Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/193

Rh respect. My belief is my knowledge, my knowledge is my practice, and my practice gives the lie to all my former belief. I believed as all others did, but my theory and practice were at variance with each other. I therefore abandoned all my former beliefs, as they came in contact with my practice, and at last followed the dictates of the impressions made on me by my patients. In this way I got rid of the errors of the world and found an answer to all my former opinions. These former opinions embraced all sorts of disease, and ideas that contained error, disease and unhappiness, which led to death. The unravelling of my old opinions gave me knowledge of myself, and happiness the world knew nothing of, and this knowledge I found could be taught to others. It teaches man that he is not in the body, but outside of it, as much as the power is outside of a lever; and the body is to the soul as the steam engine is to the engineer—a medium without knowledge or power, only as it is given by something independent of itself.—Jan. 1860.

Clairvoyance is a state of existence independent of the natural senses or the body, which has no matter nor reason, but is perfect knowledge. Thought-reading is a lower order connected with mind, but superior to the natural man. This state is what would be called spiritualism, and contains the knowledge and reasoning of this world. Clairvoyance is a higher state entirely disconnected with the natural man, but can communicate information through him while in a dreamy or mesmeric state which the company cannot know. This principle is in every man. The understanding of it is eternal life. This eternal life was in Jesus, and was Christ. It has manifested itself in various forms in all ages of the world, whenever Science has been discovered. This ignorance of the world with regard to this higher state of knowledge looks upon the manifestions of the thought-reading state as the highest development of man. This state dies and the clairvoyant state rises from the dead. It is all that is left. It can act on mind. It has an identity, and never knew of its beginning nor ending. It is all the intelligence in man.