"There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul."
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
Consider how thought and emotion influence our body functions, and health. The relationship is reciprocal, where the former influence the latter, and vice-versa. The evidence of these interactions abound to the extent that few will deny their regular occurrence; yet, our health care system has drifted away from an experience that is as old as man’s earliest awareness. While it predated Paracelsus (1493 – 1541), we’ll use his hermetic ideas because he was among the first to collect and share them in a systematic way.
Many changes have taken place since Paracelsus’ hermetical idea of harmony. Because everything in the universe was interrelated, substances beneficial to man’s health could be found in herbs, minerals and various alchemical combinations. Paracelsus, like our own Native Americans – notably the Navajo – viewed the universe as one coherent (logical) organism infused by a uniting life-giving spirit, and this in its entirety, man included, was 'God'. These views put Paracelsus at odds with the Church, for who there had to be a difference between the Creator and the created – cause and effect.
In Paracelsus’ philosophy we find a rare melding of spirituality and science. Over the centuries, science has overshadowed other philosophical thought. We owe science the systematic method of study known as the scientific method; bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. Unfortunately, flawed thinking and the baser human emotions bog down everything, as religion did over the centuries – and science has not always been spared.
But, rather than engage in highly contested and often misinterpreted philosophy – let’s return to the influence of thought and emotion on body functions and on how this knowledge and focus may return us to an often neglected path.
A royal sidetrack was experienced in France during the reign of Louis XVI, just before our own war of independence. It involved, among others, our favorite scientist and diplomat of the time, Benjamin Franklin, who, as US Ambassador to France, was invited to form part of a group of scientists investigating the phenomenon called animal magnetism. He joined others to rule against its validity to science and to health.
Louis XVI and the French scientists in his investigating group perished, guillotined during the French Revolution. German physician Franz Mesmer, who discovered the effect of natural forces that were later known as mesmerism, survived. It is now called psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), a term coined by Candace Pert and Michael Ruff.
How does it work?
Many ways has been discovered throughout history, mainly by "priests."
The so-called "new discoveries" of modern science are often only rediscoveries of secrets well known to the priests and philosophers of ancient pagandom. Man's inhumanity to man has resulted in the loss of records and formulae which, had they been preserved, would have solved many of the greatest problems of this civilization. With sword and firebrand, races obliterate the records of their predecessors, and then inevitably meet with an untimely fate for need of the very wisdom they have destroyed.
What ways are there to access it?
