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If you would ask me what to study, I would say, yourself, and when you had studied well and would ask me what next to study, I would again reply, yourself.
Permanent healing necessitates a removal of conditions that cause disease. Those conditions go beyond the physical, usually originating anterior to the present earth life. They have to do with the mental and emotional life of man; they are the result of some kind of disobedience, willful or ignorant, of cosmic law. This truth was made plain by Christ Jesus when He asked His disciples: "For whether is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?"
Disease is rooted in sin, and sin is deviation from the perfect law. It is not, therefore, an arbitrary punishment meted out to disobedient man by an offended Deity, but the inevitable result of violations against Nature's true and wholesome ways. Being out of harmony with the laws of life, disease appears and serves as a warning to the offender that the restoration of health necessitates conformity to the divine order. In his way it becomes man's enlightener, painful only because he will not, for the most part, learn except through first-hand, sorrowful experiences. When he comes to recognize these truths and makes the necessary corrections and readjustments by which the causes of sickness are removed, the ill effects disappear and permanent healing becomes an established condition.
This truth was brought out by the Christ when healing a man of lameness. According to the record as related in John 5:5-8; 14, Christ Jesus encountered a multitude which lay sick beside the pool of Bethesda, but it appears that there was only one amongst them who received healing. This was not because Christ Jesus did not have it in His heart to make them all whole, but because He evidently discovered only one in whom He recognized a receptive spirit and the necessary faith to receive the healing which a divine ministration could bestow upon him.
And so we read that the Master told him who was healed to take up his bed and walk, and that he did so. Later, when Christ Jesus met him in the Temple, He said, "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" — thus reminding him that it is a violation of law, physical and spiritual, which brings on disease, whereas obedience thereto preserves wholeness.
Again, in the Gospel of John we read of the man born blind. To the query of the disciples as to the cause, the Master replied: "That the works of God (the spirit within) should be made manifest." It is through suffering, pain, and limitation that the Ego awakens to a realization of its own innate perfection.
The pupils of Paracelsus came to him with the question: "Tell us, O Master, what is the mystery of nature and of man? What is the mystery of disease and what are life and death?" To which the ancient sage replied: "If you would decipher man then you must understand that occult language which is revealed to the scholar, but concealed from the layman. "
The occult language to which Paracelsus refers is that of the mysteries which lie hidden in the great cycles of life and whose meanings are written in the stars, therein to be deciphered by those who have developed inner wisdom. Blessed indeed are the eyes that see and the hearts that understand something of the wonder-workings of those laws which govern nature and man.
In the light of the Western Wisdom, man is infinitely more than the externalized form contacted with the outer senses. Man possesses a chain of vehicles all of which, the physical body alone excepted, are invisible to ordinary sight; but which are nevertheless present, interpenetrating one another and functioning actively in maintaining the composite form through which the Spirit manifests on this physical plane. When any maladjustment occurs between any of these several vehicles, the result is a disorder of some kind in mind or body, or both. The nature and the degree of the dislocations determine the nature and the degree of the resultant disease. To diagnose a disease perfectly is to lay bare the imperfect alignment between the bodies of man, visible and invisible. Therefore, the true physician, as Paracelsus observes, studies the invisible man more earnestly than he does the visible.
The body of man is threefold. It comprises the physical body, the vital body (which is its etheric counterpart) and the desire or astral body. These three interpenetrating vehicles are connected to the threefold Spirit or Ego by the link of mind, the mental vehicle.
The Ego has its seat in the head at the root of the nose and uses the blood as its special vehicle; the specialized physical vehicle of the etheric body is the glandular system; that of the desire body is the nervous system.
The deep and hidden causes which lie behind the mystery of disease and healing — the origin of and reason for various infirmities, the length of their duration, and many other equally interesting problems connected with this subject — can be satisfactorily solved for the occultist only in the light of the twin Laws of Rebirth and Consequence.
We will be greatly helped to a more adequate understanding of the complexity and profundity of our subject by first considering the prenatal conditions under which an Ego works preparatory to entering upon another incarnation in a new physical body. This initial work commences with the creation of the archetype in the likeness of which the physical body is formed. This living, vibrating, celestial pattern determines the size, form, and general appearance of the body; also, the length of the life span.
The quality and strength of the archetype, be it well remembered, are dependent upon the Ego's previous earth lives. It is formed of the life forces generated in the past by the Spirit itself, these forces being a synthesized extract of the individual's previous earth experiences. When an earth life has been lived under limited, negative, and inharmonious conditions — and this would include all manner of Jack, evil, and disease — the essences drawn therefrom will be of corresponding quality. Since it is out of this essence that the new archetype is formed, it will be composed of elements generated in the past and the fruits of which reappear in the next physical body used by the Ego.
