Positive Affirmations
This explains why affirmations of health are justified in the face of disease. The health conditions must be first established in the mind before they can be conveyed to and impressed upon the cells.
The well-being of the human body as a whole depends upon the health of the billions of minute cells which compose it. These cells are so small that they have to be magnified several hundred times under a powerful microscope before we can see them. Yet they are independent living beings which grow, assimilate food, multiply and die like the big cell, Man.
These little cells are congregated in communities which form the organs and tissues of the body and in these communities they carry on the complicated activities of citizens living in a large city. Some are carriers, bringing food materials to the tissues and organs or conveying waste and morbid matter to the excretory channels of the body. Other cells manufacture chemical substances, such as sugar, fats, ferments, hormones etc., for the production of which man requires complicated factories. Still others act as policemen and soldiers which protect the commonwealth against bacteria, parasites and other hostile invaders.
The marvelous work performed by these little organisms, as well as observations made in the dissecting room and under the microscope, strongly indicate that these cells are endowed with some sort of individual intelligence. They do their work without our aid or conscious volition. But, nevertheless, they are greatly influenced by the varying conditions of the mind. While their activities seem to be controlled through the sympathetic nervous system, they stand in direct telegraphic communication with headquarters in the brain and every impulse of the mind is conveyed to them.
If there be dismay and confusion in the mind, this condition is telegraphically conveyed over the nerve trunks and filaments to every cell in the body, and as a result these little workers and soldiers become panic-stricken and incapable of rightly performing their manifold duties.
The cell system of the body resembles a vast army. The mind is the general at the head of it. The cells are the soldiers, divided into groups for special work.
Much of the work of an army is carried on through different well-established departments, as the commissariat, the hospital service, the scouts and pickets, etc. Though the life and the activities of the army are so well regulated that they seem automatic, nevertheless much depends upon the commander.
The vital processes of the human organism, digestion, assimilation, elimination, respiration, the circulation of the blood, etc., are going on without our volition, whether we be awake or asleep. These involuntary activities are impelled by the sympathetic nervous system, while the voluntary functions of the body are controlled through the motor [voluntary] nervous system. This division, however, is not a sharp one, and the two departments frequently overlap one another.
The sympathetic nervous system resembles the commissarial department of the army, which attends to the material welfare of the soldiers, while the motor nervous system, with headquarters in the brain, corresponds to the commander with his executive staff, the nerve centers in the spinal cord and other parts of the body being the subordinate officers in the field.