capabilities in body, mind, and soul. This must mean the full exercise of function in all the different ways, but without excess, for excess in one causes deficiency in the others. Behind your desire for health is your own desire for more abundant life, and behind that is the desire of the Formless Intelligence to live more fully in you.

So, as you advance toward perfect health, hold steadily to the purpose to attain complete life, physical, mental, and spiritual; to advance in all ways, and in every way to live more. If you hold this purpose you will be given wisdom. He that willeth to do the will of the Father shall KNOW, said Jesus. Wisdom is the most desirable gift that can come to a person, for it makes him rightly self-governing. But wisdom is not all you may receive from the Supreme Intelligence. You may receive physical energy, vitality, life force.

The energy of the Formless Substance is unlimited, and permeates everything. You are already receiving or appropriating to yourself this energy in an automatic and instinctive way, but you can do so to a far greater degree if you set about it intelligently. The measure of a person’s strength is not what God is willing to give him, but what he, himself, has the will and the intelligence to appropriate to himself. God gives you all there is. Your only question is how much to take of the unlimited supply.

Professor James has pointed out that there is apparently no limit to the powers of the human being, and this is simply because the human beings power comes from the inexhaustible reservoir of the Supreme. The runner who has reached the stage of exhaustion, when his physical power seems entirely gone, by running on in a Certain Way may receive his second wind..

His strength is renewed in a seemingly miraculous fashion, and he can go on indefinitely. And by continuing in the Certain Way, he may receive a third, fourth, and fifth wind.. We do not know where the limit is, or how far it may be possible to extend it.

The conditions are that the runner must have absolute faith that the strength will come, that he must reckon steadily of strength and have perfect confidence that he has it, and that he must continue to run on. If he admits a doubt into his mind, he falls exhausted, and if he stops running to wait for the accession of strength, it will never come.

His faith in strength, his faith that he can keep on running, his unwavering purpose to keep on running, and his action in keeping on seem to connect him to the source of energy in such a way as to bring him a new supply. In a very similar manner, the sick person who has unquestioning faith in health, whose purpose brings him into harmony with the source, and who performs the voluntary functions of life in a certain way, will receive vital energy sufficient for all his needs, and for the healing of all his diseases.

God, who seeks to live and express himself fully in humanity, delights to give human beings all that is needed for the most abundant life. Action and reaction are equal, and when you desire to live more, if you are in mental harmony with the Supreme, the forces which make for life start to concentrate about you and upon you. The One Life starts to go toward you, and your environment becomes surcharged with it. Then, if you appropriate it by faith, it is yours.

Ye shall question what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.. Your Father doesn’t give his spirit by measure; he delights to give excellent gifts to you.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter VIII

2009-11-30T06:57:00.000-08:00

Next chapter of The Science of Being Well

Summary of the Mental Actions

Let me now summarize the mental actions and attitudes necessary to the practice of the Science of Being Well: first, you believe that there is a Thinking Substance, from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. This Substance is the Life of All, and is seeking to express more life in all. It is the Principle of Life of the universe, and the Principle of Health in a human being. A human being is a form of this Substance, and draws his vitality from it.

He is a mind-body of original substance, permeating a physical body, and the thoughts of his mind-body control the functioning of his physical body. If a person thinks no thoughts save those of perfect health, the functions of his physical body will be performed in a manner of perfect health.

In order to consciously relate yourself to the All-Health, your purpose must be to live fully on every plane of your being. You must want all that there is in life for body, mind, and soul, and this will bring you into harmony with all the life there is.

The person who is in conscious and intelligent harmony with All will receive a continuous inflow of vital power from the Supreme Life, and this in-flow is prevented by mad, selfish or antagonistic mental attitudes. If you are against any part, you have severed relations with all you will receive life, but only instinctively and automatically, not intelligently and purposefully.

You can see that if you are mentally antagonistic to any part, you cannot be in complete harmony with the Whole. Therefore, as Jesus directed, be reconciled to everybody and everything before you offer worship.

Want for everybody all that you want for yourself. The reader is recommended to read what we have said in a former work (The Science of Getting Rich) concerning the Competitive mind and the Creative mind. It is very doubtful whether one who has lost health can completely regain it so long as he remains in the competitive mind.

Being on the Creative or Excellent-Will plane in mind, the next step is to form a conception of yourself as in perfect health, and to hold no thoughts which are not in full harmony with this conception. Have FAITH that if you reckon only thoughts of health you will establish in your physical body the functioning of health; and use your will to determine that you will reckon only thoughts of health.

Never reckon of yourself as sick, or as likely to be sick; never reckon of sickness in connection with yourself at all. And, as far as may be, shut out of your mind all thoughts of sickness in connection with others. Surround yourself as much as possible with the things which suggest the thoughts of strength and health. Have faith in health, and accept health as an actual present fact in your life. Claim health as a blessing bestowed upon you by the Supreme Life, and be deeply grateful at all times. Claim the blessing by faith, know that it is yours, and never admit a contrary thought to your mind.

Use your will-power to withhold your attention from every appearance of disease in yourself and others. Do not study disease, reckon about it, nor speak of it. At all times, when the thought of disease is thrust upon you, go forward into the mental position of prayerful gratitude for your perfect health.

The mental actions necessary to being well may now be summed up in a single sentence: Form a conception of yourself in perfect health, and reckon only those thoughts which are in harmony with that conception. That with faith and gratitude and the purpose to really live covers all the requirements. It is not necessary to take mental exercises of any kind, except as described in Chapter 6, or to do wearying stunts in the way of affirmations, and so on. It is not necessary to concentrate the mind on the affected parts. It is far better not to reckon of any part as affected. It is not necessary to treat yourself by auto-suggestion, or to have others treat you in any way whatever. The power that heals is the Principle of Health within you, and to call this Principle into Constructive Action it is only necessary, having harmonized yourself with the All-Mind, to claim by FAITH the All-Health and to hold that claim until it is physically manifested in all the functions of your body.

In order to hold this mental attitude of faith, gratitude, and health, but, your external acts must be only those of health. You cannot long hold the internal attitude of a well person if you continue to perform the external acts of a sick person. It is essential not only that your every thought should be a thought of health, but that your every act should be an act of health, performed in a healthy manner. If you will make every thought a thought of health, and every conscious act an act of health, it must infallibly follow that every internal and unconscious function shall come to be healthy, for all the power of life is being continually exerted toward health. We shall next consider how you may make every act an act of health.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter IX

2009-11-30T06:53:00.000-08:00

Next chapter of The Science of Being Well

When To Eat

You cannot build and maintain a perfectly healthy body by mental action alone, or by the performance of the unconscious or involuntary functions alone. There are certain actions, more or less voluntary, which have a direct and immediate relation with the continuance of life itself. These are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping.

No matter what a persons thought or mental attitude may be, he cannot live unless he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps, and, moreover, he cannot be well if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in an unnatural or incorrect manner. It is therefore vitally vital that you should learn the right way to perform these voluntary functions, and I shall proceed to show you this way, beginning with the matter of eating, which is most vital.

