§ The reader may remember my consultation with Mr. William David at the close of my medical school days when he told of my last lifetime. To refresh our memories, I will repeat his words here:

“Your name is Benjamin D’Estarte. You are born in France. You receive a medical degree, but decide to work in hypnosis and follow some of the teachings of Mesmer. Your goal is to go to the United States. Eventually, you travel across the country to San Francisco with a wife at your side. You put up a shingle with your name as being a doctor.

“But, gossip, gossip. Where are your degrees? The medical field detests you. They consider you a quack. They find out that you are from France. You cannot prove your training. You are taken to court and told to desist from being a physician because you do not have a degree in the United States.

“You become a pharmacist and this is when you begin to dabble with all different kinds of chemistry. Then, [appearing] as a pharmacist you do your [other] work in [the back of] your shop. You still do your work but under a tremendous amount of stress and strain.

“You’re repeating a bit of that now, you understand that?”

For years, I carried this awareness that I may have been a hundred years past a physician from France, who moved to San Francisco and had to do his real work behind closed doors. But, there are really two parts to the story – at least two parts that Mr. David told me. He told me of being challenged in San Francisco, as I was before the Board of Medical Examiners in this lifetime in 1984. That part of the scenario has faded away.

But, Mesmer was the other key element. I let that clue pass me by and it has taken almost forty years for Dr. Mesmer and his magnetism [rather than hypnosis] to come back to me. Better late in the game than not at all. Researching my recent book called Phenomenon on the life of Helena Blavatsky, I found repeated references to Mesmer and his work – indications that our forebears missed an opportunity to recognize not only broader possibilities for healing but also to gain deeper understandings of the how our bodies and worlds really work. Blavatsky loudly supported his work in many instances, but most succinctly in saying:


• Hypnosis and mesmerism (or animal magnetism) come from the same roots but are very different in application as well as in results. Hypnotism uses words and suggestion; magnetism needs neither of the two but uses subtle human force.

• Dr. Mesmer himself was the re-discoverer of that force used over the ages by great numbers of healers who had profound effects on their fellows in previous epochs.

• Mesmer’s greatest claim to fame is that he brought the idea and opportunity, potential and practice of magnetic healing before public eyes in the 18th century.

• He made his own discovery, studied, researched and put forth what he called animal magnetism [distinguished from the metallic kind] to his patients and colleagues, scientists and physicians most directly in Austria and France and points beyond.

• Many, many were healed and even more were relieved of their ills simply by the transference of human magnetism – current – force – energy – influence.

• Mesmer’s teachings were spread widely in Europe before the French Revolution, but lost traction for many reasons including obstruction by physicians and the great turmoil of the period.

• Mesmerism was resurrected in the 19th century especially in England and Germany, but never gained a foothold among medical authorities and institutions.

• Scholars and physicians of the old schools did not understand Mesmer’s simple but subtle work. At the same time, they feared that the dominant medical paradigm might be swept away by the healing hands of Nature. They used ridicule and slander, among other tactics, to prevent the spread of Mesmer’s teaching and the implementation of his simple, natural method of healing. §


So after all these years, I can put Mesmer into more correct and useful perspective. I carried his teachings of magnetism (rather than hypnotism) from France to America (specifically San Francisco) in the 19th century. Mr. David revealed a big piece of the story. Other parts have been glimpsed through my experiences walking in the West. Sufficient to tell me that I must have traveled with the Mormons to get to the West Coast in generations past. Thus, my many contacts with Mormons and coincidental research of Mesmer in recent times. The work of my last lifetime was incomplete and is being resumed. 

Many times in his several writings, Anton Mesmer spoke that his major desire was for his discovery to touch humanity and relieve its ills. His greatest reward would be to know that he had done something which would benefit the whole of humankind through healing and preservation of life. The writer believes that Mesmer’s recompense is long overdue, that the 21st-century may be able to understand that he was talking about and trying to share ENERGY person to person. That gift of healing can be shared much more widely in the coming days. It is the healing power of Nature itself – vis medicatrix naturae – passing through human hands which distinguishes the energy healer and also supports any medical and surgical intervention. That power can pass through your hands as well.

