Amazon Kindle Self Publishing

CHAPTER 3

Life and Its Organisms

The human body is the abiding place of an energy which renews it when worn, which eliminates waste or poisonous matter, and which repairs the body when broken or injured. This energy we call life. Life is not generated or produced within the body; it produces the body.

The seed which has been kept in the storehouse for years will grow when planted in the soil; it will produce a plant. But the life in the plant is not generated by its growing; it is the life which makes the plant grow.

The performance of function does not cause life; it is life which causes function to be performed. Life is first; function afterward.

It is life which distinguishes organic from inorganic matter, but it is not produced after the organization of matter.

Life is the principle or force which causes organization; it builds organisms.

It is a principle or force inherent in Original Substance; all life is One.

This Life Principle of the All is the Principle of Health in a person, and becomes constructively active whenever a person thinks in a Certain Way. Whoever, therefore, thinks in this Certain Way will surely have perfect health if his external functioning is in conformity with his thought. But the external functioning must conform to the thought; a person cannot hope to be well by thinking health, if he eats, drinks, breathes, and sleeps like a sick person.

The universal Life Principle, then, is the Principle of Health in a human being. It is one with original substance. There is one Original Substance from which all things are made; this substance is alive, and its life is the Principle of Life of the universe. This Substance has created from itself all the forms of organic life by thinking them, or by thinking the motions and functions which produce them.

Original Substance thinks only health, because It knows all truth. There is no truth which is not known in the Formless, which is All, and in all. It not only knows all truth, but it has all power. Its vital power is the source of all the energy there is. A conscious life which knows all truth and which has all power cannot go wrong or perform function imperfectly. Knowing all, it knows too much to go wrong, and so the Formless cannot be diseased or think disease.

A human being is a form of this Original Substance, and has a separate consciousness of his own, but his consciousness is limited, and therefore imperfect. By reason of his limited knowledge a person can and does think wrongly, and so he causes perverted and imperfect functioning in his own body. A human being has not yet known enough not to go wrong. The diseased or imperfect functioning may not instantly result from an imperfect thought, but it is bound to come if the thought becomes habitual.

Any thought continuously held by a person tends to the establishment of the corresponding condition in his body.

Also, the human being has failed to learn how to perform the voluntary functions of his life in a healthy way. He does not know when, what, and how to eat. He knows little about breathing and less about sleep. He does all these things in a wrong way, and under wrong conditions, and this because he has neglected to follow the only sure guide to the knowledge of life. He has tried to live by logic rather than by instinct. He has made living a matter of art, and not of nature. And he has gone wrong.

His only remedy is to begin to go right, and this he can surely do. It is the work of this book to teach the whole truth, so that the person who reads it shall know too much to go wrong.

The thoughts of disease produce the forms of disease. A person must learn to think health; and being Original Substance which takes the form of its thoughts, he will become the form of health and manifest perfect health in all his functioning. The people who were healed by touching the bones of the saint were really healed by thinking in a Certain Way, and not by any power emanating from the relics. There is no healing power in the bones of dead men, whether they be those of saint or sinner.

The people who were healed by the doses of either the allopath or the homeopath were also really healed by thinking in a Certain Way; there is no drug which has within itself the power to heal disease.

The people who have been healed by prayers and affirmations were also healed by thinking in a certain way; there is no curative power in strings of words.

All the sick who have been healed, by whatsoever ‘€œsystem,’€ have thought in a Certain Way; and a little examination will show us what this way is.

The two essentials of the Way are Faith and a Personal Application of the Faith.

The people who touched the saint’s bones had faith, and so great was their faith that in the instant they touched the relics they SEVERED ALL MENTAL RELATIONS WITH DISEASE, AND MENTALLY UNIFIED THEMSELVES WITH HEALTH.

This change of mind was accompanied by an intense devotional FEELING which penetrated to the deepest recesses of their souls, and so aroused the Principle of Health to powerful action. By faith they claimed that they were healed, or appropriated health to themselves, and in full faith they ceased to think of themselves in connection with disease and thought of themselves only in connection with health.

