Why Did This Happen to Me?
(1962)
This short work lays out Murphy’s most radical thesis, and it has some commonality with Christian Science. He writes that even someone possessed by loving thoughts can fall ill or experience other forms of suffering if the individual believes in the reality of his condition. Murphy’s point is that the ultimate law of mind and the ultimate reality of life are goodness, health, and growth. That is the true nature of things. I think he would agree with the statement that while evil occurs, it does not actually exist.
—MH
Remember ye not the former things,
neither consider the things of old.
ISAIAH 43:18.
… But this one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize …
PHIL. 3:13–14.
Whatsoever a man soweth, so also shall he reap. This means that if we plant thoughts of peace, harmony, health, and prosperity, we shall reap accordingly; and that if we sow thoughts of sickness, lack, strife, and contention, we shall reap these things. We must remember that our subconscious mind is like the soil; it will grow whatever type of seed we plant in the garden of our mind. We sow thoughts, Biblically speaking, when we believe them wholeheartedly, and it is what we really believe deep down in our hearts that we demonstrate.
I had a friend who was bedridden with disease and on visiting her at a hospital in London, England, she said to me. “Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why is God angry at me? Why is God punishing me?” Her friends pointed out to me how kindhearted and deeply spiritual she was, and that she was a pillar of the church, etc.
It is true that she was an excellent person in many ways, but she believed in the reality of her sickness and that the condition was incurable. She believed that her heart was governed by laws of its own, independent of her thinking. This was her belief, so naturally, she demonstrated accordingly. She changed her belief and began to realize that her body was spiritual and that when she changed her mind, she changed her body. She began to cease giving power to the sickness in her thought and prayed as follows: “The Infinite Healing Presence is flowing through me as harmony, health, peace, wholeness, and perfection. God’s Healing Love indwells every cell.” She repeated this prayer frequently, and following her change of belief she had a wonderful healing. This woman lived in fear of a heart attack for several years, not knowing that what we fear most comes to pass.
The law of life is the law of belief. Trouble of any kind is nature’s alarm signal that we are thinking wrongly in that direction, and nothing but a change of thought can set us free. Man is belief expressed (Quimby), and we demonstrate what we really believe. There is a law of cause and effect operating at all times, and nothing happens to man without his mental consent and participation. You do not have to think of an accident to have it befall you.
Dr. Paul Tournier, famous French psychiatrist, writes about a man who cut his hand with a saw and blamed the so-called accident on the fact that the wood which he was cutting was very wet. Dr. Tournier knew that there was a mental and emotional cause behind the severe cut on the man’s hand. He discovered that the man was very irritated toward his employer, and furthermore he had considerable rancor and hostility toward a former employer who had discharged him. Dr. Tournier explained to the man that when he is irritated and upset emotionally, his efforts become uncoordinated and jerky, and thus the accident had happened.
In the thirteenth chapter of Luke we read the following: There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
Jesus denies categorically that the victims of such calamities are worse sinners than other men, and added Except ye repent, ye shall likewise perish. Misfortune, accidents, and tragedies of various kinds are signs of mental and emotional disorders that have broken out into manifestation. To repent means to think in a new way, to turn back to God and align our thoughts and mental imagery with the Infinite Life, Love, Truth, and Beauty of God, and then we become channels for the Divine.
Still your mind several times a day and affirm slowly, quietly, and lovingly, “God flows through me as harmony, health, peace, joy, wholeness, and perfection. God walks and talks in me. God’s spell is always around me, and wherever I go God’s Wisdom governs me in all my ways, and Divine right action prevails. All my ways are ways of pleasantness, and all my paths are peace.”
As you dwell on these eternal verities, you will establish patterns of Divine Order in your subconscious mind, and whatever you impress is expressed; therefore, you will find yourself watched over at all times by an Overshadowing Presence, your Heavenly Father, who responds to you when you call upon Him.
All of us are in the race mind, the great psychic sea of life. The race mind believes in sickness, accident, death, misfortune, and tragedies of all kinds, and if we do not repent, i.e., if we do not do our own thinking, the race mind will do our thinking for us. Gradually the thoughts of the race mind impinging on our consciousness, may reach a point of saturation and precipitate an accident, sudden illness, or calamity. The majority of people do not think, they think they think. You are thinking when you differentiate between that which is false and that which is true. To think is to choose. You have the capacity to say yes and no. Say yes to the Truth and reject everything unlike God or the Truth. If the mental instrument could not choose, you would not be an individual. You have the ability to accept and reject. Think on whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure … think on these things.
You are thinking when you know that there is an Infinite Intelligence which responds to your thoughts and that no matter what the problem is, as you think about a Divine solution and the happy ending, you will find a subjective wisdom within you responding to you and revealing to you the perfect plan and showing you the way you should go.
