Robert Collier - The Greatest Works of Robert Collier

Everyone admits that the mind influences the body somewhat, for everyone has seen others grow pale with fear, or red with anger. Everyone has felt the stopping of the heartbeats at some sudden fright, the quickened breathing and the thumping of the heart caused by excitement. These and a hundred other evidences of the influence of mind over matter are common to all of us, and everyone will admit them.

But everyone does not know that our whole bodies seem to be nothing more or less than the outward expression of our thought. We sit in a draught, and education teaches us we should have a cold or fever: So we have a cold or fever. We eat something which we have been told is indigestible, and immediately we are assailed with pains. We see another yawn, and our impulse is to follow suit. In the same way, when we hear of sickness round about us, the fear of it visualizes it in our own minds and we, too, have it. The fear of these things seems to bring them about, the mental suggestion sent through to our subconscious minds. We have been educated in a medical age to think that most diseases are infectious or contagious. So the mere sight of a diseased person makes most of us withdraw into ourselves like a turtle within his shell. We fear we shall catch it—when one of the great dangers of disease is that very fear of it.

For years it has been accepted as an acknowledged fact that anyone trapped in a mine or other air-tight compartment would presently die of carbon dioxide poisoning—lack of oxygen. Now comes Houdini to prove that death for lack of oxygen is not necessary at all!

"Fear, and not poisoning by carbon dioxide, causes the death of miners and others trapped in air-tight compartments," in the opinion of Houdini, according to an Associated Press despatch of August 6, 1926.

Houdini had himself sunk in a sealed coffin in a swimming pool, without chance for a breath of outside air to reach him, and stayed there for an hour and a half, although, according to all previous scientific belief, he should have been dead at the end of four minutes. Yet Dr. W. J. McConnell of the United States Department of Mines, who examined Houdini before and after the experiment, reported no marked physical reactions from the test, and Houdini himself said he felt only a slight dizziness when he was released from the coffin!

"Anyone can do it," said Houdini. "The important thing is, to believe that you are safe ."

The Chinese have a saying that when the plague comes, 5,000 people may die of the plague, but 50,000 will die of the fear of it.

Did you ever hurt a limb, or a finger, so that you thought you couldn't move it? And then, under the stress of some sudden emotion, forget all about the hurt and presently wake to find yourself using the finger or the limb just as readily and as painlessly as though there had never been anything wrong with it?

I have before me a clipping from the New York Times of March 29, 1925, telling of a cripple who had been paralyzed for six years, but under the spur of sudden fear, he ran up a stairway unaided, without crutch or cane. He had been treated in a number of hospitals, but because of an injury to his spine received in an auto accident, had been unable to walk without crutches or canes for six years. The patient in the bed next his own suddenly went crazy and attacked him, and in his fear this paralytic leaped from his bed and ran up a flight of stairs. According to the report, the sudden fright cured him!

Take the miracles of Lourdes, or of St. Anne of Beaupre, or of any of the dozens of shrines that dot the world. What is it that effects the cures? Two things— Desire and Faith . "What wouldst thou that I should do unto thee?" the Saviour asked the blind man who kept following and crying out to him. "Lord that I should receive my sight." And again of the cripple at the Pool of Bethesda Jesus asked—"Wouldst thou be made whole?"

Sounds like foolish questioning, doesn't it? But you remember the story of the famous Saint of Italy, who traveled from town to town healing the lame, the halt, and the blind. A pilgrim hastening to a town where the Saint was expected, met two lame beggars hurrying away. He asked them the reason for their haste, to be told, to his astonishment, it was because the Saint was coming to town. As they put it—"He will surely heal us, and where will our livelihood be then?"

So it is with many people today—not beggars, mind you—but people in every walk of life. They have become so wedded to their ailments, they "enjoy poor health" so thoroughly, that they are secretly a bit proud of it. Take away their complaints and they would be lost without them.

You must have the sincere desire first . That is prayer. Then the faith —the kind of faith that Jesus meant when he said—"Whatsoever ye ask for when ye pray, believe that ye receive it, and ye shall have it ." Mind you, not "believe ye are going to receive it." "Believe that ye receive it"— now —this very minute. Know that the REAL you, the image of you held in Universal Mind—in short, the Truth concerning every organ in your body—is perfect. " Know the Truth ." Believe that you HAVE this perfect image. On the day that you can truly believe this—carry this sincere conviction to your subconscious mind—on that day you WILL BE perfect.

This is the faith that Jesus meant when he said—"Thy faith hath made thee whole." This is the faith that is responsible for the miracles of Lourdes, for miraculous healings everywhere. It matters not whether you be Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile. Desire and faith such as these will heal you.

A month or two ago I read in the newspapers of a farmer, blind for two years, who went out in the field and prayed "that he should receive his sight." At the end of the second day, his sight was completely restored. He was a Protestant. He went to no shrine—just out under the sky and prayed to God.

Today I have before me a clipping from the New York Sun of February 23, 1926, telling of Patrolman Dennis O’Brien of the Jersey City police force, who at the end of a Novena to Our Lady of Help at the Monastery of St. Michael's in Union City, recovered the use of his legs, which had been paralyzed since the time, two years before, when a bullet had entered the base of his spine, severing the cord of motor and sensory nerves. He was a Catholic.

Then here is one from the New York Sun of June 26, 1926, telling how Miss Elsie Meyer of the Bronx, New York, was healed overnight of a tumorous growth that had troubled her for months:

"I realized last fall that there was an unusual growth on my body," she said. "It might have resulted from the strain of lifting a trunk. I wanted to know what it was, and I first went to a doctor, who informed me it was a tumorous growth and likely to become serious.

"But I would not be frightened and refused to receive any medical remedies in the way of cure. I have been a believer in faith healing and member of the Unity Society, a branch of the New Thought organization, for a number of years, so I went to a New Thought practitioner. While this seemed to help me, the tumorous growth remained. I guess my faith wasn't strong enough at the time. That was last fall.

"I came to the congress with the same growth, apparently unaffected by any attempts to cure it. But after attending the healing meeting at the congress yesterday I left with firm faith that I would get the healing I had asked for. When I retired I noticed the tumor was still on my body, but when I awoke this morning it had disappeared."

The chronicles of every religion are full of just such miracles. And the reason for them is the same in every case — prayer and faith . Given these, no healing is impossible.