These are the two essentials to thinking in the Certain Way which will make you well: first, claim or appropriate health by faith, and, second, sever all mental relations with disease and enter into mental relations with health.

That which we make ourselves, mentally, we become physically, and that with which we unite ourselves mentally we become unified with physically. If your thought always relates you to disease, then your thought becomes a fixed power to cause disease within you. And if your thought always relates you to health, then your thought becomes a fixed power exerted to keep you well.

In the case of the people who are healed by medicines, the result is obtained in the same way. They have, consciously or unconsciously, sufficient faith in the means used that they sever mental relations with disease and enter into mental relations with health.

Faith may be unconscious. It is possible for us to have a sub-conscious or inbred faith in things like medicine, in which we do not believe to any extent objectively, and this sub-conscious faith may be quite sufficient to quicken the Principle of Health into constructive activity. Many who have little conscious faith are healed in this way, while many others who have great faith in the means are not healed because they do not make the personal application to themselves. Their faith is general, but not specific for their own cases.

In the Science of Being Well we have two main points to consider: first, how to think with faith, and, second, how to so apply the thought to ourselves as to quicken the Principle of Health into constructive activity.

We begin by learning What to Think.

CHAPTER 4

What to Think

In order to sever all mental relations with disease, you must enter into mental relations with health, making the process positive, not negative;€” one of assumption, not of rejection. You are to receive or appropriate health rather than to reject and deny disease. Denying disease accomplishes next to nothing; it does little good to cast out the devil and leave the house vacant, for he will presently return with others worse than himself. When you enter into full and constant mental relations with health, you must of necessity cease all relationship with disease.

The first step in the Science of Being Well, then, is to enter into complete thought connection with health.

The best way to do this is to form a mental image or picture of yourself as being well, imagining a perfectly strong and healthy body, and to spend sufficient time in contemplating this image to make it your habitual thought of yourself.

This is not so easy as it sounds. It necessitates the taking of considerable time for meditation, and not all persons have the imaging faculty well enough developed to form a distinct mental picture of themselves in a perfect or idealized body. It is much easier, as in The Science of Getting Rich, to form a mental image of the things one wants to have, for we have seen these things or their counterparts and know how they look. We can picture them very easily from memory. But if we have never seen ourselves in a perfect body, a clear mental image is hard to form.

It is not necessary or essential, however, to have a clear mental image of yourself as you wish to be; it is only essential to form a CONCEPTION of perfect health, and to relate yourself to it. This Conception of Health is not a mental picture of a particular thing. It is an understanding of health, and carries with it the idea of perfect functioning in every part and organ.

You may TRY to picture yourself as perfect in physique,€” that helps, and you MUST think of yourself as doing everything in the manner of a perfectly strong and healthy person.

You can picture yourself as walking down the street with an erect body and a vigorous stride. You can picture yourself as doing your day’s work easily and with surplus vigor, never tired or weak. You can picture in your mind how all things would be done by a person full of health and power, and you can make yourself the central figure in the picture, doing things in just that way.

Never think of the ways in which weak or sickly people do things; always think of the way strong people do things. Spend your leisure time in thinking about the Strong Way, until you have a good conception of it, and always think of yourself in connection with the Strong Way of Doing Things. That is what I mean by having a Conception of Health.

In order to establish perfect functioning in every part, a person does not have to study anatomy or physiology so that he can form a mental image of each separate organ and address himself to it. He does not have to ‘€œtreat’€ his liver, his kidneys, his stomach, or his heart. There is one Principle of Health in a human being, which has control over all the involuntary functions of his life, and the thought of perfect health, impressed upon this Principle, will reach each part and organ. A person’€™s liver is not controlled by a liver-principle, his stomach by a digestive principle, and so on. The Principle of Health is One.

