Mary Baker Eddy on depravity, passions and appetities

 Depravity is a state of mind ruled by evil beliefs. Among those evil beliefs are, according to S&H:

Depraved will I: Evil Thought driven:

…Belief in Sin…Deceit….self-justification…Revenge…Hatred…Envy…Pride

Depraved Will II: Evil Emotion driven:

Passions (not specified)

Appetites (not specified)

Fear

Anger

 

Whether thought or emotion driven, evil beliefs occur on a continuum. From normal ranges to extreme (or depraved) ranges.

Emotion driven beliefs are human foibles to a limit. Over that and they are depraved.

We need to reset what we think is depraved 100 years after MBE  died. We need to start with the unspecified passions and appetites. What might they be? I think they may be code words for pleasurable activities……. Well, how much pleasurable activity is OK? And what kind?

 I am not even going to look to Lady Eddy for guidance on this one… She was never known for much of either. Let us take the literal meaning of appetite, first. An appetite literally means you want to eat. Not only should food be healthy and delicious, we get far more from the dinner table than physical nourishment. There aren’t very many gluttons, so don’t worry about depraved eating appetites, unless you mean eating stuff that isn’t food, like the stuff they sell at fast food places. Or never eat anything but turnips. Highly unlikely though.

 It is those other appetites or desires that are what Mary meant. Heh, heh.

 She takes another run at the idea with the word, “passions”. This usually means the bed, where appetites mean the table.  She devotes a whole chapter to marriage and how it should be as passionless as possible, but she is way out of date, here.  Passion in marriage is good when it is not one-sided. And passion in bed is the great metaphor for describing one’s life work, when it is beloved. Or passion for one’s hobby or life interest is good too. Or the passion that makes one persevere when all seems impossible, then make the breakthrough, or win or complete the connection. Passion and perseverance combined is a winner. It is required in sports and dance and playing a musical instrument, or to go to space. And a lot of other things.

 When is passion depraved? In the original meaning of passion,  it might mean too much of a good thing, or not confining it to marriage. Or making it entertainment.

Then when depraved appetite and depraved passion get together, it is unbelievably sinful in Mary’s eyes. In the case of masturbation, the two depravities come together and allow illicit pleasure without the intent to procreate.  Too much pleasure that easily attained, and who knows what slippery slope might be slid down, to what kind of perdition.  100 years later, the judgments are not so harsh because nothing much can be proved to be different if one does, or one doesn’t, masturbate- except the pleasure quota goes up and the wet dreams down if one does. So is this really depraved?

 When two people married to other people have an affair outside of the marriage, is the primary meaning of adultery and the primary way to break up a marriage. It is juvenile and dishonest, but is it depraved?  If unmarried adults have casual sex, or serial partners, is it depraved? Or is it more like mutual masturbation? No real passion of attachment to that, after all, just mutually needed release.  When does sexual activity actually become depraved? I am sure the line is more liberal today than it was when the fearless Mother reigned over TMC.

 The international group mind has changed considerably since her day. Depravity may have once included homosexuality, but mortal mind has shifted on that one and is still shifting away from being considered depraved. More kinds of sexual activities are recognized as pleasurable and harmless, so let’s just turn away from using depraved, if it is a harmless activity.

 Nowadays we recognize sexual predators as depraved and they are considered criminals because they have victims. Adult on child is a crime. Involuntary sex is a crime. All involuntary sexual acts forced on women are crimes because it is depraved to force sex on the unconsenting or the unable to consent. Now most depraved sexual acts are crimes, so if it is not a crime and is OK within consenting adults, it probably isn’t depraved, even if it is disgusting to some. Mortal mind loves to entertain mortal mind. A kind of mental masturbation presented to itself, as long as one wants to go there. Not too evolved, but mortal mind is basically vulgar.

Let’s repeat that. Mortal mind is basically vulgar. Vulgar is another word for the lowest common denominator. A vulgar crowd opinion, crude and plain, replete with constant cursing and  vulgar activities. A lot of individuals have evolved way beyond that most vulgar level, but that is the bottom line. Sex as entertainment. Vulgar, but not depraved, unless it hurts someone.

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“Depravity is Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, disease” 115/20.

(This was reposted from April 18, 2013)

Quimbyism at work.