There has been a vast amount of controversy as to when to eat, what to eat, how to eat, and how much to eat, and all this controversy is unnecessary, for the Right Way is very simple to find. You have only to consider the Law which governs all attainment, whether of health, wealth, power, or happiness; and that law is that you must do what you can do now, where you are now; do every separate act in the most perfect manner possible, and place the power of faith into every action.

The processes of digestion and assimilation are under the supervision and control of an inner division of a person’s mentality, which is generally called the sub-conscious mind, and I shall use that term here in order to be understood. The sub-conscious mind is in charge of all the functions and processes of life, and when more food is needed by the body, it makes the fact known by causing a sensation called hunger.

Whenever food is needed and can be used, there is hunger, and whenever there is hunger it is time to eat. When there is no hunger it is unnatural and incorrect to eat, no matter how fantastic may APPEAR to be the need for food.

Even if you are in a condition of apparent starvation, with fantastic emaciation, if there is no hunger you may know that FOOD CANNOT BE USED, and it will be unnatural and incorrect for you to eat.* Though you have not eaten for days or weeks, if you have no hunger you may be perfectly sure that food cannot be used, and will probably not be used if taken. Whenever food is needed, if there is power to digest and assimilate it, so that it can be normally used, the sub-conscious mind will announce the fact by a chose hunger.

Food, taken when there is no hunger, will sometimes be digested and assimilated, because Nature makes a special effort to perform the task which is thrust upon her against her will, but if food is habitually taken when there is no hunger, the digestive power is at last ruined, and numberless evils caused. If the foregoing be right and it is indisputably so it is a self-evident proposition that the natural time (and the healthy time) to eat is when one is hungry, and that it is never a natural or a healthy action to eat when one is not hungry. You see, then, that it is an simple matter to scientifically settle the question when to eat. ALWAYS eat when you are hungry, and NEVER eat when you are not hungry. This is obedience to nature, which is obedience to God. We must not fail, but, to make clear the distinction between hunger and appetite.

Hunger is the call of the sub-conscious mind for more material to be used in repairing and renewing the body, and in keeping up the internal heat. Hunger is never felt unless there is need for more material, and unless there is power to digest it when taken into the stomach.

Appetite is a desire for the gratification of sensation. The drunkard has an appetite for liquor, but he cannot have a hunger for it. A normally fed person cannot have a hunger for candy or sweets. The desire for these things is an appetite. You cannot hunger for tea, coffee, spiced foods, or for the various taste-tempting devices of the skilled cook. If you desire these things, it is with appetite, not with hunger.

Hunger is nature’s call for material to be used in building new cells, and nature never calls for anything which may not be legitimately used for this purpose. Appetite is often largely a matter of habit. If one eats or drinks at a certain hour, and especially if one takes sweetened or spiced and stimulating foods, the desire comes regularly at the same hour, but this habitual desire for food should never be mistaken for hunger. Hunger does not appear at specified times. It only comes when work or exercise has used sufficient energy to make the taking in of new raw material a necessity.

For instance, if a person has been sufficiently fed on the preceding day, it is impossible that he should feel a genuine hunger on arising from refreshing sleep. In sleep the body is recharged with vital power, and the assimilation of the food which has been taken during the day is completed. The system has no need for food immediately after sleep, unless the person went to his rest in a state of starvation. With a system of feeding which is even a reasonable approach to a natural one, no one can have a real hunger for an early morning breakfast. There is no such thing possible as a normal or genuine hunger immediately after arising from sound sleep.

The early morning breakfast is always taken to gratify appetite, never to satisfy hunger. No matter who you are, or what your condition is; no matter how hard you work, or how much you are exposed, unless you go to your bed starved, you cannot arise from your bed hungry.

Hunger is not caused by sleep, but by work. And it does not matter who you are, or what your condition, or how hard or simple your work, the so-called no-breakfast plot is the right plot for you. It is the right plot for everybody, because it is based on the universal law that hunger never comes until it is EARNED. I am aware that a protest against this will come from the large number of people who delight in their breakfasts, whose breakfast is their best meal, who believe that their work is so hard that they cannot get through the forenoon on an empty stomach, and so on. But all their arguments fall down before the facts.

They delight in their breakfast as the toper enjoys his morning dram, because it gratifies a habitual appetite and not because it supplies a natural want. It is their best meal for the same reason that his morning dram is the toper’s best drink. And they CAN get along without it, because millions of people, of every trade and profession, DO get along without it, and are vastly better for doing so.

If you are to live according to the Science of Being Well, you must NEVER EAT UNTIL YOU HAVE AN EARNED HUNGER. But if I do not eat on arising in the morning, when shall I take my first meal? In 99 cases out of a hundred twelve o’clock noon is early enough, and it is generally the most convenient time. If you are doing heavy work, you will get by noon a hunger sufficient to justify a excellent-sized meal. And if your work is light, you will probably still have hunger enough for a moderate meal. The best general rule or law that can be laid down is that you should eat your first meal of the day at noon if you are hungry, and if you are not hungry, wait until you become so. And when shall I eat my second meal? Not at all, unless you are hungry for it and that with a genuine earned hunger. If you do get hungry for a second meal, eat at the most convenient time, but do not eat until you have a really earned hunger.

The reader who wishes to fully inform himself as to the reasons for this way of arranging the mealtimes will find the best books thereon cited in the preface to this work. From the foregoing, but, you can easily see that the Science of Being Well readily answers the question, When, and how often shall I eat? The answer: Eat when you have an earned hunger, and never eat at any other time.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter X

2009-11-24T11:57:00.000-08:00

Next chapter of The Science of Being Well

What To Eat

The current sciences of medicine and hygiene have made no progress toward answering the question, What shall I eat? The contests between the vegetarians and the meat eaters, the cooked food advocates, raw food advocates, and various other schools of theorists, seem to be interminable. And from the mountains of evidence and argument piled up for and against each special theory, it is plain that if we depend on these scientists we shall never know what is the natural food of humans. Turning away from the whole controversy, then, we will question the question of Nature herself, and we shall find that she has not left us without an answer.

On the question of what to eat, the answer is simple: Eat what Nature provides. The One Living Substance from which all things are made has made an abundance of perfect foods for every person in every place humans can live, and has given every person the physical and mental faculties to know what foods he should eat and how and when he should eat them. Whenever people have attempted to improve on Nature, they go incorrect. For humanity does not yet know enough not to go incorrect. Nature is the physical form of the One Living Substance, operating according to the rules of the One Living Substance, with the energy of the One Living Substance. Nature provides every person exactly what is needed for perfect health.

The Fantastic Intelligence, which is in and through all, has in reality practically settled the question as to what we shall eat. In ordering the affairs of nature, It has chose that a human beings food shall be according to the zone in which he lives. These are the foods best for the requirements of the climate. These are the foods which will be the freshest when a person eats them, and therefore most filled with the life force of the One Living Substance. In acquiring these foods a person can be in closest association with the Principle of Life that made them. Therefore, a person need only question himself what food grows and lives where he lives.

How shall a person know which of these foods to eat, according to his age, gender, ancestry, condition of health, exposure to cold, physical and mental activity? Again, we see that the Fantastic Intelligence operating in Nature answers the question. It provides a variety of foods in every zone, and it provides a human being with hunger and taste.

A person needs food as a raw material for the Principle of Health in his own body to direct in providing energy, heat, defense, and tissue repair and growth. He needs protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals.