The less you go into the detailed study of physiology, the better for you. Our knowledge of this science is very imperfect, and leads to imperfect thought.

Imperfect thought causes imperfect functioning, which is disease.

Let me illustrate: Until quite recently, physiology fixed ten days as the extreme limit of a human being’€™s endurance without food. It was considered that only in exceptional cases could a person survive a longer fast. So the impression became universally disseminated that one who was deprived of food must die in from five to ten days. And numbers of people, when cut off from food by shipwreck, accident, or famine, did die within this period.

But the performances of Dr. Tanner, the 40-day faster, and the writings of Dr. Dewey and others on the fasting cure, together with the experiments of numberless people who have fasted from 40 to 60 days, have shown that a human’€™s ability to live without food is vastly greater than had been supposed. Any person, properly educated, can fast from 20 to 40 days with little loss in weight, and often with no apparent loss of strength at all.

The people who starved to death in ten days or less did so because they believed that death was inevitable. An erroneous physiology had given them a wrong thought about themselves. When a person is deprived of food he will die in from 10 to 50 days, according to the way he has been taught, or, in other words, according to the way he thinks about it. So you see that an erroneous physiology can work very mischievous results.

No Science of Being Well can be founded on current physiology; it is not sufficiently exact in its knowledge. With all its pretensions, comparatively little is really known as to the interior workings and processes of the body. It is not known just how food is digested. It is not known just what part food plays, if any, in the generation of force. It is not known exactly what the liver, spleen, and pancreas are for, or what part their secretions play in the chemistry of assimilation. On all these and most other points we theorize, but we do not really know.

When a person begins to study physiology, he enters the domain of theory and disputation. He comes among conflicting opinions, and he is bound to form mistaken ideas concerning himself. These mistaken ideas lead to the thinking of wrong thoughts, and this leads to perverted functioning and disease.

All that the most perfect knowledge of physiology could do for a person would be to enable him to think only thoughts of perfect health, and to eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in a perfectly healthy way. And this, as we shall show, he can do without studying physiology at all.

This, for the most part, is true of all hygiene. There are certain fundamental propositions which we should know, and these will be explained in later chapters, but aside from these propositions, ignore physiology and hygiene. They tend to fill your mind with thoughts of imperfect conditions, and these thoughts will produce the imperfect conditions in your own body. You cannot study any ‘€œscience’ which recognizes disease, if you are to think nothing but health.

Drop all investigation as to your present condition, its causes, or possible results, and set yourself to the work of forming a conception of health.

Think about health and the possibilities of health, of the work that may be done and the pleasures that may be enjoyed in a condition of perfect health. Then make this conception your guide in thinking of yourself. Refuse to entertain for an instant any thought of yourself which is not in harmony with it. When any idea of disease or imperfect functioning enters your mind, cast it out instantly by calling up a thought which is in harmony with the Conception of Health.

Think of yourself at all times as realizing this conception, as being a strong and perfectly healthy personage, and do not harbor a contrary thought.

KNOW that as you think of yourself in unity with this conception, the Original Substance which permeates and fills the tissues of your body is taking form according to the thought, and know that this Intelligent Substance or mind stuff will cause function to be performed in such a way that your body will be rebuilt with perfectly healthy cells.

The Intelligent Substance, from which all things are made, permeates and penetrates all things; and so it is in and through your body. It moves according to its thoughts, and so if you hold only the thoughts of perfectly healthy function, it will cause the movements of perfectly healthy function within you.

Hold with persistence to the thought of perfect health in relation to yourself. Do not permit yourself to think in any other way. Hold this thought with perfect faith that it is the fact, the truth. It is the truth so far as your mental body is concerned.

You have a mind-body and a physical body. The mind-body takes form just as you think of yourself, and any thought which you hold continuously is made visible by the transformation of the physical body into its image. Implanting the thought of perfect functioning in the mind-body will, in due time, cause perfect functioning in the physical body.