We have but to observe the average human vehicle to realize how unwisely humanity as a whole has treated its physical instruments and how little it recognizes thoughts and deeds as causative factors of health or disease in its body. As a man thinks, so is he. The law of reaping as we sow obtains on all planes of being. We are what we are because of what we have been, and we can be what we will to be when we come into a realization of the creative power of thought and acquire the ability to direct it as we will. There is no limitation placed upon man but that which he imposes upon himself. When people generally have come to accept understandingly the Law of Rebirth from this viewpoint, a new and emancipated race, a race that will truly be "heirs and joint heirs with Christ," will come into being.
The Law of Rebirth, which decrees that an Ego returns to earth life again and again until all the lessons of the material plane have been learned, its possibilities fully explored, and its powers completely mastered, is sometimes misinterpreted by those who have not looked fully into the subject as imposing unnecessary limitations on the Spirit of man. But rightly understood, the Law of Rebirth comes as a liberating truth pointing the way to repeated opportunities for the exercise of our God-given faculties until these be unfolded to their divine fullness in accordance with the ordered processes of evolving life as these operate on all planes of being throughout the universe. It is the Law of Rebirth that enables man to become, indeed, the "master of his fate and captain of his soul."
Sometime we shall all know that evolution progresses in harmony with the musical scale and that each incarnating Spirit responds in soul measures to one of the Seven Spirits before the Throne of God, or astrologically speaking, the seven planets in our solar system. (Esoterically only seven planets are native to our system.) The planet to which the Ego is keyed determines the rhythm of the archetype, which in turn transmits this same dominant note to the vehicles making up the personality (persona, mask) through which the Spirit functions during earth life. Although one planetary note is paramount, the blended tones of the other six also operate in forming the celestial fabric. The planetary bodies are vehicles of indwelling Planetary Spirits, and as their physical motion is continuous, so, too, is the activity of the Spirits ensouling them. Their radiations influence everything within the sphere of their operations from the most minute atom to the largest orb within our solar system. How much of this influence the Ego can receive and build into its life pattern depends upon its development, which in turn is determined by the quality and the quantity of the experience garnered into soul growth during previous incarnating cycles.
When, for instance, the high note of a trine between the Sun and Neptune is sounded in the heavens, if the Spirit has not yet awakened the latent qualities making it capable of responding to this lofty inspirational impulse which, when appropriated and made manifest in the individual life, leads to the exalted state we speak of as initiation, nothing whatsoever of consequence happens in terms of consciousness. The effect of this failure to respond when such a tone was sounded will be an absence of such planetary tendency in the archetype of the next embodiment. If, by way of further example, a person reacts to the forces of a square between the same two planets, and experiences its effects in conditions of negative psychism and mediumship, tendencies to re-manifest those conditions will appear in the next earth life. If the temptations to yield to negativity under such an aspect be mastered, and consciousness raised to levels where it maintains itself untouched by the undesirable manifestation of the square; a similar aspect will not have to be met in the next earth life. If it has not been mastered it will reappear, since the weakness remains to be overcome. Earth life is a school, and the Planetary Spirits before the Throne are among our celestial teachers. They do not compel us to live thus or so, but they do impel as to live in harmony with their ordered ways and in obedience to the laws of universal good.
As is our life, so is the signature of the stars. If this truth be borne carefully in mind, the erroneous conception held by the uninformed that astrology implies fatalism is forever removed. Whatever be the design formed by the lines of force which we have admitted and directed within our being, it is impressed upon our present archetype and will be transferred from it to the next. This pattern is reflected in our physical body where it is expressed as health or disease, depending on whether the forces have been drawn into patterns of beauty and harmony or of ugliness and discord.
From the self-created penalties following the misdirection of forces, or to speak astrologically, from the misfortune of malefic stellar aspects, man frees himself when he learns the ways of divine laws and lives in obedience to them. Liberation from the bondage of "bad aspects" comes with the awakening of the Christ within. The illumination that follows such an awakening leads to a life of love and beauty: lines of discord disappear from the archetype, and in due course their reflected dis-ease in the physical body also disappears. The released powers of the Christ within also strengthen the rhythm of the archetype, giving to the body added physical vigor and sometimes a prolongation of life. Those who honor their father and mother, that is, those who live in obedience to the laws of their Creator, are promised length of days. An example of life prolonged may be cited in the biblical character of good King Hezekiah.
As previously stated, evolution proceeds in harmony with the rhythms of the musical scale. The tone of the particular planet to which an Ego is attuned sets the keynote of the archetype; and later, when the embryonic vital sheath is placed by the Angels within the body of the expectant mother, it is set to the same musical key as that sounding in the archetype.
The physical envelope is moulded into an exact replica of the vital body, the medium for the inflow of the vitalizing life force. The physical body, therefore, is also built in harmony with this same musical rhythm. When this fact is recognized, it becomes clear how the harmonious relationship of the Ego with its bodies means health, and how a dissonance between it and its vehicles produces disease.
