(This is Part 4 of a continuing series. Go back to Part 3.)
To look into heaven here and now in a more detailed way it's helpful to discuss briefly the history of what is called the New Thought Movement. Though this series of articles will sometimes differ greatly from New Thought, nevertheless New Thought has served as an inspiration to pull some ideas together.
In some ways, New Thought began with the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays in 1841. Emerson, influenced by Swenborg, eastern mystics, the Gnostics of Jesus' time and others, held that God was both transcendent and immanent.
That is, God was not a personality sitting on a throne somewhere; neither was God a divine clockmaker setting his clock in motion and disregarding it thereafter; neither was God a stern judgment-meister dispensing heaven and hell to worthy and unworthy persons.
Rather, in Emerson's and others' conception, God was in and through all things, as those things. That is, the words "God" and "Existence" refer to the same thing.
Moreover, since God is in all things It is inside us as well, in what can be called "inner guidance" or "divine spirit" or "the soul." That is, God is immanent—here, now, inside us—and can be directly accessed.
That was another important point. You didn't need any intermediaries to contact this divine essence within you, nor did you need rituals, tradition or dogma. God was directly accessible to each person.
A man named Phineas Quimby, influenced by Emerson's ideas, which were "in the air" at that time, decided to combine them with the work of Anton Mesmer in France, who had used mesmerism—what we call "hypnotism"—to influence people through the spoken word.
In 1859 Quimby combined these two influences and began healing people of physical ailments simply through the power of the spoken word. Though at first he used hypnotism, he soon abandoned that and would, most times, simply talk to the patient for awhile. His famous saying, "The explanation is the cure," exemplified this.
At that time many people were deeply fearful of being sinners who would be cast into hell. Ministers preached from the pulpits that people "hung by a thread" over the pit of hell, that God was judging everything and ready to condemn people to everlasting hellfire.
Quimby began to explain to his patients that they need not fear, that God was love itself, a divine presence within each of us who, though not a personality, nevertheless could be accessed in a personal way in and through the personal instrument—the "you" and the "me."
This is God's face of immanence—that we can feel a personal relationship to the One Energy even though It is not a personality. And even though, paradoxically, there can never be any separation from It in the first place, since It is us.
The knowledge of this connection, Quimby found, could heal people of various afflictions, since now instead of being miserable sinners they could begin to realise that they were precious expressions of the Infinite—and could express that divine connection in the healing of their body.
(This is the end of Part 4. Go to Part 5.)
—jim sloman, 12.12.03 for Feb 24.
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