La curación por el espíritu Quotes

“She was one of the masters of mental healing; one of those thanks to whose life and influence healing by faith (by mind, by imagination, call it what you please) will always remain of cardinal importance. Thus it is that, “errors and omissions excepted,” this self-taught woman, standing apart from the wisdom of the schools, has acquired a permanent place among the pioneers of psychology, of the science of the soul, illustrating once more that in the history of the human spirit the uninstructed and unteachable impetuosity of a seeming simpleton may do as much for the advance of thought as all the exponents of accredited doctrine. The first task of any new idea is to arouse creative unrest. One who overstates his case drives forward, and does so precisely because he exaggerates. Even error, being radical, stimulates progress. True or false, hit or miss — every faith that a human being has been powerful enough to force upon his fellows expands the boundaries and shifts the landmarks of our spiritual world.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Unquestionably influenced by the ideas of Christian Science, this Nancy apothecary insisted that every one of us can, by autosuggestion, cure himself. Advancing a stage beyond Mary Baker Eddy, he declared that there was no need for a healer to intermediate between the patient and his suffering, for the patient could do his own suggesting. In fact, said Coué, the patient always does do his own suggesting, and the belief in the need for an outside healer is but one more illusion to be dispelled. But, like Mary Baker Eddy, Coué with his doctrine of autosuggestion, is, in the end, only paying homage to the power of the human mind influenced by what some have termed faith or will, but by what he preferred to speak of as imagination.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Down to the ninetieth year of her life, the spirit of struggle maintained the vitality of this indomitable woman. But there was no longer anyone to fight. At length, therefore, old age, so vainly repudiated, asserted itself irrevocably; death tapped her on the shoulder; the inalterable law of reality prevailed. “The mortal dream of life, substance, feeling, grew weaker in the material frame.” On December 4, 1910, the end came; and late at night, though she had been up and dressed that very day, there lay in the bed at Chestnut Hill the corpse of what had been Mary Baker Eddy, “a bodily shell which faith had forsaken.” Nothing but death had been able to overcome this iron heart.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“At eighty-five, she had paid the inevitable tribute to old age. Her sight was failing, she was growing deaf, she had lost all her teeth, she walked with difficulty. To so proud, so autocratic a woman what could seem more terrible than to expose her infirmities to hostile eyes?”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Why did this exponent of mental healing use glasses to help her to read, thus correcting “old sight” by earthly means instead of dispelling the error “by mind”? There were other questions no less indiscreet and no less painful. Why did she use a stick to help her to walk? Why did she, the declared enemy of all officially qualified practitioners, consult a dentist and have recourse to such extremely material adjuvants as artificial teeth? Why (perhaps the most crucial question of all) did she at times have morphine administered for the relief of intolerable pain? It was impossible for the founder of Christian Science, the discoverer of an infallible method of healing, to endure the ancient quip: “Physician, heal thyself!” Assuredly,”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“God had told her to take fees for instruction and healing. At first she had not grasped the reason, but then it had become plain to her. By making material sacrifices, the patient strengthens his own faith. The more he has to pay, the more earnestly does he desire to be cured.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“in Boston, arriving there with ample funds, she purchased in the best quarter of the city, on Columbus Avenue, a three-storied mansion, built of stone, and handsomely furnished. The lecture theater was especially sumptuous, for in Boston she expected audiences of the well-to-do, of “refined people,” instead of the poor proletarians who had been her first disciples in Lynn, and this wealthy clientele must be attracted by keeping up a good appearance. A fine silver plate on the door was a further indication of the change of circumstances, of the rise in social level.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Dr. Noyes. He came, made the examination, and actually showed the widow the diseased aortic valve which had been the material, the “illusory,” cause of death. But now Mrs. Eddy rallied her forces. The doctor’s diagnosis, though confirmed by autopsy, had been wrong. Asa had not died of heart disease, but had been killed by “metaphysical arsenic,” by “mental poison.” Her enemies and his had slain him by telepathic influence. To console herself for her failure to avert the death, and to counteract the effect it might have on the weak-kneed, she gave an interview to a representative of the Post of Boston, and it appeared in that paper two days after the death. Here are some significant extracts: “My husband’s death was caused by malicious mesmerism... I know it was poison that killed him, but not material poison, but mesmeric poison... After a certain amount of mesmeric poison has been administered, it cannot be averted. No power of mind can resist it.