co-operation that the mental healer usually makes a point of instructing
the patient in the broad principles of Mental Science, if he is not already
acquainted with them. But this is not always advisable or possible.
Sometimes the statement of principles opposed to existing prejudices
arouses opposition, and any active antagonism on the patient's part must
tend to intensify the barrier of conscious personality which it is the
healer's first object to remove. In these cases nothing is so effective as
_absent treatment_. If the student has grasped all that has been said on
the subject of spirit and matter, he will see that in mental treatment time
and space count for nothing, because the whole action takes place on a
plane where these conditions do not obtain; and it is therefore quite
immaterial whether the patient be in the immediate presence of the healer
or in a distant country. Under these circumstances it is found by
experience that one of the most effectual modes of mental healing is by
treatment during sleep, because then the patient's whole system is
naturally in a state of relaxation which prevents him offering any
conscious opposition to the treatment. And by the same rule the healer also
is able to treat even more effectively during his own sleep than while
waking. Before going to sleep he firmly impresses on his subjective mind
that it is to convey curative suggestion to the subjective mind of the
patient, and then, by the general principles of the relation between
subjective and objective mind this suggestion is carried out during all the
hours that the conscious individuality is wrapped in repose. This method is
applicable to young children to whom the principles of the science cannot
be explained; and also to persons at a distance: and indeed the only
advantage gained by the personal meeting of the patient and healer is in
the instruction that can be orally given, or when the patient is at that
early stage of knowledge where the healer's visible presence conveys the
suggestion that something is then being done which could not be done in his
absence; otherwise the presence or absence of the patient are matters