Customer Reviews

The Quimby Manuscripts

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This book shows clearly how many of Mary Baker Eddy's ideas concerning Christian Science were actually taken from the work of Phineas Quimby. Quimby was not a very well educated man, but he was an empiricist who devoted decades to studying how healing works. He concluded that disease is essentially an error of mind, and that the two biggest perpetrators of this fraud were the medical profession and religious leaders. Eddy had been a patient of Quimby's, and only began to teach after his death, originally attributing much of her method to him, and then later referring to him only as a mesmerist, something he had abandoned years before.

Apart from setting the record straight on sources, the work in interesting as an alternate viewpoint. Quimby is not as good a writer as Eddy, and is very repetitive in spots, but his slant is somewhat different, and interesting in his own right.

Mrs. Eddy went a step beyond I think of Quimby; in that she is "ABSOLUTE." The difference in teachings of Quimby is that his "treatments" engineered the human mind. Whereas Mrs. Eddy's work was not "human-mind over matter" based; but, reaching to a Divine Mind as Supreme-- thus acknowledging the omnipotent Power. To me, she did not rely on the human's so called mind or thoughts as having any real "power".

Quimby "works up" to the High Self; Eddy "starts" at the High Self or Omnipotent Power of God which is Love (Divine Love). At least this is my impression. Very closely related it appears in their teachings, but the premise that Mrs. Patterson (Eddy) took went farther to me.