The transformation of the physical body into the image of the ideal held by the mind-body is not accomplished instantaneously — we cannot transfigure our physical bodies at will as Jesus did. In the creation and recreation of forms, Substance moves along the fixed lines of growth it has established, and the impression upon it of the health thought causes the healthy body to be built cell by cell. Holding only thoughts of perfect health will ultimately cause perfect functioning, and perfect functioning will in due time produce a perfectly healthy body.

It may be as well to condense this chapter into a syllabus:

Your physical body is permeated and filled with an Intelligent Substance, which forms a body of mind-stuff. This mind-stuff controls the functioning of your physical body. A thought of disease or of imperfect function, impressed upon the mind-stuff, causes disease or imperfect functioning in the physical body.

If you are diseased, it is because wrong thoughts have made impressions on this mind-stuff. These may have been either your own thoughts or those of your parents:  we begin life with many sub-conscious impressions, both right and wrong. But the natural tendency of all mind is toward health, and if no thoughts are held in the conscious mind save those of health, all internal functioning will come to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner.

The Power of Nature within you is sufficient to overcome all hereditary impressions, and if you will learn to control your thoughts, so that you shall think only those of health, and if you will perform the voluntary functions of life in a perfectly healthy way, you can certainly be well.

CHAPTER 5

Faith

The Principle of Health is moved by Faith. Nothing else can call it into action, and only faith can enable you to relate yourself to health, and sever your relation with disease, in your thoughts.

You will continue to think of disease unless you have faith in health. If you do not have faith, you will doubt. If you doubt, you will fear. And if you fear, you will relate yourself in mind to that which you fear.

If you fear disease, you will think of yourself in connection with disease, and that will produce within yourself the form and motions of disease. Just as Original Substance creates from itself the forms of its thoughts, so your mind-body, which is original substance, takes the form and motion of whatever you think about. If you fear disease, dread disease, have doubts about your safety from disease, or if you even contemplate disease, you will connect yourself with it and create its forms and motions within you.

Let me enlarge somewhat upon this point. The potency, or creative power, of a thought is given to it by the faith that is in it.

Thoughts which contain no faith create no forms.

The Formless Substance, which knows all truth and therefore thinks only truth, has perfect faith in every thought, because it thinks only truth, and so all its thoughts create.

But if you will imagine a thought in Formless Substance in which there was no faith, you will see that such a thought could not cause the Substance to move or take form.

Keep in mind the fact that only those thoughts which are conceived in faith have creative energy. Only those thoughts which have faith with them are able to change function, or to quicken the Principle of Health into activity.

If you do not have faith in health, you will certainly have faith in disease. If you do not have faith in health, it will do you no good to think about health, for your thoughts will have no potency, and will cause no change for the better in your conditions.

If you do not have faith in health, I repeat, you will have faith in disease. And if, under such conditions, you think about health for ten hours a day and think about disease for only a few minutes, the disease thought will control your condition because it will have the potency of faith, while the health thought will not. Your mind-body will take on the form and motions of disease and retain them, because your health thought will not have sufficient dynamic force to change form or motion.

In order to practice the Science of Being Well, you must have complete faith in health.

Faith begins in belief; and we now come to the question:  What must you believe in order to have faith in health?

You must believe that there is more health-power than disease-power in both yourself and your environment; and you cannot help believing this if you consider the facts. These are the facts:

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.

The thought of a form, in this Substance, produces the form; the thought of a motion institutes the motion. In relation to the human being, the thoughts of Original Substance are always of perfect health and perfect functioning. This Substance, within and without a human being, always exerts its power toward health.

A person is a thinking center, capable of original thought. He has a mind-body of Original Substance permeating a physical body, and the functioning of his physical body is determined by the FAITH of his mind-body. If a person thinks with faith of the functioning of health, he will cause his internal functions to be performed in a healthy manner, provided that he performs the external functions in a corresponding manner. But if a person thinks, with faith, of disease, or of the power of disease, he will cause his internal functioning to be the functioning of disease.