UCBerkeley sponsored this video. I think this kind of work is getting to be fairly science-based. This guy is good. He has a very hypnotic, kind voice, as I always imagined Phineas Quimby had. He uses “guided imagery” which is considered a form of hypnotism. I regard hypnotism as a trance state, easily controlled by the “subject”, not as something someone “does” to another. It is in these kinds of trance states that one can really relax and let go of stress. This particular imagery is classic. It shows that daydreaming for awhile is actually a good thing!

 

How Your Brain Can Turn Anxiety into Calmness

Dissecting “mortal mind” in Chapter Two, “Atonement”, and Chapter Four, “Spiritualism Unmasked”

In the following list of occurrences of the term “mortal mind”, the crossed out lines are ones that attribute powers to mortal mind that demonstrably do not belong to mortal mind. Most of them are fear-driven, such as that imagining something bad will cause it to occur. This is just plain magical thinking and absolutely wrong.

The occurrences that aren’t crossed out proclaim over and over that there is no matter, all is mind, and that mortal mind is a false belief, which is in turn, nothing.  In this post, I cross out the posts that are now known to be erroneous. In the next post I will present the material that is left after the cross-outs are removed

1. A1 30-12. Had his origin and birth been wholly apart from mortal mind, Jesus would not have been appreciable to mortal mind as, “the way”.
2. Sp 71-16. Thus you learn that these are also images which mortal mind holds and evolves, and which stimulate mind, life, and intelligence.
3. 71-18. From dreams also you learn that neither mortal mind nor matter is the image and likeness of God, and that immortal Mind is not in matter.
4. 77-8.  Error brings its own self-destruction both here and here after, for mortal mind creates its own physical conditions.
5. 78-4. They are the falsities of sense, the changing deflections of mortal mind; they are not the eternal realities of mind.
6. 6.     80-24. Even planchette—the French toy which years ago pleased so many people—attested the control of mortal mind over its substratum called matter
7. 80-25. It is mortal mind which convulses its substratum, matter.
8. 8.     80-27. Mortal mind produces table tipping as certainly as table setting, and believes that this wonder emanates from spirits and electricity
9. 83-32. The act of reading mortal mind investigates and touches only human beliefs.

10. 86-5. Jesus knew as others did not, that it was not matter, but mortal mind whose touch called for aid.

11. 86-20. Haunted houses, ghostly voices, unusual noises, and apparitions brought out in dark séances either involve feats by tricksters, or thay are images and sounds evolved involuntarily by mortal mind.

12. 86-29. Mortal mind sees what it believes as surely as it believes what it sees.

13. 87-15. The scotch call such vision, “Second sight” when really it is first sight instead of second for it presents primal facts to mortal mind.

14. 87-26. The strong impressions produced on mortal mind by friendship or any intense feelings are lasting, and mind readers can perceive and reproduce these impressions.

15. 88-13. Thoughts proceeding from the brain or from matter, are offshoots of mortal  mind; they are mortal material beliefs.

16. 89-3. This phenomenon only shows that the beliefs of mortal mind are loosed.

17. 90-11.  Divest yourself of the thought that there can be substance in matter, and the movements and transitions now possible for mortal mind will be found to be equally possible for the body.

18. 94-28. Our master read mortal on a scientific basis, that of the omnipresence of Mind.

19. 95-2. The effect of his mind was always and to save, and this is the only genuine science of reading mortal mind.to heal

20. 97-6. In reality, the more error resembles truth and so-called matter resembles its essence mortal mind, the more impotent error becomes as a belief.

21. an102-8 Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in a sense it is an unreal concept of the so-called mortal mind.

22. 103-6 As named in Christian Science, The destruction of the claims of mortal mind through Science, by which man can escape from sin and mortality, blesses the whole human family

23. 103-19  As named in Christian Science, animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error or mortal mind.

24. 103-26 The truths of immortal Mind sustain man, and they annihilate the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust

25. 103-29 In reality, there is no mortal mind and thus no transference of mortal thought.

26. 104-32 Is not mortal mind the murderer?

27. 105-1 The hands without mortal mind to direct them, could not commit a murder.

28. 105-6 and 8. To say that these tribunals have no jurisdiction over the carnal or mortal mind would be to contradict precedent and to admit the power of human law is restricted to matter, while mortal mind, evil, which is the real outlaw defies justice and is recommended to mercy.

