Modern Religious Cults and MovementsAtkins, Gaius Glenn
Religion
Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Atkins, Gaius Glenn
Christian Science; New Thought; Religion; Spiritual healing
We are concerned here chiefly with the fact and it is a fact capable of
far-reaching application. Of course the nature and extent of the changes
thus produced are the battlegrounds of the two schools. Medical Science
is quite willing to admit that while functional action may thus be
modified no real organic changes can be produced. There is a border-land
so much still in shadow that no final word can be said about the whole
matter, but it is incontestably true that modifications of attention
have a reflex in the modification of physical states.
A pain which is not registered does not, for the time being at least,
exist, and if the attention can either through hypnotism or by a
persistent mental discipline be withdrawn from disturbing physical
reports, then the conditions which produce them will at least be left to
correct themselves without interference from consciousness and since the
whole tendency of disturbed physical organism is to correct itself, the
whole process probably goes on more quickly as it certainly goes on with
less discomfort if attention is withdrawn.[15] The assumption of health
is a tremendous health-giving force and if the condition to be remedied
is really due to a mental complex which needs only some strong exertion
of the will or readjustment of attitude to change, then marvellous
results may follow changed mental and spiritual states. The apparently
dumb may speak, the apparently paralyzed rise from their beds, the
shell-shocked pull themselves together and those under the bondage of
their fears and their pains be set free. There are so many illustrations
of all this that the fact itself is not in debate.
[Footnote 15: Organic changes (the storm center of the controversy) may
possibly be induced through a better general physical tone. Such changes
would not be directly due to suggestion but to processes released by
suggestion. Organic change may certainly be checked and the effect of it
overcome by increased resistance. So much conservative physicians admit.
How far reconstruction thus induced may go is a question for the
specialist.]
_The Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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