V - The Future is Now

An earlier article in this series posed the wonderment of What Might Have Been in the political world. It soon moved to wondering about possibilities in the world of health and healing.

The past is gone, but we may yet learn from it for the betterment of all. When we do not, as often is the case, we pay the price. As Santayana said, “Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We all know that story in surveying personal moments and passages in our own lives. We can find larger examples in the political, military, and international arenas. 

It should be evident, though often unfortunately not, that we are only beginning to make real discoveries in science and medicine. This despite the fact that some researchers and writers believe all the great discoveries have been made. Sometimes, it seems that that might be true. What major contributions have our universities brought forth in recent history? 

Often we are re-learning things long known in centuries and millennia past. Columbus re-discovered the continent of America. Galileo's pronouncements on the Earth circling the Sun only repeated the teachings of ancient Greeks, Persians, and Indians. Einstein, as bright as he was, parroted what great philosophers of old dictated on the energies which stand within all of creation.

What may be even more important for health and well-being are the simple, long-held facts that human beings are ultimately energy in motion. How little have the learnings of the century past in physics penetrated into modern medicine.

Human illnesses appear more often than not when that energy-in-motion is impeded. Then, your physician tries to treat your discomfort with his pills and your surgeon which his scalpel. But, he or she is really acting like a carpenter trying to manipulate a tack with a sledge hammer. 

It can be done, but often ends up in a mess. Thus explaining in part the reasons for so many side-effects, unnecessary procedures, and waste in medicine. When something goes wrong, the patient pays for the next try physically and financially. 

Dis-ease and diseases persists despite proclaimed technological advances. Their names have changed. So have the way they are approached and attacked (treated). People live longer, but often not so well considering all the pills they take and operations to which they are subjected. 

The human race is yet laden with so many inexplicable illnesses. You name a disease and its cause is likely unknown and its treatment less than effective.

Such brings us back to olden times when real healers walked the planet. Unfortunately, they were frequently and basely misunderstood. Then mistreated, and often worse.

I write of the new/old approaches to healing in the likes of Jesus and Apollonius, Paracelsus and Mesmer. All four healed far and wide without labeling of diseases or producing protocols for healing. No diagnoses, no radical therapy. No pills and no knives. And, no ill effects. They simply offered the gift of health much like we are used to offer gifts of goods or money to others who are in need.

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathy - a much maligned methodology, was on the right trail when he said, “There are no diseases, only sick people.”

Anton Mesmer put it a bit differently, “There is only one disease and only one cure.”

Those two quotes, especially the latter, might boggle your mind for a while as they have many scholars and skeptics over the ages. Why then do we need physicians, and so many specialties?

In coming posts, we will explore the works of some of the great healers of the ages - most especially Anton Mesmer. The works that were and might have changed the world to a large degree. 

Yet, they may still do so when re-discovered and shared generously.

Avante. Towards renewal, rejuvenation, and recompense.

Comments welcomed below or sent to theportableschool@gmail.com

IV - Mesmer and Me: Recompense

We left off with the story about being told of “doing my real work in the back room” in San Francisco in the 19th century. 

Although the veil was lifted about that work in 1977, I had very little idea about the hints I received. To me as probably most people who scratch the surface of such things, mesmerism and hypnotism were and continue to be synonymous.

Over the years, I got clues that hypnosis sometimes can be more harmful than helpful to those who come under its influence. Medical training including psychiatry courses never mentioned either mesmerism or hypnotism.

So, it has taken almost forty years for Dr. Mesmer and his animal magnetism to come back to me. Better late in the game than not at all. Researching my most recent book Phenomenon, on the life of Helena Blavatsky, I found repeated reference to Mesmer and his work - indications that our forebears missed an opportunity to recognize not only healing possibilities but also to gain deeper understandings of the how our world really works. 

Modern medicine still doesn’t know how aspirin works, what makes the heart to beat, what happens when we go to sleep at night, etc. My esoteric studies with Helena Blavatsky led to those with Anton Mesmer which have more immediate implications and life-changing potentials for those who are open and ready to receive them. I have been fascinated, amazed, astonished, enlightened and practically thrilled to uncover this long forgotten treasure.