These are found in the flesh, milk, blood, eggs, bones, and organs of water and land creatures, and in the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds, grains, nuts, and fruits of land and water plants. The Fantastic Intelligence guides the masses of people to learn ways of procuring and preparing these foods in harmony with Nature. A persons own Principle of Health guides his hunger and taste to the particular foods that will fill its needs.

With all the various ways food is prepared, how shall a person know the proper way? He should procure and prepare his food in ways that cooperate with Nature. It is only when people work against Nature that they go incorrect.

To illustrate this point let us compare the health of people working in cooperation with Nature with the health of these same people working against Nature. In every climate there are tribes who have learned over thousands of years the wisdom of nature and the best ways to gather, prepare, and eat the foods of the region in perfect harmony with the seasons and cycles of Nature. The perfect health of these people provides a bright example of what is possible in physical strength and endurance, perfect eyesight and teeth, longevity, skill and agility, mental development, morality, and overall well-being.

Moreover, they have learned the secrets of healthy reproduction and child-rearing such that there are not only pleased, healthy children, but the absence of unsociable behavior. What secrets of eating are followed by these perfectly healthy people? They eat only foods that occur in nature or that can be simply made from these. They eat only the best foods, and parts of foods, with the greatest nutrient content.

They eat both animal and plant foods. Many foods from both plant and animal sources are eaten raw. From wild animals, bones, and organs are as vital as (and often preferred over) muscle meat. From domesticated animals, fresh milk (and in some cases, even blood) is drawn. When milk products are used, they are made from milk taken from vitally healthy animals after they have been well fed on newly growing spring grasses. Cheese, butter, and other milk products that can be stored for later use are made from this milk. During other seasons, the animals are fed the highest quality hay.

For some groups, insects in both adult and immature forms are vital food sources, even where other animal foods are available. In zones near the sea, sea creatures are the source of animal food. Fish eggs are a rich source of nutrients. Where they are not available year-round, both the flesh and eggs of fish are dried for winter use in a way that preserves or increases nutrient content.

Plant foods are eaten liberally during the season in which they grow and are ripe. Where they are not growing year-round, some are preserved for winter use in ways that preserves their nutrients. Sweet foods of all kinds are eaten only sparingly on special occasions.

Refined sugar is avoided altogether, as are all foods made by adding refined sugar. Land used for plant cultivation is fertilized liberally with natural substances, and allowed periods of rest.

Grains are eaten whole, or ground immediately before use. The entire grain is used. Women are supplied with extra high nutrient diets for several months before marriage and pregnancy, and during pregnancy and lactation. Childbirth is carefully spaced three years apart so that the mother can nurse her child, then replenish her body in preparation for the next pregnancy. Young men are also fed extra-high nutrient diets in preparation for fathering children. Children are nursed, then given high nutrient foods to help them grow. There are times of natural decrease in food supply, and ceremonial times, when the people eat less, or not at all.

The people actively participate in the physical pursuit of growing, gathering, hunting, and preparing their food. They have community ceremonies of gratitude and celebration. These are the practices of the healthiest people on earth.

What happens when these same people abandon their way of living and eating and replace their foods with unnatural foods? They develop disease, deformity, misery, and unsociable behavior. What are the unnatural foods that cause these effects?

They are refined and preserved foods from which natural life has been removed or lost, or sugar and flavors added to hide the absence of nutrients. They are foods so ancient that no life force remains in them. They are foods from unhealthy plants and animals, containing life force that bears the impression of weakness or disease.

What is needed for perfect health is vital food, brimming with life force, eaten according to the practices of healthy people. How shall the modern city dweller buy this vital food and incorporate these practices into his life?

First is to remember that he is to eat the food Nature provides in the zone in which he lives. He must align himself with the Principle of Life with gratitude that there is abundant food for all and with faith that he will be perfectly guided to the best sources available in his area. Perfect health requires a relationship with the Source of all food with faith, gratitude, and joy. Food must be gathered with the attitude of more life to all and less to none.

A person must either learn to grow and gather, raise animals, hunt and fish, or find those who do. If he does not procure his own food directly from Nature, he must form a friendly relationship with those who do. He can then knowingly choose to deal with those who operate in harmony with Nature, exercising gratitude and wisdom. The person who does not know how to identify a farmer or hunter following the natural laws of producing and finding food can be guided by these simple concepts:

Choosing your food providers

1. The food provider is healthy, pleased, and of a generous spirit.

2. He uses no poisons of any kind in the production of foods.

3. If he raises animals, they are healthy and treated with kindness, respect, and gratitude. They are fed only the best foods for their health, not for abnormal growth or food production. They are not confined in unhealthy conditions, but given freedom to go about normally, and only sheltered for their protection.

4. If he fishes or hunts, he catches or kills lake, river, land or sea creatures in their natural environment. He uses means that ensure the healthy survival of all the species caught, whether or not they are the ones to be eaten.

5. If he farms, he uses only healthy, living soil uncontaminated by previous poisons. He replenishes the life of the soil so that his crops are rich in natural nutrients. His crops and soil are so healthy that they do not attract pests, and he farms in such a way that birds and other creatures eating the insects on his farm are unharmed. Any water running off his land contains no chemicals that will harm any other part of life.

These are the characteristics of a person who knows the laws of Nature in the production and procurement of food. You must also know how to determine the right people with whom to associate in any other steps of obtaining your food.

Do not associate with anyone in the process of procuring food who speaks of disease, dread, or lack in any way. Associate only with those who gratefully and joyfully appreciate the life-giving qualities of food, are pleased to grow it, harvest it, prepare it, serve it, eat it, and know that there is an abundance of the best food for all. This is vital whether you are dealing with someone who is selling you land on which to farm, or a farmer, or butcher, or truck driver, or store clerk, or cook, or waiter in a restaurant.

You must not eat foods produced or transported carelessly, or treated in any other way than as precious, life-giving substances. This is easily accomplished when you are the one procuring the food from its natural source or if you are in direct and harmonious relationship with all those who are.

The city dweller who thinks it is too hard or too expensive to obtain food in this way need only review The Science of Getting Rich. All his doubts will there be answered. He will be guided in the right manner of acquiring all the money he wants, and in attracting to himself all other resources he desires. Once a person is supplied with a variety of vital foods from which to choose, how shall he know what to eat at a given meal? Here is the only needed guideline:

Eat what your body wants. Your body wants what the Principle of Health requires to make perfect health. What your body wants is determined very simply. The thought of the food, when you are truly hungry, is appealing.

The taste of the food while chewing it is pleasant. After eating, your body feels energized and satisfied. There is no sleepiness, irritability, congestion, pain, discomfort of any kind, from the moment you start to eat until the next day. Over a period of days, weeks and months, you continue to feel well.

This is how you will know you are eating the right foods. Then you will not need to give the least thought to what you should or should not eat. You will want the right foods. The Principle of Health in your own body will guide you to know what to eat just as surely as it will guide you to know when to eat.

If you do not eat until you have an EARNED hunger, you will not find your taste demanding unnatural or unhealthy foods. If you make an association with your source of food that brings joy and gratitude, you will further increase your desire to eat what is natural and healthy.