Over-exhaustion, anger, emotional excess of any kind, rich and heavy foods taken in excess, all have a tendency to lower the initial tone of the vital body and thus disturb the "musical balance" of the entire organism. Bodies are then more easily susceptible to inharmonious reactions and such weaknesses as exist in the archetype are most liable to reappear. What these are will be seen in the radical horoscope of a person's nature since this is in truth a picture of the soul. Wherever squares and oppositions are found, disharmony is most likely to appear. A scientific analysis of all factors involved points to the nature of a mental or physical ailment that is likely to manifest. Remember, however, that the awakened Christ within can lift man above these inscribed lines of causation.
As we realize that disease is really a musical inharmony — "sweet bells jangled, out of tune," as the poet put it — we also begin to understand something of the trememendous part that music will assume in the bealing practice of the future. If every person were sufficiently sensitized to be able to rise in consciousness to where he could listen to his own particular keynote, the words of the Master, "Physician, heal thyself," would bear a new and more far-reaching significance. But since this is not possible, other methods must be employed in the meantime.
Relief from disease comes as the rhythm of the vital body is raised and strengthened. Health or harmony is permanently restored when the lines of harmony are definitely re-established within the archetype. Thus we see how inadequate pills and powders become in the light of this understanding, and how essential is the power of spiritual thinking and the transformed mind as advocated by the great Christian metaphysician, Paul.
One of the most potent means of lifting the tone of the vital body is by the use of spiritual affirmations. Many portions of the Bible are particularly efficacious in this work, the Twenty-third Psalm and the first chapter of John's Gospel being familiar and notable examples. Certain music, a poem, or excerpts from a well-loved book, are also helpful in producing the required result.
If we would be immune to disease, it is necessary that the practice of lifting the consciousness to a point where it contacts the "tone" of spirit must be performed faithfully at regular intervals, preferably in the early morning hours and at night on retiring. It is best to use consistently the same affirmation, as in time every atom of our bodies, both visible and invisible, will respond instantaneously to the "tone" of the affirmation used.
Deep, rhythmic, harmonious breathing is also an important factor in the rehabilitation of both inner and outer man. Breath is fundamental to physical life, and as we learn to ascend in consciousness we shall also learn to breathe in the powers of the Holy Spirit; this will enable us to transcend the limitations of disease and even to conquer that last of all enemies, death itself.
All forms of disease may be divided into two classes, namely, chronic and acute. A study of disease in the light of rebirth has shown that mental weaknesses in one life usually react as physical infirmities in the next; and contrariwise, that physical abuses take their after-toll in mental disabilities. Mistaken attitudes of mind, whatever they may be, build lines of force into the seed atoms of the desire and mental bodies, from which they are later transferred to or "set" in the archetype. From the archetype they are, in turn, transmitted to the Ego's next vital and physical bodies where they will appear as lines of inharmony or disease, either chronic or acute. There they remain until the indwelling Spirit has learned the lesson imposed by the infirmity. The cause will then be removed, after which the effect will permanently disappear. Any form of healing that does not remove the cause is obviously impermanent. Every true healer endeavors to awaken within the patient a realization of his own innate divinity. In the degree the patient realizes his inner powers and utilizes them rightly does he demonstrate health and wholeness of mind and body. Were we able to observe the subtler interpenetrating vehicles of the composite man, we would see the processes of restoration going on simultaneously in the entire chain of vehicles, from those within to those outside the physical.
There are four elements from which all things are composed. These elements are called Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. All diseases may be classed under one or another of these four headings. For instance, infirmities caused by alcoholic indulgence, cancers, and fevers are of a fiery nature. Mental aberrations and diseases caused by the excessive use of drugs, come under the airy element. Malformed bodies and abnormal growths belong to the earthy element. Diseases of the stomach, digestive tract, and the assimilative and glandular systems are associated with the watery element.
There are four fundamental types of persons correlating with the i twelve zodiacal signs. These twelve signs may be subdivided into four groups of three each, according to the element to which they belong. They make up what we speak of astrologically as the four triplicities. A healer will be most successful in dealing with ailments that come under the same element as does his ruling sign. The physician who comes under the fiery sign Leo, for instance, will have greater ability for curing patients who are under a sign of a compatible element and for healing ailments belonging to the fiery element. Most healers, if not all, of every school, regardless of whether or not they recognize the astrological factors, admit they are more successful in treating some patients, and in healing some types of disease, than others. The key to this is to be found in a common element linking healer and patient together, and also the third factor, the ailment to be cured. These are the facts that lead to specialization, even though they are as yet unknown to the average practitioner making such choice.
A healer with the Sun in the fiery, cardinal sign Aries will be most successful in the treatment of acute diseases; one with the Sun in the fiery, fixed sign Leo, in chronic maladies; one with the Sun in the fiery, mutable sign Sagittarius will serve most effectively as a nurse. Similarly, a healer coming under the earth ray will prove most successful with the type of disease governed by his ruling sign. If that be Capricorn, it will be acute maladies; if Taurus, chronic; and if Virgo, the healing that comes chiefly from nursing. Under the airy ray, Gemini governs acute illnesses; Aquarius, chronic; Libra, the nurse. Under the watery ray, Pisces, acute; Scorpio, chronic; Cancer, the nurse.
