Healing

Mental healing

The concept of mental healing was first introduced by the "Christian Science", a system of religious thought and practice developed by Mary Baker Eddy based on her study of the Bible. The major teachings of Christian Science include the belief that spiritual reality is the only reality and all else is illusion or "error", sickness and disease being not real but the result of fear, ignorance, or sin. The recognition and understanding of the spiritual nature of reality allows for healing through prayer or introspection. Later, other movements such as "Mental Science" and "New Thought" developed, introducing the use of affirmations and denials to cure illnesses.

Regarding this, H. P. Blavatsky wrote:

Is it true that all our diseases are the result of wrong beliefs? The child, who has no belief, no knowledge or conception, true or false, on the subject of disease, catches scarlet fever through the transference of germs not through that of thought.

Blavatsky questioned the infallibility of the connection between diseases and mental patterns:

But "Christian Science" goes further than that. At a lecture, in London, it was distinctly asserted that every physical disease arises from, and is the direct effect of, a mental disease or vice: e.g., "Bright’s disease of the kidneys is always produced in persons who are untruthful, and who practise deception." Query, Would not, in this case, the whole black fraternity of Loyola, every diplomat, advocate and lawyer, as the majority of tradesmen and merchants, be incurably afflicted with this terrible evil? Shall we be next told that cancer on the tongue or in the throat is produced by those who backbite and slander their fellow men? It would be well-deserved Karma, were it so. Unfortunately, some recent cases of this dreadful disease, carrying off two of the best, most noble-hearted and truthful men living, would give a glaring denial to such an assertion.

This view can be supported by the fact that spiritual teachers such as Jiddu Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, and many others died with cancer.

Regarding the technique of affirmations and denials, Mme. Blavatsky maintained that this was not the teaching of Jesus, and criticized the effectiveness of it in removing the causes of evil:

Sins, wickedness, diseases, etc., are not denied by Jesus, nor are their opposites, virtue, goodness and health, anywhere affirmed. Otherwise, where would be the raison d’être for his alleged coming to save the world from the original sin?

The Christian Scientist in his denials and affirmations . . . by denying disease and evil . . . is simply flying into the face of fact and encouraging the unwary mystic to ignore instead of killing his sinful nature.

One problem in this view is that it does not take into account the law of karma:

Disease, mental characteristics and shortcomings, are always effects produced by causes: the natural effect of Karma, the unerring Law of Retribution, as we would say; and one gets into a curious jumble when trying to work along certain given lines of this “Christian Science” theory.

Blavatsky is not so much denying that "mental healing" may have an effect, but that it does not addresses the cause of the disease, but only delays the natural karmic effect, or transfers it to other aspects of our nature:

[T]hrough too much attention to her body she [a "Christian Scientist"] is reaping a temporary enjoyment now, for which, in subsequent lives, she will have to pay, [and] again, by using her mind so strangely to cure her body she may have removed her infirmities from the plane of matter to that of the mind. . .

[W]hat the extreme practice of mental curing does is to stave off for a time an amount of Karma which will, later on, reach us. We prefer to let it work out naturally through the material part of us and to expel it quickly if we may with even mineral remedies. But for all that we have no quarrel with mental healing at all, but leave each one to his or her own judgment.

Finally, since this approach, whether consciously or unconsciously, uses occult forces, it is very important to maintain a strict ethical code:

First a word of warning. As the preparation for the new cycle proceeds, as the forerunners of the new subrace make their appearance on the American continent, the latent and occult powers in man are beginning to germinate and grow. Hence the rapid growth of such movements as Christian Science, Mind Cure, Metaphysical Healing, Spiritual Healing, and so forth. All these movements represent nothing but different phases of the exercise of these growing powers—as yet not understood and therefore but too often ignorantly misused. Understand once for all that there is nothing “spiritual” or “divine” in any of these manifestations. The cures effected by them are due simply to the unconscious exercise of occult power on the lower planes of nature—usually of prana or life-currents. The conflicting theories of all these schools are based on misunderstood and misapplied metaphysics, often on grotesquely absurd logical fallacies. . . .

Already these so-called sciences of “Healing” are being used to gain a livelihood. Soon some sharp person will find out that by the same process the minds of others can be influenced in many directions, and the selfish motive of personal gain and money-getting having been once allowed to creep in, the one-time “healer” may be insensibly led on to use his power to acquire wealth or some other object of his desire.
This is one of the dangers of the new cycle, aggravated enormously by the pressure of competition and the struggle for existence. . . .

What I said last year remains true today, that is, that the Ethics of Theosophy are more important than any divulgement of psychic laws and facts. The latter relate wholly to the material and evanescent part of the septenary man, but the Ethics sink into and take hold of the real man—the reincarnating Ego.

Online resources

Articles

• Christian or Mental Science by H. P. Blavatsky
• Christian Science by H. P. Blavatsky
• "The Empty Vessel Makes the Greatest Sound" by H. P. Blavatsky
• Another View of Metaphysical Healing by Ursula N. Gestefeld (reply to W. Q. Judge's article Of "Metaphysical Healing")
• Affirmations and Denials by William Q. Judge (follow up to W. Q. Judge's article Of "Metaphysical Healing")
• Of "Metaphysical Healing" by William Q. Judge