Let me give a very brief overview of what I have (re)discovered while I leave the details and stories and phenomena for later:

• Hypnosis and mesmerism (or animal magnetism) come from the same roots but are very different in application as well as in results. Hypnotism uses words and suggestion; magnetism when properly done needs neither of the two.

• Dr. Mesmer himself was the re-discoverer of works done over the ages by great numbers of healers who had profound effects on their fellows in previous epochs. 

• Mesmer’s real claim to fame is that he brought the idea and opportunity, potential and practice of magnetic healing before the eyes of thousands and thousands of the public in the 18th century.

• He made his own discovery, studied, researched and put forth his animal magnetism to his patients and colleagues, scientists and physicians most directly in Austria and France and points in between.

• Anton Mesmer had an extraordinarily keen mind, observing spirit, radiant hand, and clairvoyant eye which guided his studies and work. 

• Many, many were healed and even more were relieved of their ills simply by the touch - although it was a different kind of touch than you might imagine.

• He added inventions of magnetic apparatus which allowed for aiding numbers of sick and injured at the same time. 

• Mesmer’s teachings were spread widely in Europe before the French Revolution, but lost traction for various reasons including obstruction by medical politics and the great turmoil of the period. 

• Mesmer’s magnetism was resurrected in the 19th century especially in England, but never took firm hold to gain a foothold in any medical institutions. 

• Scholars and physicians of the old schools did not understand Mesmer’s simple but subtle work and feared that the dominant, but weak medical paradigm might be swept away by the healing hands of Nature. They used all kinds of tactics including ridicule and slander to prevent this opportunity from spreading Mesmer’s doctrine and implementation of this simple method of healing.

Many times in his several writings, Anton Mesmer spoke that his major desire was for his discovery to touch humanity. His greatest reward would be to know that he had done something which would benefit the whole of humankind.

This writer believes that Mesmer’s recompense is long overdue, that the 21st-century may be able to understand what he was trying to share, and that the gift of healing can be shared much more widely in the coming days.

Let the reader beware that such a gift may not be happily or even grudgingly accepted by the powers that be. Especially as the medical machine has created a vast business and bureaucratic system which portrays that it alone has the knowledge and ability to deal with human illness and injury.

Still at the same time, the medical system always falls back on the healing power of Nature - vis medicatrix nature - to support its pills and operations. The healing power of nature really needs very little of medical and surgical intervention. Particularly since such often gets in the way of Nature’s own efforts.

Let the public and the patient recognize that healing comes from within and that the Nature within them is connected with that in all living beings. The abundance of health in another can relatively easily bring restoration to you in many cases. You can do the same for another in need of healing.

Anton Mesmer brought to public light the gift of Nature for use in the hands of human beings. This is the simple, yet profound message that I apparently studied almost two hundred years ago. [Do understand, I had a different body and name, and lived in a distant land and spoke another tongue.]

But in the interim, I forgot all about Mesmer and Nature and the Gift. [The Angel of Forgetfulness does that to us each time we return into bodies at birth.] And it has taken forty years since I received the first hints in the message of William David about the work to be done. Ah, better late than not at all.

So, I have begun the work in earnest after studying far and wide in the traditional and alternative medical fields and in the arena of life. Now in recent years, I have dived into the “mountains” of material on Mesmer and animal magnetism and comparable disciplines. I have read and studied and read some more. It would be impossible for one person in one lifetime to research all that has been written on the subject. In the decade of 1778-1787 alone, the French National Library collected 14 files of 1000 pages each on the subject. 

But, I have been working hard on the subject and have much to share. Join me in learning about the Healing Gift we all possess and can quickly learn to contribute towards the healing of others. As we do so, we will help Mesmer receive his recompense as we go about the work of Sharing the Health.

The next post will be about the Future of Healing.

Share comments below or send to theportableschool at gmail dot com.