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CHAPTER 8

Summary of the Mental Actions

Let me now summarize the mental actions and attitudes necessary to the practice of the Science of Being Well: first, you believe that there is a Thinking Substance, from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. This Substance is the Life of All, and is seeking to express more life in all. It is the Principle of Life of the universe, and the Principle of Health in a human being. A human being is a form of this Substance, and draws his vitality from it. He is a mind-body of original substance, permeating a physical body, and the thoughts of his mind-body control the functioning of his physical body. If a person thinks no thoughts save those of perfect health, the functions of his physical body will be performed in a manner of perfect health.

In order to consciously relate yourself to the All-Health, your purpose must be to live fully on every plane of your being. You must want all that there is in life for body, mind, and soul, and this will bring you into harmony with all the life there is.

The person who is in conscious and intelligent harmony with All will receive a continuous inflow of vital power from the Supreme Life, and this inflow is prevented by angry, selfish or antagonistic mental attitudes. If you are against any part, you have severed relations with all — you will receive life, but only instinctively and automatically, not intelligently and purposefully.

You can see that if you are mentally antagonistic to any part, you cannot be in complete harmony with the Whole. Therefore, as Jesus directed, be reconciled to everybody and everything before you offer worship.

Want for everybody all that you want for yourself.

The reader is recommended to read what we have said in a former work (The Science of Getting Rich) concerning the Competitive mind and the Creative mind. It is very doubtful whether one who has lost health can completely regain it so long as he remains in the competitive mind.

Being on the Creative or Good-Will plane in mind, the next step is to form a conception of yourself as in perfect health, and to hold no thoughts which are not in full harmony with this conception. Have FAITH that if you think only thoughts of health you will establish in your physical body the functioning of health; and use your will to determine that you will think only thoughts of health.

Never think of yourself as sick, or as likely to be sick; never think of sickness in connection with yourself at all. And, as far as may be, shut out of your mind all thoughts of sickness in connection with others. Surround yourself as much as possible with the things which suggest the ideas of strength and health.

Have faith in health, and accept health as an actual present fact in your life. Claim health as a blessing bestowed upon you by the Supreme Life, and be deeply grateful at all times. Claim the blessing by faith, know that it is yours, and never admit a contrary thought to your mind.

Use your will-power to withhold your attention from every appearance of disease in yourself and others. Do not study disease, think about it, nor speak of it. At all times, when the thought of disease is thrust upon you, move forward into the mental position of prayerful gratitude for your perfect health.

The mental actions necessary to being well may now be summed up in a single sentence: Form a conception of yourself in perfect health, and think only those thoughts which are in harmony with that conception.

That “with faith and gratitude and the purpose to really live” covers all the requirements.

It is not necessary to take mental exercises of any kind, except as described in Chapter 6, or to do wearying “€œstunts”€ in the way of affirmations, and so on. It is not necessary to concentrate the mind on the affected parts. It is far better not to think of any part as affected. It is not necessary to “treat”€ yourself by auto-suggestion, or to have others treat you in any way whatever. The power that heals is the Principle of Health within you, and to call this Principle into Constructive Action it is only necessary, having harmonized yourself with the All-Mind, to claim by FAITH the All-Health and to hold that claim until it is physically manifested in all the functions of your body.

In order to hold this mental attitude of faith, gratitude, and health, however, your external acts must be only those of health. You cannot long hold the internal attitude of a well person if you continue to perform the external acts of a sick person. It is essential not only that your every thought should be a thought of health, but that your every act should be an act of health, performed in a healthy manner. If you will make every thought a thought of health, and every conscious act an act of health, it must infallibly follow that every internal and unconscious function shall come to be healthy, for all the power of life is being continually exerted toward health.

We shall next consider how you may make every act an act of health.

CHAPTER 9

When to Eat

You cannot build and maintain a perfectly healthy body by mental action alone, or by the performance of the unconscious or involuntary functions alone. There are certain actions, more or less voluntary, which have a direct and immediate relation with the continuance of life itself. These are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping.

No matter what a person’€™s thought or mental attitude may be, he cannot live unless he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps, and, moreover, he cannot be well if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in an unnatural or wrong manner. It is therefore vitally important that you should learn the right way to perform these voluntary functions, and I shall proceed to show you this way, beginning with the matter of eating, which is most important.

There has been a vast amount of controversy as to when to eat, what to eat, how to eat, and how much to eat, and all this controversy is unnecessary, for the Right Way is very easy to find. You have only to consider the Law which governs all attainment, whether of health, wealth, power, or happiness; and that law is that you must do what you can do now, where you are now; do every separate act in the most perfect manner possible, and put the power of faith into every action.

The processes of digestion and assimilation are under the supervision and control of an inner division of a person’s mentality, which is generally called the sub-conscious mind, and I shall use that term here in order to be understood. The sub-conscious mind is in charge of all the functions and processes of life, and when more food is needed by the body, it makes the fact known by causing a sensation called hunger.

Whenever food is needed and can be used, there is hunger, and whenever there is hunger it is time to eat. When there is no hunger it is unnatural and wrong to eat, no matter how great may APPEAR to be the need for food.

Even if you are in a condition of apparent starvation, with great emaciation, if there is no hunger you may know that FOOD CANNOT BE USED, and it will be unnatural and wrong for you to eat. Though you have not eaten for days or weeks, if you have no hunger you may be perfectly sure that food cannot be used, and will probably not be used if taken. Whenever food is needed, if there is power to digest and assimilate it, so that it can be normally used, the sub-conscious mind will announce the fact by a decided hunger.

Food, taken when there is no hunger, will sometimes be digested and assimilated, because Nature makes a special effort to perform the task which is thrust upon her against her will, but if food is habitually taken when there is no hunger, the digestive power is at last destroyed, and numberless evils caused.

If the foregoing be true;€” and it is indisputably so, it is a self-evident proposition that the natural time (and the healthy time) to eat is when one is hungry, and that it is never a natural or a healthy action to eat when one is not hungry. You see, then, that it is an easy matter to scientifically settle the question when to eat. ALWAYS eat when you are hungry, and NEVER eat when you are not hungry. This is obedience to nature, which is obedience to God.

We must not fail, however, to make clear the distinction between hunger and appetite.

Hunger is the call of the sub-conscious mind for more material to be used in repairing and renewing the body, and in keeping up the internal heat. Hunger is never felt unless there is need for more material, and unless there is power to digest it when taken into the stomach.

Appetite is a desire for the gratification of sensation. The drunkard has an appetite for liquor, but he cannot have a hunger for it. A normally fed person cannot have a hunger for candy or sweets. The desire for these things is an appetite. You cannot hunger for tea, coffee, spiced foods, or for the various taste-tempting devices of the skilled cook. If you desire these things, it is with appetite, not with hunger.

Hunger is nature’€™s call for material to be used in building new cells, and nature never calls for anything which may not be legitimately used for this purpose.

Appetite is often largely a matter of habit. If one eats or drinks at a certain hour, and especially if one takes sweetened or spiced and stimulating foods, the desire comes regularly at the same hour, but this habitual desire for food should never be mistaken for hunger.

Hunger does not appear at specified times. It only comes when work or exercise has used sufficient energy to make the taking in of new raw material a necessity.