As we come closer to the cooperative age of airy Aquarius, healing groups will be established to work along specialized lines determined by fundamental fitness as this is ascertainable by reference to the science of the stars. This knowledge will be applied in schools of healing, in hospitals, and in the general practice of healing. There will be formed healing groups of twelve, or multiples thereof, in which the combined and properly proportioned forces of all the twelve zodiacal signs will become operative to a degree of efficiency not possible short of such organization. Such a group will become a power as a group, and each individual in it, working intelligently along his own specialized ray, will function with enhanced ability as a result of his coordination with fellow practitioners possessing complementary forces which, in their completeness, serve the whole of man and nature. The results of such concerted efforts will be so remarkable and far-reaching that many who come to scoff will remain to praise.
Man is a microcosmic universe. The laws which govern the starry spheres apply equally to the bodies of man. Every atom in the universe and in man is in continuous rotation. In health the movement is from left to right; in disease, from right to left. Positive, constructive thinking also produces the clockwise motion; negative, destructive thinking, counter-clockwise. Viewed clairvoyantly, any abnormal growth in the body is seen to be composed of atoms rotating negatively and out of harmony with the keynote of the vital body.
The strong constructive thought of a healer, reinforced by appropriate affirmations on the part of both healer and patient, has the power to reverse this motion, and thereby disintegrate the diseased atoms, after which comes the restoration to health.
Dr. Alexis Carrel, in his richly informative and illuminating work, Man, the Unknown, observes that "science studies intensely man's liver, kidneys, and all his physical functions — everything except the only important function, which is thought."
Life is vibration. It is the Eternal Essence manifesting at a certain rate of motion. When the vibratory rate falls below a given point, disease is the result, and when it falls still lower, death ensues. At that point the forces of disintegration overtake those of attraction and cohesion. Vibration offers the key to the secrets of health and disease, of youth and age, of death and its eventual surrender to immortal life.
People suffer greatly today from contagious diseases. Repeated epidemics take their toll of tens of millions. Fear plays an important part at such times. Where the disease itself takes the lives of hundreds, it is perhaps true that fear claims victims by the thousands. Thought becomes very obviously the most important factor of cure and control under such situations. If people recognized the importance of Dr. Carrel's statement quoted above, and gave attention to the power of thought, the problem of contagion would be largely solved. Fear is paralyzing in its effects. It slows down the motion of the atoms of both the mental and the physical bodies. The rhythmic harmony between the several vehicles is disturbed with the inevitable result of dis-ease of some kind.
When an epidemic sweeps over a city the psychic atmosphere takes on a leaden aspect; it is grey and heavy with the accumulated fear thoughts of the masses. The glaring headlines in the daily paper add to the scare. By stirring up emotions of fear through screaming aloud the numbers who are ill and the fatalities as they increase, added numbers succumb. This alone is a sinister influence of tremendous power. It is largely responsible for lowering the consciousness of a community in time of an epidemic to such an extent that it becomes a task of major proportions for the average individual to rise above it. How truly Job spoke for multitudes of others when he exclaimed: "That which I feared hath come upon me."
When these facts are known and acted upon, effective measures can be taken to avoid fear and remain immune to contagion. Let the mind remain faithfully centered in Truth, and in calm and in confidence meditate on the divine power within that is available whenever called into action. Use such affirmations as strengthen poise and faith. The Twenty-third and the Ninety-first Psalms have magical power for alleviating fear. Let these rhythms enter into the very recesses of the subconscious mind by repetition and by meditation upon their divine assurances. Avoid reading about disease or discussing the subject unnecessarily, never negatively. Refuse to permit any of its lurid details to be pictured upon your mind. The image-building faculty of mind (imagination) is one of its most powerful tools. It may be used constructively or destructively. It can rebuild a broken body or tear down a healthy one. The power to do one or the other lies within ourselves.
It is also to be noted in this connection that in accordance with the law of retributive justice those who, knowingly or ignorantly, implant fears of contagion during epidemics in the hearts of individuals or communities, become the victims of their own unfortunate sowing in this or in another life.
Hereditary diseases can be rightly understood only in the light of rebirth. The Law of Heredity is the counterpart of the spiritual Law of Rebirth. When strained to include facts explicable only by a reference to the latter law, it becomes a fallacy. The average individual attributes to heredity powers not belonging to it. This is one of the many limiting misconceptions that have yet to be outgrown.
While it is true that parents supply the physical atoms for building the infant body of an incoming Ego, and that a pure body cannot be provided by parents whose bodies are charged with poisons and disease, it must never be forgotten that the incarnating Ego need not remain subject to such limitations. It possesses the power to nullify every negative condition passed on to it under the Law of Heredity. It can remake its physical body atom for atom. As for the qualities of character, these are not the product of heredity or environment. They belong to the individual soul, and the soul is the child of its own previous creation. The reason it receives by heredity an imperfect body is due to its own causation; it has broken laws of God and nature in the past and therefore finds itself in physical imperfection until such time as it ceases such violations and obeys the law of health and harmony. No time limit is placed on when this may occur. It is whenever the Ego chooses to leave the path of pain for ways of lasting joy. That time may be now.