The Original Intelligent Substance is in a human being, moving toward health, and it is pressing upon him from every side. The human being lives, moves, and has his being in a limitless ocean of health-power, and he uses this power according to his faith. If he appropriates it and applies it to himself it is all his, and if he unifies himself with it by unquestioning faith, he cannot fail to attain health, for the power of this Substance is all the power there is.

A belief in the above statements is a foundation for faith in health. If you believe them, you believe that health is the natural state of humanity, and that a human being lives in the midst of Universal Health that all the power of nature makes for health, and that health is possible to all, and can surely be attained by all.

You will believe that the power of health in the universe is 10,000 times greater than that of disease; in fact, that disease has no power whatever, being only the result of perverted thought and faith. And if you believe that health is possible to you, and that it may surely be attained by you, and that you know exactly what to do in order to attain it, you will have faith in health. You will have this faith and knowledge if you read this book through with care and determine to believe in and practice its teachings.

It is not merely the possession of faith, but the personal application of faith which works healing. You must claim health in the beginning, and form a conception of health, and, as far as may be, of yourself as a perfectly healthy person. And then, by faith, you must claim that you ARE REALIZING this conception.

Do not assert with faith that you are going to get well; assert with faith that you ARE well. Having faith in health, and applying it to yourself, means having faith that you are healthy. And the first step in this is to claim that it is the truth.

Mentally take the attitude of being well, and do not say anything or do anything which contradicts this attitude. Never speak a word or assume a physical attitude which does not harmonize with the claim: €œI am perfectly well.

When you walk, go with a brisk step, and with your chest thrown out and your head held up. Watch that at all times your physical actions and attitudes are those of a healthy person.

When you find that you have relapsed into the attitude of weakness or disease, change instantly: straighten up, and think of health and power. Refuse to consider yourself as other than a perfectly healthy person.

One great aid, perhaps the greatest aid, in applying your faith you will find in the exercise of gratitude.

Whenever you think of yourself, or of your advancing condition, give thanks to the Great Intelligent Substance for the perfect health you are enjoying.

Remember that there is a continual inflow of life from the Supreme, which is received by all created things according to their forms, and by every person according to his faith. Health from God is continually being urged upon you, and when you think of this, lift up your mind reverently, and give thanks that you have been led to the Truth and into perfect health of mind and body. Be, all the time, in a grateful frame of mind, and let gratitude be evident in your speech. Gratitude will help you to own and control your own field of thought.

Whenever the thought of disease is presented to you, instantly claim health, and thank God for the perfect health you have. Do this so that there shall be no room in your mind for a thought of ill. Every thought connected in any way with ill health is unwelcome, and you can close the door of your mind in its face by asserting that you are well, and by reverently thanking God that it is so. Soon the old thoughts will return no more.

Gratitude has a twofold effect: it strengthens your own faith, and it brings you into close and harmonious relations with the Supreme. You believe that there is one Intelligent Substance from which all life and all power come, you believe that you receive your own life from this substance, and you relate yourself closely to It by feeling continuous gratitude.

It is easy to see that the more closely you relate yourself to the Source of Life the more readily you may receive life from it. And it is easy also to see that your relation to It is a matter of mental attitude.

We cannot come into physical relationship with God, for God is mind-stuff and we also are mind-stuff. Our relation with God must therefore be a mind relation. It is plain, then, that the person who feels deep and hearty gratitude will live in closer touch with God than the person who never looks up to God in thankfulness.

The ungrateful or unthankful mind really denies that it receives at all, and so cuts its connection with the Supreme. The grateful mind is always looking toward the Supreme, is always open to receive from it, and it will receive continually.

The Principle of Health in a human being receives its vital power from the Principle of Life in the universe, and a person relates himself to the Principle of Life by faith in health, and by gratitude for the health he receives.

A person may cultivate both faith and gratitude by the proper use of his will.