For instance, if a person has been sufficiently fed on the preceding day, it is impossible that he should feel a genuine hunger on arising from refreshing sleep. In sleep the body is recharged with vital power, and the assimilation of the food which has been taken during the day is completed;€” the system has no need for food immediately after sleep, unless the person went to his rest in a state of starvation. With a system of feeding which is even a reasonable approach to a natural one, no one can have a real hunger for an early morning breakfast. There is no such thing possible as a normal or genuine hunger immediately after arising from sound sleep.

The early morning breakfast is always taken to gratify appetite, never to satisfy hunger. No matter who you are, or what your condition is; no matter how hard you work, or how much you are exposed, unless you go to your bed starved, you cannot arise from your bed hungry.

Hunger is not caused by sleep, but by work. And it does not matter who you are, or what your condition, or how hard or easy your work, the so-called no-breakfast plan is the right plan for you. It is the right plan for everybody, because it is based on the universal law that hunger never comes until it is EARNED. I am aware that a protest against this will come from the large number of people who “enjoy”€ their breakfasts, whose breakfast is their “€œbest meal,”€ who believe that their work is so hard that they cannot ‘€œget through the forenoon on an empty stomach,’€œ and so on. But all their arguments fall down before the facts.

They enjoy their breakfast as the toper enjoys his morning dram, because it gratifies a habitual appetite and not because it supplies a natural want. It is their best meal for the same reason that his morning dram is the toper’€™s best drink. And they CAN get along without it, because millions of people, of every trade and profession, DO get along without it, and are vastly better for doing so.

If you are to live according to the Science of Being Well, you must NEVER EAT UNTIL YOU HAVE AN EARNED HUNGER.

But if I do not eat on arising in the morning, when shall I take my first meal?

In 99 cases out of a hundred twelve o’clock noon is early enough, and it is generally the most convenient time. If you are doing heavy work, you will get by noon a hunger sufficient to justify a good-sized meal. And if your work is light, you will probably still have hunger enough for a moderate meal. The best general rule or law that can be laid down is that you should eat your first meal of the day at noon if you are hungry, and if you are not hungry, wait until you become so.

And when shall I eat my second meal?

Not at all, unless you are hungry for it, and that with a genuine earned hunger. If you do get hungry for a second meal, eat at the most convenient time, but do not eat until you have a really earned hunger.

The reader who wishes to fully inform himself as to the reasons for this way of arranging the mealtimes will find the best books thereon cited in the preface to this work. From the foregoing, however, you can easily see that the Science of Being Well readily answers the question, When, and how often shall I eat?

The answer: Eat when you have an earned hunger, and never eat at any other time.

CHAPTER 10

What to Eat

The current sciences of medicine and hygiene have made no progress toward answering the question, What shall I eat? The contests between the vegetarians and the meat eaters, the cooked food advocates, raw food advocates, and various other ‘€œschools’€ of theorists, seem to be interminable. And from the mountains of evidence and argument piled up for and against each special theory, it is plain that if we depend on these scientists we shall never know what is the natural food of humans. Turning away from the whole controversy, then, we will ask the question of Nature herself, and we shall find that she has not left us without an answer.

On the question of what to eat, the answer is simple: Eat what Nature provides. The One Living Substance from which all things are made has made an abundance of perfect foods for every person in every place humans can live, and has given every person the physical and mental faculties to know what foods he should eat and how and when he should eat them.

Whenever people have attempted to ‘€œimprove’ on Nature, they go wrong. For humanity does not yet know enough not to go wrong. Nature is the physical form of the One Living Substance, operating according to the rules of the One Living Substance, with the energy of the One Living Substance. Nature provides every person exactly what is needed for perfect health.

The Great Intelligence, which is in and through all, has in reality practically settled the question as to what we shall eat. In ordering the affairs of nature, It has decided that a human being’s food shall be according to the zone in which he lives. These are the foods best for the requirements of the climate. These are the foods which will be the freshest when a person eats them, and therefore most filled with the life force of the One Living Substance. In acquiring these foods a person can be in closest association with the Principle of Life that created them. Therefore, a person need only ask himself what food grows and lives where he lives.

How shall a person know which of these foods to eat, according to his age, gender, ancestry, condition of health, exposure to cold, physical and mental activity?

Again, we see that the Great Intelligence operating in Nature answers the question. It provides a variety of foods in every zone, and it provides a human being with hunger and taste.

A person needs food as a raw material for the Principle of Health in his own body to direct in providing energy, heat, defense, and tissue repair and growth. He needs protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. These are found in the flesh, milk, blood, eggs, bones, and organs of water and land creatures, and in the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds, grains, nuts, and fruits of land and water plants. The Great Intelligence guides the masses of people to discover ways of procuring and preparing these foods in harmony with Nature. A person’€™s own Principle of Health guides his hunger and taste to the particular foods that will fill its needs.

With all the various ways food is prepared, how shall a person know the proper way?

He should procure and prepare his food in ways that cooperate with Nature. It is only when people work against Nature that they go wrong. To illustrate this point let us compare the health of people working in cooperation with Nature with the health of these same people working against Nature.

In every climate there are tribes who have learned over thousands of years the wisdom of nature and the best ways to gather, prepare, and eat the foods of the region in perfect harmony with the seasons and cycles of Nature.

The perfect health of these people provides a shining example of what is possible in physical strength and endurance, perfect eyesight and teeth, longevity, skill and agility, mental development, morality, and overall well-being. Moreover, they have learned the secrets of healthy reproduction and child-rearing such that there are not only happy, healthy children, but the absence of unsociable behavior.

What secrets of eating are followed by these perfectly healthy people?

• They eat only foods that occur in nature or that can be simply made from these.
• They eat only the best foods, and parts of foods, with the greatest nutrient content.
• They eat both animal and plant foods.
• Many foods from both plant and animal sources are eaten raw.
• From wild animals, bones, and organs are as important as (and often preferred over) muscle meat.
• From domesticated animals, fresh milk (and in some cases, even blood) is drawn. When milk products are used, they are made from milk taken from vitally healthy animals after they have been well fed on newly growing spring grasses.
• Cheese, butter, and other milk products that can be stored for later use are made from this milk. During other seasons, the animals are fed the highest quality hay.
• For some groups, insects in both adult and immature forms are important food sources, even where other animal foods are available.
• In zones near the sea, sea creatures are the source of animal food. Fish eggs are a rich source of nutrients. Where they are not available year-round, both the flesh and eggs of fish are dried for winter use in a way that preserves or increases nutrient content.
• Plant foods are eaten liberally during the season in which they grow and are ripe. Where they are not growing year-round, some are preserved for winter use in ways that preserves their nutrients.
• Sweet foods of all kinds are eaten only sparingly on special occasions. Refined sugar is avoided altogether, as are all foods made by adding refined sugar.
• Land used for plant cultivation is fertilized liberally with natural substances, and allowed periods of rest.
• Grains are eaten whole, or ground immediately before use. The entire grain is used.
• Women are supplied with extra high nutrient diets for several months before marriage and pregnancy, and during pregnancy and lactation. Childbirth is carefully spaced three years apart so that the mother can nurse her child, then replenish her body in preparation for the next pregnancy.
• Young men are also fed extra-high nutrient diets in preparation for fathering children.
• Children are nursed, then given high nutrient foods to help them grow.
• There are times of natural decrease in food supply, and ceremonial times, when the people eat less, or not at all.
• The people actively participate in the physical pursuit of growing, gathering, hunting, and preparing their food. They have community ceremonies of gratitude and celebration.

