Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teasers:

"I know one woman who judges how alive she is by how sick she is. That is, by how many aches and pains she can count. She then keeps the aches and pains alive and well by continually talking about them to whomever she converses with. What she doesn't understand is that the more she talks about her aches and pains,  the more energy she gives them and the more she reinforces her illness."

~ p. 47 "Feelings Buried Alive Never Die" by Karol K. Truman

 PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks! 

Dr. John Harrison

I have begun my chapter on the intersection between health and self-help, and one of the authors I want to explore is the Australian Dr. John Harrison.
Harrison was something of a medical celebrity in Australia in the late 1980s, and through the advocacy of Louise Hay he became a worldwide influencer in the field of alternative health and the mind-body interaction. His magnum opus is a book called Love Your Disease It's Keeping You Healthy, and I hope to look at this book in some depth in this chapter.



It was an immensely influential book in its time, selling over 100,000 copies and becoming a bestseller in America.
Harrison seemed to have been combining New Thought ideas with fashionable psychology, naturopathy and Eastern-influenced health advice (he speaks glowingly of the concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine). Indeed, his seeming "blame-the-victim" rhetoric is quite stark in the book, and quite unembarrassed. It is not the sort of thing that would be published now.
Harrison's reputation was later destroyed through some extremely questionable accusations of sexual misconduct, and Australian journalist Sue Williams wrote a fascinating book about this case called Death of a Doctor (2005), in which Harrison is vindicated and posited as something of a victim of the conventional medical establishment.
It's interesting to examine an Austraian book which had a great influence on American self-help writing and publishing - quite a reversal of the usual state of affairs.

The Importance of Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures

Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures, which Mark Twain famously described as “chloroform in print,” is one of the most tremendously influential texts in the histroy of self-help literature. These days, with Christian Science fading from public consciousness, it is easy to forget the tremendous influence this philosophy had on the popular cultural imagination, and just how many of the ideas contained in the book were absorbed into the understanding of alternative health, spirituality and self-help. Its author, and the eventual founder of the Christian Science Church, was Mary Baker Eddy, an impoverished New Englander with a patchy matrimonial history and a lifelong history of largely psychosomatic illness.

I think we have hugely underestimated the cultural power that Eddy’s movement maintained over Western culture up to the 1960s, including here in Australia. Writers, celebrities and Hollywood stars were all drawn to this religion that validated women and denied the dogmas of the traditional churches. This was the case, too, in Australia, where Christian Science churches and reading rooms popped up in every capital city. In Science and Health... Eddy sets forth her theological understanding that all that is good is of God, and all that is bad is illusion, for God is the only reality:

"all real being is in God, the Divine Mind, and that Life, Truth, and Love are all-powerful and ever-present."

This huge, prolix and immensely difficult book became almost an instant bestseller, establishing the market for spiritually-inspired books of self-help healing that continues till this day. The success of the book and of the religious movement it inspired meant that by the end of the nineteenth century Mary Baker Eddy was ver rich, powerful and influential.

The crest on the front of the book reads:

"Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead, Cast Out Demons, Cleanse the Lepers."

These, of course, being the miracles of Christ, which Mary Baker Eddy believed all of her followers should be able to emulate. To this end she forbade the use of conventional medicine, though she herself famously visited the dentist towards the end of her life.

Eddy’s empire was, however, not without its critics. In Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality, Leigh Eric Schmidt makes the old point that Eddy's book was largely influenced by the work of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a travelling New England healer who was immensely popular in the middle of the nineteenth century and who was responsible for many of Eddy's own cures. Eddy later rejected this notion, claiming that all of the ideas in the book were her own, divinely inspired. She said that the book was "hoplessly original," perhaps hinting that even she was aware of some of it stylistic shortcomings. And in denying sin, suffering and evil, the book was, of course, entirely heretical and opposed to any mainstream theology. In rejecting the notion of original sin, Horton Davies, in his book Christian Deviations, wrote that:

"Christian Scientists are tone-deaf to the tragic notes of our human symphony. Life's foes demand to be faced with bracing realism, not evaded by Christian Science escapism."