It is when a person becomes bone idle and allows himself to be tempted by taste and convenience rather than following the Fantastic Intelligence with which he is bestowed, that he pays the price of decreased health. When you learn to cooperate with Nature you will want what is excellent for you, and you will eat what you want. This you can do with perfect results if you eat in the right way, and how to do this will be clarified in the next chapter.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter XI

2009-11-24T11:47:00.000-08:00

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How To Eat

It is a settled fact that a person naturally chews his food. The few faddists who maintain that we should bolt our nourishment, after the manner of the dog and others of the lower animals, can no longer get a hearing. We know that we should chew our food. And if it is natural that we should chew our food, the more thoroughly we chew it the more completely natural the process must be. If you will chew every mouthful to a liquid, you need not be in the least concerned as to whether you are getting enough nutrients, for you have already chosen the best foods according to Natural Law.

Whether or not this chewing shall be an irksome and laborious task or a most enjoyable process, depends upon the mental attitude in which you come to the table. If your mind and attitude are on other things, or if you are nervous or worried about business or domestic affairs, you will find it nearly impossible to eat without bolting more or less of your food. You must learn to live so scientifically that you will have no business or domestic cares to worry about. This you can do. You must also arrange your life so that you are not in the presence of others who distract from the enjoyment of your meal. This way, you can learn to give your undivided attention to the act of eating while at the table.

The matter of eating only when in a peaceful state of mind must be emphasized. You must focus on gratitude before eating the food on your table and on the full enjoyment of each bite while eating. After eating, you must again focus on gratitude for the vital force from the food supplied to you through the One Living Substance. These mental actions will help in the physical extraction of vital force from your food, and in bringing the Principle of Health within you into full Constructive Activity.

You must therefore eat with an eye single to the purpose of getting all the enjoyment you can from that meal. Dismiss everything else from your mind, and do not let anything take your attention from the food and its taste until your meal is finished. Be cheerfully confident, for if you follow these instructions you may KNOW that the food you eat is exactly the right food, and that it will agree with you to perfection.

Sit down to the table with confident cheerfulness, and take a moderate part of the food. Take whatever thing looks most desirable to you. Do not select some food because you reckon it will be excellent for you select that which will taste excellent to you. If you are to get well and stay well, you must drop the thought of doing things because they are excellent for your health, and do things because you want to do them. Select the food you want most, gratefully give thanks to God that you have learned how to eat it in such a way that digestion shall be perfect, and take a moderate mouthful of it.

Do not fix your attention on the act of chewing; fix it on the TASTE of the food. And taste and delight in it until it is reduced to a liquid state and passes down your throat by involuntary swallowing. No matter how long it takes, do not reckon of the time. Reckon of the taste. Do not allow your eyes to wander over the table, speculating as to what you shall eat next. Do not worry for dread there is not enough, and that you will not get your share of everything. Do not anticipate the taste of the next thing. Keep your mind centered on the taste of what you have in your mouth. And that is all of it.

Scientific and healthful eating is a delightful process after you have learned how to do it, and after you have overcome the terrible ancient habit of gobbling down your food un-chewed. It is best not to have too much conversation going on while eating. Be cheerful, but not talkative. Do the talking afterward.

In most cases, some use of the will is required to form the habit of right eating. The bolting habit is an unnatural one, and is without doubt mostly the result of dread. Dread that we will be robbed of our food, dread that we will not get our share of the excellent things, dread that we will lose precious time – these are the causes of haste. Then there is anticipation of the dainties that are to come for dessert and the consequent desire to get at them as quickly as possible. And there is mental abstraction, or thinking of other matters while eating. All these must be overcome.

When you find that your mind is wandering, call a halt. Reckon for a moment of the food and of how excellent it tastes, of the perfect digestion and assimilation that are going to follow the meal, and start again. Start again and again, though you must do so 20 times in the course of a single meal.

And again and again, though you must do so every meal for weeks and months. It is perfectly certain that you CAN form the Fletcher habit. If you persevere, and when you have formed it, you will experience a healthful pleasure you have never known.

This is a vital point, and I must not leave it until I have thoroughly impressed it upon your mind. Given the right materials, perfectly prepared, the Principle of Health will positively build you a perfectly healthy body, and you cannot prepare the materials perfectly in any other way than the one I am describing. If you are to have perfect health, you MUST eat in just this way. You can, and the doing of it is only a matter of a small perseverance. What use for you to talk of mental control unless you will govern yourself in so simple a matter as stopping to bolt your food? What use to talk of concentration unless you can keep your mind on the act of eating for so small a space as 15 or 20 minutes, especially with all the pleasures of taste to help you?

Go on, and conquer. In a few weeks, or months, as the case may be, you will find the habit of scientific eating becoming fixed, and soon you will be in so splendid a condition, mentally and physically, that nothing would induce you to return to the terrible ancient way. We have seen that if a person will reckon only thoughts of perfect health, his internal functions will be performed in a healthy manner, and we have seen that in order to reckon thoughts of health, a person must perform the voluntary functions in a healthy manner. The most vital of the voluntary functions is that of eating, and we see, so far, no special difficulty in eating in a perfectly healthy way.

I will here summarize the instructions as to when to eat, what to eat, and how to eat, with the reasons why: NEVER eat until you have an EARNED hunger, no matter how long you go without food. This is based on the fact that whenever food is needed in the system, if there is power to digest it, the sub-conscious mind announces the need by the sensation of hunger.

Learn to distinguish between genuine hunger and the gnawing and craving sensations caused by unnatural appetite. Hunger is never a disagreeable feeling, accompanied by weakness, faintness, or gnawing feelings at the stomach.

It is a pleasant, anticipatory desire for food. It does not come at certain hours or at stated intervals. It only comes when the body is ready to receive, digest, and assimilate food. Eat whatever foods you want, making your selection from the full variety of the best foods found in the zone in which you live. The Supreme Intelligence has guided humanity to the selection of these foods, and they are the right ones. I am referring, of course, to the foods which are taken to satisfy hunger, not to those which have been contrived merely to gratify appetite or perverted taste. The instinct which has guided people to make use of the fantastic staples of food to satisfy their hunger is a divine one. God has made no mistake; if you eat these foods you will not go incorrect.

Eat your food with cheerful confidence in a pleasant atmosphere, and get all the pleasure that is to be had from the taste of every mouthful. Chew each morsel to a liquid, keeping your attention fixed on the enjoyment of the process. This is the only way to eat in a perfectly complete and successful manner; and when anything is done in a completely successful manner, the general result cannot be a failure.

In the attainment of health, the law is the same as in the attainment of riches: if you make each act a success in itself, the sum of all your acts must be a success. When you eat in the mental attitude I have described, and in the manner I have described, nothing can be added to the process it is done in a perfect manner, and it is successfully done. And if eating is successfully done, digestion, assimilation, and the building of a healthy body are successfully begun.
We next take up the question of the quantity of food required.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter XII

2009-11-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

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Hunger and Appetites

It is very simple to find the right answer to the question, How much shall I eat? You are never to eat until you have an earned hunger, and you are to stop eating the instant you START to feel that your hunger is abating. Never gorge yourself. Never eat to repletion. When you start to feel that your hunger is satisfied, know that you have enough. For until you have enough, you will continue to feel the sensation of hunger.