29. 105-13 Mortal mind, not matter, is the criminal in every case; and human law rightly estimates crime, and courts reasonably pass sentences, according to the motive.

30. 108-10. It was the divine law of Life and Love, unfolding to me the demonstrable fact that matter possesses neither sensation nor life; that human experiences show the falsity of all material things; and that immortal cravings “the price of learning love,” establish the truism that the only sufferer is mortal mind, for the divine Mind cannot suffer.

31. 108-27. I learned these truths in divine Science: that all real being is in God, the divine mind, and that Life, Truth and Love are all powerful and ever present; that the opposite of Truth —called, error, sin, sickness, disease and death— is the false testimony of false material sense, of mind in matter; that this false sense evolves, in belief, a subjective state of mortal mind which this so-called mind names matter, thereby shutting out the true sense of Spirit.

32. 108-30. My discovery, that erring, mortal, misnamed mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body, set my thought to work in new channels,

33. and led up to my demonstration of the proposition that Mind is all and matter is naught as the leading factor in Mind-science.

34. 114-3. Usage classes both evil and good together as mind;

35. therefore, to be understood, the author calls sick and sinful humanity mortal mind,—meaning by this term the flesh as opposed to the Spirit, the human mind and evil in contradistinction to  the divine Mind, or Truth and good.

36. 114-12. Mortal mind is a solecism in language, and involves an improper use of the word mind

37. 114-14. As Mind is immortal, the phrase mortal mind implies something untrue and therefore unreal; and as the phrase is used in teaching Christian Science, it is meant to designate that which has no real existence

1. 38.  114-31. Science shows that what is termed matter is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author mortal mind.

39. 115-19. Scientific Translation of Mortal mind.First degree: DepravityPhysical. Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, deceit, hatred revenge, sin, sickness disease, death.Second degree: Evil beliefs disappearing. Moral. Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness temperance. Third degree; Understanding. Spiritual. Wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.

40. 116-4. In the third degree, mortal mind disappears, and man as God’s image appears.

41. 116-19. (Works on metaphysics) They never crown the power of Mind as the Messiah, nor do they carry the day against physical enemies — even to the extinction of all belief in matter, evil, disease, and death—nor insist upon the fact that god is all, therefore that matter is nothing beyond an image in mortal mind.

42. 122-10. The material senses’ reversal of the Science of Soul was practically exposed 1,900 years ago by the demonstrations of Jesus; yet these so-called senses still make mortal mind tributary to mortal body, and ordain certain sections of matter, such as brains and nerves as the seats of pain and pleasure, from which matter reports to this so-called mind its status of happiness or misery.

43. 124-4. Physical science, (so called) is human knowledge—a law of mortal mind, a blind belief, a Samson shorn of his strength.

44. 125-1. The elements and functions of the physical body and of the physical world will change as mortal mind changes its beliefs.

45. 126-4. The problem of nothingness, or “ dust to dust” will be solved, and mortal mind will be without form and void, for mortality will cease when man beholds himself God’s reflection, even as man sees his reflection in a glass.

46. 138-13. He showed that diseases were cast out, neither by corporeality, by materia medica, nor by hygiene, but by the divine Spirit, casting out the errors of mortal mind.

47. 145-29. By this antagonism mortal mind must continually weaken its own assumed power.

48. 151-31. That mortal mind claims to govern every organ of the mortal body, we have overwhelming proof.

49. 152-5. The immortal divine Mind takes away all its supposed sovereignty, and save mortal mind from itself.

50. 153-22. We weep because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but mortal mind, not matter contains and carries the infection.

51. 154-4. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association— calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its subsequent manifestation in the body.

52. 154-18. The law of mortal mind and her own fears govern her child more than the child’s mind governs itself, and they produce the very results which might have been prevented through the opposite understanding.

53. 157-24. Erring mortal mind confers the power which the drug seems to possess.

54. 157-26. Narcotics quiet mortal mind, and so relieve the body; but they leave both mind and body worse for this submission.

55. 158-21. It is pitiful to lead men into temptation through the byways of this wilderness world—to victimize the race with intoxicating prescriptions for the sick until mortal mind acquires a educated appetite for strong drink, and men and women become loathsome sots.

56. 158-27. Drug-systems are quitting their hold on matter and so letting in matter’s higher stratum, mortal mind.

