PHINEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY: Maine's Godfather of New Thought

By Igor I. Sikorsky and Vincent J. Tanner

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was a mid-1800s clockmaker in Belfast, Maine. He became fascinated with the practice of hypnotism, then called mesmerism. He dropped his clockmaking profession and traveled around Maine, offering demonstrations of mesmerism.

Over the years, he studied how the body, when mesmerized, could perform astonishing feats. Gradually, Quimby developed what he called science of the mind and used his concepts to heal the sick.

This is the story of how he evolved his theory. Consequently, his work was directly related to the founding of the Unity movement and Christian Science.

The author’s position is that the New Age philosophy that the mind controls the body was inspired by a Maine clockmaker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638855651

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PHINEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY

Maine's Godfather of New Thought

Igor I. Sikorsky Jr. and Vincent J. Tanner Sr.

ISBN 978-1-63885-564-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63885-565-1 (Digital)

Copyright © 2021 Igor I. Sikorsky Jr. and Vincent J. Tanner Sr.

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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Table of Contents

Quimby’s Background

Mesmerism

Quimby the Experimenter—Showman

Quimby the Healer

Quimby’s Methodology

Quimby—the Theologian

Quimby’s Debt to Universalism

The Heritage of Quimby

The Disciples of Quimby

Emmet Fox—the Johnny Appleseed of Quimby’s New Thought

Conclusion—the Heritage of Quimby

Introduction

William James called the New Thought movement the American people’s only decidedly original contribution to the systematic philosophy of life; a religious expression of the American blend of pragmatism and spirituality.

Many facets of the present interest meditation, Eastern philosophies, and the current revolution of consciousness have been anticipated for over a century in the New Thought movement, some of whose origins are traceable to Belfast, Maine, mid-1850s. This book introduces the development of New Thought Christian pantheism, tracing one source of its origins to an obscure clockmaker in Belfast and his experiments with the influence of thought on physical health.

In his lecture on The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness, William James dealt with the movement he called mind-cure, health mysticism. The metaphysical movement or metaphysics are terms used interchangeably, generally referring not only to New Thought but also to religious healing, Christian Science, and other doctrines such as Unity. James defined mind-cure as a deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and practical side. Its primary purpose was the systematic cultivation of a healthy-mindedness. Although the movement is best known as a means of gaining health, wealth, and happiness through the power of positive thinking, its writers also emphasize that apart from any worldly rewards flowing from the relationship, a supreme value in itself lies in one’s coming into tune with the infinite.

The basic tenets of New Thought have changed very little over the years. The International New Thought Alliance’s Declaration of Principles, which is published in each issue of the New Thought quarterly, proclaims,

We affirm the inseparable oneness of God and man, the realization of which comes through spiritual intuition. The implications are that man can reproduce the Divine perfection of his body, emotions, and all his external affairs.

We affirm the freedom of each person in matters of belief.

We affirm the Good to be supreme, universal, and eternal.

We affirm that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, that we are one with the Father, that we should love one another and return good for evil.

We affirm that we should heal the sick through prayer and that we should endeavor to manifest perfection even as our Father in Heaven is perfect.

We affirm our belief in God and the Universal Wisdom Love, Life Truth, Power Peace, Beauty, and Joy, in whom we live, move, and have our being.

We affirm that man’s mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become his experience through the Creative Law of Cause and Effect.

We affirm that the Divine Nature expressing Itself through man manifests Itself as health, supply, wisdom, love, life, Truth, power, peace, beauty, and joy.

We affirm that man is an invisible spiritual dweller within a human body, continuing and unfolding as a spiritual being beyond the change called physical death.

We affirm that the Universe is the body of God, spiritual in essence, governed by God through laws that are spiritual in reality even when material in appearance.

This work traces the New Thought movement to tie in the work of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby through the Unity Movement, Christian Science, and Emmet Fox, and more significantly, to its permeation after that through Fox into Alcoholics Anonymous.

Quimby the clockmaker became Quimby the hypnotist then the healer, and, finally, the teacher of a different view of man’s relationship to the infinite.

Indirectly from Quimby came an essentially parallel message: God is the only Power and evil is insubstantial; we form our destiny by our thoughts and beliefs; thought is spirit (i.e., all beliefs have an inherent tendency to actualize or externalize themselves on the material plane); time and space are human illusions; man is a manifestation of God, who is perfectly good; Jesus the Nazarene taught this whole truth and showed us the way toward oneness with the Divine Spirit (i.e., at-one-ment or atonement) and therefore He is the Savior. This realization is the Christ in each of us.

Center to New Thought is the rejection of a concept of man as a fallen creature and an understanding that man, in fact, is a cocreator in the universe, innately capable of perfect creation. We also have the power to see ourselves in this light or choose to see ourselves as fallible sinners. We exercise this choice every time we perceive a negative thought as we try to justify it. We accept responsibility for it and rebroadcast it in a way that affects others, for every thought infused with belief manifests itself in the physical world. If, on the other hand, we recognize a negative thought as a cry of fear originating outside ourselves, we reconvert that thought into a forgiving one. This is the realization of the Christ world in each of us.

Since man and God are coexistent, then man inherently and by his very nature is a part of the divine perfection. We need only accept this reality to find our true status. As Meister Eckhart, the medieval Catholic mystic, stated, All the worth of the humanity of the saints, or Mary, the Mother of God, or even Christ Himself, is mine also, in my human nature.

Since man’s nature is one with God’s nature, we have only to see the truth, and we are free. The road to Damascus is an inward journey and requires only giving up a belief in one’s limitations. Emmet Fox says it simply and concisely: You are the presence of God wherever you are.

Quimby rediscovered the power of healing and its relationship to our divine nature. As such a pioneer, he deserves recognition for helping to revitalize man’s view of God and His role in the universe.

Chapter 1

Quimby’s Background

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on February 16, 1802. He was one of seven children born to Jonathan Quimby, the village blacksmith, and his wife, Susannah White Quimby. In 1804 the family moved to Belfast, Maine. Quimby lived most of his life and practiced most of his healings. He married Susannah B. Haraden and became a parent to four children.

Belfast, a part of Troy county, was a small village with a population of 900 in 1805. Ocean travel to and from Boston and the stagecoach were its only means of communication with the rest of the country.

There were fine old farmhouses within the village proper, several log homes, one store, two meeting houses, and five wigwams. Lumber and cordwood were principal resources for economic growth. During the first half of the nineteenth century, Belfast grew from a backward area of extreme poverty to a prosperous center of culture and society. By the mid-1830s, Belfast had a population of 3,075. That climbed to 5,000 by 1850. There was a school and several churches, and a Universalist society, of which Quimby was a charter organizer.

During the golden age of the New England family farm, Belfast boasted magnificent homes and offices that dotted the countryside and overlooked the bay. Oxen carts drew steady commerce of hay, lumber, ice potatoes, and apples for shipment by sea, creating general prosperity for Belfast. P. P. Quimby, as the town clockmaker, silversmith, and goldsmith, shared this prosperity.

His family was poor in his early years, and his only education consisted of a few weeks of grammar school in the earliest grades. This was barely enough time for him to learn to read. Because of this, New England’s prominent intellectual writers Emerson, Thoreau, and other transcendentalists, those who wrote about the era’s philosophical movements, were close to him. He did not read the classics, science, and history of philosophy. Despite his sparse education, Quimby was always interested in scientific subjects, mechanics, history, and philosophy.

Quimby learned his trade as an apprentice to his older brother William, who had previously been apprenticed to Abiel B. Eastman and succeeded Eastman in 1822. William’s