If you eat as directed in the last chapter, it is probable that you will start to feel satisfied before you have taken half your usual amount, but stop there, all the same. No matter how delightfully attractive the dessert, or how tempting the pie or pudding, do not eat a mouthful of it if you find that your hunger has been in the least degree assuaged by the other foods you have taken. Whatever you eat after your hunger starts to abate is taken to gratify taste and appetite, not hunger and is not called for by nature at all. It is therefore excess mere debauchery and it cannot fail to work mischief. This is a point you will need to watch with nice discrimination, for the habit of eating purely for sensual gratification is very deeply rooted with most of us. The usual dessert of sweet and tempting foods is prepared solely with a view to inducing people to eat after hunger has been satisfied, and all the effects are evil. For the effect of eating these unwholesome foods is often an increase in appetite.

The same is right of alcohol taken before eating. Both will trick you to eat far more than you would otherwise want, and make it hard to focus your attention on the satisfaction of your right hunger. You will find that if you eat as directed in the preceding chapters, the plainest food will soon come to taste like kingly fare to you, for your sense of taste, like all your other senses, will become so acute with the general improvement in your condition that you will find new delights in common things.

No glutton ever loved a meal like the person who eats for hunger only, who gets the most out of every mouthful, and who stops on the instant that he feels the edge taken from his hunger. The first intimation that hunger is abating is the signal from the sub-conscious mind that it is time to quit.

The average person who takes up this plot of living will be greatly surprised to learn how small food is really required to keep the body in perfect condition. The amount depends upon the work upon how much muscular exercise is taken, and upon the extent to which the person is exposed to cold.

The woodchopper who goes into the forest in the winter time and swings his axe all day can eat two full meals, but the brain worker who sits all day on a chair, in a warm room, does not need one-third and often not one-tenth as much. Most woodchoppers eat two or three times as much, and most brain workers from three to ten times as much as nature calls for, and the elimination of this vast amount of surplus rubbish from their systems is a tax

on vital power which in time depletes their energy and leaves them an simple prey to so-called disease. Get all possible enjoyment out of the taste of your food, but never eat anything merely because it tastes excellent. And on the instant that you feel that your hunger is less keen, stop eating.

If you will consider for a moment, you will see that there is positively no other way for you to settle these various food questions than by adopting the plot here laid down for you. As to the proper time to eat, there is no other way to choose than to say that you should eat whenever you have an EARNED HUNGER. It is a self-evident proposition that that is the right time to eat, and that any other is a incorrect time to eat.

As to what to eat, the Eternal Wisdom has chose that the people shall eat the best products of the zones in which they live. The staple foods of your particular zone are the right foods for you, and the Eternal Wisdom, working in and through the minds of people, has taught them how best to prepare these foods by cooking and otherwise.

And as to how to eat, you know that you must chew your food in a peaceful state of mind, and if food must be chewed, then reason tells us that the more thorough and perfect the operation the better. I repeat that success in anything is attained by making each separate act a success in itself. If you make each action, but small and unimportant, a thoroughly successful action, your days work as a whole cannot result in failure. If you make the actions of each day successful, the sum total of your life cannot be failure.

A fantastic success is the result of doing a large number of small things, and doing each one in a perfectly successful way. If every thought is a healthy thought, and if every action of your life is performed in a healthy way, you must soon attain to perfect health. It is impossible to devise a way in which you can perform the act of eating more successfully, and in a manner more in accord with the laws of life, than by chewing every mouthful to a liquid, enjoying the taste fully, and keeping a cheerful confidence the while. Nothing can be added to make the process more successful, while if anything be subtracted, the process will not be a completely healthy one.

In the matter of how much to eat, you will also see that there could be no other guide so natural, so safe, and so reliable as the one I have prescribed to stop eating on the instant you feel that your hunger starts to abate. The subconscious mind may be trusted with implicit reliance to inform us when food is needed, and it may be trusted as implicitly to inform us when the need has been supplied. If ALL food is eaten for hunger, and NO food is taken merely to gratify taste, you will never eat too much, and if you eat whenever you have an EARNED hunger, you will always eat enough. By reading carefully the summing up in the following chapter, you will see that the requirements for eating in a perfectly healthy way are really very few and simple. The matter of drinking in a natural way may be dismissed here with a very few words. If you wish to be exactly and rigidly scientific, drink nothing but water, drink only when you are thirsty, drink whenever you are thirsty, and stop as soon as you feel that your thirst starts to abate. But if you are living rightly in regard to eating, it will not be necessary to practice asceticism or fantastic self-denial in the matter of drinking. You can take an occasional cup of weak coffee without harm. You can, to a reasonable extent, follow the customs of those around you.

Do not get the soda fountain habit. Do not drink merely to tickle your palate with sweet liquids. Be sure that you take a drink of water whenever you feel thirst. Never be too bone idle, too indifferent, or too busy to get a drink of water when you feel the least thirst. If you obey this rule, you will have small inclination to take weird and unnatural drinks. Drink only to satisfy thirst, drink whenever you feel thirst, and stop drinking as soon as you feel thirst abating. That is the perfectly healthy way to supply the body with the necessary fluid material for its internal processes.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter XIII

2009-11-24T10:37:00.000-08:00

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In a Nutshell

There is a Cosmic Life which permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe, being in and through all things. This Life is not merely a vibration, or form of energy it is a Living Substance. All things are made from it. It is All, and in all.

This Substance thinks, and it assumes the form of that which it thinks about. The thought of a form, in this substance, makes the form; the thought of a motion institutes the motion. The visible universe, with all its forms and motions, exists because it is in the thought of Original Substance.

A human being is a form of Original Substance and can reckon original thoughts, and within himself a persons thoughts have controlling or formative power. The thought of a condition produces that condition; the thought of a motion institutes that motion. So long as a person thinks of the conditions and motions of disease, so long will the conditions and motions of disease exist within him. If a person will reckon only of perfect health, the Principle of Health within him will maintain normal conditions.

To be well, a person must form a conception of perfect health, and hold thoughts harmonious with that conception as regards himself and all things. He must reckon only of healthy conditions and functioning. He must not permit a thought of unhealthy or abnormal conditions or functioning to find lodgment in his mind at any time.

In order to reckon only of healthy conditions and functioning, a person must perform the voluntary acts of life in a perfectly healthy way. He cannot reckon perfect health so long as he knows that he is living in a incorrect or unhealthy way, or even so long as he has doubts as to whether or not he is living in a healthy way.

A person cannot reckon thoughts of perfect health while his voluntary functions are performed in the manner of one who is sick. The voluntary functions of life are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. When a person thinks only of healthy conditions and functioning, and performs these externals in a perfectly healthy manner, he must have perfect health. In eating, a person must learn to be guided by his hunger. He must distinguish between hunger and appetite, and between hunger and the cravings of habit. He must NEVER eat unless he feels an EARNED HUNGER.

He must learn that genuine hunger is never present after natural sleep, and that the demand for an early morning meal is purely a matter of habit and appetite; and he must not start his day by eating in violation of natural law. He must wait until he has an Earned Hunger, which, in most cases, will make his first meal come at about the noon hour.