These are the practices of the healthiest people on earth.

What happens when these same people abandon their way of living and eating and replace their foods with unnatural foods?

They develop disease, deformity, misery, and unsociable behavior.

What are the unnatural foods that cause these effects?

They are refined and preserved foods from which natural life has been removed or lost, or sugar and flavors added to hide the absence of nutrients. They are foods so old that no life force remains in them. They are foods from unhealthy plants and animals, containing life force that bears the impression of weakness or disease.

What is needed for perfect health is vital food, brimming with life force, eaten according to the practices of healthy people.

How shall the modern city dweller acquire this vital food and incorporate these practices into his life?

First is to remember that he is to eat the food Nature provides in the zone in which he lives.

He must align himself with the Principle of Life with gratitude that there is abundant food for all and with faith that he will be perfectly guided to the best sources available in his area. Perfect health requires a relationship with the Source of all food with faith, gratitude, and joy. Food must be gathered with the attitude of more life to all and less to none.

A person must either learn to grow and gather, raise animals, hunt and fish, or find those who do. If he does not procure his own food directly from Nature, he must form a friendly relationship with those who do. He can then knowingly choose to deal with those who operate in harmony with Nature, exercising gratitude and wisdom.

The person who does not know how to identify a farmer or hunter following the natural laws of producing and finding food can be guided by these simple concepts:

Choosing your food providers

1. The food provider is healthy, happy, and of a generous spirit.
2. He uses no poisons of any kind in the production of foods.
3. If he raises animals, they are healthy and treated with kindness, respect,and gratitude. They are fed only the best foods for their health, not for abnormal growth or food production. They are not confined in unhealthy conditions, but given freedom to move about normally, and only sheltered for their protection.
4. If he fishes or hunts, he catches or kills lake, river, land or sea creatures in their natural environment. He uses means that ensure the healthy survival of all the species caught, whether or not they are the ones to be eaten.
5. If he farms, he uses only healthy, living soil uncontaminated by previous poisons. He replenishes the life of the soil so that his crops are rich in natural nutrients. His crops and soil are so healthy that they do not attract pests, and he farms in such a way that birds and other creatures eating the insects on his farm are unharmed. Any water running off his land contains no chemicals that will harm any other part of life.

These are the characteristics of a person who knows the laws of Nature in the production and procurement of food.

You must also know how to determine the correct people with whom to associate in any other steps of obtaining your food.

Do not associate with anyone in the process of procuring food who speaks of disease, fear, or lack in any way. Associate only with those who gratefully and joyfully appreciate the life-giving qualities of food, are happy to grow it, harvest it, prepare it, serve it, eat it, and know that there is an abundance of the best food for all. This is important whether you are dealing with someone who is selling you land on which to farm, or a farmer, or butcher, or truck driver, or store clerk, or cook, or waiter in a restaurant.

You must not eat foods produced or transported carelessly, or treated in any other way than as precious, life-giving substances. This is easily accomplished when you are the one procuring the food from its natural source or if you are in direct and harmonious relationship with all those who are.

The city dweller who thinks it is too difficult or too expensive to obtain food in this way need only review The Science of Getting Rich. All his doubts will there be answered. He will be guided in the correct manner of acquiring all the money he wants, and in attracting to himself all other resources he desires.

Once a person is supplied with a variety of vital foods from which to choose, how shall he know what to eat at a given meal? Here is the only needed guideline: Eat what your body wants. Your body wants what the Principle of Health requires to create perfect health.

What your body wants is determined very simply. The thought of the food, when you are truly hungry, is appealing. The taste of the food while chewing it is pleasant. After eating, your body feels energized and satisfied. There is no sleepiness, irritability, congestion, pain, discomfort of any kind, from the moment you begin to eat until the next day. Over a period of days, weeks and months, you continue to feel well.

This is how you will know you are eating the correct foods. Then you will not need to give the least thought to what you should or should not eat. You will want the right foods. The Principle of Health in your own body will guide you to know what to eat just as surely as it will guide you to know when to eat.

If you do not eat until you have an EARNED hunger, you will not find your taste demanding unnatural or unhealthy foods. If you make an association with your source of food that brings joy and gratitude, you will further increase your desire to eat what is natural and healthy.

It is when a person becomes lazy and allows himself to be tempted by taste and convenience rather than following the Great Intelligence with which he is bestowed, that he pays the price of decreased health.

When you learn to cooperate with Nature you will want what is good for you, and you will eat what you want. This you can do with perfect results if you eat in the right way, and how to do this will be explained in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 11

How to Eat

It is a settled fact that a person naturally chews his food. The few faddists who maintain that we should bolt our nourishment, after the manner of the dog and others of the lower animals, can no longer get a hearing. We know that we should chew our food. And if it is natural that we should chew our food, the more thoroughly we chew it the more completely natural the process must be. If you will chew every mouthful to a liquid, you need not be in the least concerned as to whether you are getting enough nutrients, for you have already chosen the best foods according to Natural Law. Whether or not this chewing shall be an irksome and laborious task or a most enjoyable process, depends upon the mental attitude in which you come to the table.

If your mind and attitude are on other things, or if you are anxious or worried about business or domestic affairs, you will find it almost impossible to eat without bolting more or less of your food. You must learn to live so scientifically that you will have no business or domestic cares to worry about. This you can do.

You must also arrange your life so that you are not in the presence of others who distract from the enjoyment of your meal. This way, you can learn to give your undivided attention to the act of eating while at the table.

The matter of eating only when in a peaceful state of mind must be emphasized. You must focus on gratitude before eating the food on your table and on the full enjoyment of each bite while eating. After eating, you must again focus on gratitude for the vital force from the food supplied to you through the One Living Substance. These mental actions will assist in the physical extraction of vital force from your food, and in bringing the Principle of Health within you into full Constructive Activity.

You must therefore eat with an eye single to the purpose of getting all the enjoyment you can from that meal. Dismiss everything else from your mind, and do not let anything take your attention from the food and its taste until your meal is finished. Be cheerfully confident, for if you follow these instructions you may KNOW that the food you eat is exactly the right food, and that it will ‘€œagree’€ with you to perfection.

Sit down to the table with confident cheerfulness, and take a moderate portion of the food. Take whatever thing looks most desirable to you. Do not select some food because you think it will be good for you — select that which will taste good to you. If you are to get well and stay well, you must drop the idea of doing things because they are good for your health, and do things because you want to do them. Select the food you want most, gratefully give thanks to God that you have learned how to eat it in such a way that digestion shall be perfect, and take a moderate mouthful of it.

Do not fix your attention on the act of chewing; fix it on the TASTE of the food. And taste and enjoy it until it is reduced to a liquid state and passes down your throat by involuntary swallowing.