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“In her utmost need she did what she had so tyrannically forbidden others to do. Giving up the attempt to save Gilbert Eddy by the powers of mind, she called in a regular practitioner, a “confectioner of disease,” Dr. Rufus K. Noyes. For once, she capitulated to reality. This representative of official medicine prescribed the appropriate remedies for a failing heart, but these likewise were unavailing. The patient died on June 3, 1882, the third husband of the woman who had declared illness and death to be nothing but error and illusion.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“has tended to ignore the forces of mental healing, the psychical “will-to-health” — has failed to take into practical account the fact that, besides such medicaments as arsenic and camphor, there are other remedies to stimulate a flagging vitality; purely spiritual remedies, such as courage, self-confidence, faith, vigorous optimism. Much as our reason may revolt against the futility of the teaching of those who want to kill bacilli by “mind,” to counteract syphilitic infection by “truth,” and to nullify the disastrous effect of arteriosclerosis by “God,” we should make a great mistake were we to ignore the energy which this doctrine can furnish to one who believes in it. We should be closing our eyes to the truth were we to deny that Christian Science has achieved wonderful successes, and, by the profundity of its faith, has brought consolation to numberless persons in moments of despair. Perhaps it is but an intoxicant, is but “dope,” giving no more than a transient support to the nerves as does camphor or caffeine, and temporarily arresting the advance of disease. Still, in giving this temporary relief, it shows once more how the power of the mind can come to the help of the body.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“The physical affirmative should be met by a mental negative.” Nor should the sufferer ever admit to himself that he feels pain, for experience shows that one who pays attention to a pain increases it by autosuggestion.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Despite all her exaggerations, despite her defects of character, and despite the hopeless confusion of much of her thought, Mary Baker was unquestionably a woman of genius. She discovered (or rediscovered) some of the fundamental laws of the mind, and turned them to account in her practice. The most important of these is the indisputable fact that every imaginative anticipation of a feeling, such as a pain, tends to transform itself into reality, and that therefore a countersuggestion will often remove that dread of illness which is almost as dangerous as illness itself. “The ills we fear are the only ones that conquer us” — behind such words, however much they may lie open to the onslaught of logical criticism, there lurks a profound truth. Mary Baker was anticipating Coué’s doctrine of autosuggestion when she declared: “The sick hurt themselves when they say that they are sick.” She insisted that the Christian Science practitioner should never accept the patient’s conviction of illness.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“There is a famous passage in Science and Health which has been spoken of as Mary Baker’s “immortal thesis,” and an alleged distortion of which was the theme of one of the numerous lawsuits in which the founder and the apostles of Christian Science have been involved. In set terms it is here declared that there is neither life, nor truth, nor intelligence, nor substance, in matter. Everything is infinite mind and its everlasting revelation, for God is all in all. Mind is immortal truth, whereas matter is mortal error. Mind is the real and the eternal, whereas matter is the unreal and the temporal. Mind is God and man is his image, wherefore man is not material but mental. Can the reader understand this farrago? If not, all the better.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Physician, heal thyself,” runs the adage; but it was characteristic of Mary Baker as of so many mental healers, that the magician who cured thousands could never fully succeed in curing herself.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Now it would be a shoemaker who, returning home of an evening, wearied by many hours’ work at the machine, wanted as recreation to learn about “higher things” and was glad if anyone would help him to interpret the words of Scripture. Now it would be some withered old woman, dreading the near approach of death, and to whom tidings of immortality brought consolation. For such as these, persons with little intelligence and yet having a passion for the spiritual, the encounter with Mary Baker was a great experience.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“They are people with a passion for faith, but not intelligent enough to make a faith for themselves. Pure in spirit, but weaklings as a rule, longing for a mediator who will guide them whither they should go, they form the best possible recruits for the support of new religious sects and novel doctrines of one kind or another.