No matter what his condition, vocation, or circumstances, he must make it his rule not to eat until he has an EARNED HUNGER, and he may remember that it is far better to quick for several hours after he has become hungry than to eat before he starts to feel hunger. It will not hurt you to go hungry for a few hours, even though you are working hard, but it will hurt you to fill your stomach when you are not hungry, whether you are working or not. If you never eat until you have an Earned Hunger, you may be certain that in so far as the time of eating is concerned, you are proceeding in a perfectly healthy way. This is a self-evident proposition.

As to what he shall eat, a person must be guided by that Intelligence which has arranged that the people of any given part of the earth’s surface must live on the staple products of the zone which they inhabit. Have faith in God, and trust Gods ability to guide your taste to that which your body requires. Do not worry over the controversies as to the relative merits of cooked and raw foods, of vegetables and meats, or as to your need for carbohydrates and proteins. Eat only when you have an earned hunger, and then take the best foods of the healthy people in the zone in which you live, and have perfect confidence that the results will be excellent. They will be. Do not seek for luxuries, or for things imported or fixed up to tempt the taste.

Stick to the plain foods, and when these do not taste excellent, quick until they do. Then you will be functioning in a perfectly healthy manner, so far as what to eat is concerned. I repeat, if you have no hunger or taste for the plain foods, do not eat at all. Wait until hunger comes. Go without eating until the plainest food tastes excellent to you, and then start your meal with what you like best. In deciding how to eat, a person must be guided by reason. We can see that the abnormal states of rush and worry produced by incorrect thinking about business and similar things have led us to form the habit of eating too quick, and chewing too small.

We know that an mad or distracting atmosphere upsets the process of digestion. Reason tells us that food should be chewed, and that the more thoroughly it is chewed the better it is prepared for the chemistry of digestion.

Furthermore, we can see that the person who eats slowly and chews his food to a liquid, keeping his mind on the process and giving it his undivided attention, will delight in more of the pleasure of taste than he who bolts his food with his mind on something else.

To eat in a perfectly healthy manner, a person must concentrate his attention on the act with cheerful enjoyment and confidence. He must taste his food, and he must reduce each mouthful to a liquid before swallowing it. The foregoing instructions, if followed, make the function of eating completely perfect. Nothing can be added as to what, when, and how.

In the matter of how much to eat, a person must be guided by the same inward intelligence, or Principle of Health, which tells him when food is wanted. He must stop eating in the moment that he feels hunger abating; he must not eat beyond this point to gratify taste. If he ceases to eat in the instant that the inward demand for food ceases he will never overeat, and the function of supplying the body with food will be performed in a perfectly healthy manner.

The matter of eating naturally is a very simple one; there is nothing in all the foregoing that cannot be easily practiced by anyone. This method, place into practice, will infallibly result in perfect digestion and assimilation, and all anxiety and careful thought concerning the matter can at once be dropped from the mind. Whenever you have an earned hunger, eat with thankfulness from the variety of natural foods before you, chewing each mouthful to a liquid, and stopping when you feel the edge taken from your hunger.

The importance of the mental attitude is sufficient to justify an additional word. While you are eating, as at all other times, reckon only of healthy conditions and normal functioning. Delight in what you eat. If you carry on a conversation at the table, talk of the goodness of the food, and of the pleasure it is giving you. Never mention that you dislike this or that. Speak only of those things which you like. Never discuss the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of foods. Never mention or reckon of unwholesomeness at all.

If there is anything on the table for which you do not care, pass it by in silence, or with a word of commendation. Never criticize or object to anything. Eat your food with gladness and with singleness of heart, praising God and giving thanks. Let your watchword be perseverance. Whenever you fall into the ancient way of hasty eating, or of incorrect thought and speech, bring yourself up small and start again.

It is of the most vital importance to you that you should be a self-controlling and self-directing person, and you can never hope to become so unless you can master yourself in so simple and fundamental a matter as the manner and method of your eating. If you cannot control yourself in this, you cannot control yourself in anything that will be worthwhile.

On the other hand, if you carry out the foregoing instructions, you may rest in the assurance that in so far as right thinking and right eating are concerned you are living in a perfectly scientific way, and you may also be assured that if you practice what is prescribed in the following chapters you will quickly build your body into a condition of perfect health.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter XIV

2009-11-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

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Breathing

The function of breathing is a vital one, and it immediately concerns the continuance of life. We can live many hours without sleeping, and many days without eating or drinking, but only a few minutes without breathing. The act of breathing is involuntary, but the manner of it and the provision of the proper conditions for its healthy performance fall within the scope of volition. A person will continue to breathe involuntarily, but he can voluntarily determine what he shall breathe, and how deeply and thoroughly he shall breathe. And he can, of his own volition, keep the physical mechanism in condition for the perfect performance of the function.

It is essential, if you wish to breathe in a perfectly healthy way, that the physical machinery used in the act should be kept in excellent condition. You must keep your spine moderately straight, and the muscles of your chest must be flexible and free in action. You cannot breathe in the right way if your shoulders are greatly stooped forward and your chest hollow and rigid. Sitting or standing at work in a slightly stooping position tends to produce a hollow chest. So does lifting heavy weights or light weights.

The tendency of work, of nearly all kinds, is to pull the shoulders forward, curve the spine, and flatten the chest, and if the chest is greatly flattened, full and deep breathing becomes impossible and perfect health is out of the question. Various gymnastic exercises have been devised to counteract the effect of stooping while at work, such as hanging by the hands from a swing or trapeze bar, or sitting on a chair with the feet under some heavy article of furniture and bending backward until the head touches the floor, and so on. All these are excellent enough in their way, but very few people will follow them long enough and regularly enough to accomplish any real gain in physique. The taking of health exercises of any kind is burdensome and unnecessary.

There is a more natural, simpler, and much better way. This better way is to keep yourself straight, and to breathe deeply. Let your mental conception of yourself be that you are a perfectly straight person, and whenever the matter comes to your mind, be sure that you instantly expand your chest, throw back your shoulders, and straighten up. Whenever you do this, slowly draw in your breath until you fill your lungs to their utmost capacity. Crowd in all the air you possibly can, and while holding it for an instant in the lungs, throw your shoulders still further back, and stretch your chest. At the same time try to pull your spine forward between the shoulders. Then let the air go easily.

This is the one fantastic exercise for keeping the chest full, flexible, and in excellent condition. Straighten up, fill your lungs FULL, stretch your chest and straighten your spine, and exhale easily. And this exercise you must repeat, in season and out of season, at all times and in all places, until you form a habit of doing it. You can easily do so.

Whenever you step out of doors into the fresh, pure air, BREATHE. When you are at work, and reckon of yourself and your position, BREATHE. When you are in company, and are reminded of the matter, BREATHE. When you are awake in the night, BREATHE. No matter where you are or what you are doing, whenever the thought comes to your mind, straighten up and BREATHE.

If you walk to and from your work, take this exercise all the way. It will soon become a delight to you, and you will keep it up, not for the sake of health, but as a matter of pleasure.

Do not consider this a health exercise. Never take health exercises or do gymnastics to make you well. To do so is to recognize sickness as a present fact or as a possibility, which is precisely what you must not do. The people who are always taking exercises for their health are always thinking about being sick. It ought to be a matter of pride with you to keep your spine straight and strong as much so as it is to keep your face clean.