No matter how long it takes, do not think of the time. Think of the taste. Do not allow your eyes to wander over the table, speculating as to what you shall eat next. Do not worry for fear there is not enough, and that you will not get your share of everything. Do not anticipate the taste of the next thing. Keep your mind centered on the taste of what you have in your mouth.

And that is all of it.

Scientific and healthful eating is a delightful process after you have learned how to do it, and after you have overcome the bad old habit of gobbling down your food unchewed. It is best not to have too much conversation going on while eating. Be cheerful, but not talkative. Do the talking afterward.

In most cases, some use of the will is required to form the habit of correct eating. The bolting habit is an unnatural one, and is without doubt mostly the result of fear. Fear that we will be robbed of our food, fear that we will not get our share of the good things, fear that we will lose precious time;€” these are the causes of haste. Then there is anticipation of the dainties that are to come for dessert and the consequent desire to get at them as quickly as possible. And there is mental abstraction, or thinking of other matters while eating. All these must be overcome.

When you find that your mind is wandering, call a halt. Think for a moment of the food and of how good it tastes, of the perfect digestion and assimilation that are going to follow the meal, and begin again. Begin again and again, though you must do so 20 times in the course of a single meal. And again and again, though you must do so every meal for weeks and months. It is perfectly certain that you CAN form the ‘Fletcher Habit’€ if you persevere, and when you have formed it, you will experience a healthful pleasure you have never known.

This is a vital point, and I must not leave it until I have thoroughly impressed it upon your mind. Given the right materials, perfectly prepared, the Principle of Health will positively build you a perfectly healthy body, and you cannot prepare the materials perfectly in any other way than the one I am describing.

If you are to have perfect health, you MUST eat in just this way. You can, and the doing of it is only a matter of a little perseverance. What use for you to talk of mental control unless you will govern yourself in so simple a matter as ceasing to bolt your food? What use to talk of concentration unless you can keep your mind on the act of eating for so short a space as 15 or 20 minutes, especially with all the pleasures of taste to help you?

Go on, and conquer. In a few weeks, or months, as the case may be, you will find the habit of scientific eating becoming fixed, and soon you will be in so splendid a condition, mentally and physically, that nothing would induce you to return to the bad old way.

We have seen that if a person will think only thoughts of perfect health, his internal functions will be performed in a healthy manner, and we have seen that in order to think thoughts of health, a person must perform the voluntary functions in a healthy manner. The most important of the voluntary functions is that of eating, and we see, so far, no special difficulty in eating in a perfectly healthy way.

I will here summarize the instructions as to when to eat, what to eat, and how to eat, with the reasons why:  NEVER eat until you have an EARNED hunger, no matter how long you go without food. This is based on the fact that whenever food is needed in the system, if there is power to digest it, the sub-conscious mind announces the need by the sensation of hunger.

Learn to distinguish between genuine hunger and the gnawing and craving sensations caused by unnatural appetite. Hunger is never a disagreeable feeling, accompanied by weakness, faintness, or gnawing feelings at the stomach. It is a pleasant, anticipatory desire for food. It does not come at certain hours or at stated intervals. It only comes when the body is ready to receive, digest, and assimilate food.

Eat whatever foods you want, making your selection from the full variety of the best foods found in the zone in which you live. The Supreme Intelligence has guided humanity to the selection of these foods, and they are the right ones. I am referring, of course, to the foods which are taken to satisfy hunger, not to those which have been contrived merely to gratify appetite or perverted taste. The instinct which has guided people to make use of the great staples of food to satisfy their hunger is a divine one. God has made no mistake; if you eat these foods you will not go wrong.

Eat your food with cheerful confidence in a pleasant atmosphere, and get all the pleasure that is to be had from the taste of every mouthful. Chew each morsel to a liquid, keeping your attention fixed on the enjoyment of the process. This is the only way to eat in a perfectly complete and successful manner; and when anything is done in a completely successful manner, the general result cannot be a failure.

In the attainment of health, the law is the same as in the attainment of riches: if you make each act a success in itself, the sum of all your acts must be a success. When you eat in the mental attitude I have described, and in the manner I have described, nothing can be added to the process — it is done in a perfect manner, and it is successfully done. And if eating is successfully done, digestion, assimilation, and the building of a healthy body are successfully begun.

We next take up the question of the quantity of food required.

CHAPTER 12

Hunger and Appetites

It is very easy to find the correct answer to the question, How much shall I eat? You are never to eat until you have an earned hunger, and you are to stop eating the instant you BEGIN to feel that your hunger is abating. Never gorge yourself. Never eat to repletion. When you begin to feel that your hunger is satisfied, know that you have enough. For until you have enough, you will continue to feel the sensation of hunger.

If you eat as directed in the last chapter, it is probable that you will begin to feel satisfied before you have taken half your usual amount, but stop there, all the same. No matter how delightfully attractive the dessert, or how tempting the pie or pudding, do not eat a mouthful of it if you find that your hunger has been in the least degree assuaged by the other foods you have taken.

Whatever you eat after your hunger begins to abate is taken to gratify taste and appetite, not hunger and is not called for by nature at all. It is therefore excess; mere debauchery,€” and it cannot fail to work mischief.

This is a point you will need to watch with nice discrimination, for the habit of eating purely for sensual gratification is very deeply rooted with most of us. The usual “€œdessert”€ of sweet and tempting foods is prepared solely with a view to inducing people to eat after hunger has been satisfied, and all the effects are evil. For the effect of eating these unwholesome foods is often an increase in appetite.

The same is true of alcohol taken before eating. Both will trick you to eat far more than you would otherwise want, and make it difficult to focus your attention on the satisfaction of your true hunger. You will find that if you eat as directed in the preceding chapters, the plainest food will soon come to taste like kingly fare to you, for your sense of taste, like all your other senses, will become so acute with the general improvement in your condition that you will find new delights in common things.

No glutton ever enjoyed a meal like the person who eats for hunger only, who gets the most out of every mouthful, and who stops on the instant that he feels the edge taken from his hunger. The first intimation that hunger is abating is the signal from the sub-conscious mind that it is time to quit.

The average person who takes up this plan of living will be greatly surprised to learn how little food is really required to keep the body in perfect condition.

The amount depends upon the work — upon how much muscular exercise is taken, and upon the extent to which the person is exposed to cold.

The woodchopper who goes into the forest in the winter time and swings his axe all day can eat two full meals, but the brain worker who sits all day on a chair, in a warm room, does not need one-third and often not one-tenth as much. Most woodchoppers eat two or three times as much, and most brain workers from three to ten times as much as nature calls for, and the elimination of this vast amount of surplus rubbish from their systems is a tax on vital power which in time depletes their energy and leaves them an easy prey to so-called disease.

Get all possible enjoyment out of the taste of your food, but never eat anything merely because it tastes good. And on the instant that you feel that your hunger is less keen, stop eating.

If you will consider for a moment, you will see that there is positively no other way for you to settle these various food questions than by adopting the plan here laid down for you. As to the proper time to eat, there is no other way to decide than to say that you should eat whenever you have an EARNED HUNGER. It is a self-evident proposition that that is the right time to eat, and that any other is a wrong time to eat.