57. 158-29. Matter is going out of medicine; and mortal mind, of a higher attenuation than the drug, is governing the pellet.

58. 159-21. The sequel proved that this Lynn woman died from effects produced by mortal mind, and not from the disease or the operation.

59. 160-10. The motion of the arm is no more dependent upon the direction of mortal mind, than are the organic and secretion of the viscera.

60. 160-16 Has mortal mind ceased speaking to them, or has it bidden them to be impotent?

61. 160-27. Why then consult anatomy to learn how muscle is not so-governed?

62. 161-4. This is an exact statement, more exact than you suppose; for mortal mind, not matter, burns it.

63. 161-27. The ordinary practitioner, examining bodily symptoms telling the patient that he is sick, and treating the case according to his physical diagnosis, would naturally induce the very disease he is trying to cure, even if it were not already determined by mortal mind.

64. 168-27. Disease, being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal mind, the sensation would    not appear if the error in belief was met and destroyed by truth.

65. 168-32. By chemicalization I mean the process which mortal mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a material to a spiritual basis.

66. 169-23. It is mortal mind, not matter, which brings to the sick whatever good they may seem to derive from materiality.

67. 172-21. …man is the image and likeness of Spirit; and the belief that there is a Soul in sense or Life in matter obtains in mortals, alias mortal mind, to which the apostle refers when he says the we must “put off the old man”.

68. 176-2. The action of mortal mind on the body was not so injurious before inquisitive modern Eves took up the study of medical works and unmanly Adams attributed their own downfall and the fate of their offspring to the weakness of their wives.

69. 172-18. Mortal mind is the worst foe of the body while divine Mind is its best friend.

70. 176-27. All disease is the result of education and disease can carry its ill-effects no farther than mortal mind maps out the way.

71. 177-8. Mortal mind and body are one.

72. 177-10. Matter, or body, is a false concept of mortal mind.

73. 178-4. In such cases a few persons believe the potion swallowed by the patient to be harmless, but the vast majority of mankind, though they know nothing of this particular case and this special person, believes the arsenic, the strychnine, or what ever the drug used, to be poisonous, for it is set down as a poison by mortal mind. Consequently the result is controlled by the majority of opinions, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick chamber.

74. 178-18. Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensation in matter, is animal magnetism; but this so-called mind, from which comes all evil, contradicts itself, and must finally yield to the eternal Truth, or the divine Mind, expressed in Science.

75. 179-13. The preference of mortal mind for a certain method creates a demand for that method, and the body then seems to require such treatment.

76. 180-2. As mortal mind is the husbandman of error, it should be taught to do the body no harm and to uproot its false sowing.

77. 180-23. Instead of furnishing thought with fear, they should try to correct this turbulent element of mortal mind by the influence of divine Love which casteth out fear.

78. 184-21. Mortal mind alone suffers—not because a law of matter has been transgressed, but because a law of this so-called mind has been disobeyed.

79. 185-14. They have their birth in mortal mind, which puts forth a human conception in the name of Science to match the divine Science of immortal Mind, even as necromancers of Egypt strove to emulate the wonder wrought by Moses.

80. 185-32. A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by emptying his thought of the false stimulus and reaction of will power and filling it with the divine energies of Truth.

81. 186-28. Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be self-deceived.

82. 186-29. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it would be better.

83. 187-14. The valves of the heart, opening and closing for the passage of the blood, obey the mandate of mortal mind as directly as does the hand, admittedly moved by the will.

84. 187-19. What is this “my” but mortal mind,  the cause of all materialistic action?

85. 188-24. The soil of disease is is mortal mind and you have an abundant, or scanty crop of disease according to the seedlings of fear.

86. 189-10. In like manner mortals should no more deny the power of Christian Science to establish harmony and to explain the effect of mortal mind on the body, though the cause be unseen, than they should deny the existence of sunlight when the orb of day disappears, or doubt that the sun will reappear.

87. 189-15. We call the body material; but it is as truly mortal mind, according to its degree, as the lmaterial brain which is supposed to furnish the evidence of all mortal thought or things.

88. 189-19. The human mortal mind, by inevitable perversion makes all things start from the lowest instead of from the highest mortal thought.

89. 189-25. From mortal mind comes the reproduction of the species- first the belief of inanimate and then of animate matter.