Creative Mind by Ernest Holmes

Creative Mind was Ernest Holmes' first published book, written long before he was a celebrity preacher with a massive following. It's a nice little book which, considering how early along in his career he wrote it, stands as a surprisingly good (and wonderfully concise) introduction to Holmes' philosophy. Interestingly, it is said that Norman Vincent Peale read this book when he was a young man, and that it had a profound influence on him.
The book is an extended discussion of the New Thought idea of the creative mind - that Divine Mind which is innately creative and to which we are all (or at least should be) connected to. God - or Mind - is constantly creative, and this creation moves in an upward direction. We are all evolving into better beings and it is through our connection to Creative Mind that this happens.
In many ways this book sticks much more closely to a Christian Science idea of the Universe, which is not surprising because it was around this period that Holmes was studying with Emma Curtis Hopkins, the grandmother of New Thought and a woman who had once been Mary Baker Eddy's closest associate.
For the early Holmes the Universe was all spirit, and nothing material was reality - a notion familiar to anyone who has studied Christian Science. He says:

"There is no physical explanation for anything in the universe; all causation is Spirit and all effect spiritual. We are not living in a physical world but in a spiritual world peopled with spiritual ideas."

This is, of course, a reasonably complex and sophisticated theological vision, and one that is, if anything, even more difficult to grasp in our inherently materialist age than it would have been in 1918. In the book Holmes is radically anti-clerical as well, insisting that the path to realisation was available to us all, with absolutely no intermediary force required. He actually retained this hostility to religious organisation and institutonalisation all his life, though a huge church somehow managed to build itself up around him.
Holmes despised dogma, and he particularly despised the dogmatic churchmen of his day, who he saw as wilfuly misinterpreting scripture and trying to stop people from having a real and dynamic connection with God. He saw himself more as a man of science, and his method as genuinely scientific - hence calling his philosophy The Science of Mind. As he saw it, the metaphysician was dealing with immutable laws and principles, not the arbitrary judgements and positions more characteristic of conventional religion. He saw God as a complete reality, one who would ultimately be discovered by science. Holmes was the perfectly modern man, in love with the new ideas of his age. Science, he said, could never destroy true religion, because it "is man's true experience of Reality" (Living the Science of Mind, p. 40). Religion might peddle its false dualities and its childish fears, but ultimately science would expose us all to the truth of God.
Healing, too, is presented in this book as the ultimate outcome of a genuine understanding of God. For in our illness we are merely allowing ourselves to dwell in error, to grasp onto a false premise. The laws of the Universe must always be productive of good, and so once we abide by these laws we are healed as a matter of course. Health is our primal state of being.
Anyone familiar with The Secret will also find much in this old book that is familiar. Holmes sets out the Law of Attraction, and assures readers that what is needed is to speak into the Universe all that we require, and it will be supplied to us. Proving, of course, that The Secret is a very old idea indeed, with a substantial literature and religious culture behind it.

The Stomach in The Science of Mind

The whole of Chapter 15 in The Science of Mind ("Physical Perfection, Concluded") is devoted to specific complaints and illnesses and how they might be cured through the power of thought. As in the rest of the book, these instructions are addressed to the Religious Science "Practitioner", though one imagines any general reader might also be able to put these instructions to work.
The basic treatement seems to be complete denial of the illness, which is exactly what Christian Science dictates. Any ailment is merely a false beliefe, and it is the duty of the practicioner to heal the patient of her false thoughts, thereby restoring her body to the absolute physical perfection that God intended, and that we are all worthy of.
On p. 256 Holmes tells us that the stomach in particular is inclined to be affected by mental causes, though many of these stomach upsets can be alleviated through the simple expedient of saying grace before meals (and I will have to try that out).
This chapter includes specific instructions and affirmations for any number of ailments, including headache and obesity. Interestingly, this kind of thing was revived (and with great success) by Louise Hay, herself a Religious Science practitioner, and more recently in Australia by people like Annette Noontil and Inna Segal. Which goes to show that you can't keep a good idea down.