As to what to eat, the Eternal Wisdom has decided that the people shall eat the best products of the zones in which they live. The staple foods of your particular zone are the right foods for you, and the Eternal Wisdom, working in and through the minds of people, has taught them how best to prepare these foods by cooking and otherwise.

And as to how to eat, you know that you must chew your food in a peaceful state of mind, and if food must be chewed, then reason tells us that the more thorough and perfect the operation the better.

I repeat that success in anything is attained by making each separate act a success in itself. If you make each action, however small and unimportant, a thoroughly successful action, your day’€™s work as a whole cannot result in failure. If you make the actions of each day successful, the sum total of your life cannot be failure.

A great success is the result of doing a large number of little things, and doing each one in a perfectly successful way. If every thought is a healthy thought, and if every action of your life is performed in a healthy way, you must soon attain to perfect health. It is impossible to devise a way in which you can perform the act of eating more successfully, and in a manner more in accord with the laws of life, than by chewing every mouthful to a liquid, enjoying the taste fully, and keeping a cheerful confidence the while. Nothing can be added to make the process more successful, while if anything be subtracted, the process will not be a completely healthy one.

In the matter of how much to eat, you will also see that there could be no other guide so natural, so safe, and so reliable as the one I have prescribed; to stop eating on the instant you feel that your hunger begins to abate. The subconscious mind may be trusted with implicit reliance to inform us when food is needed, and it may be trusted as implicitly to inform us when the need has been supplied. If ALL food is eaten for hunger, and NO food is taken merely to gratify taste, you will never eat too much, and if you eat whenever you have an EARNED hunger, you will always eat enough.

By reading carefully the summing up in the following chapter, you will see that the requirements for eating in a perfectly healthy way are really very few and simple.

The matter of drinking in a natural way may be dismissed here with a very few words. If you wish to be exactly and rigidly scientific, drink nothing but water, drink only when you are thirsty, drink whenever you are thirsty, and stop as soon as you feel that your thirst begins to abate.

But if you are living rightly in regard to eating, it will not be necessary to practice asceticism or great self-denial in the matter of drinking. You can take an occasional cup of weak coffee without harm. You can, to a reasonable extent, follow the customs of those around you.

Do not get the soda fountain habit. Do not drink merely to tickle your palate with sweet liquids.

Be sure that you take a drink of water whenever you feel thirst. Never be too lazy, too indifferent, or too busy to get a drink of water when you feel the least thirst. If you obey this rule, you will have little inclination to take strange and unnatural drinks. Drink only to satisfy thirst, drink whenever you feel thirst, and stop drinking as soon as you feel thirst abating. That is the perfectly healthy way to supply the body with the necessary fluid material for its internal processes.

CHAPTER 13

In a Nutshell

There is a Cosmic Life which permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe, being in and through all things. This Life is not merely a vibration, or form of energy — it is a Living Substance. All things are made from it. It is All, and in all.

This Substance thinks, and it assumes the form of that which it thinks about. The thought of a form, in this substance, creates the form; the thought of a motion institutes the motion. The visible universe, with all its forms and motions, exists because it is in the thought of Original Substance.

A human being is a form of Original Substance and can think original thoughts, and within himself a person’s thoughts have controlling or formative power. The thought of a condition produces that condition; the thought of a motion institutes that motion. So long as a person thinks of the conditions and motions of disease, so long will the conditions and motions of disease exist within him. If a person will think only of perfect health, the Principle of Health within him will maintain normal conditions.

To be well, a person must form a conception of perfect health, and hold thoughts harmonious with that conception as regards himself and all things. He must think only of healthy conditions and functioning. He must not permit a thought of unhealthy or abnormal conditions or functioning to find lodgment in his mind at any time.

In order to think only of healthy conditions and functioning, a person must perform the voluntary acts of life in a perfectly healthy way. He cannot think perfect health so long as he knows that he is living in a wrong or unhealthy way, or even so long as he has doubts as to whether or not he is living in a healthy way.

A person cannot think thoughts of perfect health while his voluntary functions are performed in the manner of one who is sick. The voluntary functions of life are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. When a person thinks only of healthy conditions and functioning, and performs these externals in a perfectly healthy manner, he must have perfect health.

In eating, a person must learn to be guided by his hunger. He must distinguish between hunger and appetite, and between hunger and the cravings of habit. He must NEVER eat unless he feels an EARNED HUNGER.

He must learn that genuine hunger is never present after natural sleep, and that the demand for an early morning meal is purely a matter of habit and appetite; and he must not begin his day by eating in violation of natural law. He must wait until he has an Earned Hunger, which, in most cases, will make his first meal come at about the noon hour.

No matter what his condition, vocation, or circumstances, he must make it his rule not to eat until he has an EARNED HUNGER, and he may remember that it is far better to fast for several hours after he has become hungry than to eat before he begins to feel hunger. It will not hurt you to go hungry for a few hours, even though you are working hard, but it will hurt you to fill your stomach when you are not hungry, whether you are working or not. If you never eat until you have an Earned Hunger, you may be certain that in so far as the time of eating is concerned, you are proceeding in a perfectly healthy way. This is a self-evident proposition.

As to what he shall eat, a person must be guided by that Intelligence which has arranged that the people of any given portion of the earth’s surface must live on the staple products of the zone which they inhabit. Have faith in God, and trust God’€™s ability to guide your taste to that which your body requires. Do not worry over the controversies as to the relative merits of cooked and raw foods, of vegetables and meats, or as to your need for carbohydrates and proteins.

Eat only when you have an earned hunger, and then take the best foods of the healthy people in the zone in which you live, and have perfect confidence that the results will be good. They will be.

Do not seek for luxuries, or for things imported or fixed up to tempt the taste. Stick to the plain foods, and when these do not “taste good,” fast until they do. Then you will be functioning in a perfectly healthy manner, so far as what to eat is concerned. I repeat, if you have no hunger or taste for the plain foods, do not eat at all. Wait until hunger comes. Go without eating until the plainest food tastes good to you, and then begin your meal with what you like best.

In deciding how to eat, a person must be guided by reason. We can see that the abnormal states of hurry and worry produced by wrong thinking about business and similar things have led us to form the habit of eating too fast, and chewing too little.

We know that an angry or distracting atmosphere upsets the process of digestion. Reason tells us that food should be chewed, and that the more thoroughly it is chewed the better it is prepared for the chemistry of digestion. Furthermore, we can see that the person who eats slowly and chews his food to a liquid, keeping his mind on the process and giving it his undivided attention, will enjoy more of the pleasure of taste than he who bolts his food with his mind on something else.

To eat in a perfectly healthy manner, a person must concentrate his attention on the act with cheerful enjoyment and confidence. He must taste his food, and he must reduce each mouthful to a liquid before swallowing it. The foregoing instructions, if followed, make the function of eating completely perfect. Nothing can be added as to what, when, and how.

In the matter of how much to eat, a person must be guided by the same inward intelligence, or Principle of Health, which tells him when food is wanted. He must stop eating in the moment that he feels hunger abating; he must not eat beyond this point to gratify taste. If he ceases to eat in the instant that the inward demand for food ceases he will never overeat, and the function of supplying the body with food will be performed in a perfectly healthy manner.

