University of Virginia Library

Mind and stomach

This new-born understanding, that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of mortal mind, can make one suffer, brings with it an- other lesson, - that gluttony is a sensual illusion, and

that this phantasm of mortal mind disappears as we better apprehend our spiritual existence and ascend the ladder of life.

This person learned that food affects the body only as mortal mind has its material methods of working, one of which is to believe that proper food supplies nutriment and strength to the human system. He learned also that mortal mind makes a mortal body, whereas Truth re- generates this fleshly mind and feeds thought with the bread of Life.

Food had less power to help or to hurt him after he had availed himself of the fact that Mind governs man, and he also had less faith in the so-called pleasures and pains of matter. Taking less thought about what he should eat or drink, consulting the stomach less about the economy of living and God more, he recovered strength and flesh rapidly. For many years he had been kept alive, as was believed, only by the strictest ad- herence to hygiene and drugs, and yet he continued ill all the while. Now he dropped drugs and material hygiene, and was well.

He learned that a dyspeptic was very far from being the image and likeness of God, - far from having "do- minion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle," if eating a bit of animal flesh could overpower him. He finally concluded that God never made a dyspeptic, while fear, hygiene, physiology, and physics had made him one, contrary to His commands.