Some months ago a woman visited me, stating that she had an organic lesion for several years which failed to heal. She had taken all kinds of therapy including X-ray. She had prayed and sought prayer therapy from others without results. She told me, “God has it in for me. I’m a sinner, this is why I am being punished.” She also told me that she went to a man who hypnotized her, read her past, and had the effrontery and the audacity to tell her that she was a victim of karma, that she had wounded people in a former life, punishing them unjustly, and that now she was suffering and reaping her just deserts. Poignantly she asked, “Do you think this is why I can’t be healed?”
All this is so much folderol and a monstrous absurdity. The above explanation compounded the misery and pain of the woman and offered no cure or solace. I explained to her an age-old Truth that there is but one Power called God. It is the Creative Intelligence in all of us which created us. This Power becomes to us what we believe It to be. If a person thinks that God is punishing him and that he must suffer, according to his thought and belief is it done unto him. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. This means that man’s thoughts and feelings create his destiny. Man is what he thinks all day long, and if a man fails to think constructively, wisely, and judiciously, then someone else or the race mind will do his thinking for him, and perhaps make a complete mess of his life.
If you believe that God is Infinite Goodness, Boundless Love, Absolute Harmony, and Boundless Wisdom, the God-Presence will respond accordingly to you by the law of reciprocal relationship, and you will find yourself blessed in countless ways. The forces of life are not evil; it depends how we use them. Atomic energy is not evil, it is good or bad depending on the way we use it. Man can use electricity to kill another or to vacuum the floor. You can use water to quench a child’s thirst or drown it. The wind which blows the ship on the rocks can also carry it to safety. The uses to which all things or objects in the world are put are determined by the thoughts of man. It is the mind of man which determines the use of the forces and objects in the world. Good and evil are movements in the mind of man relative to the One Power which is whole, pure, and perfect. The Creative Force is in man. There is no power in the manifest universe except we give power to externals. This woman was seeking justification and alibis for her suffering. She was looking outside herself instead of realizing the cause is always in her subconscious mind.
I asked her to tell me about her relationship with men. She confessed that she had an illicit love affair five years previously and that she felt guilty and full of remorse. This unresolved remorse was the psychic wound behind her organic lesion. She realized that God was not punishing her, but she was punishing herself by her own thoughts. The lesion was solidified thought which she could unthink. Life or God does not punish. If you burn your finger, Life proceeds to reduce the edema, gives you new skin, and restores it to wholeness. If you eat some tainted food, Life causes you to regurgitate and seek to restore you to perfect health. The ancients said that the doctor dresses the wound, and God heals it.
The lesion and the morbid symptoms that no medical treatment or prayer therapy could heal, or had been able to cure, disappeared in a week. There is no worse suffering than a guilty conscience and certainly none more destructive. This woman had been punishing herself for five years by her destructive thinking, and when she ceased to condemn herself and began to claim that the Infinite Healing Presence was saturating her whole being and that God indwells every cell of her body, the lesion disappeared. If you had been misusing the principle of electricity or chemistry for fifty years and you suddenly used it correctly, surely you would not say that the principle of electricity had a grudge against you because you had misused it. Likewise, no matter how long you may have used your mind in a negative and destructive manner, the minute you begin to use it the right way, right results follow. Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old. ISAIAH 43:18.
A man who came to see me some months ago was gradually losing his vision. He was attributing it to lack of vitamins, heredity factors, and pointed out that his grandfather went blind at eighty years of age. He belonged to a strange cult, and the cult leader, after reading his horoscope, said the planets were in a malefic configuration and that this was the cause of his failing vision. It is well known in psychosomatic circles today that psychic factors play a definite role in all disease. Nearsightedness can be brought on by workings of the mind. Treating the mental and emotional factors of the individual rather than the eye may reveal the basic emotional factor, the reason why the subconscious mind is selecting an ailment which tends to shut out everything except the immediate surroundings.
Dr. Francis Dunbar states that certain emotional reactions can cause the involuntary muscles to twist the eyeball out of shape. In talking to this man, he revealed that he hated the sight of his mother-in-law who was living in his home. He was full of suppressed rage, and his emotional system which could not stand the strain any longer selected the eyes as the scapegoat. The explanation was the cure in this case. He was surprised to learn that negative emotions, if persisted in, snarl up in the subconscious mind and being negative must have a negative outlet. The negative commands to his subconscious mind, “I hate the sight of her,” “I don’t want to see her anymore,” were accepted by the deeper mind as a request which brought it to pass.
He made arrangements for his mother-in-law to live elsewhere and prayed for her by releasing her to God and wishing for her all the blessings of Heaven. His vision began to improve almost immediately, and in two weeks his eyesight was restored to normal. He knew he had forgiven his mother-in-law because he could meet her in his mind, and there was no longer any sting. He was trying to justify his failing vision by explaining it in terms of outside causes rather than his own mind.