Where similarity of character between parents and children would appear to indicate that heredity applied, the most obvious fact disproving such a conclusion is the number of cases of extreme dissimilarity. The explanation for the similarity is the Law of Attraction that normally brings together Egos of approximately like development and of similar tastes and interests.
An Ego comes into earth life carrying with it in latency all the powers and abilities that it has acquired in past lives, together with such increment as it has added during its period in the inner worlds between the last earth life and the one upon which it next enters. The time between earth lives is not one of idleness; it is one of intense, purposeful activity. Normally, growth and progress are continuous and uninterrupted. The body in which the Ego will function will be built, as previously stated, of materials supplied by the parents. The quality of that material will be in accordance with the individual's past causation. If in past lives he has incorporated lines of discord or weakness, or tendencies to certain diseases into his body they will exist in his present archetype, and by the Law of Attraction he will gravitate to parents who will supply materials of similar nature. Thus, the Ego will fashion a body susceptible to certain specific weaknesses but in accordance with causes set up in past lives by himself, not because he chanced to meet the misfortune of a parentage over which he had no control. To believe the latter would be to deny the existence of justice in the world and to affirm that we incarnate, well or ill, good or bad, by caprice and not according to desert. It were to deny the operation of natural law in the moral sphere and the supervision of a Divine Father — He Who is Love and no respecter of persons, who provides equal opportunity for all His children to become perfect even as He is perfect.
In addition to the general Law of Attraction which brings similarly stationed individuals into family, community, and racial groups, there are usually specific ties of an intimate nature from the past that link individuals together in family relationships. There are causations to be reaped; pleasant fruits to be harvested, grievous debts to be paid-most frequently something of both.
Let it be repeated again — for it cannot be repeated too often — that it is not to be inferred from the above that we are helplessly bound by the past. The unfortunate links forged under the Law of Causation between people may be severed by entering into a realization of the truth that sets us free. The chains of past causation and the bonds of heredity hold us only so long as we permit them to do so. "We are in bondage under the law (material thinking); we are free in Christ (spiritual realization)."
The practice of hypnotism carries serious consequences both to the practitioner and his subjects. It involves interference with the free will of an Ego. The hypnotist projects his own mind into the brain of another and makes the victim subject to his will. Even where this is done with the unselfish purpose of freeing a person of an enslaving habit of drugs or liquor it is not justifiable. The cure is not permanent until the sufferer himself has conquered the weakness, and, therefore, when a hypnotist cures the body by ejecting the will of the Ego, using it and supplanting it with his own will power, he has merely deprived the Ego of the opportunity to learn the lesson that it must some day master. The immediate seeming gain is really a loss. The lesson to be learned has been delayed; also, the will power of the victim has been weakened by the process.
Free will is an Ego's most priceless heritage during this earth pilgrimage; for another person to supplant that will with his own or in any way to weaken it, even though the motives for doing so be of the highest, is to bring upon himself disastrous consequences. By the power of the will the Ego mounts the ladder of evolution that leads to Godhood. That will is weakened in the individual who submits to hypnotism, in which state the will of the hypnotist brings the will of the hypnotized completely under his domination. But a person cannot be put "under the spell" if his own will is more positive than that of the hypnotist.
When control over another is for the purpose of idle amusement or in order to gain some selfish advantage, the consequences of the wrong are yet more serious, There are none more so. Those who surrender their will to another have the task of regaining the will power that has been lost. Those who have victimized others will be called upon under the Law of Justice to assist their victims to regain their weakened powers. They are also liable to serious physical infirmities in future embodiments. Such is the frequent fate of a professional hypnotist. Through a misshapen, useless body the Spirit will learn the enormity of the wrong of making another's body helpless by substituting his own will for that of its rightful occupant.
The widespread practice of hypnotism in our time, together with the flood of literature favorable to the subject, is another evidence of the disintegrating forces that are threatening to overtake our civilization and bring about its collapse. Integrity in the full meaning of that word is the great need of our time — integrity in our personal and public life, integrity in commercial, professional, and governmental life. Man must become a harmoniously, unified functioning being before he can build a successful life and so become a sound unit in the upbuilding of a healthy community, a wholesome culture and an enduring civilization.
Medical science is far less materialistic today than it was in the last century. It is confronted with facts that are compelling it to recognize that it must learn how to minister to diseased minds no less than to diseased bodies. The nature and behavior of the psyche or soul has become an object of extensive medical research, and has so far developed as to have given rise to psychiatry as a recognized branch of medical practice. While the psyche is still popularly regarded as a term pertaining to mind only and not to the higher vehicle of the soul, yet the direction of medical scientific thought is steadily moving away from the former material concepts which regarded man solely as a physical being and is now coming gradually to an acceptance of man's composite nature as taught in both religious doctrines and occult science.