90. 189-28.According to mortal thought, the development of embryonic mortal mind commences in the lower basal portion of the brain and goes on in an ascending scale by evolution, keeping always in the direct line of matter, for matter is the

91. 189-32. subjective condition of mortal mind.

92. 190-2.  Next we have the formation so-called embryonic mortal mind, afterwards mortal men or mortals,–all this while matter is a belief, ignorant of itself, ignorant f what it is supposed to produce.

93. 190-6. The mortal says that an inanimate unconscious seedling  is producing mortals, both body and mind; and yet neither a mortal mind nor the immortal Mind is found in brain or elsewhere in matter or in mortals.

94. 192-12. Erring power is a material belief, a blind miscalled force, the offspring of will and not wisdom, of the mortal mind and not the immortal.

95. 194-12. Destruction of the auditory nerve and paralysis of the optic nerve are not necessary to ensure deafness and blindness; for if mortal mind says, “I am deaf and blind” it will be so without an injured nerve.

96. 194-18. The authentic history of Kasper Hauser is a useful hint as to the frailty and inadequacy of mortal mind.

97. 194-21. It proves beyond a doubt that education constitutes this so-called mind and that, in turn, mortal mind manifests itself in the body by the false sense it imparts.

98. 195-11. The point for each one to decide is, whether it is mortal mind or immortal Mind that is causative.

99. 195-21. Observation, invention, study, and original thought are expansive and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is mortal.

196-5. The power of mortal mind over its own body is little understood.

196-6. Better the suffering which awakens mortal mind from its fleshly dream, than the false pleasures which tend to perpetuate this dream.

196-20. Such books as will rule disease out of mortal mind – and so efface the images and thoughts of disease, instead of impressing them with forcible descriptions and medical details— will help to abate sickness and destroy it.

198-2. The doctor should suppress his fear of disease, else his belief in its reality and fatality will harm his patients even more than his calomel and morphine, for the higher stratum mortal mind his in belief more power to harm man than the substratum matter.

198-13. It is better to prevent disease from forming in mortal mind afterwards to appear on the body; but to do this requires attention.

199-1. If matter were the cause of action, and if muscles without volition of mortal mind, could lift the hammer and strike the anvil, it might be thought true that hammering would enlarge the muscles.

199-16. Mortals develop their own bodies or make them sick, according as they influence them through mortal mind.

New Thought is Old Thought come ’round again.

One thing I keep coming back to is why try to build, then justify a system of metaphysics at all? Why believe in God at all? Even a very advanced abstract deity? What does such a concept do for a person? I guess it is the fear of death being the final curtain, and the hopeful wish that a soul or spirit will retain the concept of self-hood past death. It must be the pursuit of trying to actualize this proposition, with any kind of proof, that keeps these guys going, even though not a shred of proof has ever been found. It seems like an intellectual pursuit like counting angels on the head of a pin. It replaces fear of death with beliefs there is no death and that this reality is but a dream with a prologue and an epilogue. But let us start at the beginning of religion:

I. Old Thought is: “Everything is has a ‘spirit’ “.

In order to get to “New Thought”, I need to explain “Old Thought” so I am going to go back to the earliest men to roam the earth during the  Pleistocene in the following paragraphs. (The Pleistocene lasted from 2.5 millionya (years ago) until about 11.5kya.) One of my interests has always been the evolution of man so I have pursued information about the human fossil record, which was very small when I was 15 in 1957, but has steadily grown over the decades since then, building a picture of several lines of hominids, none of which which survived other than homo sapiens who came into being 200 – 1oo kya. Our direct ancestors left Africa at least 60 kya.

The fossil record.

One thing I know for sure if the fossil record is correct and man evolved from a line of walking apes that had fire before they had chins, man invented God at some point in his evolution to becoming a complete homo sapiens.  Maybe it was shortly after that transition, but long before the proposition that there is only one god was thought of, mankind seems to have first believed that everything in the universe had a kind of energy or consciousness, a spirit.

Consciousness.

At some point in the Pleistocene, hominids realized they had self-consciousness literary consciousness . This human consciousness was made up of words, enough words to develop and communicate to self and others, to be able to draw word pictures others could understand. As vocabularies expanded, men gained the ability to describe their universe in great detail. Literary consciousness allows imagination and creativity because it is made of of words. Literary consciousness allows one to speculate beyond the present ,to either the past or the future. It can include the stars and the deep, blue sea. It can wonder from whence we came and where we are going and make up the answers, too.

