Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/250

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246
THE WORLD OF THE SENSES

in Him, and He taught it. He says : “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.” The people believed their life to be in themselves. But Jesus knew their lives were in God, for if they lost their opinions and found this Truth, then they had lost their life and found it.

I will now take my own practice to explain what life is according to Jesus. I said if two persons were sitting together, and each felt a pain each would call it his own. Now this pain is life, for it contains our senses, and this life is in matter, for the pain is in our mind, and our mind, senses, and life are all the same according to the world's wisdom. I know I can take a person's feelings, and this knowledge to me is truth, and to know it is life, and this knowledge the patient does not possess. He knows he has a pain and this to him is a truth, but this life is in his belief, and so his life is liable to be lost by his losing his mind. My life is in my wisdom and my wisdom is not matter. So that to know this is a truth outside of my patient's belief, and this truth contains my life. To get his senses out of his matter into this truth is to give him eternal life. I want to give him eternal life to save him from the sufferings occasioned by his belief that he may lose his life by disease of the heart. My wisdom acting is in matter but it is no part of it, so what to him is disease is to me spiritual matter that can be changed. His ignorance keeps his senses in fear of death, and all his life subject to bondage through his belief.

I commence by describing his feelings. These he admits; but how I can tell them is to him a mystery. This I know for I see him in his error, yet he cannot see me in his wisdom, for it is in its own prison. It wants me to explain how I can see it, and how I know how it feels. I will suppose you, the reader, to be the patient, and that you acknowledge that I tell your feelings and what you think is your disease. All this I get from you without your knowledge, therefore you do not know how I do it. So I will inform you. Ideas have life. A belief has life or matter, for it can be changed. Now all the aforesaid make up the natural man, and all this can be changed. As I am trying to convince you how I take your feelings I must use such illustrations as you understand, for my life is in my words, and if my words cannot destroy your life or matter, then I cannot give you my life or wisdom.