The pressure of the facts of every-day life is compelling the reluctant admission from hitherto confirmed materialists that mind is superior to matter and that cures call for more than drugs. The untold number of mental cases that are now being treated in hospitals in the United States alone, together with another vast number of unhospitalized cases estimated at anywhere from seven to fourteen million, have of necessity called forth a new and rapidly growing class of healers that we have come to know as psychiatrists, or mind-therapists. The next logical development in the healing ministry will be the restoration of the healing that combined religion and science as practiced by the priest-physician — the chief of whom was the Lord Christ, the Healer of Healers, who came to earth that men might be restored to wholeness and well-being.
Mental diseases are of many kinds and gradations. The most prevalent is psychoneurosis, or neurosis for short. This is characterized by conflicting emotions and bad adjustment to environment. There is wanting a proper integration of body, mind, and soul. The several principles, or bodies, of the outer and the inner man have fallen out of perfect alignment and hence fail at times to function as a unit. There is a split — hence the expression "split personality," or schizophrenia, as it is technically termed. This has been defined as a split between the sense of the actual and the ideal, the state of mind of one who is unable to face certain unpleasant realities and so withdraws into an unreal world of his own.
More serious is the mental ailment formerly called just plain insanity but in the new terminology of our day as psychosis. The mental derangement of those so afflicted is due to various causes and conditions. One type of insanity is spoken of in medical terms as multi-personality, or obsession, in which the mind is said to leave its normal track at times for some reason not yet known to material medical practice. It is a type of insanity that was formerly pronounced incurable, and consequently its sufferers were committed to mental institutions for life. However, in the decade of the thirties a form of treatment was discovered which in many instances proved highly efficacious. This is known as the "shock treatment" since, by the use of electricity, insulin, or metrazol, the patient is subjected to a series of shocks as strong as can be taken. In this way it has been found that patients have at times been jolted back to normal. To he thrown into " the snake pit " is but another form of administering such a shock. It was a theory among medieval medics that since a shock of this type was enough to drive a sane person mad it should also have the power of shocking a mad mind back to normality.
There is truth here as the occultist well knows. In the case of multiple personality an alien Ego has entered into a body that is not its own by ejecting the rightful owner. Hence, the body is used by two (or more) entities. While material science repudiates this "devil theory," as it is termed, it does recognize shock treatments as driving out something; or at any rate, as effecting some sort of rearrangement in the patient's mental mechanism. The occultist, on the other hand, sees it as a means by which an intruding entity is forced to loosen its hold upon the etheric body of the victim and thereby turn the body over to its rightful owner, at least partially or for a brief period. The fact is that the obsessing entity's hold is gradually weakened by repeated treatments of this kind, and in some cases complete cures have been effected.
Obsessions may be divided into two classes, elemental and demoniacal. The former is more common. It is generally caused by self-abuse in previous lives. Such a practice, if long continued, produces an extremely nervous, negative condition which makes the subject an easy prey to elementals of earth, water and air. It was this form of insanity that the Supreme Physician healed when He cast out obsessing entities from afflicted human beings and sent them into swine which, when so possessed, rushed headlong into the sea and were drowned. Swine symbolize the bestial elements in man's nature that must be driven out to cleanse his house for the return of its rightful occupant.
All demoniacal obsessions are directly traceable to the practice of some form of black magic in the past. By black magic is meant any practice that in any way enslaves another being, or that limits the free will of an individual. As previously pointed out, there is no greater crime than this. The perpetrator of such wrongs pays heavily in pain and sorrow until he has learned the enormity of his sins.
Treatment of demoniacal obsession, which is alarmingly prevalent in these modern times, requires a healer who is highly spiritual and who possesses extended vision. Unfortunately, such healers are few. So our asylum continue to be overcrowded with cases pronounced incurable. This disorder is frequently referred to in the Bible as the possession of devils.
Persons suffering from obsession forfeit benefits they would normally receive from their earthly experience to the extent that they are deprived of the use of their own bodies. Yet it is not all loss. The agony they suffer as the result of their expulsion writes itself into their soul. After they have contemplated from the inner world the psychological crimes they committed that brought upon them such a tragic calamity, the voice of conscience will speak loudly to them in future lives, warning against a repetition of those sins.
The question sometimes arises as to the justification of taking the life of an individual who begs to be relieved from a body that renders him incapable of even the slightest self-help. From the point of view of a single earth life, arguments in its favor may seem altogether plausible. But in the light of rebirth and causation, this is a wrong that cannot be condoned. It would solve no problem. The Ego must be born again and yet again in an equally helpless body until the import of past misdeeds has been learned. This is not the arbitrary edict of a vengeful Deity; it is the inexorable working of the Law of eternal Justice. It is the way of progress. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
The blood is the direct channel of the Spirit within the body of man. It contains the deepest secrets of life. A "blood tie" means a bond that is indissoluble; it can be severed only through a Spirit's final release from its body. This fact was borne out by an interesting press report about a man who had given of his blood to a considerable number of persons requiring transfusions. He stated that whenever one whom he had so served died, he was immediately aware of the passing and also saw the likeness of the departed. What he saw was not merely a likeness, but the disembodied Spirit itself.