Human consciousness is not always easy to have. The imagination can run wild with fearful speculations. The present can be really awful, and consciousness can be overwhelmed at painful times. Fortunately we can sink into trances and pre-conscious states, which is probably how we operated before consciousness first amalgamated.

I. Everything has consciousness.

One of the earliest speculations and organizations of belief was the idea that everything in the whole universe, each thing, animal, vegetable or mineral, was run by mental ideas, energies, spirits, or conscious minds. Since everything has a spirit, including people, it is possible to attain a meeting of the minds through communication with the spirit of anything else.

This belief is a very effective one for self-discipline towards  a way of working with everything in the universe. One has to keep good relationships with all spirits, because if you hurt yourself or got sick, it was because you had offended a spirit. (This is still an almost universal belief in most spirit-based religions) So man and spirits developed ways of giving to each other through acts of propitiation and honor, which developed into ceremonies and rituals. All men must have been doing this before they left Africa, but after they left they eventually moved though out the entire earth and every group developed its own private language and rituals which could branch into new groups, which branch out themselves, and so on.

Speculations about the Earliest Rituals

I like to imagine what rituals dedicated to communing with spirits looked like 35 kya. One thing I am sure of, is that music and dance were already the milieu of the ritual. Once words, melody, and rhythm were discovered and combined with movement (probably earlier than we can believe)  they could be performed in endless combinations, distinguishing the latest hominids from all other animals, none of whom ever had this ancient kind of public theater.

Trance states are integral to worship:

A strange, but characteristic thing happened to people when they sang and danced and drummed for a long time, they went into trance states, some deeper than others where they communed with or temporarily “became” spirits. Trances were culture specific; some had shaman-like individuals go into a very deep trance, then come back with the needed culture specific information for the situation. Most groups acted out possession by some spirit or another who imparted information. Usually music and dance are involved. Drums help drive the trance states. Sometimes only a drum is used to chant the spirits to earth where certain, probably costumed, men and or women acted out the spirit’s message while in a very deep trance known as possession trance. So far, possession trance is the deepest trance anthropologists know of. It occurs in cultures all over the world, so possession trance must be as old as the Pleistocene. It is something any human can do, though some folks are markedly better than others in attaining such deep trances. Even so, everyone trances out during this kind of ritual or ceremony.

Everyday trances: (Man is a tranced-out animal.)

Night dances and music aside, several normal daily routines tend to turn off the pilot (consciousness) and allow the autopilot (subconscious) to take over. When the autopilot takes over, the conscious mind is dissociated from the body and can think on its own, or it can go to sleep,

Back then, people did a lot of walking and running every single day. It is easy to slip into a trance and let autopilot take over especially when running a long distance. All peoples coming out of Africa brought this knowledge with them and used trance states for all routine activities one of which was running whether they realized it or not. In fact these subconscious states can propel most people through  most of the day, if not the entire life, with hardly a conscious thought.

Being able to run at least as far as our modern marathons almost daily, was mankind’s strength, because if they were hunting a herd animal, they never could run as fast as those ungulates, but they could easily follow and run one down until it collapsed of exhaustion, for no ungulate is able to run a marathon. Running has always been one of man’s greatest assets since the Pleistocene, and it was highly valued by all hunter/gatherer tribes since the that old stone age. Running stayed popular with all tribes in North America until the 20th century, when the tradition died out in almost all tribes. Running is still usually done in a state of trance.

The autopilot takes over performing actions you have done by rote many times. That leaves your conscious mind to relax or even drift off.  When running, it isn’t that easy to talk, so you just run and think, or run and not think, whichever, but there is no time in trance states so it becomes much easier to run long distances in a day.  Human were made to use trances. In fact trances states are the norm, and focused consciousness is barely used.

Many ways to enter trance states:

When people pray or say rosaries, they enter trance states. Repeating a word or phrase over and over can put one into a deep enough trance to withstand a lot of pain as in doing the dentist without anesthetics, which I used to do. But nowadays even if people do not pray, say an mantra or a rosary, their self-talk is often repetitive enough to put oneself into a trance.

