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It is commonly said that man is made of flesh and bone. That is not the whole story. There is muscular flesh, and there is what is known as neuromuscular flesh. There is also bone and the marrow of bone. Just plain flesh and bone are the physical working parts of the body, but much that is in the body is created for the express purpose of conveying messages from the Mind WITHIN each cell to its surrounding ring, and the nerve-flesh which conveys messages to the farthest extremities of the body with the speed of light.
The vegetable kingdom is practically all "flesh and bone" but even that has an intricate intercommunicating system which is composed of a very different kind of flesh, a kind which corresponds to the nervous system in animal and man.
The muscular and bone flesh which is used for utility purposes, that which we call meat in chickens and cattle, is entirely different from the flesh of the heart, brain, spinal cord and nervous system, and also of arteries, veins and bone marrow. The blood is also flesh of the body, as other parts of it are, and it comes from the Mind-center of thought-rings which constitute the heart. That too is a flesh which is mostly concerned with its message-carrying purpose, both for body-building and Mind-thinking purposes. That flesh is so sensitive to tensions and strains of unbalanced actions and emotions that its normal
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thought-ring cells quickly change, or their centers shift to eccentric positions very quickly. The slightest emotional disturbance acts upon them in such a manner that they seem to have an intelligent understanding of such tensions, for they immediately convey that tension to the heart, brain and stomach with a consequent equal upsetting. All message-carrying flesh and bone marrow must have the rhythms of happiness and joyousness in order that their normally balanced electrical state will extend normal balance to the cells that they are continually creating and controlling, as well as informing as to purpose.
If people only realized that a happy body cannot exist as a normal body without a happy state of Mind, there would be no "mental cases," or insanity, stomach ulcers or heart diseases.
One little example of such effects should be enough. Consider the red blood corpuscles as that example. The blood is the basic
living flesh of the body. Strangely enough - but appropriately - its red blood cells are microscopic rings with holes centering them, such as pictured in example A, shown above. Emotional, or other disturbances, even inherited disturbances, which sufficiently upset the balance of the body metabolism, will break openings in these rings and make them appear to be sickle-formed as shown in example B.
The little white discs which constitute the white corpuscles
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of the blood appear to have frayed edges, as though they were moth eaten. Anemia and leukemia follow such abnormalities.
The blood is of first importance of all of the elements which compose the body. The nervous system could be entirely paralyzed and the body would still function, but the blood has deep instinctive awareness of its existence and the body, which does not have a happy, rhythmic blood condition, cannot possibly retain its normalcy. The blood immediately feels every mental and physical tension it is subjected to.
Next of importance is the heart flesh itself. There are muscular parts of the heart which perform physical functions only, as other flesh does, but a great part of the heart is composed of an independently living kind of "flowing" flesh which is not dependent upon the whole body, as all other parts are. The blood is the most potent of all of the Mind-message carriers of the body.
If you cut any part of your body out and preserve it from decay in a salt solution it can be thus preserved for a long time, even though it is as dead as the flesh in your deep freeze is dead. Not so, however, with that part of your heart which is made up of what the text-books call specific, or autonomous neuromuscular flesh. If you put that in a proper electric conducting medium, such as a salt solution, it will live a very long time - indefinitely perhaps - if the solution remains properly conductive. It does not die as other flesh dies so long as it is held in a conductive medium. The blood really has no intelligence but it is so close to the Mind as a carrier of power and creative messages that it seems to have intelligence of its own.
There are other parts of the heart which are, likewise, intended for the mental and physical state of the body which are utterly absent in all vegetable life, and less conspicuously developed in lower animal life. Such parts are the sinus node, the right and left bundle branch, and the intricate intertwining nerves, veins and muscles of the lower heart.
More important still is the fact that the blood is placed in columns, or shafts, which center all body-extensions in such posi-
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tions that those centers are the location of Magnetic stillness, and, as such, are of zero electric potential.
