ANYONE CAN HEAL HIMSELF!
TНЕ spirit view of healing was given by Silver Birch when one of the sitters, himself a budding psychic healer, referred to his own temporary illness.
"Throw it away,” said the guide. "Say you will have none of this disharmony. You know the old lawーPhysician, heal thyself.”
"I thought of that,” said the sitter. "Is it possible to heal oneself?"
"It is not only possible, it happens," replied Silver Birch. "Drive out those aches and pains by asserting the supremacy of your own soul and spirit and refusing to allow your indivi-duality to be cramped and subdued by an inferior body of matter. Make your body your servant, not your master. Everyone can do that, but most people are afraid that they will not be able to do it, and so they cannot.
"The body is the servant of the mind. The mind is not the slave of the body. The body is temporal; the mind is infinite. The body decays. It lasts, in its present form, as long as mind inhabits it and dwells within it. It is but a temporal thing. It is not the individual; it is but his expression, the instrument through which he functions, the means by which he is made known to this world. Just as the body has been taught by the mind to walk and move, to use its muscles, its blood to cir-culate, its heart to beat, all its organs to function automati-cally, so you can compel all those organs to work in closer rhythm and throw off illness, sickness, infirmities and disease."
"Does that mean that anyone could make himself better?” asked the sitter.
"Yes, it does mean that,” said the guide, "if you can rise to the heights when you can say, 'I am the Great Spirit, part of the infinite creation, the spirit responsible for all life, the spirit that in itself is perfection.'
A sitter pointed out the similarity between this teaching and the beliefs of Christian Science.
"I do not deny the truths contained in what is known as Christian Science," answered Silver Birch. "To a large extent they are right, but much of it has gone astray, for they go further and teach the illusion of matter. I say that matter is reality but is governed by the supremacy of the mind. You are infinite. You are not your bodyーyou are a spirit using a body, a spirit with a body, not a body with a spirit. Your body will last in its present form for a span of fifty, sixty, seventy or perhaps a hundred years, and then it will decay and crumble into the dust of which it is composed. But your spirit will not go through that process, for it is made of the stuff of immortality.”
.'If we are all healers, why do we have to have healing mediums?" the guide was then asked.
"Because there are so many ignorant of the laws," he replied, "so many afraid that they cannot be true, that they cannot rise and put into practice the laws that would give them health. If you live with the Law, you should not have disease or sickness. It is only because you live contrary to the Law that imperfection comes into your bodily being. And when you have created disharmony you are ill, until harmony is restored either by your own efforts or by the healing force poured through an instrument of our world."
"Is self-healing accompanied by help from the spirit world?" was the sitter's next query.
"Yes and no," answered the guide, "for you are always vehicles receiving thoughts and ideas, power and force from round and about you. But, at the same time, you are spirit, part of the Great Spirit of life, and you can call on that in-finite reservoir and enable it to express itself more fully than it does. Do you think that mankind has reached the highest stage in its evolution? Is not your present civilization a clear proof that mankind has much further to go in its growth and evolution yet?
"You are divine and that divinity, though it be but a tiny spark, is resident within every human being. Whether you fan that spark and make it into a great light, or whether you ignore it until it becomes almost extinguished, is a matter for you to decide with the exercise of your own free will, for none ever can perform it for you. You are the arbiters of your own destiny. You fashion and mould your future. Whether you allow the Great Spirit to be expressed or not is a matter for your decision. It cannot be done for you. None can ever stimulate the growth until you begin it yourself.”
This puzzled one sitter, who said, “If the Great Spirit is in everything, surely we cannot help expressing Him.'
"When you admire the beauty of nature as it is seen in all its wondrous splendour in the height of summer," said Silver Birch, "do you not realize that behind it are the tiny seeds? The wondrous rose with its delicate petals and beautiful scent is all contained in a tiny seed and it first shows itself as an unopened bud. All the beauty of the opened rose was in the tiny seed, but it was not expressed until the bud was opened. The Great Spirit is within you. That link is eternal and can-not be severed, but how much of divinity is expressed is a matter each decides for himself.”
Silver Birch was then asked to explain the means by which a sick person was healed by a medium. What passed between the medium and the patient?
"Life-giving rays," said the guide, "all dependent upon the disease to be treated. I cannot describe these rays because there is not the means of comparison. You speak of X-rays and wireless waves, magnetism and electricity, but these are mere names that convey nothing. They do not describe what they are. We have at our disposal rays, forcesーcall them by what name you willーthat possess the power to heal. They are part of the life-giving essence that is at the command of those who have qualified by their evolution to serve your world.
"Just as those who teach can tap fountains of wisdom, so those who heal can tap fountains of health. And, in the same way, all those who provide those physical evidences so neces-sary to many have at their command gases which are not yet known to your world. Realize that all life is progressive. Knowledge does not end with the grave. Development does not stop with the tomb. The human soul marches on, ever adding to its store of wisdom."
Discussing spirit healing on another occasion, Silver Birch said a big obstacle was the fear and worry of the patient con-cerning the illness.
"Is it ever right to worry, or is it always wrong?" asked a sitter.
"It is not a question of right or wrong," replied the guide. "It is only a question of impeding the channel of communica-tion, of interfering with the flow and preventing us from coming near you. When you are worried, you vibrate the atmosphere and create a condition which makes it hard for us to netrate what is around you. When you are calm and passive, then it is easy for us to get close to you. If you are confident, if you have perfect faith, then we can get near to you. The more perfect your faith, the more confident you are, the closer we can be to you.”
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WHEN HEALING WAS THREATENED
NOT all the parliaments, not all the dictators, not all the churches can quench this truth," declared Silver Birch when a Bill was introduced into Parliament which, if it became law, would restrict psychic healing.
"Because it is of God, it will endure and must endure,” the guide continued. The natural laws that we seek to reveal cannot be established by your laws, neither can their know-ledge be retarded by your man-made laws. We have no concern with your laws, made by human beings with fallible minds. We preach the laws of the Great Spirit, unalterable, unchangeable, immutable, omnipotent, that always were and always will be. It does not matter what men say of us, or of the truth that we seek to establish.
"All those who have sought to reform, all those with ideals, who strove to serve their fellows, have had to endure mockery, scorn and ridicule because they were in the fore-front and because they had advanced a little further in the line of evolution. When they passed to our world, you held them up as patterns of honourーand began to crucify the pioneers in your midst. Truth has to fight many battles before it can be established.
"Have no fear. The power that brought us into being, the power that called us to your service, the power that we seek to reveal within your own beings is the same force that created all life. It cannot fail you as long as you do not fail it. The earth will continue to spin on its axis through space, the sun will continue to shine, the stars will pursue their allotted courses, the ocean tides will ebb and flow, spring, summer, autumn, winter will continue to manifest in their ordered sequence, because the power that is behind them is infinite and cannot fail. Confronted with the wonderful spectacle of the Law in operation, do you think that that same power of the spirit could fail your world?
"As long as we have instruments through whom this power can be made manifest, as long as we have men and women whose desire is to serve, so long will we continue to heal the sick, to prove that life continues beyond the grave, to demon-strate the eternal spiritual realities of life, so that false materialism may be banished for ever, so that the darkness of creedalism which has obscured the realities of inspiration may be abolished and the true religion of service be enthroned in its place."