The matter of eating naturally is a very simple one; there is nothing in all the foregoing that cannot be easily practiced by anyone. This method, put into practice, will infallibly result in perfect digestion and assimilation, and all anxiety and careful thought concerning the matter can at once be dropped from the mind. Whenever you have an earned hunger, eat with thankfulness from the variety of natural foods before you, chewing each mouthful to a liquid, and stopping when you feel the edge taken from your hunger.

The importance of the mental attitude is sufficient to justify an additional word.

While you are eating, as at all other times, think only of healthy conditions and normal functioning. Enjoy what you eat. If you carry on a conversation at the table, talk of the goodness of the food, and of the pleasure it is giving you. Never mention that you dislike this or that. Speak only of those things which you like. Never discuss the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of foods. Never mention or think of unwholesomeness at all.

If there is anything on the table for which you do not care, pass it by in silence, or with a word of commendation. Never criticize or object to anything. Eat your food with gladness and with singleness of heart, praising God and giving thanks. Let your watchword be perseverance. Whenever you fall into the old way of hasty eating, or of wrong thought and speech, bring yourself up short and begin again.

It is of the most vital importance to you that you should be a self-controlling and self-directing person, and you can never hope to become so unless you can master yourself in so simple and fundamental a matter as the manner and method of your eating.

If you cannot control yourself in this, you cannot control yourself in anything that will be worthwhile.

On the other hand, if you carry out the foregoing instructions, you may rest in the assurance that in so far as right thinking and right eating are concerned you are living in a perfectly scientific way, and you may also be assured that if you practice what is prescribed in the following chapters you will quickly build your body into a condition of perfect health.

CHAPTER 14

Breathing

The function of breathing is a vital one, and it immediately concerns the continuance of life. We can live many hours without sleeping, and many days without eating or drinking, but only a few minutes without breathing.

The act of breathing is involuntary, but the manner of it and the provision of the proper conditions for its healthy performance fall within the scope of volition. A person will continue to breathe involuntarily, but he can voluntarily determine what he shall breathe, and how deeply and thoroughly he shall breathe. And he can, of his own volition, keep the physical mechanism in condition for the perfect performance of the function.

It is essential, if you wish to breathe in a perfectly healthy way, that the physical machinery used in the act should be kept in good condition. You must keep your spine moderately straight, and the muscles of your chest must be flexible and free in action. You cannot breathe in the right way if your shoulders are greatly stooped forward and your chest hollow and rigid. Sitting or standing at work in a slightly stooping position tends to produce a hollow chest. So does lifting heavy weights — or light weights.

The tendency of work, of almost all kinds, is to pull the shoulders forward, curve the spine, and flatten the chest, and if the chest is greatly flattened, full and deep breathing becomes impossible and perfect health is out of the question.

Various gymnastic exercises have been devised to counteract the effect of stooping while at work, such as hanging by the hands from a swing or trapeze bar, or sitting on a chair with the feet under some heavy article of furniture and bending backward until the head touches the floor, and so on. All these are good enough in their way, but very few people will follow them long enough and regularly enough to accomplish any real gain in physique. The taking of ‘health exercises’€ of any kind is burdensome and unnecessary.

There is a more natural, simpler, and much better way.

This better way is to keep yourself straight, and to breathe deeply. Let your mental conception of yourself be that you are a perfectly straight person, and whenever the matter comes to your mind, be sure that you instantly expand your chest, throw back your shoulders, and ’straighten up.’€

Whenever you do this, slowly draw in your breath until you fill your lungs to their utmost capacity. ‘Crowd in’€ all the air you possibly can, and while holding it for an instant in the lungs, throw your shoulders still further back, and stretch your chest. At the same time try to pull your spine forward between the shoulders. Then let the air go easily.

This is the one great exercise for keeping the chest full, flexible, and in good condition. Straighten up, fill your lungs FULL, stretch your chest and straighten your spine, and exhale easily. And this exercise you must repeat, in season and out of season, at all times and in all places, until you form a habit of doing it. You can easily do so.

Whenever you step out of doors into the fresh, pure air, BREATHE. When you are at work, and think of yourself and your position, BREATHE. When you are in company, and are reminded of the matter, BREATHE. When you are awake in the night, BREATHE. No matter where you are or what you are doing, whenever the idea comes to your mind, straighten up and BREATHE. If you walk to and from your work, take this exercise all the way. It will soon become a delight to you, and you will keep it up, not for the sake of health, but as a matter of pleasure.

Do not consider this a ‘€œhealth exercise.’ Never take health exercises or do gymnastics to make you well. To do so is to recognize sickness as a present fact or as a possibility, which is precisely what you must not do. The people who are always taking exercises for their health are always thinking about being sick. It ought to be a matter of pride with you to keep your spine straight and strong — as much so as it is to keep your face clean.

Keep your spine straight, and your chest full and flexible for the same reason that you keep your hands clean and your nails manicured — because it is slovenly to do otherwise. Do it without a thought of sickness, present or possible. You must either be crooked and unsightly or you must be straight, and if you are straight your breathing will take care of itself. You will find the matter of health exercises referred to again in a future chapter.

It is essential, however, that you should breathe AIR. It appears to be the intention of nature that the lungs should receive air containing its regular percentage of oxygen and not greatly contaminated by other gases, or by filth of any kind.

Do not allow yourself to think that you are compelled to live or work where the air is not fit to breathe. If your house cannot be properly ventilated, move. And if you are employed where the air is bad, get another job; you can, by practicing the methods given in the preceding volume of this series, The Science of Getting Rich.

If no one would consent to work in bad air, employers would speedily see to it that all work rooms were properly ventilated. The worst air is that filled with poisonous chemical gases.* Next to that is air heavily charged with mold, asbestos, or factory dust particles. After that is air from which the oxygen has been exhausted by breathing;€” as that of airplanes, churches and theaters where crowds of people congregate, and the outlet and supply of air are poor.

Then there is air containing other natural gases than oxygen and hydrogen; sewer gas and the effiuvium from decaying things. Air that contains house-hold dust or pollen may be endured better than any of these. Small particles of organic matter other than food are more easily thrown off from the lungs than gases, which go into the blood.

I speak advisedly when I say ‘€œother than food.’ Air is largely a food. It is the most thoroughly alive thing we take into the body. Every breath carries life. The odors from earth, grass, tree, flower, plant, and from cooking foods are foods in themselves. They are minute particles of the substances from which they come, and are often so attenuated that they pass directly from the lungs into the blood, and are assimilated without digestion. And the atmosphere is permeated with the One Original Substance, which is life itself.

Consciously recognize this whenever you think of your breathing, and think that you are breathing in life. You really are, and conscious recognition helps the process. See to it that you do not breathe air containing poisonous gases, and that you do not re-breathe the air which has been used by yourself or others.

That is all there is to the matter of breathing correctly. Keep your spine straight and your chest flexible, and breathe pure air, recognizing with thankfulness the fact that you breathe in the Eternal Life. That is not difficult, and beyond these things give little thought to your breathing except to thank God that you have learned how to do it perfectly.

CHAPTER 15

Sleep

Vital power is renewed in sleep. Every living thing sleeps. Humans, animals, reptiles, fish, and insects sleep, and even plants have regular periods of slumber. And this is because it is in sleep that we come into such contact with the Principle of Life in nature that our own lives may be renewed. It is in sleep that our brains are recharged with vital energy and the Principle of Health within us is given new strength. It is of the first importance, then, that we should sleep in a natural, normal, and perfectly healthy manner.

