Day 203: Faith and Misfortune

401:7-403:13

Things are better with my daughter. Yesterday’s intense CS reading was worth it. Today’s reading gave me some insight into what may have happened.

Mary Baker Eddy uses the term self-mesmerism (hypnotism) to explain sickness. I thought her exact word choice was very interesting and made me think of my recent challenge with my daughter:

self-mesmerism…is believed that the misfortune is a material effect

Day 54

100:1-101:32

These two pages introduce the concept of hypnotism as proposed by Mesmer and explain the French government's investigation of the claim of hypnotism's ability to heal or work on the body. Since I've read some of Mary Baker Eddy's biographies, I know she tried hypnotism herself, to find healing. At first, she thought it healed but then the healing didn't last so she moved on in her search before discovering Christian Science. I underlined randomly, now that I look at the page:

mutual influence

impressions made upon the senses

the power of the imagination

The only full sentence I underlined is:

In no instance is the effect of animal magnetism, recently called hypnotism, other than the effect of illusion.

Hypnotism seems to be one of the those rigid beliefs in people. They either do believe in it or they don't.

The term "mutual influence" is interesting because that's not how most people would think of hypnotism. I hope MBE explains this in the chapter.