The Science of Being Well By Wallace Delois Wattles --- 04 CHAPTER 4. WHAT TO THINK

CHAPTER 4. 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 is then, 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 we have never seen ourselves in
a perfect body, and 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
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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 day's 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 of 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. This is
what I mean by having a Conception of Health.
In order to establish perfect functioning in every part, man 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 man, 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. Man's 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 man's endurance without food; it was considered that only in exceptional
cases could he 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 performance of Dr. Tanner, the forty-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 forty to sixty days,
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have shown that man's ability to live without food is vastly greater than had
been supposed.
Any person, properly educated, can fast from twenty to forty 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 the believed death
was inevitable; and erroneous physiology had given them a wrong thought
about themselves.
When a man is deprived of food he will die in from ten to fifty days,
according to the way he has been taught; or, in other words, according to
the way he thinks about it. So you can 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 man 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 man 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
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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 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
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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.