Studying sleep, we note that the breathing is much deeper and more forcible and rhythmic than in the waking state. Much more air is inspired when asleep than when awake, and this tells us that the Principle of Health requires large quantities of some element in the atmosphere for the process of renewal.

If you would surround sleep with natural conditions, then, the first step is to see that you have an unlimited supply of fresh and pure air to breathe. Physicians have found that sleeping in the pure air of out-of-doors is very effective in the treatment of pulmonary troubles, and, taken in connection with the Way of Living and Thinking prescribed in this book, you will find that it is just as effective in curing every other sort of trouble.

Do not take any half-way measures in this matter of securing pure air while you sleep. Ventilate your bedroom thoroughly — so thoroughly that it will be practically the same as sleeping out of doors. Have a door or window open wide; have one open on each side of the room, if possible. If you cannot have a good draught of air across the room, pull the head of your bed close to the open window, so that the air from without may come fully into your face. No matter how cold or unpleasant the weather, have a window open, and open wide, and try to get a circulation of pure air through the room. Pile on the bedclothes, if necessary, to keep you warm, but have an unlimited supply of fresh air from out of doors. This is the first great requisite for healthy sleep.

The brain and nerve centers cannot be thoroughly vitalized if you sleep in ‘dead’€ or stagnant air. You must have the living atmosphere, vital with nature’€™s Principle of Life. I repeat, do not make any compromise in this matter. Ventilate your sleeping room completely, and see that there is a circulation of outdoor air through it while you sleep. You are not sleeping in a perfectly healthy way if you shut the doors and windows of your sleeping room, whether in winter or summer.

Have fresh air. If you are where there is no fresh air, move. If your bedroom cannot be ventilated, get into another house.

Next in importance is the mental attitude in which you go to sleep. It is well to sleep intelligently, purposefully, knowing what you do it for. Lie down thinking that sleep is an infallible vitalizer, and go to sleep with a confident faith that your strength is to be renewed, that you will awake full of vitality and health. Put purpose into your sleep as you do into your eating. Give the matter your attention for a few minutes, as you go to rest.

Do not seek your couch with a discouraged or depressed feeling; go there joyously, to be made whole. Do not forget the exercise of gratitude in going to sleep. Before you close your eyes, give thanks to God for having shown you the way to perfect health, and go to sleep with this grateful thought uppermost in your mind.

A bedtime prayer of thanksgiving is a mighty good thing. It puts the Principle of Health within you into communication with its source, from which it is to receive new power while you are in the silence of unconsciousness.

You may see that the requirements for perfectly healthy sleep are not difficult. First, to see that you breathe pure air from out of doors while you sleep, and, second, to put the Within into touch with the Living Substance by a few minutes of grateful meditation as you go to bed. Observe these requirements, go to sleep in a thankful and confident frame of mind, and all will be well.

If you have insomnia, do not let it worry you. While you lie awake, form your conception of health. Meditate with thankfulness on the abundant life which is yours. Breathe, and feel perfectly confident that you will sleep in due time;€” and you will. Insomnia, like every other ailment, must give way before the Principle of Health aroused to full constructive activity by the course of thought and action herein described.

The reader will now comprehend that it is not at all burdensome or disagreeable to perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way. The perfectly healthy way is the easiest, simplest, most natural, and most pleasant way. The cultivation of health is not a work of art, difficulty, or strenuous labor. You have only to lay aside artificial observances of every kind and eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in the most natural and delightful way, and if you do this, thinking health and only health, you will certainly be well.

CHAPTER 16

Supplementary Instructions

In forming a conception of health, it is necessary to think of the manner in which you would live and work if you were perfectly well and very strong — to imagine yourself doing things in the way of a perfectly well and very strong person, until you have a fairly good conception of what you would be if you were well.

hen take a mental and physical attitude in harmony with this conception, and do not depart from this attitude. You must unify yourself in thought with the thing you desire, and whatever state or condition you unify with yourself in thought will soon become unified with you in body. The scientific way is to sever relations with everything you do not want, and to enter into relations with everything you do want. Form a conception of perfect health, and relate yourself to this conception in word, act, and attitude.

Guard your speech. Make every word harmonize with the conception of perfect health. Never complain. Never say things like these: “€œI did not sleep well last night,”€ “I have a pain in my side,”€ “€œI do not feel at all well today,” and so on. Say: “I am looking forward to a good night’€™s sleep tonight,”€ “€œI can see that I progress rapidly,”€ and things of similar meaning. As far as everything which is connected with disease is concerned, your way is to forget it; and as far as everything which is connected with health is concerned, your way is to unify yourself with it in thought and speech.

This is the whole thing in a nutshell: make yourself one with Health in thought, word, and action, and do not connect yourself with sickness either by thought, word, or action.

Do not read ‘€œdoctor books’€ or medical literature, or the literature of those whose theories conflict with those herein set forth. To do so will certainly undermine your faith in the Way of Living upon which you have entered and cause you to again come into mental relations with disease. This book really gives you all that is required;€” nothing essential has been omitted, and practically all the superfluous has been eliminated.

The Science of Being Well is an exact science, like arithmetic. Nothing can be added to the fundamental principles, and if anything be taken from them, a failure will result. If you follow strictly the way of living prescribed in this book, you will be well. And you certainly CAN follow this way, both in thought and action.

Relate not only yourself, but so far as possible all others, in your thoughts, to perfect health. Do not sympathize with people when they complain, or even when they are sick and suffering. Turn their thoughts into a constructive channel if you can. Do all you can for their relief, but do it with the health thought in your mind.

Do not let people tell their woes and catalogue their symptoms to you. Turn the conversation to some other subject, or excuse yourself and go. Better be considered an unfeeling person than to have the disease thought forced upon you.

When you are in company of people whose conversational stock-in-trade is sickness and kindred matters, ignore what they say and fall to offering a mental prayer of gratitude for your perfect health. And if that does not enable you to shut out their thoughts, say good-by and leave them.

No matter what they think or say, politeness does not require you to permit yourself to be poisoned by diseased or perverted thought. When we have a few more hundreds of thousands of enlightened thinkers who will not stay where people complain and talk sickness, the world will advance rapidly toward health. When you let people talk to you of sickness, you assist them to increase and multiply sickness.

What shall I do when I am in pain? Can one be in actual physical suffering and still think only thoughts of health?

Yes. Do not resist pain; recognize that it is a good thing. Pain is caused by an effort of the Principle of Health to overcome some unnatural condition. This you must know and feel.

When you have a pain, think that a process of healing is going on in the affected part, and mentally assist and cooperate with it. Put yourself in full mental harmony with the power which is causing the pain — assist it, help it along. Do not hesitate, when necessary, to use hot fomentations and similar means to further the good work which is going on. If the pain is severe, lie down and give your mind to the work of quietly and easily cooperating with the force which is at work for your good.