Keep your spine straight, and your chest full and flexible for the same reason that you keep your hands clean and your nails manicured because it is slovenly to do otherwise. Do it without a thought of sickness, present or possible. You must either be bent and unsightly or you must be straight, and if you are straight your breathing will take care of itself. You will find the matter of health exercises referred to again in a future chapter.

It is essential, but, that you should breathe AIR. It appears to be the intention of nature that the lungs should receive air containing its regular percentage of oxygen and not greatly contaminated by other gases, or by filth of any kind.

Do not allow yourself to reckon that you are compelled to live or work where the air is not fit to breathe. If your house cannot be properly ventilated, go. And if you are employed where the air is terrible, get another job you can, by practicing the methods given in the preceding volume of this series, The Science of Getting Rich.

If no one would consent to work in terrible air, employers would speedily see to it that all work rooms were properly ventilated. The worst air is that filled with poisonous chemical gases (This includes tobacco smoke and most other smoke; fumes from paint, plastic, gasoline and other petroleum products, solvents, glues, carpets and furniture made from artificial substances, and even household cleaners.). Next to that is air heavily charged with mold, asbestos, or factory dust particles. After that is air from which the oxygen has been exhausted by breathing as that of airplanes, churches and theaters where crowds of people congregate, and the outlet and supply of air are poor.

Then there is air containing other natural gases than oxygen and hydrogen, sewer gas and the effluvium from decaying things. Air that contains household dust or pollen may be endured better than any of these.

Small particles of organic matter other than food are more easily thrown off from the lungs than gases, which go into the blood.

I speak advisedly when I say other than food, air is largely a food. It is the most thoroughly alive thing we take into the body. Every breath carries life. The odors from earth, grass, tree, flower, plant, and from cooking foods are foods in themselves. They are minute particles of the substances from which they come, and are often so attenuated that they pass directly from the lungs into the blood, and are assimilated without digestion. And the atmosphere is permeated with the One Original Substance, which is life itself. Consciously recognize this whenever you reckon of your breathing, and reckon that you are breathing in life. You really are, and conscious recognition helps the process. See to it that you do not breathe air containing poisonous gases, and that you do not re-breathe the air which has been used by yourself or others.

That is all there is to the matter of breathing correctly. Keep your spine straight and your chest flexible, and breathe pure air, recognizing with thankfulness the fact that you breathe in the Eternal Life. That is not hard, and beyond these things give small thought to your breathing except to thank God that you have learned how to do it perfectly.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter XV

2009-11-18T07:06:00.000-08:00

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Sleep

Vital power is renewed in sleep. Every living thing sleeps. Humans, animals, reptiles, fish, and insects sleep, and even plants have regular periods of slumber. And this is because it is in sleep that we come into such contact with the Principle of Life in nature that our own lives may be renewed.

It is in sleep that our brains are recharged with vital energy and the Principle of Health within us is given new strength. It is of the first importance, then, that we should sleep in a natural, normal, and perfectly healthy manner.

Studying sleep, we note that the breathing is much deeper and more forcible and rhythmic than in the waking state. Much more air is inspired when asleep than when awake, and this tells us that the Principle of Health requires large quantities of some element in the atmosphere for the process of renewal.

If you would surround sleep with natural conditions, then, the first step is to see that you have an unlimited supply of fresh and pure air to breathe. Physicians have found that sleeping in the pure air of out-of-doors is very effective in the treatment of pulmonary troubles, and, taken in connection with the Way of Living and Thinking prescribed in this book, you will find that it is just as effective in curing every other sort of trouble.

Do not take any half-way measures in this matter of securing pure air while you sleep. Ventilate your bedroom thoroughly so thoroughly that it will be practically the same as sleeping out of doors. Have a door or window open wide; have one open on each side of the room, if possible. If you cannot have a good draught of air across the room, pull the head of your bed close to the open window, so that the air from without may come fully into your face. No matter how cold or unpleasant the weather, have a window open, and open wide, and try to get a circulation of pure air through the room. Pile on the bedclothes, if necessary, to keep you warm, but have an unlimited supply of fresh air from out of doors. This is the first great requisite for healthy sleep.

The brain and nerve centers cannot be thoroughly vitalized if you sleep in dead or stagnant air. You must have the living atmosphere, vital with natures Principle of Life. I repeat, do not make any compromise in this matter. Ventilate your sleeping room completely, and see that there is a circulation of outdoor air through it while you sleep. You are not sleeping in a perfectly healthy way if you shut the doors and windows of your sleeping room, whether in winter or summer.

Have fresh air. If you are where there is no fresh air, move. If your bedroom cannot be ventilated, get into another house. Next in importance is the mental attitude in which you go to sleep. It is well to sleep intelligently, purposefully, knowing what you do it for. Lie down thinking that sleep is an infallible vitalizer, and go to sleep with a confident faith that your strength is to be renewed, that you will awake full of vitality and health. Put purpose into your sleep as you do into your eating. Give the matter your attention for a few minutes, as you go to rest.

Do not seek your couch with a discouraged or depressed feeling; go there joyously, to be made whole. Do not forget the exercise of gratitude in going to sleep. Before you close your eyes, give thanks to God for having shown you the way to perfect health, and go to sleep with this grateful thought uppermost in your mind.

A bedtime prayer of thanksgiving is a mighty good thing. It puts the Principle of Health within you into communication with its source, from which it is to receive new power while you are in the silence of unconsciousness.

You may see that the requirements for perfectly healthy sleep are not difficult. First, to see that you breathe pure air from out of doors while you sleep, and, second, to put the Within into touch with the Living Substance by a few minutes of grateful meditation as you go to bed. Observe these requirements, go to sleep in a thankful and confident frame of mind, and all will be well. If you have insomnia, do not let it worry you. While you lie awake, form your conception of health. Meditate with thankfulness on the abundant life which is yours. Breathe, and feel perfectly confident that you will sleep in due time and you will. Insomnia, like every other ailment, must give way before the Principle of Health aroused to full constructive activity by the course of thought and action herein described.

The reader will now comprehend that it is not at all burdensome or disagreeable to perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way. The perfectly healthy way is the easiest, simplest, most natural, and most pleasant way. The cultivation of health is not a work of art, difficulty, or strenuous labor. You have only to lay aside artificial observances of every kind and eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in the most natural and delightful way, and if you do this, thinking health and only health, you will certainly be well.

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The Science of Being Well-Chapter XVI

2009-11-17T08:22:00.000-08:00

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Supplementary Instructions

In forming a conception of health, it is necessary to think of the manner in which you would live and work if you were perfectly well and very strong, to imagine yourself doing things in the way of a perfectly well and very strong person, until you have a fairly good conception of what you would be if you were well.

Then take a mental and physical attitude in harmony with this conception, and do not depart from this attitude. You must unify yourself in thought with the thing you desire, and whatever state or condition you unify with yourself in thought will soon become unified with you in body. The scientific way is to sever relations with everything you do not want, and to enter into relations with everything you do want. Form a conception of perfect health, and relate yourself to this conception in word, act, and attitude.