Let the public and the patient recognize that healing comes from within and that the Nature within them is connected with that in all living beings. Human beings are open systems, constantly giving and receiving forces in many directions. The abundance of health in another can potentially bring restoration to you in many cases. You can do the same for another in need of healing.

Over the course of many decades, I largely forgot about Mesmer and Nature and the Gift. (The Angel of Forgetfulness does that to us to a greater or lesser degree each time we return into bodies at birth.) And it has taken forty years since I received the first hints in the message of William David to gather the essence of the work to be done.

Ah, better late than not at all. So, that is the work I have taken up in the past few years. Studying, researching, and writing on Mesmer and his magnetism. Eventually, to spread not just healing information but also healing energy. Hopefully to be passed on and on.

While becoming something of an expert on Dr. Mesmer and his magnetism, I have also come to look at the world and all of us humans in it as magnets – magnetic creatures. Human beings have been likened to machines, to computers, to factories, to communications systems, and many other man-made inventions. But, all of these have been made in the image of man and secondarily in the image of God.

As symbols and images, they have much to tell and teach us. But, let us use the magnet as a Natural symbol for humans even while it often acts as more than a symbol.

We know that magnets attract and repel. Magnetic humans – all of us to a greater or lesser degree – do much the same. We attract experiences and events, people and possibilities into the scenes of our existences. Sometimes we do so consciously. Quite often our magnetic influence is at work without our even being aware of it.

In my own case, I – through my deeper nature – have fortunately attracted some great teachers and teachings into my present existence. I usually call that good karma. But, I also might describe it as magnetizing forces which help me create the life and experiences which follow in line with past ones to build better futures.

I was first magnetized by the Cayce readings toward understanding holistic health, mind as builder, the concept of meeting self, the outer world reflecting the inner, etc. Along the way, I drew to myself other teachers in the likes of A Course in Miracles, Alice Bailey, Helena Blavatsky, and most recently Anton Mesmer. They all have added layers of meaning to my passage through parts of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Besides teaching me another dimension of healing, Mesmer has brought me back to the magnetic nature of lives and lifetimes. We all attract remnants of the past in the guises of the worlds and peoples which surround us in order to perfect the incarnation at hand.

Together, we also may recapitulate unfulfilled endeavors from the past and bring them to fruition. Thence we will bring ourselves and the the human race into an era of greater cooperation, better health and brighter promise.

For Cayce followers, it is worth remembering that Cooperation is the first chapter in the Search For God brought forth for study in groups by the Readings. Cooperation is another way of addressing the idea of Community.

§ Years ago, I ran across a story which has stayed with me and grown in meaning. Now, especially with my recent re-learnings on magnetism, energy and healing. It tells about a spacecraft much like the Starship Enterprise of Star Trek exploring the universe. The explorers encounter all sorts of planets and worlds and peoples in their travels. Their most amazing discovery occurs on finding two nearly identical planets populated by humans who appear much like Earthlings. But, there are key differences amongst the three.

The voyagers find the first planet green, abundant, and Earth-like. But sadly, the humans are starving because they have great difficulty feeding themselves. Their upper arms are short and forearms long, so that they have obvious problems getting food into their mouths.

Those on the second planet have the same unusual deformity, but they are nonetheless thriving. They are neither weakened nor diseased. For, they came to a simple answer to their universal problem. They simply feed each other. §

   
This story can be most helpful as a metaphor for looking at humans in need. Especially in illness and injury. For ages, human have had disease and disorder to address. We have searched for complicated scientific and medical responses. And, more and more resorted to technology and tests and treatments applied by medical professionals. The paradigm may look good in books and on paper, but it loses much in translation and execution.

When I was a child, mothers and relatives did most of the caregiving and hands-on therapy. We went to the medical office but a very few times in the course of our growing up. Now, it is common for youngsters and adults to seek medical assistance several times in a year. This practice is promoted by the media, the medical system and governments. But, neither produces demonstrable health and healing benefits. If we count numbers of people who have major chronic diseases, we have a pretty sickly society.