Next in our consideration is the brain flesh which surrounds the thought-rings of the central "switch-board" of the entire bodily nerve system. This, with the bone-marrow which assists message-carrying intercommunications between the Creator's Mind, and the imaged-forms He is creating, constitute quite a new science in itself, which is more needed by the medical profession than by our layman students. For this reason we cannot devote as much space to this vital subject as we would like to do.
Our present purpose is served by exemplifying the fact that every illness of the body is made in the image of one's thinking and the actions which follow mental, or sensed-decisions. We can retain our body normalcy, or we can easily damage it, by unbalancing our thinking and our normal way of life. If, therefore, one is ill, he should first look to the cause of it in himself. If people only realized that a happy body cannot exist without a happy state of Mind there would be no "mental cases" or insanity, much less headaches and other ailments.
There are two other shafts of zero potential besides the arterial and spinal ones which center the chest. These are the shafts which convey food to the stomach and the one which carries air to the lungs. The membranous flesh, which constitutes these tubes, is not like a plastic container. It has great conductive supersensitivity. It performs two separate and seemingly impossible opposite offices, for it both insulates that which should be insulated and conducts that which should be conducted.
One is very often mistaken in assuming that a badly upset stomach is due to food unwisely eaten when the fact is that unhappy rhythms have been the cause. The reaction has not alone been confined to the digestive functions. Its main cause may lie in emotional disturbance, business worry, worry of conscience, fear or many other states of unbalance. Even the food one eats should be "happy." It should be cooked with love and eaten joyfully, and there should be a joyful realization of love in one's deep breathing and exaltation during the process of taking food into one's body. The food you eat becomes blood
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and flesh of your body, and the manner in which you eat it, and your mental attitude while eating it, decides your blood count, the balance between acidity and alkalinity of your digestive machinery, and your entire metabolism.
These four great body shafts have much more "responsibility" than just performing physical, mechanical purposes. Please realize that fact. Your typewriter is a machine which will supposedly operate just as perfectly if you are angry, but even your typewriter could register your anger and be damaged by it. Whatever your mental condition is, your body condition records and reflects it as truly as a mirror equally images an angry you or a happy you.
Your Mind is YOU and your body is the record of your thoughts and actions. Your body is what your Mind electrically extends to it for recording.
Future generations should learn to think in such terms. They should discard the present concept of Mind and matter, and substitute Mind, thought, and action in place of it. Some day man will fully comprehend that matter is but the motion of thought.
The substance of this chapter is for the purpose of making you realize that your Mind reaches to every part of your body, not only your arms, legs, fingers and toes, but to every microscopic cell in your body.
You can instantly order your arms or fingers to obey a command from you, because large enough nerves connect your "switchboard" with them. There is not one cell in your body you cannot reach, however, with orders from your Mind. You may have to concentrate long and often to do it but you can do it. A simple experiment to prove that is to look concentratively upon one part of your body, such as the end of one finger. Demand of it that warm blood shall collect there, and it will, after a very few efforts. Many have done this. Another experiment for convincing you will be to order your ears to move - and they will in due time, just as a Paderewski orders his fingers to do fifty times as much as you can with yours.
Now apply this to your headache. First making sure that you
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are "in tune with the infinite" and not out of tune with it, and that you are not violating any law of Nature which continues its cause, your headache must disappear. It cannot do otherwise. Nature is normal. It balances all unbalanced effects if it is given a chance. However, it is useless to try to cure an unbalanced condition mentally unless the unbalanced cause is first replaced with the joyous rhythms which approach the God-Mind-ecstasy.
Now that you know where your Mind is in relation to your body, you have the basis of what Jesus knew when He extended His balance to the unbalanced thinking of other bodies, and gave them His balance. Unbalanced bodies cannot remain unbalanced if one's Mind is balanced and joyous to the point of ecstasy.
It is our earnest hope that each of you will now more fully comprehend the meaning of the command to seek the kingdom of heaven within you. It is also our earnest hope that the medical profession will apply this knowledge to every patient and not treat his physical unbalance alone, while allowing its mental cause to be ignored.
The physician is the logical Mind-healer for he has knowledge of effects which the Mind-healer cannot possibly have. One cannot go to God abstractly. You must know what you wish to ask for and know how to do your part in working with Him.
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