CHAPTER 6

Use of the Will

In the practice of the Science of Being Well, the will is not used to compel yourself to go when you are not really able to go or to do things when you are not physically strong enough to do them. You do not direct your will upon your physical body or try to compel the proper performance of internal function by will power.

You direct the will upon the mind, and use it in determining what you shall believe, what you shall think, and to what you shall give your attention.

The will should never be used upon any person or thing external to you, and it should never be used upon your own body. The sole legitimate use of the will is in determining to what you shall give your attention and what you shall think about the things to which your attention is given.

All belief begins in the will to believe.

You cannot always and instantly believe what you will to believe; but you can always will to believe what you want to believe. You want to believe truth about health, and you can will to do so. The statements you have been reading in this book are the truth about health, and you can will to believe them. This must be your first step toward getting well.

These are the statements you must will to believe:

That there is a Thinking Substance from which all things are made, and that a human being receives the Principle of Health, which is his life, from this Substance.

That a human being himself is Thinking Substance;€” a mind-body permeating a physical body, and that as a person’€™s thoughts are, so will the functioning of his physical body be.

That if a person will think only thoughts of perfect health, he must and will cause the internal and involuntary functioning of his body to be the functioning of health, provided that his external and voluntary functioning and attitude are in accordance with his thoughts.

When you will to believe these statements, you must also begin to act upon them. You cannot long retain a belief unless you act upon it, you cannot increase a belief until it becomes faith unless you act upon it, and you certainly cannot expect to reap benefits in any way from a belief so long as you act as if the opposite were true.

You cannot long have faith in health if you continue to act like a sick person. If you continue to act like a sick person, you cannot help continuing to think of yourself as a sick person. And if you continue to think of yourself as a sick person, you will continue to be a sick person.

The first step toward acting externally like a well person is to begin to act internally like a well person. Form your conception of perfect health, and get into the way of thinking about perfect health until it begins to have a definite meaning to you. Picture yourself as doing the things a strong and healthy person would do, and have faith that you can and will do those things in that way. Continue this until you have a vivid CONCEPTION of health, and what it means to you.

When I speak in this book of a conception of health, I mean a conception that carries with it the idea of the way a healthy person looks and does things. Think of yourself in connection with health until you form a conception of how you would live, appear, act, and do things as a perfectly healthy person. Think about yourself in connection with health until you conceive of yourself, in imagination, as always doing everything in the manner of a well person — until the thought of health conveys the idea of what health means to you. As I have said in a former chapter, you may not be able to form a clear mental image of yourself in perfect health, but you can form a conception of yourself as acting like a healthy person.

Form this conception, and then think only thoughts of perfect health in relation to yourself, and, so far as may be possible, in relation to others. When a thought of sickness or disease is presented to you, reject it. Do not let it get into your mind. Do not entertain or consider it at all. Meet it by thinking health, by thinking that you are well, and by being sincerely grateful for the health you are receiving.

Whenever suggestions of disease are coming thick and fast upon you, and you are in a ‘tight place,’€ fall back upon the exercise of gratitude. Connect yourself with the Supreme, give thanks to God for the perfect health God gives you, and you will soon find yourself able to control your thoughts, and to think what you want to think. In times of doubt, trial, and temptation, the exercise of gratitude is always a sheet anchor which will prevent you from being swept away.

Remember that the great essential thing is to SEVER ALL MENTAL RELATIONS WITH DISEASE, AND TO ENTER INTO FULL MENTAL RELATIONSHIP WITH HEALTH. This is the KEY to all mental healing; it is the whole thing.

Here we see the secret of the great success of Christian Science. More than any other formulated system of practice, it insists that its converts shall sever relations with disease, and relate themselves fully with health. The healing power of Christian Science is not in its theological formulae nor in its denial of matter, but in the fact that it induces the sick to ignore disease as an unreal thing and accept health by faith as a reality. Its failures are made because its practitioners, while thinking in the Certain Way, do not eat, drink, breathe, and sleep in the same way.