A deficiency of Vitamin A can cause ophthalmia which is an inflammation of the conjunctiva or of the eyeball; nevertheless, this could be due to ignorance, indifference, or negligence on the part of the individual. The cause in this case would be stupidity or carelessness, and the latter is a state of mind or simply a lack of knowledge. Vitamin A is omnipresent and we should have the intelligence to use it.
You cannot dodge or circumvent the law of mind. It is done unto you as you believe, and a belief is a thought in the mind. No external power or evil entity is trying to lure or harm you. People are constantly attributing their ailments to the atmosphere, the weather, to malpractice, evil entities, germs, viruses, and diet. Man pollutes the air with his strange notions and false doctrines. If a man believes that by being near an electric fan he will catch cold or get a stiff neck, that belief when accepted by him becomes his master and ruler and causes him to experience a cold. This is why the Bible says, According to your faith is it done unto you. The fan has no power to give anyone a stiff neck; it is harmless. Your faith can be used two ways. You can have faith in an invisible virus to give you the flu, or you can have faith in the Invisible Spirit within you to flow through you as harmony, health, and peace.
Realize God cannot be sick and the Spirit in you is God; what is true of God is true of you. Believe this and you will never be sick for according to your faith (in health and happiness) is it done unto you. Emerson said, “He (man) thinks his fate alien because the copula is hidden. But the soul contains the event that shall befall it; for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts, and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted. The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your skin.” Fate by R. W. Emerson.
The Devil in the Bible means ignorance or misunderstanding. Spell live backward and you have evil. Your evil is an inversion of the Life-Principle which is God. God moves as a unity and seeks to express Himself through you as beauty, love, joy, peace, and Divine Order. The false idea in your mind is called the adversary, devil, Satan, etc. The devils which bedevil man are enmity, strife, hatred, revenge, hostility, self-condemnation, and other negative emotions. If man fails to believe in the goodness of God and in a God of Love, the extent to which he believes this can well be his so-called devil which is the source of his pains, aches, and misfortunes.
A woman wrote me stating that her daughter was watching a group of men fighting on the streets of New York and that a bullet hit her daughter necessitating the amputation of two fingers—and what was the cause of it? Was it God’s will? Was it punishment for her sins that this accident occurred? The answer is in the negative to all these questions of the mother. God does not judge or punish; good and evil are the movements of man’s own mind. It is very primitive thinking to believe that God is punishing us or that a devil is tempting us. Our state of consciousness is always made manifest. Men, women, and children are constantly testifying to our state of consciousness. Our state of consciousness is always cause.
We do not know the contents of this girl’s mind. If she were hateful, resentful, or full of hostility and self-condemnation, she could have attracted such a condition to herself. We must remember that the majority of people do not discipline, control, or direct their thinking and mental imagery along Godlike channels; therefore, their failure to think constructively and harmoniously from the standpoint of the Infinite One means that they leave their minds open to the irrational mass mind which is full of fears, hates, jealousies, and all kinds of negative happenings.
Man’s failure to think the right way is as bad as thinking negatively and destructively. As a boy, I remember a farmer in Ireland who waited behind a fence every day for over a week in order to shoot the landlord when he passed by. One day he was going behind the usual fence and he stumbled, the rifle went off, and he was shot fatally. I did not understand the reason at that time, and like others, I believed it to be an accident. There are no accidents; there is a mind, a mood, a feeling behind that car, train, bicycle, and also behind the gun. This man had murder in his heart for a long time, and his subconscious responded accordingly.
No manifestation cometh unto me, save I the Father draw it. The father is your state of consciousness, your own creative power, and no experience comes to you except there is an affinity in your own mind. Two unlike things repel each other. If you walk and talk with God and believe that God is guiding you and that the Law of Harmony is always governing you, then you cannot be on a train that is wrecked because discord and harmony do not dwell together. The mother added in her letter as a postscript, “My daughter cannot get her fingers back through prayer.” I don’t know why people are so decisive and categorical in their statements that a man cannot grow a leg or finger if missing.
Let me quote from He Heals To-Day by Elsie Salmon: “Mildred was three years old when brought to me. She was born without a left hand. The arm ended in a point no bigger than the size of an index finger well above the wrist. Within a month the point at the end of the deformed arm had doubled in size and was quite plump, whereupon the father, now seeing this remarkable development, said, ‘Anything can happen.’ The following month there was a formation which looked like a thumb and which, at the time, we thought was a thumb. About three months following we found that this was not a thumb at all but that the growth was the whole hand at the end of the arm and this was unfolding like a flower before our eyes.”
She concludes by saying that those who were skeptical are now accepting it as an established fact. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the rhinoceros. When you take off his horns and cut out the roots, he grows new horns. Cut the legs off a crab, and he grows new legs. If a man believed he could grow a new finger, leg, or any organ, he could experience his belief.
Let us cease blaming others, let us look within for the cause of all. Believe in God, in the goodness of God, in the love of God, and in God’s guidance, and you will find that all your ways will be those of pleasantness, and all your paths will be paths of peace. You are belief expressed.