In the case of blood transfusions great care should be exercised to secure the proper blood type and a donor belonging astrologically to the same element as the patient. A patient coming under a fire sign should accept blood only from a donor who comes under either a fire or an air sign: a water patient should draw on someone belonging to an earth or water sign; an air patient, from a fire or air donor; an earth patient from one coming under a water or an earth sign.
Two persons coming into such an intimate relationship as the mixing of blood usually do so in liquidation of some debt incurred in the past. One who frequently gives his blood in this manner is probably atoning for blood he has shed, perhaps in the course of wars of ruthless aggression. In the case of a person highly sensitized through clean and holy living, extra precautions are necessary for otherwise the reactions may be serious or even fatal. In such a case it is desirable to obtain blood from one who abstains from meat, tobacco, and alcoholic liquors. Where the vibratory rate of the newly infused blood varies too greatly from that of the patient, the Ego may not be able to reconcile the difference and bring the "alien" life — for "the life is in the blood" — under its complete control, in which event derangement, or even death, is the result.
Every infirmity is connected with one of the four elements. Poisons are of fiery origin and center in the desire body. Poison is rendered harmless to one's body when his lower desires have been transmuted. Hence, the Master's statement. to his disciples: "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them."
All fermentations operate in the fiery ray. Alcoholic beverages have the ultimate effect of making man a slave to his desire nature and an abject tool of the Lucifers. The house of prayer (body) becomes the den of thieves (destructive poisons). One of the darkest causations the nations of the world will have to meet is the result of extensive indulgence in alcoholic liquors. Those who engage in the manufacture and distribution of intoxicants, or who are in any way responsible for its traffic, will not escape the deleterious effects which the habit of strong drink has had upon the race. They will one day have to share in bearing the burden of racial reclamation, the need for which they had a part in creating.
Epidemics are largely a reaction from collective wrongs committed in the past. The ten millions, or thereabouts, who went out from this plague in 1919-20 suffered a sudden reaction from the mass crimes of the World War. We cannot take the lives of our brothers and charge the atmosphere with destructive thoughts of hate, murder and revenge — far greater in power than poison gas — without its resulting in a heavy toll of misery and death.
Cholera, black plague, and smallpox are more prevalent among primitive people than in more enlightened races. They are occultly attributable in large part to voodoo practices, black magic, incantations, and other means used to subordinate the mind of one person to another without the former's knowledge or against his will.
In the words of a sage, the weaknesses of the soul proclaim the frailties of the body. Upon the seed atom, located in the left ventricle of the heart, is engraven an unalterable record of man's life. By this record is he judged and his destiny fixed — a fact which prompted the Psalmist to sing: "Your heart shall live forever."
Since the outer reflects the inner, it is to the latter we must look for the ultimate cause of whatever manifests in the physical body. These causes are not ascertainable by one examining a physical body only, but may be discerned by one capable of investigating the conditions of the subtler bodies. To go farther back into causes of the effects found in these subtle bodies one must possess spiritual powers for reading the Memory of Nature, wherein is recorded everything from the beginning of time.
Research into the hidden side of health and disease throws an amazing light on the science of healing. From among numberless facts revealed, a few may be cited by way of illustration.
Clear spiritual perception will express itself outwardly as perfect physical sight. A persistent refusal to see truth when presented ends in blindness. Far-sightedness comes from having overlooked opportunities to serve, and of living in the future to the neglect of the present. Of short-sightedness an esoteric rabbi writes: "Wherefore the limitation of short-sighted vision if it were not for peering into other people's affairs, else why the punishment laid on innocent eyes and ears?" A warped mental viewpoint, if maintained long enough, will produce a distortion of physical vision.
Similar reasons account for deafness as for loss of sight. Persistently close the ears to words of truth and the time will come when a spoken truth will fall on ears unable to hear.
An impediment in speech betokens blasphemy, false testimony, or malicious gossip in the past. Words may slay or injure; the reaction from such is impaired speech, or even total dumbness. The betrayal of a sacred trust or the violation of a vow may later cost the betrayer an injury to the tongue or, in more serious cases, its complete loss.
Most people suffer more or less from imperfect teeth. They are seldom retained in perfect condition to the end of a full life span. The hidden cause for such loss is the identification in consciousness of oneself with the ephemeral things of life. When consciousness is transferred from the transient to unchangeable reality, the change will be reflected in conditions of relative stability and permanency in the physical body.