Guard your speech. Make every word harmonize with the conception of perfect health. Never complain. Never say things like these: I did not sleep well last night; I have a pain in my side; I do not feel at all well today; and so on. Say: I am looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight; I can see that I progress rapidly; and things of similar meaning. As far as everything which is connected with disease is concerned, your way is to forget it; and as far as everything which is connected with health is concerned, your way is to unify yourself with it in thought and speech.

This is the whole thing in a nutshell: make yourself one with Health in thought, word, and action, and do not connect yourself with sickness either by thought, word, or action.

Do not read doctor books, or medical literature, or the literature of those whose theories conflict with those herein set forth. To do so will certainly undermine your faith in the Way of Living upon which you have entered and cause you to again come into mental relations with disease. This book really gives you all that is required nothing essential has been omitted, and practically all the superfluous has been eliminated.

The Science of Being Well is an exact science, like arithmetic. Nothing can be added to the fundamental principles, and if anything be taken from them, a failure will result. If you follow strictly the way of living prescribed in this book, you will be well. And you certainly CAN follow this way, both in thought and action.

Relate not only yourself, but so far as possible all others, in your thoughts, to perfect health. Do not sympathize with people when they complain, or even when they are sick and suffering. Turn their thoughts into a constructive channel if you can. Do all you can for their relief, but do it with the health thought in your mind.

Do not let people tell their woes and catalogue their symptoms to you. Turn the conversation to some other subject, or excuse yourself and go. Better be considered an unfeeling person than to have the disease thought forced upon you.

When you are in company of people whose conversational stock-in-trade is sickness and kindred matters, ignore what they say and fall to offering a mental prayer of gratitude for your perfect health. And if that does not enable you to shut out their thoughts, say good-bye and leave them.

No matter what they think or say, politeness does not require you to permit yourself to be poisoned by diseased or perverted thought. When we have a few more hundreds of thousands of enlightened thinkers who will not stay where people complain and talk sickness, the world will advance rapidly toward health. When you let people talk to you of sickness, you assist them to increase and multiply sickness.

What shall I do when I am in pain? Can one be in actual physical suffering and still think only thoughts of health? Yes. Do not resist pain; recognize that it is a good thing. Pain is caused by an effort of the Principle of Health to overcome some unnatural condition. This you must know and feel. When you have a pain, think that a process of healing is going on in the affected part, and mentally assist and cooperate with it. Put yourself in full mental harmony with the power which is causing the pain assist it, help it along.

Do not hesitate, when necessary, to use hot fomentations and similar means to further the good work which is going on. If the pain is severe, lie down and give your mind to the work of quietly and easily cooperating with the force which is at work for your good.

This is the time to exercise gratitude and faith. Be thankful for the power of health which is causing the pain, and be certain that the pain will cease as soon as the good work is done. Fix your thoughts, with confidence, on the Principle of Health which is making such conditions within you that pain will soon be unnecessary. You will be surprised to find how easily you can conquer pain, and after you have lived for a time in this Scientific Way, pains and aches will be things unknown to you.

What shall I do when I am too weak for my work? Shall I drive myself beyond my strength, trusting in God to support me? Shall I go on, like the runner, expecting a second wind? No; better not. When you begin to live in this Way, you will probably not be of normal strength, and you will gradually pass from a low physical condition to a higher one. If you relate yourself mentally with health and strength, and perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy manner, your strength will increase from day to day, but for a time you may have days when your strength is insufficient for the work you would like to do. At such times rest, and exercise gratitude. Recognize the fact that your strength is growing rapidly, and feel a deep thankfulness to the Living One from whom it comes. Spend an hour of weakness in thanksgiving and rest, with full faith that great strength is at hand, and then get up and go on again. While you rest do not think of your present weakness; think of the strength that is coming. Never, at any time, allow yourself to think that you are giving way to weakness. When you rest, as when you go to sleep, fix your mind on the Principle of Health which is building you into complete strength.

What shall I do about that great bugaboo which scares millions of people to death every year constipation? Do not worry. Read Horace Fletcher on The A.B.- Z. of Our Own Nutrition, and get the full force of his explanation of the fact that when you live on this scientific plan there will be much less matter to eliminate. The material from the plant foods you are naturally guided to eat will take care of the matter. The gross feeders who eat from three to ten times as much fat, meat, and starch as can be utilized in their systems have a great amount of waste to eliminate and not the plant materials to assist, but if you live in the manner we have described it will be otherwise with you.

If you eat only when you have an EARNED HUNGER, and chew every mouthful to a liquid, and if you stop eating the instant you BEGIN to be conscious of an abatement of your hunger, you will so perfectly prepare your food for digestion and assimilation that practically all of it will be taken up by the absorbents, and there will be little remaining in the bowels to be excreted. If you are able to entirely banish from your memory all that you have read in doctor books and patent medicine advertisements concerning constipation, you need give the matter no further thought at all. The Principle of Health will take care of it.

But if your mind has been filled with fear-thought in regard to constipation, it may be well in the beginning for you to occasionally flush the colon with warm water. There is not the least need of doing it, except to make the process of your mental emancipation from fear a little easier; it may be worth while for that. And as soon as you see that you are making good progress, and that you have cut down your quantity of food, and are really eating in the Scientific Way, dismiss constipation from your mind forever; you have nothing more to do with it. Put your trust in that Principle within you which has the power to give you perfect health. Relate to It by your reverent gratitude to the Principle of Life which is All Power, and go on your way rejoicing. What about exercise?

Everyone is the better for a little all-round use of the muscles every day, and the best way to get this is to do it by engaging in some form of play or amusement. Get your exercise in the natural way as recreation, not as a forced stunt for health’s sake alone. Ride a horse or a bicycle, play tennis or tenpins, or toss a ball. Have some avocation like gardening in which you can spend an hour every day with pleasure and profit. There are a thousand ways in which you can get exercise enough to keep your body supple and your circulation good, and yet not fall into the rut of exercising for your health. Exercise for fun or profit. Exercise because you are too healthy to sit still, and not because you wish to become healthy, or to remain so.

Are long continued fasts necessary? Seldom, if ever. The Principle of Health does not often require 20, 30, or 40 days to get ready for action. Under normal conditions, hunger will cose in much less time. In most long fasts, the reason hunger does not come sooner is because it has been inhibited by the patient himself. He begins the fast with the FEAR if not actually with the hope that it will be many days before hunger comes. The literature he has read on the subject has prepared him to expect a long fast, and he is grimly determined to go to a finish, let the time be as long as it will. And the sub-conscious mind, under the influence of powerful and positive suggestion, suspends hunger.

When, for any reason, nature takes away your hunger, go cheerfully on with your usual work, and do not eat until she gives it back. No matter if it is two, three, ten days, or longer, you may be perfectly sure that when it is time for you to eat you will be hungry. And if you are cheerfully confident and keep your faith in health, you will suffer from no weakness or discomfort caused by abstinence.

When you are not hungry, you will feel stronger, happier, and more comfortable if you do not eat than you will if you do eat, no matter how long the fast. And if you live in the scientific way described in this book, you will never have to take long fasts, you will seldom miss a meal, and you will enjoy your meals more than ever before in your life. Get an earned hunger before you eat, and whenever you get an earned hunger, eat.

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