This human ability to fall into trance is exploited by cults, religions, etc who immerse followers into their own literature and their style of thinking and choice of words. A religion like Christian Science who uses repetitive arguments and phrases is effectively inducing a Christian Science trance. But the same is true of the Baptists down the street. It is just a different style and language. Long drawn out Christian prayers with a “lord” every third sentence  can put one right into a prayer trance. Some religions which use rosaries are encouraging the trance state,  where there are no original thoughts or memories. There are no emotions, there is no time. It is a state many hundreds of thousands having willingly entered into for thousands of years for the peace of mind it confers- at least while in the trance-.

The Rise of Mother Gods

The next step in belief in Gods, was the rise of the “mother” religions. These religions still believed everything had a spirit, and had participatory rituals, but thought Mother Earth was the most important spirit to relate to, because she was also Mother Nature. These mother religions characterized the earliest stages of agriculture, domestication, and village living. Isis Inanna, and Astarte are among the often named Mother Gods.This era lasted from 5-10 thousand years. Trance was still at the heart of ritual.

The Rise of the Father Gods.

About the time of Abraham, the belief in a single father god began to supplant the Mother goddess, even to deny her recognition at all. This Father God concept seemed to sweep the old world and male gods everywhere became predominant and men took over the development of civilization. Abraham of the Hebrew Tradition begat both Jesus of the Christian religion and Mohammed of the Islamic tradition. This fiercely male trio- triune – trifecta- no, trinity of gods (which are all considered to be the same, yet different) have effectively dominated world politics and wars west of India for more than a millennium. Father Gods have become less and less likely like to recognize trance states and even actively fight anything encouraging group trance rituals as part of religion.

The Rise of God as Abstract Principle ruling the Universe.

After an almost 5,000 year hegemony, the belief in a tribal Father god who interfered in the affairs of men began to be frayed by more abstract concepts of an impersonal god, such as Deism in the Enlightenment era and then by Quimby and Eddy’s day, God was often thought of as Mind, Love, Life and other fairly abstract ideas.

The Forms of New Thought.

“Everything is in the mind and mind rules over matter”. New thought is dated to Phinneas Quimby who promoted the belief that illness originated in the mind, and could be overcome by the mind when the thoughts were or corrected to know that God was the Ultimate Reality and He is good.

Your create your own reality by your thoughts.

Mary Baker Eddy added what came to be known as “the Law of attraction” to this belief that mind rules matter. This belief is that your thoughts create your reality, or attract what you think about, wish for, or fear, to yourself.

Mary Baker Eddy also added a false boogie-man she called, “mortal mind”, which entity creates and feeds the belief in matter and illness. Later forms of New Thought uniformly ignore the latter belief, even as they accept the first two tenants.

Everything is energy.

The latest twist on the New Thought philosophy is to use metaphors from quantum physics to claim we really are not material beings, but energy forms made up of concentrated thoughts and beliefs that appear to be matter. Since we are really just energy forms, it is obvious that if we if we change our thoughts, we change our state of being from illness to health (or vice versa). By our thinking, we can attract that which we wish into our lives and protect ourselves from negative influences.

Now that we are back to being energy forms, then everything we know in our environment  is also a form of energy and thus we return to pantheism where everything is alive and in relationship to everything else.

What goes round, comes round.

And the eternal question is still, “Why has man so often chosen to believe there is a God we can propitiate/use to control our destiny?”

We run into difficult conundrums when we claim our thoughts entirely rule our perceptions and we are responsible for what we attract to ourselves; and/or that we can absolutely rule our thoughts and perceptions to create the reality we want. To a certain point those maxims are true, but they are tendencies, not laws.

There must be a name for the logical fallacy that extrapolates tendencies into permanent states of being.

New Thought strikes again

New Thought is deeply embedded in American self-help culture. It has many expressions other than the way Eddy taught it. The video below is the 1st 15 minutes of a documentary and it places Mary Baker Eddy squarely in the New Thought movement about minutes 11-13.

William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, described New Thought as follows:

…for the sake of having a brief designation, I will give the title of the “Mind-cure movement.” There are various sects of this “New Thought,” to use another of the names by which it calls itself; but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be neglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement, without apology, as if it were a simple thing.It is an optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and a practical side. In its gradual development during the last quarter of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of contributory elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power. It has reached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature is great enough for insincere stuff, mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers – a phenomenon never observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest insecure beginnings.