This is the time to exercise gratitude and faith. Be thankful for the power of health which is causing the pain, and be certain that the pain will cease as soon as the good work is done. Fix your thoughts, with confidence, on the Principle of Health which is making such conditions within you that pain will soon be unnecessary. You will be surprised to find how easily you can conquer pain, and after you have lived for a time in this Scientific Way, pains and aches will be things unknown to you.

What shall I do when I am too weak for my work? Shall I drive myself beyond my strength, trusting in God to support me? Shall I go on, like the runner, expecting a “second wind?”

No; better not. When you begin to live in this Way, you will probably not be of normal strength, and you will gradually pass from a low physical condition to a higher one. If you relate yourself mentally with health and strength, and perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy manner, your strength will increase from day to day, but for a time you may have days when your strength is insufficient for the work you would like to do.

At such times rest, and exercise gratitude. Recognize the fact that your strength is growing rapidly, and feel a deep thankfulness to the Living One from whom it comes. Spend an hour of weakness in thanksgiving and rest, with full faith that great strength is at hand, and then get up and go on again. While you rest do not think of your present weakness; think of the strength that is coming.

Never, at any time, allow yourself to think that you are giving way to weakness. When you rest, as when you go to sleep, fix your mind on the Principle of Health which is building you into complete strength.

What shall I do about that great bugaboo which scares millions of people to death every year–constipation?

Do not worry. Read Horace Fletcher on The A.B.- Z. of Our Own Nutrition, and get the full force of his explanation of the fact that when you live on this scientific plan there will be much less matter to eliminate. The material from the plant foods you are naturally guided to eat will take care of the matter. The gross feeders who eat from three to ten times as much fat, meat, and starch as can be utilized in their systems have a great amount of waste to eliminate and not the plant materials to assist, but if you live in the manner we have described it will be otherwise with you.

If you eat only when you have an EARNED HUNGER, and chew every mouthful to a liquid, and if you stop eating the instant you BEGIN to be conscious of an abatement of your hunger, you will so perfectly prepare your food for digestion and assimilation that practically all of it will be taken up by the absorbents, and there will be little remaining in the bowels to be excreted. If you are able to entirely banish from your memory all that you have read in ‘doctor books’€ and patent medicine advertisements concerning constipation, you need give the matter no further thought at all. The Principle of Health will take care of it.

But if your mind has been filled with fear-thought in regard to constipation, it may be well in the beginning for you to occasionally flush the colon with warm water. There is not the least need of doing it, except to make the process of your mental emancipation from fear a little easier; it may be worth while for that. And as soon as you see that you are making good progress, and that you have cut down your quantity of food, and are really eating in the Scientific Way, dismiss constipation from your mind forever; you have nothing more to do with it. Put your trust in that Principle within you which has the power to give you perfect health. Relate to It by your reverent gratitude to the Principle of Life which is All Power, and go on your way rejoicing.

What about exercise?

Everyone is the better for a little all-round use of the muscles every day, and the best way to get this is to do it by engaging in some form of play or amusement. Get your exercise in the natural way — as recreation, not as a forced stunt for health’s sake alone. Ride a horse or a bicycle, play tennis or tenpins, or toss a ball. Have some avocation like gardening in which you can spend an hour every day with pleasure and profit. There are a thousand ways in which you can get exercise enough to keep your body supple and your circulation good, and yet not fall into the rut of “exercising for your health.” Exercise for fun or profit. Exercise because you are too healthy to sit still, and not because you wish to become healthy, or to remain so.

Are long continued fasts necessary?

Seldom, if ever. The Principle of Health does not often require 20, 30, or 40 days to get ready for action. Under normal conditions, hunger will come in much less time. In most long fasts, the reason hunger does not come sooner is because it has been inhibited by the patient himself. He begins the fast with the FEAR if not actually with the hope that it will be many days before hunger comes. The literature he has read on the subject has prepared him to expect a long fast, and he is grimly determined to go to a finish, let the time be as long as it will. And the sub-conscious mind, under the influence of powerful and positive suggestion, suspends hunger.

When, for any reason, nature takes away your hunger, go cheerfully on with your usual work, and do not eat until she gives it back. No matter if it is two, three, ten days, or longer, you may be perfectly sure that when it is time for you to eat you will be hungry. And if you are cheerfully confident and keep your faith in health, you will suffer from no weakness or discomfort caused by abstinence.

When you are not hungry, you will feel stronger, happier, and more comfortable if you do not eat than you will if you do eat, no matter how long the fast. And if you live in the scientific way described in this book, you will never have to take long fasts, you will seldom miss a meal, and you will enjoy your meals more than ever before in your life. Get an earned hunger before you eat, and whenever you get an earned hunger, eat.

CHAPTER 17

A Summary of The Science of Being Well

Health is perfectly natural functioning, normal living. There is a Principle of Life in the universe; it is the Living Substance, from which all things are made. This Living Substance permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. In its invisible state it is in and through all forms, and yet all forms are made of it.

To illustrate: Suppose that a very fine and highly diffusible aqueous vapor should permeate and penetrate a block of ice. The ice is formed from living water and is living water in form, while the vapor is also living water, unformed, permeating a form made from itself. This illustration will explain how Living Substance permeates all forms made from It. All life comes from It. It is all the life there is.

This Universal Substance is a thinking substance, and takes the form of its thought. The thought of a form, held by it, creates the form; and the thought of a motion causes the motion. It cannot help thinking, and so is forever creating. And it must move on toward fuller and more complete expression of itself. This means toward more complete life and more perfect functioning and that means toward perfect health.

The power of the living substance must always be exerted toward perfect health. It is a force in all things making for perfect functioning.

All things are permeated by a power which makes for health.

A human being can relate himself to this power, and ally himself with it. He can also separate himself from it in his thoughts.

A human being is a form of this Living Substance, and has within him a Principle of Health. This Principle of Health, when in full constructive activity, causes all the involuntary functions of the human body to be perfectly performed.

A human being is a thinking substance, permeating a visible body, and the processes of his body are controlled by his thought.

When a person thinks only thoughts of perfect health, the internal processes of his body will be those of perfect health. A person’€™s first step toward perfect health must be to form a conception of himself as perfectly healthy and as doing all things in the way and manner of a perfectly healthy person. Having formed this conception, he must relate himself to it in all his thoughts, and sever all thought relations with disease and weakness.

If he does this, and thinks his thoughts of health with positive FAITH, a person will cause the Principle of Health within him to become constructively active, and to heal all his diseases. He can receive additional power from the universal Principle of Life by faith, and he can acquire faith by looking to this Principle of Life with reverent gratitude for the health it gives him. If a person will consciously accept the health which is being continually given to him by the Living Substance, and if he will be duly grateful for it, he will develop faith.

A person cannot think only thoughts of perfect health unless he performs the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy manner. These voluntary functions are eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping. If a person thinks only thoughts of health, has faith in health, and eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps in a perfectly healthy way, he must have perfect health.

Health is the result of thinking and acting in a Certain Way, and if a sick person begins to think and act in this Way, the Principle of Health within him will come into constructive activity and heal all his diseases. This Principle of Heath is the same in all, and is related to the Life Principle of the universe. It is able to heal every disease, and will come into activity whenever a person thinks and acts in accordance with the Science of Being Well. Therefore, every person can attain perfect health.

The End