Heart afflictions result from misplaced affections. The following has been told humorously, but the ailing young man spoke more truly than he knew. Upon being told by a physician that he had a bad heart, that he was troubled with angina pectoris, he agreed with the doctor but insisted that that was not her name! Heartaches do come from too many loves. A wanton spilling of affection means a later heart leakage. An intense personal love, directed to a single individual at the expense of any regard for others where such regard is due, has the effect of contracting the heart and giving rise to cardiac disorders. The heart, the center for the love principle, suffers when this principle is in any way subverted from its highest expression. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
Ailments of arms and shoulders result from evading the responsibilities of life and relegating them to others. The hands present, even more than the countenance, indices to character, ability, and development. They reveal the nature and quality of past thought and action. Being a direct expression of the mind, they develop as does the thinker. Compare the hands of mindless anthropoids with those of rational man. The thumb, index to will, wisdom, and activity, is undeveloped in the apes. Even that of a giant gorilla is smaller than a man's little finger, and its opposable action is negligible.
The hands, like the mind which they express in action, are ruled by Mercury. The little finger is specifically ruled by this planet. When the mind is warped the little finger is curved. It is so in congenital imbeciles.
An Ego born without one or both hands has thus lost their use for an entire life as a result of having used them unscrupulously — as a surgeon who has committed heartless experiments or a soldier guilty of hideous atrocities. Fingers may be lost as a consequence of pilfering, cheating, gambling, or other dishonest practices.
Maimed feet are a reflex from leading others into paths of wrong-doing. "It were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck ... than that he should offend one of these little ones. "
Disabilities of the generative organs result from a misuse of the holy creative life force; also from criminal interference with normal processes as in forced abortions, for instance. To suffer the extraction of the spinal fluid, a delicate and dangerous process, is the effect of misuse in any one of many ways of this precious life substance, and of victimizing others by means of the power it contains. The liver is the seat of the desire body; consequently, its numerous afflictions are traceable to various forms of unholy desires and selfish motivations.
Stomach troubles come from having lived to eat rather than eating to live. The gormandizer becomes the dyspeptic. Further removed, the cause lies in the higher faculties. He who simply gathers facts, who accumulates knowledge to satiety, does for his mind what overeating does for his stomach. To fail to assimilate knowledge and to use it with a purpose becomes the hidden cause of intestinal troubles. As the mind has neglected to select wisely and use purposefully the knowledge it gathered, so the intestines fail in the selective process of absorbing needful elements for the body's upkeep and rejecting all that is useless and superfluous. The relation may be noted astrologically, Virgo being the sign of discrimination ruling the intestinal tract.
The modern scourge of cancer belongs to the destructive fiery element and has its center in the desire body. Its origin can be traced back occultly to a time when unbridled desires held sway. The ancient scourge of leprosy had its origin in a like causation. Paralysis comes from a lack of compassion in the past. It is the physical limitation growing out of indifference to either the joys or sorrows of others. The unmoved Spirit brings the body to a like state. Tuberculosis is the effect of materialistic thinking and living. Hardened thoughts produce hardened tissue. Dropsy results from the habitual tendency to exaggerate. Diseases directly attributable to impurity of the blood spring from sensual, poisonous, destructive thinking. Tumors and cysts are physical manifestations of a hoarding, grasping, selfish nature.
Morphine belongs to the airy element and sets its destructive rhythms primarily in the mentality. Many cases of insanity may be traced to excessive use of drugs in the past. Among cases pronounced "hopelessly incurable" are those who have led others into this devastating habit. Crippled bodies often follow past cruelties inflicted upon man or beast as, for instance, the terrible atrocities of the Inquisition and the sufferings to which animals are subjected in vivisection laboratories. High motive does not nullify the action of the law. The reaping will be as the sowing in each and every aspect of the act. Noble purpose will react in a refinement and a strengthening of character; cruelty involved as a result of an unbalanced or undeveloped nature will react on the physical organism in a blemish equally unnatural. The law is exact and inexorable. Where the body is helplessly crippled it is probable that the Ego once occupied a position of power which be misused by condemning others to unspeakable tortures.
Lines of causation reach into the far past and bind the living forces of our every word and deed into the crystallized substance of our present bodily habitation and environment. If, therefore, we are not pleased with our present condition, we will do well to remember that we have, by our own thought and action in the past, made ourselves what we are today; and that more intelligent thought and action today will make for us a better tomorrow. No external influence is responsible for our limitations; neither can any outward being or influence deter our progress toward perfection if we will it otherwise. The Spirit within is the only monitor of man's fate. In it is resident all power. The regeneration of one's nature and the illumination of one's Spirit proceed together.
Thought is the great regenerating power. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." admonished Paul. And again, "Glorify God in your body." Here we have the two fundamental healing affirmations given by one of the supreme physicians of all times.
To know continuous, radiant health is to live in constant communion with the divinity within. In this relationship lies freedom from every tie of past causation. This was the teaching of the Christ and of all illumined ones who have come after Him, regardless of time, place, or creed.
— Corinne Heline
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