of these lectures is rather to ground the student in those general
principles on which _all_ conscious use of the creative power of thought is
based, than to lay down formal rules for specific applications of it. I
will therefore examine the broad principles which appear to be common to
the various methods of mental healing which are in use, each of which
derives its efficacy, not from the peculiarity of the method, but from it
being such a method as allows the higher laws of Nature to come into play.
Now the principle universally laid down by all mental healers, in whatever
various terms they may explain it, is that the basis of all healing is a
change in belief. The sequence from which this results is as follows:--the
subjective mind is the creative faculty within us, and creates whatever the
objective mind impresses upon it; the objective mind, or intellect,
impresses its thought upon it; the thought is the expression of the belief;
hence whatever the subjective mind creates is the reproduction externally
of our beliefs. Accordingly our whole object is to change our beliefs, and
we cannot do this without some solid ground of conviction of the falsity of
our old beliefs and of the truth of our new ones, and this ground we find
in that law of causation which I have endeavoured to explain. The wrong
belief which externalizes as sickness is the belief that some secondary
cause, which is really only a condition, is a primary cause. The knowledge
of the law shows that there is only _one_ primary cause, and this is the
factor which in our own individuality we call subjective or sub-conscious
mind. For this reason I have insisted on the difference between placing an
idea in the sub-conscious mind, that is, on the plane of the absolute and
without reference to time and space, and placing the same idea in the
conscious intellectual mind which only perceives things as related to time
and space. Now the only conception you can have of_ yourself_ in the
absolute, or unconditioned, is as _purely living Spirit_, not hampered by
conditions of any sort, and therefore not subject to illness; and when this
idea is firmly impressed on the sub-conscious mind, it will externalize it.