While there is no healing power in the repetition of strings of words, yet it is a very convenient thing to have the central thoughts so formulated that you can repeat them readily, and so that you can use them as affirmations whenever you are surrounded by an environment which gives you adverse suggestions. When those around you begin to talk of sickness and death, close your ears and mentally assert something like the following:

There is One Substance, and I am that Substance.

That Substance is eternal, and it is Life; I am that Substance, and I am Eternal Life.

That Substance knows no disease; I am that Substance, and I am Health.

Exercise your will power in choosing only those thoughts which are thoughts of health, and arrange your environment so that it shall suggest thoughts of health. Do not have about you books, pictures, or other things which suggest death, disease, deformity, weakness, or age. Have only those which convey the ideas of health, power, joy, vitality, and youth. When you are confronted with a book, or anything else which suggests disease, do not give it your attention.

Think of your conception of health, and your gratitude, and affirm as above. Use your will power to fix your attention upon thoughts of health. In a future chapter I shall touch upon this point again. What I wish to make plain here is that you must think only health, recognize only health, and give your attention only to health, and that you must control thought, recognition, and attention by the use of your will.

Do not try to use your will to compel the healthy performance of function within you. The Principle of Health will attend to that if you give your attention only to thoughts of health.

Do not try to exert your will upon the Formless to compel It to give you more vitality or power. It is already placing all the power there is at your service.

You do not have to use your will to conquer adverse conditions, or to subdue unfriendly forces. There are no unfriendly forces; there is only One Force, and that force is friendly to you. It is a force which makes for health.

Everything in the universe wants you to be well. You have absolutely nothing to overcome but your own habit of thinking in a certain way about disease, and you can do this only by forming a habit of thinking in another Certain Way about health.

A person can cause all the internal functions of his body to be performed in a perfectly healthy manner by continuously thinking in a Certain Way and by performing the external functions in a certain way. He can think in this Certain Way by controlling his attention, and he can control his attention by the use of his will.

He can decide what things he will think about.

CHAPTER 7

Health from God

I will give a chapter here to explain how a human being may receive health from the Supreme. By the Supreme I mean the Thinking Substance from which all things are made, and which is in all and through all, seeking more complete expression and fuller life. This Intelligent Substance, in a perfectly fluid state, permeates and penetrates all things, and is in touch with all minds. It is the source of all energy and power, and constitutes the ‘€œinflow’€ of life, vitalizing all things. It is working to one definite end and for the fulfillment of one purpose, and that purpose is the advancement of life toward the complete expression of Mind. When a person harmonizes himself with this Intelligence, it can and will give him health and wisdom. When a person holds steadily to the purpose to live more abundantly, he comes into harmony with this Supreme Intelligence.

The purpose of the Supreme Intelligence is the most Abundant Life for all. The purpose of this Supreme Intelligence for you is that you should live more abundantly. If, then, your own purpose is to live more abundantly, you are unified with the Supreme — you are working with It, and it must work with you.

But as the Supreme Intelligence is in all, if you harmonize with it you must harmonize with all, and you must desire more abundant life for all as well as for yourself. Two great benefits come to you from being in harmony with the Supreme Intelligence.

First, you will receive wisdom.

By wisdom I do not mean knowledge of facts so much as ability to perceive and understand facts, and to judge soundly and act rightly in all matters relating to life. Wisdom is the power to perceive truth, and the ability to make the best use of the knowledge of truth. It is the power to perceive at once the best end to aim at, and the means best adapted to attain that end.

With wisdom comes poise, and the power to think rightly, to control and guide your thoughts, and to avoid the difficulties which come from wrong thinking. With wisdom you will be able to select the right courses for your particular needs, and to so govern yourself in all ways as to secure the best results. You will know how to do what you want to do. You can readily see that wisdom must be an essential attribute of the Supreme Intelligence, since That which knows all truth must be wise, and you can also see that just in proportion as you harmonize and unify your mind with that Intelligence you will have wisdom.

