The formula for the cure of leprosy as revealed in the fourteenth chapter of Leviticus is most illuminating when viewed through the eyes of a mystic. This formula can be prescribed as the positive cure of any disease in man’s world, be it physical, mental, financial, social, moral – anything.
It matters not about the nature of the disease or its duration, for the formula can be successfully applied to any and all of them.
Here is the formula as it is recorded in the book of Leviticus. “Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean… and the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed…..As for the living bird, he shall take it and shall dip it in the blood of the bird that was killed; and he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times and shall pronounce him clean and shall let the living bird loose into the open field…. And he shall be clean” [14:4-8].
A literal application of this story would be stupid and fruitless, while on the other hand a psychological application of the formula is wise and fruitful.
A bird is a symbol of an idea. Every man who has a problem or who desires to express something other than that which he is now expressing can be said to have two birds. These two birds or conceptions can be defined as follows: the first bird is your present out-pictured conception of yourself; it is the description which you would give if you were asked to define yourself – your physical condition, your income, your obligations, your nationality, family, race and so on. Your sincere answer to these questions would necessarily be based solely upon the evidence of your senses and not upon any wishful thinking.
This true conception of yourself (based entirely upon the evidences of your senses) defines the first bird.
The second bird is defined by the answer you wish you might give in these questions of self-definition. In short, these two birds can be defined as that which you are conscious of being and that which you desire to be.
Another definition of the two birds would be, the first – your present problem regardless of its nature, and the second – the solution to that problem.
For example: if you were sick, good health would be the solution. If you were in debt, freedom from debt would be the solution. If you were hungry, food would be the solution. As you have noticed, the how, the manner of realizing the solution, is not considered.
Only the problem and the solution are considered.
Every problem reveals its own solution. For sickness it is health; for poverty it is riches; for weakness it is strength, for confinement it is freedom.
These two states then, your problem and its solution, are the two birds you bring to the priest. You are the priest who now performs the drama of the curing of the man of leprosy – you and your problem. You are the priest; and with the formula for the cure of leprosy you now free yourself from your problem.
First: Take one of the birds (your problem) and kill it by extracting the blood from it. Blood is man’s consciousness. “He hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” [Acts 17:26].
Your consciousness is the one and only reality which animates and makes real that which you are conscious of being. So turning your attention away from the problem is equivalent to extracting the blood from the bird. Your consciousness is the one blood which makes all states living realities. By removing your attention from any given state you have drained the lifeblood from that state. You kill or eliminate the first bird (your problem) by removing your attention from it. Into this blood (your consciousness) you dip the live bird (the solution), or that which heretofore you desired to be or possess. This you do by freeing yourself to be the desirable state now.
The dipping of the live bird into the blood of the bird that was killed is similar to the blessing of Jacob by his blind father Isaac. As you recall, blind Isaac could not see his objective world, his son Esau. You, too, are blind to your problem – the first bird – for you have removed your attention from it and therefore you do not see it. Your attention (blood) is now placed upon the second bird (subjective state), and you feel and sense the reality of it.
Seven times you are told to sprinkle the one to be cleansed. This means you must dwell within the new conception of yourself until you mentally enter the seventh day (the Sabbath); until the mind is stilled or fixed in the belief that you are actually expressing or possessing that which you desire to be or to possess. At the seventh sprinkle you are instructed to loose the living bird and pronounce the man clean.
As you fully impress upon yourself the fact that you are that which you desire to be, you have symbolically sprinkled yourself seven times; then you are as free as the bird that is loosed. And like the bird in flight which must in a little while return to the earth, so must your subjective impressions or claim in a little while embody itself in your world.
This story and all the other stories of the Bible are psychological plays dramatized within the consciousness of man.
You are the high priest; you are the leper; you are the birds.
Your consciousness or I AM is the high priest; you, the man with the problem, are the leper. The problem, your present concept of yourself, is the bird that is killed; the solution of the problem, what you desire to be, is the living bird that is freed.
You re-enact this great drama within yourself by turning your attention away from your problem and placing it upon that which you desire to express.
You impress upon yourself the fact that you are that which you desire to be until your mind is stilled in the belief that it is so.
Living in this fixed attitude of mind, living in the consciousness that you are now that which you formerly desired to be, is the bird in flight, unfettered by the limitations of the past and moving toward the embodiment of your desire.