One of the doctrinal sources of Mind-cure is the four Gospels; another is Emersonianism or New England transcendentalism; another is Berkeleyan idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages of “law” and “progress” and “development”; another the optimistic popular science evolutionism of which I have recently spoken; and, finally, Hinduism has contributed a strain. But the most characteristic feature of the mind-cure movement is an inspiration much more direct. The leaders in this faith have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary states of mind. Their belief has in a general way been corroborated by the practical experience of their disciples; and this experience forms to-day a mass imposing in amount.[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Thought

James overlooked Quimbyism and Christian Science,  but we all know as does Wikipedia that

The earliest identifiable proponent of what came to be known as New Thought was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–66), an American philosopher, mesmerist, healer, and inventor. Quimby developed a belief system that included the tenet that illness originated in the mind as a consequence of erroneous beliefs and that a mind open to God‘s wisdom could overcome any illness.^[7] His basic premise was “The trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in…Therefore, if your mind had been deceived by some invisible enemy into a belief, you have put it into the form of a disease, with or without your knowledge. By my theory or truth, I come in contact with your enemy, and restore you to health and happiness. This I do partly mentally, and partly by talking till I correct the wrong impression and establish the Truth, and the Truth is the cure.”^[8]

Here is a Wikipedia link to a list of New Thought writers. It is very extensive. It certain seems to be the popular prose with educated middle class people living a (mostly) corporate-style existence today. You do need to be affluent to access most of the trainings and workshops pedaled by other educated -but more enlightened than thou- leaders. Some are less virulent than others. I think

• Dale Carnegie^[13] – How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, How to Win Friends and Influence People

is fairly benign. Machiavelli would eat him up, though.

• Napoleon Hill^[13][36] – Think and Grow Rich

is Carnegie reheated.

• Norman Vincent Peale^[48] – The Power of Positive Thinking

Is the same as the first two, but with more of a Christian slant- or at least, it was written by a well-known Christian.

Although Jane Roberts and her Seth Books are not on the list; her aphorism, “You Create Your Own Reality” was a huge inspiration to many new age thinkers, from Louise Hay to Marianne Williamson.

• Louise Hay^[35] – You Can Heal Your Life (1984)

Guilt trips people for having an unhappy body part- She get very specific about what challenged body parts reflect about your thinking, erroneous thinking of course. Louise supplies affirmation to repeat until the untoward body part is reflecting the truth.

Deepak Chopra understands New Thought theory perfectly. In fact the Hindus probably came up with the concept yugas ago.

What all New thought movements have in common other than they a 100% Congregationalist, there is no central authority, is a belief in an abstract God, of which we are all particulates, and a belief you can create your own reality, that you DO create your own reality. Thought can even change physical reality dramatically. It can change physics.

Quantum Theory is the latest metaphor pulled into use by New Thought theorists. There may be something to that as a metaphor, a literary truth. A way to see the world.

But old New thought (pre-quantum physics) is a kind of puritan congregationalism deconstructed for the Age of Aquarius. The central belief that “we create our own reality”creates a new kind of predestination, in which we each chose the reality in which we live. In New Thought thinking we get depressed because we think depressing thoughts, not because something bad happened. In fact the bad thing happening is because of the error in thinking that created the bad thing. There is no responsibility for others who “chose” to live their lives in poverty, some kind of under-the-table kind of slavery, and get sick, get sad, get over taxed and under-represented.

“They chose it” absolves the one who says that, of any blame for vast differentials in wealth, health, and education. It encourages a winner-take-all competition and style of thinking that is justified only in their own minds.

In New Thought, anyone can write a book, give lectures, and become a founder of a self-help group and take the group into any metaphorical literary style they wish. Mary Baker Eddy was the pioneer of  that formula to riches and power, but many who broke from her, followed her formula and became successful, too. It worked well, and many have others followed that formula ever since. This formula is the criteria for getting into the self-help circuit, where gurus rise and fall but the ideas remain New Thought or New Age.

You attract what you think about. You create your own reality, and God is an all-encompassing eternal being you either reflect or are are part of. Good vibes are good and bad vibes are bad, and avoided and/or banished as unreal intrusions into the good vibes.

The message is remarkably similar in every child of Quimbyism.

“You are what you think” is good, but I would have to see more before I would take it to metaphysics.