But I repeat that since this Intelligence is All, and in all, you can enter into Its wisdom only by harmonizing with all. If there is anything in your desires or your purpose which will bring oppression to any, or work injustice to, or cause lack of life for any, you cannot receive wisdom from the Supreme. Furthermore, your purpose for your own self must be the best.

A person can live in three general ways: for the gratification of his body, for that of his intellect, or for that of his soul.

The first is accomplished by satisfying the desires for food, drink, and those other things which give enjoyable physical sensations. The second is accomplished by doing those things which cause pleasant mental sensations, such as gratifying the desire for knowledge or those for fine clothing, fame, power, and so on. The third is accomplished by giving way to the instincts of unselfish love and altruism.

A person lives most wisely and completely when he functions most perfectly along all of these lines, without excess in any of them. The person who lives swinishly, for the body alone, is unwise and out of harmony with God. That person who lives solely for the cold enjoyments of the intellect, though he be absolutely moral, is unwise and out of harmony with God. And the person who lives wholly for the practice of altruism, and who throws himself away for others, is as unwise and as far from harmony with God as those who go to excess in other ways.

To come into full harmony with the Supreme, you must purpose to LIVE;€” to live to the utmost of your capabilities in body, mind, and soul. This must mean the full exercise of function in all the different ways, but without excess, for excess in one causes deficiency in the others. Behind your desire for health is your own desire for more abundant life, and behind that is the desire of the Formless Intelligence to live more fully in you.

So, as you advance toward perfect health, hold steadily to the purpose to attain complete life, physical, mental, and spiritual; to advance in all ways, and in every way to live more. If you hold this purpose you will be given wisdom. €œHe that willeth to do the will of the Father shall KNOW, said Jesus. Wisdom is the most desirable gift that can come to a person, for it makes him rightly self-governing.

But wisdom is not all you may receive from the Supreme Intelligence. You may receive physical energy, vitality, life force. The energy of the Formless Substance is unlimited, and permeates everything. You are already receiving or appropriating to yourself this energy in an automatic and instinctive way, but you can do so to a far greater degree if you set about it intelligently. The measure of a person’€™s strength is not what God is willing to give him, but what he, himself, has the will and the intelligence to appropriate to himself. God gives you all there is. Your only question is how much to take of the unlimited supply.

Professor James* has pointed out that there is apparently no limit to the powers of the human being, and this is simply because the human being’s power comes from the inexhaustible reservoir of the Supreme. The runner who has reached the stage of exhaustion, when his physical power seems entirely gone, by running on in a Certain Way may receive his ‘€œsecond wind.’€ His strength is renewed in a seemingly miraculous fashion, and he can go on indefinitely. And by continuing in the Certain Way, he may receive a third, fourth, and fifth ‘€œwind.’ We do not know where the limit is, or how far it may be possible to extend it.

The conditions are that the runner must have absolute faith that the strength will come, that he must think steadily of strength and have perfect confidence that he has it, and that he must continue to run on. If he admits a doubt into his mind, he falls exhausted, and if he stops running to wait for the accession of strength, it will never come.

His faith in strength, his faith that he can keep on running, his unwavering purpose to keep on running, and his action in keeping on seem to connect him to the source of energy in such a way as to bring him a new supply.

In a very similar manner, the sick person who has unquestioning faith in health, whose purpose brings him into harmony with the source, and who performs the voluntary functions of life in a certain way, will receive vital energy sufficient for all his needs, and for the healing of all his diseases.

God, who seeks to live and express himself fully in humanity, delights to give human beings all that is needed for the most abundant life. Action and reaction are equal, and when you desire to live more, if you are in mental harmony with the Supreme, the forces which make for life begin to concentrate about you and upon you. The One Life begins to move toward you, and your environment becomes surcharged with it. Then, if you appropriate it by faith, it is yours.

Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Your Father doesn’t give his spirit by measure; he delights to give good gifts to you.

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.