again enjoyed her food as she had expected to when she was the slave of matter — thinking of the flesh-pots of Egypt, feeling the hunger of childhood, and undisciplined by self-denial.
The new-born understanding — that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of mortal mind, could make her suffer — brought with it another lesson, namely, that gustatory pleasure is a sensuous illusion, an illusion that diminishes as we understand our spiritual being and ascend the ladder of Life.
This woman learned that food neither strengthens nor weakens the body, — that mind alone does this. True, mortal mind has its material methods of doing it; one of which is to say that proper food supplies nutriment and strength to the human system. She learned also that mortal mind makes a mortal and sickly body, because it governs it with mortal opinions.
Food had less power to help or to hurt her, when availing herself of the fact that Mind governs man, and she had less faith in the so-called pleasures or pains of matter. Taking less thought about what she should eat or drink — consulting the stomach less, and God more, about the economy of living — she recovered strength and flesh rapidly. For many years she had lived, as was believed, only by the strictest adherence to hygiene and the use of drugs, continuing ill all the time. Now she dropped drugs and rules, and was well.
She learned that a dyspeptic was very far from the image and likeness of God, — having “dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field,” — when eating a bit of animal flesh could overpower her. She finally concluded that God never made
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