While medicine and surgery certainly have valuable places in modern society, there are other paradigms and possibilities to consider. Besides the spectrum of alternative medicine, we appear to have forgotten important things along the way to our standardized modern life. Maybe those things can be recovered for the betterment of all.

We might take religion and spirituality as a model of how things may appear in the healing of the future. In the present era, we have grown by degrees into the belief and understanding that every human can be his/her own priest in the practice of approaching God directly. We are told to go into our closet and supplicate, communicate, and listen. Slowly, we come at least to the belief that we all possess the potential to touch the Spirit in our midst and pass it on.

The power and love of God exists and flows through all of us. One day, we will find ourselves healers as well as priests. We then will share of our abundance to spread healing force and energy to those in need. As parents – mothers mostly – do with their children, we can transfer some of the healing vitality which flows freely in us to those who are depleted, diseased, or devitalized. We may be wonderfully surprised at effects which heal, bring people together, and empower them as well.

That potential was well expressed through the truths that Dr. Mesmer uncovered and demonstrated over two hundred years ago. He gave clear evidence that universal healing is possible because we are all potentially healers. Mesmer’s words and teachings were emulated by thousands of students-turned-healers who came from all walks of life.

In Mesmer’s time, the noted French politician Brissot dared to hope that natural human magnetism might bring the classes together, draw humane actions from the wealthy, and even advance the cause of fatherhood. “But I, a father who fears doctors, I love mesmerism because it identifies me with my children. How sweet it is to me … when I see them obey my inner voice, bend over, fall into my arms and enjoy sleep! The state of a nursing mother is a state of perpetual mesmerism. We unfortunate fathers, caught up in our business affairs, we are practically nothing to our children. By mesmerism, we become fathers once again. Hence a new benefit for society, and it has such need of one!”

The attorney and writer Servan experienced through magnetism “persons of all ranks ... in this perfect equality, all believe or hope, desiring vitally to communicate reciprocally the good the most precious of life, the good without which there is no other good, the health and the life.”

He believed that one day, “All the diseases of which the human machine can be attacked, from the simplest that nature alone surely would heal & promptly, up to the most complicated that she would heal, perhaps, but more slowly, it is only one, yes, a single one, your [medical] art overwhelms with words, with books, with formulas, and with instruments; under this enormous jumble, who could ever see the action of nature? in the middle of this babble of the [medical] art, who could hear the secret voice of nature? …. However, in spite of this jumble, in spite of this noise, she acts, she speaks, & often she heals.”

The priest and professor Hervier looked forward to “the era where human Nature will be repaired by animal Magnetism, this happy moment, where the Peoples, healthy & robust, can discard the epidemics, the diseases brought by the course of the centuries ... we will see the families relieve themselves of their infirmities, without having need of foreign aid.”

The Communities which began to develop in the late 18th century were largely swept aside by the terrible man-made violence of the French Revolution. Here and there, the discoveries, teachings, and healings appeared again in France in the next century. But, the magnetism of Mesmer appeared most prominently in England in that era when it was for decades touted as “one of nature’s secrets,” “one of nature’s mysterious motive energies,” “truth itself.”

A century later, the 60s brought en masse a resurgence of peace, love, and healing. Feminism, civil rights, and ecology stood shoulder to shoulder with the holistic healing movement. However, the keys of Community and Nature seem to have been pushed aside thereafter by the vaunted benefits of technology and growth.

The future depends on our recovering them into our lives. The psychiatrist M. Scott Peck recognized this fact some years ago when he wrote, “The salvation (healing) of the world is dependent on the development of the sense of community in our midst.”

Love and Spirit, Community and Consciousness, Nature and Magnetism must rise again to bring healing to individuals and groups, nations and the planet. The dis-eases which we bear from lifetime to lifetime must be seen as opportunities to join forces, grow together, and transform into one world.