Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
Evans's Interior Receptivity
To still the mind and ‘retire inward’ into a calm, passive, trusting state in which one feels open to the inflow of the universal divine Life as health and strength.
Evans’s interior receptivity in 4 lines: Sit quietly and turn inward, away from the senses (“introversion of the mind”). Take the receptive attitude — tranquil desire, passive receptivity, unresisting willingness, serene trust. Open, as to a door, and let the universal Life flow in as health and peace; don’t strain, just receive. Rest there, then carry the calm into the day. (Restful adjunct; not a cure — keep your medical care.)
What it is
Beneath all of Evans’s healing sits a contemplative posture he inherited from Swedenborg’s doctrine of influx: the soul does not generate life but receives it from the universal divine Life that flows in continually.
To heal, Evans teaches, you retire inward, grow still and passive, and put yourself in the receptive attitude in which that inflowing Life can act as health. He describes the moments “when. we retire inward by an introversion of the mind,” and prescribes an attitude of “tranquil desire, passive receptivity, unresisting willingness, and serene trust.” This is the foundational contemplative-receptivity practice of New Thought — the ancestor of “going into the Silence.”
The Method
Faithful to Evans (Mental Cure, Primitive Mind-Cure):
- Withdraw from the senses. Sit quietly and turn attention away from the outer, sensory world — Evans’s “introversion of the mind.” The clamor of sense and worry is what blocks the inner perception.
- Settle into the receptive attitude. Deliberately adopt Evans’s fourfold posture: tranquil desire (a quiet wish for health/good, not anxious craving), passive receptivity (you are not generating anything, only opening), unresisting willingness (no straining of the will), and serene trust (calm confidence, not demand).
- Open to the inflow. Hold the sense that the universal Life — for Evans, God / the Christ-life — flows into you from within, as health, strength, and peace. He frames it scripturally: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man open the door, I will come in to him” — your part is only to open. Evans’s healer reaches “an interior state where the inner ear can catch the echo of thought and life,” receiving “that he may impart.” 4. Stay still and let it act. Do not work, will, or analyze. Rest in the quiet, letting the felt inflow steep through you. The stillness itself is the receptivity.
- Carry the filled, trusting state back into the day; for Evans this calm openness is both the healer’s qualification and the patient’s best condition for cure. (Sourcing note: the quoted phrases — “introversion of the mind,” the fourfold “tranquil desire, passive receptivity.” attitude, the “inner ear” passage, and the Rev. 3:20 citation — are Evans’s own wording, attributed. Framing is faithful paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Evans (1817–1889) drew this directly from Emanuel Swedenborg’s doctrine that all life is influx from the Divine, fused with Quimby’s healing practice.
It predates and seeds the New Thought “Silence”: Fillmore’s silence, Militz’s single-eye concentration, Trine’s In Tune with the Infinite, the Master Key “sit still,” and Quietude practices generally.
Evans’s version is distinctively Swedenborgian-receptive — emphasis on inflow received, not concentration generated.
Common refinements
Straining to “receive.” The whole posture is unresisting willingness; effortful trying defeats it. Evans’s word is passive.
- Anxious craving disguised as desire. “Tranquil desire” is calm, not grasping; demanding a result re-introduces the fear you came to release.
- Treating a peaceful state as proof of cure. Feeling filled with Life is not evidence the body has healed. Don’t read the mood as a medical verdict.
- Refinement: Evans uses this receptive stillness as the ground for his other methods — enter it first, then (if desired) impress a healing idea or affirm the well self.