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Chapter XVIII: The Little Lives of the Body.1873
a fixed position in all parts of our bodies, renewing the wornout tissues
and replacing them with new material and throwing out of the system the
wornout and injurious particles of matter.
In the lower animals Nature allows the Instinctive Mind a fuller scope
and a larger field, and as life ascends in the scale, developing the reasoning
faculties, the Instinctive Mind seems to narrow its field. For instance, crabs
and members of the spider family are able to grow new feeders, legs, claws,
etc. Snails are able to grow even parts of the head, including eyes which
have been destroyed; some fishes are able to re-grow tails. Salamanders
and lizards are able to grow new tails, including bones, muscle and parts of
the spinal column. The very lowest forms of animal life have practically an
unlimited power of restoring lost parts and can practically make themselves
entirely over, provided there is left the smallest part of them to build upon.
The higher form of animals have lost much of this recuperative power and
man has lost more than any of them owing to his mode of living. Some of
the more advanced of the Hatha Yogis, however, have performed some
wonderful results along these lines, and anyone, with patient practice, may
obtain such control of the Instinctive Mind and the cells under its control that
he may obtain wonderful recuperative results in the direction of renewing
diseased parts and weakened portions of the body.
But even ordinary man still possesses a wonderful degree of recuperative
power, which is constantly being manifested, although the average man
pays no attention to it. Let us take the healing of a wound for example. Let
us see how it is performed. It is well worth your consideration and study. It is
so common that we are apt to overlook it, and yet so wonderful as to cause
the student to realize the greatness of the intelligence displayed and called
into force in the work.
Let us suppose that a human body is wounded—that is, cut or torn by
some outside agency. The tissues, lymphatic and blood vessels, glands,
muscles, nerves, and sometimes even the bone, is severed, and the
continuity interrupted. The wound bleeds, gapes and causes pain. The