87/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Symptoms of disease are due to derangement of the natural functions of the bodily parts. Nearly every person is so sensitive to suggestions from subconscious sources, that any appreciable change in the attitude or relations of the constituent parts of his body, produces, under ordinary circumstances, a corresponding change in his own states of consciousness.
Such sensations as pain or sickness are ordinarily due to suggestions we receive from a bodily source. A condition of the body may be the occasion of a mental state, as in the case of a wound, which is accompanied by the feeling of fain; but it is not, in the stricter sense, the cause of the sensation that lies in our acceptance of the suggestion offered.
This is clearly demonstrated in instances where attention is completely diverted from the object or incident that suggests the sensation. A sudden shock has been known to restore deranged organic functions to their normal operation. In the hypnotized subject’s consciousness, the suggestion of the hypnotizer is paramount to that received from his own body; so that he may be prevented from accepting the suggestion of pain in case of bodily injury.
Medicine acts directly upon the bodily atoms, on the chemical plane of subconsciousness, and induces them to assume such altered relations that they will have a tendency to exert psychical influences which suggest to the patient normal mental states, and thus promote in him the consciousness of health.
Mental methods are incomparably superior to material ones, because they appeal directly to the ego, the rightful ruler of the whole bodily domain, and encourage it to govern, instead of to be governed. In this way they open the door to the development of selfhood.
Every human being is in some measure influenced by suggestions that come to him from the relatively lower subconscious, or the relatively higher superconscious realm. He may sink to the plane of sensation, where bodily forces will determine the direction of his thought and produce experiences of sickness, pain and depression; or he may rise above the level of material consciousness, so that higher forces will control and mold his life.
By exercising intuition, we come into relation with higher influences, and realize the satisfaction of a free, spontaneous existence; for we are no longer drawn down toward the material pole of life, but approach the spiritual pole, and become atoms of a higher body, in which perfect harmony prevails, because all its members are polarized by the spiritual consciousness.