You Can Heal Your Life

One of the most legendary books in the history of the self-help genre is Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life. Originally self-published, it went on to become a mammoth bestseller and the source of Ms. Hay's business and publishing empire. And, in more recent years, it has broken new ground by becoming the first self-help book to be turned into a full-length motion picture.
The book is pretty much run-of-the-mill New Thought. At the time of its writing Louise Hay was a popular Science of Mind minister, and her book and career would probably have faded into obscurity under normal circumstances. But something extraordinary happened. The AIDS crisis began, and Louise Hay, with her slightly raunchy and matter-of-fact manner, her mysterious background and her frank acceptance of gay and lesbian people, became the spiritual inspiration to thousands of men who were dying from that terrible disease. Suddenly, Hay and her little book were an intrinsic part of a social and cultural moment that caught up some of the greatest and most creative minds of a generation. Leading her famous "Hay Ride" healing sessions which were packed to the rafters with gay men, Louise Hay became the first major religious figure who addressed the AIDS problem directly, and treated people with AIDS with dignity and compassion. Hers was a lone voice for some years, and her personal bravery and integrity have been, I feel, forgotten in recent years. In the early 80s very few people were saying it was alright to be gay, and this elderly lady-minister, with her old-fashioned New Thought ideas and quaint little book, was a lonely voice in the wilderness.
You Can Heal Your Life became mainstream, of course, and was for many years - and remains - a bestseller. Hay was one of the first to see the possibility of new forms of media, and released many cassettes of her meditations and other work.
The book is beautifully, if simply, written, and Hay has a great gift for getting her ideas across. She has been criticised and lampooned mercilessly over the years, but she has gone from strength to strength, becoming a powerful publishing industry tycoon with her own company Hay House, which has made the careers of many others in the self-help and metaphysical fields.
Indeed, Hay has never really written another book - her entire philosophy was so succinctly and so prefectly expressed in You Can Heal Your Life. Other books have been printed, but they are really just transcriptions of her talks and workshops, as any avid listener to her audio material can soon discover.
It makes for fun reading, and is frequently outrageous. She uses a male prostitute as an example of how to apply prosperity thinking, for example, and she suggests that people should masturbate when they feel a migraine coming on. The book consciously addresses itself to actors, artist, writers and other creative types, proving that Ms. Hay, writing from LA, knew who her core clientele would be.
But the fact remains that it is one of the most seminal and culturally influential self-help books ever to be written, and new generations of readers are constantly discovering it. Her simple prose and clear thinking make the book much more accessible than other New Thought classics, and her message of love and self-acceptance seems to continue to strike a chord in the public imagination.

The Body Expressing the Mind

A very common idea within the world of self-help is that sickness is merely an external expression of negative states of mind.
The virus, the bacteria, the inherited illness - all are bunkum in the world of self-help, where one's unfortunate physical circumstances can only ever be evidence of wrong thinking.
This is a very old idea, and, like many popular self-help ideas, can be traced back to the work of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a faith healer who inspired the work of Mary Baker Eddy and many others.
The concept is still going strong - kept alive in the 80s and 90s through the work of Louise L. Hay, some Australia authors also subscribe to this system of ideas, most notably Annette Noontil and Inna Segal. In most of these books one can look up the symptoms of one's illness and discover the corresponding mental or spiritual causes. Then there is normally a suggested cure, taking the shape of an affirmation or prayer or visualisation which will reverse the negative state that caused the trouble. Such a system seems to be very comforting to those who are ill - probably quite understandable when one considers how alienating and authoritarian the conventional medical system can be.
I'm very interested in Inna Segal's work because she is quite young and the book (The Secret Language of Your Body) has been released quite recently. It intrigues me how she managed to learn and absorb these old ideas. I can see the strong influence of New Thought and Christian Science teachings in the work.
But, on a purely practical level I have to report that a chronic health condition I was suffering from last year remained completely unaffected even though I scrupulously applied these 'esoteric healing' methods. Eventually the only cure was good old fashioned surgery.