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“The strongest man is always the man of one idea. Devoting to it all his energy, his will, his intelligence, his nervous tension, he often becomes irresistible. Mary Baker was one of these exemplars among monomaniacs, for from 1862 onwards she possessed, or rather was possessed by, one idea and one only.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Thunder does not come from a clear sky, nor yet from a cloud until there has been an accumulation of electrical stresses; and in like manner a miracle, if it is to happen, demands a particular predisposition, a peculiar nervous and religious tension of the mind. No one ever experiences a miracle unless he has long and passionately awaited it.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“The will-to-power, when it can find no outlet, is directed inwards; the frustrated impulse plays havoc with the sufferer’s own nerves. Before puberty, Mary had not infrequently had convulsive seizures and had given other signs of excessive nervous excitability. When it became obvious to her that such attacks aroused sympathy and attention, she began consciously or unconsciously (the border line is hard to define) to cultivate these hysterical fits.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Mark Baker, Mary’s father, was a man of very strict views, his head being as hard as his fist. “You could not move him any more than you could move old Kearsarge,” his neighbors were wont to say of him — Kearsarge being a nearby mountain. This obstinacy, this indomitable will, was certainly handed down to Mary, the seventh child, born July 16, 1821.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“History extols, not the beginner but the completer. She puts the victor on a pedestal, while leaving the mere combatant in obscurity. Thus has it been with Mesmer, the first of the new psychologists, whose ungrateful task it was to be born before his time.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Good fortune and bad are both fine tests of a man’s character. Mesmer had not been boastful or presumptuous in the days of his fame, and now, when the world had suddenly forgotten him, he was modest and stoical. Far from making any attempt to attract attention to himself, when an endeavor was made to recall him into the limelight he rejected the overture.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“by means of what we now call hypnosis an individual could exercise an influence for better or worse upon the mental condition of his neighbor.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“For an hour the organism would be charged with magnetic energy; or, as we should prefer to phrase it today, by monotony and expectation the organism would be made ripe for suggestive therapy.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Should my proposals meet with a rebuff in France, it would be my unhappy fate to leave that country and seek better luck elsewhere. If in the end the whole world proves to be against me, then I can still hope to find a spot on this earth where I may live in peace. Conscious of my own rectitude of purpose, secure from any self-reproach, I am convinced that I shall be able to gather a small company around me, persons I have helped to benefit, and then I shall need no one’s advice, and no one’s interference with what I undertake. If I were to act otherwise, animal magnetism would become no more than a passing fashion. Each would seek to find in it either more, or less, than really exists. It would be used amiss, its utility would become dubious, and it would give rise to a problem whose solution might not be discovered for centuries.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“They called on the parents of the girl and filled them with alarm by suggesting that the empress would withdraw the yearly pension of two hundred ducats if their daughter’s sight were restored, and, further, that the young pianist would lose half her attraction on the concert platform if she possessed normal vision. The possibility of having to forgo the yearly income worked like a charm upon Father and Mother Paradies.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“He was sure of one thing only, and on this single security he built up the whole of his teaching: a living man, through his mere presence and through his personal influence, may do more to cure the sick than can any other remedy in the world. “Of all bodies in nature, none is so potent in its influence upon man as is the body of man himself.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“He now became aware that his amazing influence over his fellow mortals did not arise from the lifeless mineral wherewith he performed his manipulations, but from himself, from the living man; that not the magnet but the magnetizer was the wizard who restored health.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“today our physicians make use of radium: but no matter the method adopted, every one of them depends to a large extent for its efficacy upon the power it has of arousing the will-to-health in the patient.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud

“Whenever remarkable cures have taken place, we may be pretty sure that suggestion has been at work.”
― Stefan Zweig, Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud