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CHAPTER VIII - The Laws and Rules Enumerated and Applied - Part 4

In so doing, the "lunar lords" and the forces of substance must eventually yield to the energy of the soul, and are benefited, whether they are microcosmic forces or macrocosmic.

One of the things which frequently puzzle students is the statement that the dense physical body is not a principle.  H.P.B. states this fact with emphasis; people are apt to think (unless they are theosophical fanatics) that he was incorrect or was intentionally misleading students.  One of the points, little understood, is the nature of a principle. Yet only by understanding what a principle is can the beauty and accuracy of his statement be grasped.  What, in the last analysis, is a principle?  A principle is that which, macrocosmically speaking, is being developed upon each plane of our seven planes—the seven subplanes of the cosmic physical plane.  It is the germ or the seed on each subplane which embodies some aspect of the divine unfolding consciousness; [612] it is that which is fundamentally related to some form of sensitivity; it is that to which the bodies, as they evolve, find that they can respond.  A principle is a germ of awareness, carrying all the potentiality of full consciousness on some particular level of divine activity.  It is that which makes knowledge and conscious response to environment possible; it is that which connotes a sequential and "unrolling" sensitive activity, resulting in divine understanding, possible and inevitable.

The physical body, and to a far less extent the astral and mental bodies, are automatic in their activity as aspects of a divine response apparatus, of a mechanism which enables the Heavenly Man, the planetary Logos and the spiritual man to register conscious response to that which is to be contacted under the divine plan and through the medium of a mechanism.  At present, the physical body is the only one which is as yet so fully developed that it has in this planetary scheme of ours no further evolutionary development, except in so far as the spiritual man can affect it—and most of the effect is produced in the etheric body and not in the dense physical.  This is a point little grasped but of major importance.

The dense physical body reached its high point of development and of interest (from the angle of mental attention and of hierarchical action) in the previous solar system.  It was then the divine goal of the entire evolutionary process.  This is not an easy point for humanity today to grasp.  It is not possible or advisable for me to indicate the evolutionary stages through which this divine mechanism passed in preparation for the task to be undertaken in the present solar system.  In this divine incarnation of our planetary Logos through the medium of this little planet, the Earth, the physical body is not a goal, but simply something which exists and must be accepted, and which must be adapted and [613] incorporated into the general evolutionary plan.  That plan has to do entirely with consciousness.  The physical body is simply (no more and no less) the vehicle of consciousness upon the physical plane, but the emphasis of attention is the etheric body as an expression of the subtler vehicles and their state of embodied consciousness.  The physical body is important because it has to house and respond to every type of conscious response, from that of the lowest type of human being up to and inclusive of the consciousness of an initiate of the third degree.  The bodies and forms of the indwelling conscious life in the three subhuman kingdoms have an analogous but less difficult problem; I am here, however, considering only the physical body of a human being, which is not a principle because it is not in any way a goal; it is not the seed or germ of anything.  Any changes wrought in the physical body are secondary to the goal of conscious response to the revelation of an emerging divinity. I have felt it necessary to emphasise this because of the confusion in men's minds anent the subject.  

To sum up:  the physical body is not a principle; it is not a main object of attention of the aspirant; it automatically responds to the slowly unfolding consciousness in all the kingdoms of nature:  it constantly remains that which is worked upon and not that which has an innate influence of its own; it is not important in the active process, for it is a recipient and not that which initiates activity.  That which is important is the unfolding consciousness, the response of the indwelling spiritual man to life, circumstances, events and environment.  The physical body responds.  When the physical body becomes, in error, the object of attention, retrogression is indicated; and this is why all profound attention to the physical disciplines, to vegetarianism, to diet and to fasting, and to the present modes of (so-called) mental and divine healing, are undesirable [614] and not in line with the projected plan.  Therefore undue consideration and excessive emphasis upon the physical body is reactionary and is like the worship of the golden calf by the children of Israel; it is reversion to that which at one time was of importance but today should be relegated to a minor position and below the threshold of consciousness.

I have dealt with this here because in Law VII the fact of the endocrine glands is brought to our attention, and it is necessary that we approach this subject from the right point of view.  The endocrine glands are a tangible part of the physical body; they are therefore a part of that created manifestation which is not regarded as a principle.  They are, however, effective and potent and may not be ignored.  It is essential that students regard these glands as effects and not causes of events and happenings and conditions in the body.  The physical body—no matter what its victims may believe and declare—is always conditioned by inner causes; it is never, intrinsically, itself a cause.  It is, in this solar system and on our planet, automatic and affected by causes generated on the inner planes or by the action of the soul.  Please note the importance of this statement.  The physical body has no true life of its own, but is simply—in this cycle—responsive to impulses emanating from elsewhere.  Its achievement and its triumph is that it is an automaton.  If you can grasp this adequately, we can safely proceed to the consideration of Law VII and Rule Four.

LAW VII

When life or energy flows unimpeded and through right direction to its precipitation (the related gland), then the form responds and ill health disappears.

One of the interesting factors which students should note is the doctrine of intermediaries which is to be found [615] in such rich abundance and is regarded as of such vital importance in all occult teaching.  It has been emphasised (though erroneously interpreted) in the Christian teaching anent the Christ; Christianity has presented Him as acting as the intermediary between an angry God and a pitiful and ignorant humanity.  Such was by no means the intent of His coming or of His work, but into the real meaning I need not enter here.  I have dealt with this theme elsewhere in connection with the New World Religion. [ix]*

It has been taught also in the esoteric presentation (and this is closely allied with the Christian doctrines) that the soul is the intermediary between the monad and the personality; the same idea is also found in many other religious presentations, i.e., the Buddha is shown as the intermediary between Shamballa and the Hierarchy, acting in this capacity once a year; the Hierarchy itself is the intermediary between Shamballa and Humanity; the etheric plane (and by this I mean the cosmic, planetary and individual etheric vehicles) is the intermediary between the higher planes and the dense physical body.  The whole system of occult or esoteric revelation is based on this wonderful doctrine of interdependence, of a planned and arranged conscious linking, and of the transmission of energy from one aspect of divine manifestation to another; everywhere and through everything is circulation, transmission, and modes of passing energy from one form to another form, and always through an appropriate mechanism.  This is true in the involutionary sense, in the evolutionary sense, and in a spiritual sense also; this latter is slightly different to the other two, as all initiates of the higher degrees know well.  An entire thesis upon transmitting agencies could be written, and it would include, finally, the doctrine of Avatars. An Avatar is one [616] who has a peculiar facility or capacity (besides a self-initiated task and a preordained destiny) to work with energies, transmitted via the etheric body of a planet or of the solar system; this, however, is a deep mystery.  It was demonstrated in a peculiar manner, and in relation to cosmic energy, by the Christ Who, for the first time in planetary history, transmitted the cosmic energy of love directly to the physical plane of our planet, and also in a peculiar manner to the fourth kingdom in nature, the human. This should indicate to you that though the love energy is the second aspect of divinity, the Christ embodied and transmitted four qualities of this aspect to humanity, and consequently to the other kingdoms in nature—the only four which humanity could absorb.  Only one of these four is as yet beginning to express itself —the quality of goodwill. The other three will later be revealed, and one is related in a peculiar sense to the healing quality of love.  According to The New Testament, this quality was called by the Christ "virtue" (a somewhat inaccurate translation of the word originally used); Christ employed it when healing force had been taken from Him and He said "virtue has gone out of me."

I have called this to your attention because this truth is directly related to this seventh law.  We have seen, in connection with all the healing processes, that the dense physical body is regarded esoterically as simply an automaton; it is only a recipient of transmitted energies.  We have seen that the etheric body in or "substanding" every form is itself a structure for the transmission of energies coming from some source or another—the source being primarily the point where the life within the form lays its basic emphasis.  For the average human being, this is usually the astral body, from which astral or emotional energy emanates and finds anchorage, prior to transmission into the [617] etheric body.  There will be, however, in the majority of cases, a greater or less admixture of mental energy.  Later, soul energy, reinforced (if I may use such a word) by the purified mind and transmitted through the personality, will condition the etheric body and control, consequently, the activities of the physical vehicle.

This law brings to our attention the fact that the dense physical body, under the impact of subjective energies, in its turn produces a "structure for transmission" and automatically repeats the activity of the etheric body.  It creates (in response to the inflow of energies from the etheric body, via the seven major centres) a dense physical interlocking structure, to which we have given the name "the endocrine glandular system." These glands—in their turn and in response to the inflowing energy from the etheric body—produce a secretion which is called a secretion of hormones, and this the glands transmit directly into the blood stream.

It is not my intention to be overtechnical in my consideration of this subject; I write for the lay reader, and not for the medical profession, who are frank to admit how little they know, as yet, anent this subject.  The medical research worker knows little anent the relation of the endocrine glands to the blood and to the total physiology of the human being; he knows little anent the relation of the various glands to each other; these constitute an interlocking directorate of vital importance, linked and united, animated and directed by the seven etheric centres.  This is a factor naturally overlooked by the orthodox scientist in this field, and until he recognises that which produces the endocrine glands he will remain totally at sea as to cause and true results.  The glands are direct precipitations of the seven types of energy flowing through the seven etheric centres.  They control all the areas of the body.  In their creation [618] you have a definite expression of the radiatory and the magnetic activity of all energies, for they are produced by radiation from the seven centres, but their effect—individual and combined—is magnetic.  The radiation abstracts dense physical atoms and focusses them in the correct area in the physical body, so that they can act as distributors into the blood stream, and therefore into the dense physical body, of one aspect of the inflowing energy.  I would have you note that only one aspect of the energy is thus distributed—that which corresponds to the third aspect of active intelligent substance; the other two latent aspects are distributed as pure energy, affecting areas but not affecting any localised focal point.  A gland is such a localised focal point.    I am anxious for this subject of the glands and their relation to the centres to be correctly understood.  The entire subject is closely related to the art of healing; one of the effects of the application of the healing energy (through the medium of any centre conditioning the area wherein the point of friction is located) is the stimulation of the related gland and its increased activity.  The glands are intermediaries, in the last analysis, between the healer and the patient, between the centre and the dense physical body, and between the etheric body and its automaton, the receiving dense physical vehicle.

In continuing our consideration of the immediate transmitting agency of the centres into the blood stream (the endocrine glands) I would like to point out that the centres work through this endocrine system through direct impact, through a ray or stream of energy, emanating from the central point within the centre.  Through this medium they condition and control entire areas of the body and they do this through those aspects of the centres which we symbolically call the "petals of the lotus." In a point at the very centre of the lotus the life force is focussed, and as [619] [619] it passes outward into the related gland, it takes on the quality of the energy for which the centre is responsible, because life force is essentially unqualified.  The ray of life, if one may call it so, which is found at the heart of each centre, is identified monadically with its source, and possesses (when brought in contact with its petals) one major innate quality of attractive energy; all energy emanating from the one source in this solar system, is related to the energy which we call Love, and this energy is magnetic attraction. The petals of the lotus, and the area of surrounding energy which constitutes the form of the lotus, are qualified by one of the seven subsidiary types of energy; these emanate from the seven Rays which emerge out of the one Source, as Representatives of the manifold Creator.

Within the solar system, as you know, are to be found the seven sacred planets, which are the custodians or the expression of these seven rays, of these seven qualities of divinity; within our planet, the Earth (which is not a sacred planet), there are likewise seven centres which become, as evolution proceeds, the recipients of the seven ray qualities from the seven sacred planets, thus providing (within the solar ring-pass-not) a vast interlocking system of energies. Three of these centres, representing the three major rays, are well known to you:

1. Shamballa  ...........The ray of power or purpose. The first aspect.

                                 The energy of will.

2. The Hierarchy  .....The ray of love-wisdom. The second aspect.

                                 The energy of love.

3. Humanity  .............The ray of active intelligence. The third aspect.

                                 The energy of mind or thought.

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there are four other centres, and these, with the above three, constitute the seven centres, or the seven planetary focal points of energy, which condition the bodily manifestation of our planetary Logos. Through them the Lord of the World, working from His Own level on a cosmic plane and through His divine Personality, Sanat Kumara, carries out His purposes upon our planet.

Similarly, within the microcosm, man, the correspondences to these seven centres are to be found.  Therein likewise are seven major centres, and they are the recipients of the energy emanating from the seven planetary centres, the custodians of the seven aspects of ray force; these seven energies—at various stages of potency—condition the man's expression in the three worlds, make him what he is at any given moment whilst in incarnation, and indicate (by their effect or lack of effect upon the centres) his point in evolution.

Two of these centres in the human being are to be found in the head, and the other five are to be found up the spinal column.  This spinal column is the physical symbol of that essential alignment which is the immediate goal of directed relationships, carried forward in consciousness by the spiritual man and brought about as a result of right meditation.

Meditation is a technique of the mind which eventually produces correct, unimpeded relationship; this is another name for alignment.  It is therefore the establishment of a direct channel, not only between the one source, the monad, and its expression, the purified and controlled personality, but also between the seven centres in the human etheric vehicle.  This is—perhaps astonishingly to you—putting the results of meditation on the basis of physical, or rather of etheric, effects, and may be regarded by you as indicating the very lowest phase of such results.  This is due to the [621] fact that you lay the emphasis upon your mental reaction to the produced alignment, on the satisfaction you acquire from such an alignment, in which you register a new world or worlds of phenomena, and on the new concepts and ideas which consequently impinge upon your mind.  But the true results (as divine and as esoterically desirable) are correct alignment, right relationship, and clear channels for the seven energies in the microcosmic system, thereby bringing about eventually a full expression of divinity.  All the seven centres in the etheric vehicle of the Christ were rightly adjusted, correctly aligned, truly awakened and functioning, and properly receptive of all the seven streams of energy coming from the seven planetary centres; these put Him en rapport, therefore, and in full realised contact, with the One in Whom He lived and moved and had His being.  The physiological result of this complete "esoteric surrender of the seven" (as it is sometimes called) to the incoming spiritual energies, in their right order and rhythm, was the appearance in the Christ of a perfect endocrine system. All His glands (both major and minor) were functioning correctly; this produced a "perfect man"—physically perfect, emotionally stable and mentally controlled.  In modern terms, the "pattern of the behaviour" of the Christ—due to the perfection of His glandular system, as an effect of correctly awakened and energised centres—made Him an expression of divine perfection to the entire world; He was the first of our humanity to arrive at this point in evolution, and "the Eldest in a great family of brothers," as St. Paul expresses it.  The current pictures of the Christ testify to their own complete inaccuracy, for they bear no witness to any glandular perfection; they are full of weakness and sweetness, but show little strength, alert power and aliveness.  And the promise has gone forth that as He is, so may we be in this world.

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This is a promise which lies behind the right understanding of the science of the centres; the factual reality of the centres will be proven to all men when the centres are gradually brought under control of the soul, are correctly and scientifically energised and brought to a condition of true "livingness," and begin to condition the entire area of the body in which a centre is found, and—between them—bringing every part of the human body under their radiatory and magnetic influence.

It is the centres which hold the body together and make it a coherent, energised and active whole. As you know, when death takes place, the consciousness thread withdraws from the head centre and the life thread withdraws from the heart centre. What has not been emphasised is that this dual withdrawal has an effect upon every centre in the body. The consciousness thread, anchored in the head centre, qualifies the petals of the lotus called in the oriental literature the "thousand-petalled lotus," and the petals of that lotus have a relationship and a definitely qualifying effect (both radiatory and magnetic) upon the petals in every one of the other major centres within the etheric body; the head centre preserves them in qualifying activity, and when this quality of conscious response is withdrawn from the head centre an immediate effect is felt in all the petals of all the centres; the qualifying energy is withdrawn, leaving the body via the head centre. The same general technique is true of the life thread which is anchored in the heart, after passing (in alliance with the consciousness thread) into and through the head centre. As long as the life thread is anchored in the heart it energises and preserves in livingness all the centres in the body, sending out its threads of life into a point which is found at the exact centre of the lotus, or at the heart of the centre. This is sometimes called "the jewel in the lotus," though the phrase [623] is more frequently applied to the monadic point at the heart of the egoic lotus on its own plane. When death takes place and the life thread is gathered up by the soul and withdrawn from the heart into the head and from thence back into the soul body, it carries with it the life of each centre in the body; therefore, the body dies and disintegrates, and no longer forms a coherent, conscious, living whole.

Related to these centres, and reacting in strict unison with them, is the endocrine or glandular system, through which system—during incarnation—life or energy flows unimpeded and under right direction in the case of the highly developed man, or impeded and imperfectly directed in the case of the average or undeveloped human being; through this system of glandular control, the human form responds or does not respond to the surrounding world energies. In connection with our present theme of healing, a man can be sick and ill or well and strong, according to the state of the centres and their precipitation, the glands.  It must ever be remembered that the centres are the major agency upon the physical plane through which the soul works, expresses life and quality, according to the point reached under the evolutionary process, and that the glandular system is simply an effect—inevitable and unavoidable—of the centres through which the soul is working.  The glands therefore express fully the point in evolution of the man, and according to that point are responsible for defects and limitations or for assets and achieved perfections.  The man's conduct and behaviour upon the physical plane is conditioned, controlled and determined by the nature of his glands, and these are conditioned, controlled and determined by the nature, the quality and the livingness of the centres; these, in their turn are conditioned, controlled and determined by the soul, in increasing effectiveness as evolution proceeds.  Prior to soul control, they are conditioned, qualified [624] and controlled by the astral body, and later by the mind. The goal of the evolutionary cycle is to bring about this control, this conditioning, and this determining process by the soul; human beings are today at every imaginable stage of development within this process.

I realise that much of the above is well known and in the nature of repetition.  But I have felt it essential to repeat the story so that there may be a fresh clarity in your thinking.

It will be apparent to you also that the karmic process in any individual life must therefore work out through the medium of the glands, which condition the reaction of the person to circumstance and events.  The results of all previous lives and of all activities carried on during those lives have been registered by the Lords of Karma; karmic law works in close cooperation with the lunar Lords, who build and construct the bodies which constitute the personality; later, the law works in an even closer cooperation with the soul purpose.  The whole problem is necessarily most intricate and difficult. All I can do is to give certain indications.

It is with this system of centres and their externalised effects, the glands, that the healer has to work and which he has to take into most careful consideration; all stimulation which he may be able, for instance, to convey to a centre in the patient's body, or all abstraction of energy from a centre, will have a most definite effect upon the allied or related gland, and therefore upon the secretion which that gland is in the habit of pouring into the blood stream.

As again you know, the seven major centres and their allied glands are as follows:

1. The head centre..........The pineal gland.

2. The ajna centre..........The pituitary gland.

3. The throat centre........The thyroid gland.

4. The heart centre.........The thymus gland.

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5. The solar plexus centre...........The pancreas.

6. The sacral centre....................The gonads.

7. The centre at base of spine.....The adrenal glands.

There are also other centres and many other glands in the body, but these are the seven with which the healer works; the minor or subsidiary glands are conditioned by the centre controlling the area in which they are located.  The healer, however, refuses to complicate his thinking with the multiplicity and detail of the other lesser glandular system and with the intricacies of lesser interior relationships.  The above list gives also the centres and glands which basically determine the state of health—good, indifferent or bad—and the psychological equipment of a man. Students should bear in mind that the primary effect of the activity of the glands and of their secretions is psychological.  A man is, upon the physical plane, emotionally and mentally what his glandular system makes him, and incidentally what they make him physically, because that is frequently determined by his psychological state of mind and emotions.  The emphasis of the self-centred ordinary man is largely upon the physical vehicle, and he pays little or no attention to the balance or the imbalance of his endocrine system or setup (if I may use that word) from the angle of its determining his psychological effect upon his fellow men.  It is not my intention to analyse the various glands, noting how they respond to the awakened or the unawakened condition of the centres, or how they limit or implement the responsiveness of the man to his environment or determine his interpretation of life and the passivity or the activity of his daily reactions to events and circumstance.  A man, it may emphatically be stated, is what his glands make him, but they, in their turn, are only the effects of certain inner potent [626] sources of energy.  Again, as you see, I repeat this vital truth.

It is for this reason that medical science will eventually find the truth (and already they are sensing it) that it is impossible to fundamentally change the personality and the physical equipment of a man through treating the glands themselves; little real progress has been made along this line during the thirty or forty years during which the endocrinologists have considered and investigated this subject.  Certain things have been found out; certain results of the activity or the inactivity of the glands have been noted; certain types of people have been recognised as illustrative of glandular activity or passivity; ameliorative measures have been applied and the action of a gland has been stimulated or retarded (with good or bad effects) through various methods and types of medication.  Beyond this little is known, and the best minds in this particular field are conscious of the fact that they are face to face with a terra incognita.  This situation will remain as it is until modern medical science recognises that the world of causes (as far as the endocrine glands are concerned) is the etheric body with its seven centres; they will then register the fact that all work in relation to the glands must be shifted away from the seven effects or precipitations of the centres on to the centres themselves.

The healer, therefore, ignores the gland involved and deals directly with the centre which conditions the "point of friction" and controls the area under its influence; this necessarily includes the gland which the centre has created, formed or precipitated and energised.

The concept in the mind of the healer should be, as this law indicates, that an unimpeded channel or a clear passage must be formed along which health-giving life may flow from the "needed centre" in the healer's etheric body [627] to the allied centre in the body of the patient and from thence into the blood stream, via the related gland.  Forget not, the truth remains eternally right that the "blood is the life"—even if as yet inexplicable in its implications from the angle of the esotericist as well as from the angle of medical science.

Healers have to learn to work with the life principle, and not with some vague energy which is set in motion by the power of thought or by the potency of love, as is the case presented today by the various healing systems of the world which mankind has evolved.  This life principle is contacted and set in motion by the mode of clearing certain etheric channels within the etheric structure which underlies every part of the patient's body.  This clearance is not brought about by thinking health or by affirming divinity or by eliminating "error" in the mental approach, but by the much more prosaic method of directing streams of energy via certain centres, and thus affecting certain glands in the area of the physical body which is diseased and the seat of trouble, pain and distress.

That thought or correct thinking is involved is necessarily true; the healer has to think clearly before he can bring about the desired results, but the energy poured into the patient's vehicle is not mental energy, but one of the seven forms of pranic or life energy.  This travels along the line of force or the channel which relates and links all the centres and connects those centres with the glands.  Forget not that this constitutes an interlinking and interlocking directorate of the following systems, and that—from the point of view of the esotericist—these systems are symbols of great cosmic processes:

1. The etheric body, as a whole, with its channels and communicating lines of energy which underlie every part [628] of the human body.

2. The seven related centres, each specifically qualified and each in touch, via the etheric fibres or threads of force, with each and every centre.

3. The nadis, that system of slightly denser etheric channels or tiny threads of force which underlie the entire nervous system; they underlie every type of nerve and every type of nerve plexus.

4. The nervous system itself, which is found extending its radius of influence throughout the entire body of a man.

5. The endocrine or glandular system.

6. The blood stream, the recipient of streams of living energy from the endocrine system, via what are called the hormones.

7. The interrelated sumtotal, which is the divine manifestation of the spiritual man in any incarnation and at any point in evolution.

Therefore, two great streams of energy permeate and animate this entire aggregation of systems:  the life stream and the consciousness stream.  One works through the nervous system (the consciousness stream) and the other through the blood stream.  Both are in fact so closely related and allied that, in action, it is not easy for the ordinary man to differentiate between them.

The healer, however, does not work with the consciousness aspect; he works entirely with the life aspect; the perfect healer (something at present nonexistent) works through the closed and sealed point within the centre (the very heart of the centre).  There the point of life is to be found.  From this point within the centre, life rays out into the petals of the lotus, and the combination of the life at the centre and the consciousness, inherent in the petals, is the source of the living, breathing, sensitive human [629] being—from the physical angle—and this the healer must recognise.

Behind this livingness and this consciousness is the Being, the spiritual man, the actor, the one who feels (in varying degrees), and the thinker.  The simplicity of the above statement is somewhat misleading, as there are other factors and relationships and other energies which must be considered, but it is nevertheless basically true, and upon this truth the healer can act.

It is interesting to point out that the Great Invocation now being distributed in the world is based upon this same fundamental concept of great systems, conditioning humanity as a whole, which can be energised by the inflow of streams of energy, bringing new life and health to the entire body of humanity via the planetary centres of divine livingness and consciousness.

Rule Four which accompanies Law VII is of major importance.  This is because of its extreme simplicity, and because, if comprehended and followed, it forms a bridging rule between the subjective and the objective methods of handling disease.  The law which we have just considered was also exceedingly simple and direct, and in its implications related to the subjective nature and the objective form.  Students should not be deceived by simplicity and by plain, direct statements.  There is a tendency to regard esoteric teaching as necessarily abstruse and indirect, requiring always the use of the "esoteric sense" (whatever is meant by that) in order to arrive at understanding.  Yet the more advanced the teaching, very frequently the more simply is it expressed.  Abstruseness is related to the ignorance of the student—not to the mode of presentation of the teacher.  This rule runs as follows:

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RULE FOUR

A careful diagnosis of disease, based on the ascertained outer symptoms, will be simplified to this extent—that once the organ involved is known and thus isolated, the centre in the etheric body which is in closest relation to it will be subjected to methods of occult healing, though the ordinary ameliorative, medical or surgical methods will not be withheld.

This rule requires little elucidation, for it is composed of clear, concise instructions.  Let us list these instructions:

1. There must be careful diagnosis, based on the ascertained outer symptoms.

2. The organ which is the seat of the trouble must be located.  Both these activities concern the dense physical body.

3. The centre in the etheric body closest to the area of the trouble will next receive attention.

4. Methods of occult healing are then employed, directed to the stimulation, or the reverse, of the centre involved.

5. Simultaneously, all outer orthodox methods are employed.

It is on this question of careful diagnosis that most modern so-called healers go astray.  They do not know enough about the physical body, about the pathology of disease, about the primary or secondary symptoms, to determine the nature of the difficulty; this is because the usual healer has not had medical training, and at the same time he is not psychically equipped to arrive at a true diagnosis in an occult manner.  He therefore falls back on the general assumption that the patient is sick, that the seat of the trouble appears to be in such or such an area of the physical body, that the patient complains of certain pains and aches, and that if the patient can be rendered acquiescent enough, [631] if he can grasp (along with the healer) the fact of his divinity—and who can, my brother?—then if he has faith in the healer, he can assuredly be healed.

The outstanding thing usually to note is the ignorance of both the patient and the healer; the thing to be deplored is the assumption of the healer that, if a healing does follow, it is due entirely to the healing methods followed, whereas the patient would, in all probability, have recovered in any case.  The healing may have been hastened by the factor of faith, and faith is simply the focussing of the patient's energy in line with the injunction of the healer, and a consequent "display" of that energy in the diseased area in obedience to the law that "energy follows thought."  The "explosion" (if I may use so forcible a word) of the energy of faith on the part of the two people involved—the healer and the patient—occultly and occasionally produces sufficient energy stimulation to bring about a cure where a cure in any case was inevitable.  It has simply been a hastening process.  This is not, however, a true occult healing and no true occult healing methods were employed or involved.  Psychologically, the same thing can be seen taking place in the case of a "conversion," as the Fundamentalist School of Christianity calls it.  The faith of the person and the faith of the evangelist, plus the faith of the audience (where there is one) bring about a psychological healing along the line of resolving cleavages, or produce an at-one-ment, even if only of a temporary nature.

It must be increasingly borne in mind that there is nothing in the created world but energy in motion, and that every thought directs some aspects of that energy, though always within the sphere of influence of some greater thinking, directing energy.  The healer's faith and the patient's faith are both examples of energy in motion, and at present usually the only energies employed in every case [632] of healing.  Orthodox medicine also works with the same energies, supplementing its orthodox methods with the patient's faith in the physician and in his scientific knowledge.

I am not here going to enlarge further on the injunction to use medical and surgical methods whenever possible.  I have touched upon this subject several times in the course of this teaching upon healing.  It is essential that people should realise that the ascertained knowledges of medicine and surgery are just as much an expression of divine experience and understanding as the hopeful, assertive, yet fumbling methods of so-called divine healing—if not more so at present.  Though much of the orthodox methods remain experimental, they are less so than the methods of the modern healers, and much of their scientific knowledge is proven and real.  It should be used, and confidence can be expressed in it.  The perfect healing combination is that of the medical man and the spiritual healer, each working in his own field, and both having faith in each other; this is not now the case.  There is no need to call in divine aid to set bones which the surgeon is well equipped to do, or to clear up infection which the physician knows well how to handle.  The healer can help and can hasten the healing process, but the orthodox physician can also hasten the work of the healer.  Both groups need each other.

I realise that what I have said here will please neither the spiritual healer nor the orthodox medical man.  It is time, however, that they learn to appreciate each other and to work in cooperation.  In the last analysis, the spiritual healer and the new modes of mental healing have relatively little to contribute in comparison with the work and the knowledge of the member of the orthodox profession.  The debt of the world to its doctors and surgeons is very great.  The debt to healers is decidedly not so great; they oft also poison the channel by bitterness and constant [633] criticism of the physician and of orthodox medicine.  Surety of knowledge and experience prevents a similar attitude in the orthodox group, plus the realisation that even the spiritual healer will call in the doctor in times of emergency.

The law and the rule now to be considered will carry us into realms of real abstraction; it will not be easy for you to understand much of what I may say.  This Law VIII takes us back to the very source of all phenomena as far as the human being is concerned—the will of the immortal soul to incarnate on earth or to withdraw from incarnation.  It involves also the consideration of the factor of the Will in producing disease as the direct means of bringing about that withdrawal.  So little is as yet understood anent the Will that it is particularly hard to explain.

LAW VIII

Disease and death are the result of two active forces.  One is the will of the soul, which says to its instrument:  "I draw the essence back."  The other is the magnetic power of the planetary life, which says to the life within the atomic structure:  "The hour of reabsorption has arrived.  Return to me."  Thus, under cyclic law, do all forms act.

Two aspects in the nature of the divine Will are called into play where disease and death are concerned:  one is the will of the soul to bring an incarnation to an end; another is the will of the spirit of the earth (the basic elemental force) to draw back into itself the released and temporarily isolated substance of which the soul had availed itself during the cycle of incarnation.

The factor of time, the factor of the interplay between the point of will which is that of the soul, and the diffused ever present will of the elemental spirit of substance are involved, plus their cyclic relation.  These we shall attempt to consider.

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What I have here to say is of major importance and will throw a new and strange light upon the entire subject of disease.  I will deal, first of all, with the second half of the law, which refers to the "magnetic power of the planetary life," which says to the life within the atomic structure:  "The hour of reabsorption has arrived.  Return to me."

To understand the reference, I would remind you that a human being is a spiritual entity, occupying or informing (which is the occult word I prefer) a dense physical vehicle.  This dense physical body is part of the general structure of the entire planet, composed of living atoms which are under the control of, and are part of the life of the planetary entity.  This dense physical vehicle is released into a temporary and directed freedom by the will of the informing soul, but remains at the same time an intrinsic part of the sumtotal of all atomic substance.  This physical vehicle—having its own life and having a measure of intelligence which we call its instinctual nature—is called by esotericists the physical elemental.  During incarnated life, it is the coherent force or agency by means of which the physical body preserves its particular form, under the impact of etheric livingness; this affects all the living atoms and brings them into relation with each other.  The physical body is the great symbol (within the one Life) of the many of which it is constituted; it is the demonstrated fact of innate coherency, of unity, of synthesis and of relationship.  Physical or planetary prana (the lowest form of pranic energy) is the life of the sumtotal of the atoms (of which all outer forms are composed) as they are brought into relation to the separated atomic structure of the dense physical body of an individual informing soul in any kingdom of nature—particularly, from our point of study, the human kingdom.  

What is true in this connection of the individual or of [635] man, the microcosm, is true also of the planet, which—like man—is a coherent whole.  This wholeness is due to the relation of two aspects of life:  the life of the planetary Logos and the life of the spirit of the earth, which is the life of the sumtotal of all the atoms which compose all forms.  To this sumtotal of living substance, of elemental life, man's dense physical body conforms and is therefore the symbol.  These two lives, functioning microcosmically and also macrocosmically, create that living pranic energy which circulates throughout the etheric bodies of all forms, which produces coherency or a synthetic holding-together and which can be discerned when the densest aspect of the etheric body is seen, creating thus the health aura in plants, trees, sea life, animals and man.  Other energies and potencies circulate through and condition the etheric vehicle, but I refer here only to the lowest physical aspect.  This is indicative of the life of the elemental of our planet, the spirit of the earth—a divine life, making its own progress upon the involutionary arc of manifestation.

This spirit of the earth preserves its hold upon the atomic structures of which all forms are made, including the physical body of man; it gathers them together again eventually and reabsorbs those elements of its life which were temporarily isolated from it during any incarnated experience of any soul in any of the kingdoms in nature. These atoms, it must be noted, are imbued or conditioned by two factors for which the spirit of the earth is solely responsible:

1. The factor of the Karma of the life of the elemental of the planet.  This is an involutionary, precipitating karma, entirely different to that of the planetary Logos, Who is a spiritual Life upon the evolutionary arc.  This involutionary karma, therefore, conditions the life experience [636] from the purely physical angle of all forms composed of atomic substance.

2. The factor of limitation.  Apart from the karma, resulting in physical events, affecting all physical forms composed of this elemental essence, the physical vehicles of all lives in all the kingdoms of nature are also conditioned by the point in time of the cyclic influence of the planetary spirit and by its point in evolution.  This involutionary spirit has not yet attained a point of perfection, but is progressing towards a specific goal which will be attained when the evolutionary arc of experience is reached.  This lies very far ahead.  Our planetary Logos, that great divine Life in Whom we live and move and have our being, is one of the "imperfect Gods" as yet, from the point of view of the goal set before all planetary Logoi.  His body of expression, our planet, the Earth, is not yet a sacred planet.  The spirit of the earth is yet very far from even the relative perfection of which a conscious human being is aware.

The point in evolution of the spirit of the earth affects every atom in his body—the body of an involutionary entity.  The result of this imperfection, which is not that of the planetary Logos but that of the spirit of the earth, shows itself in the presence of disease in all forms in all the kingdoms of nature.  Minerals are subject to disease and decay; even the "fatigue" of metals is a registered scientific fact; plants and animals all react to disease within the structure of their forms, and disease and death are inherent in the atom of which all organisms are composed.  Man is not exempt.  Disease, therefore, is not brought about by wrong thinking, as oft I have told you, or by any failure to affirm divinity.  It is inherent in the form nature itself, being indicative of the imperfections from which the spirit of the earth suffers; [637] it is the mode par excellence whereby this elemental life retains integrity and the capacity to reabsorb that which is his but which has been brought under other direction by the attractive potency of the life of that which informs every other kingdom in nature during a cycle of incarnation.   This will give you surely a new idea anent disease.  Man creates, under soul impulsion and the will to incarnate, a form which is composed of substance already subjected to conditioning; it is already impregnated with the life impulses of the spirit of the earth.  Man, in so doing, assumes responsibility for that elemental form but—at the same time—limits himself definitely by the nature of the atoms of which that form is composed.  The atomic substance through which the spirit of the earth expresses itself has in it ever the "seeds of return," permitting a reabsorption.  This substance is also composed of all grades and qualities of matter, from the very coarsest up to the very finest, as for instance the quality of the substance which makes the appearance of the Buddha or of the Christ possible.  The Lord of the Earth, the planetary Logos, cannot find substance animated by the spirit of the earth of a quality and nature pure enough; He cannot, therefore, materialise or make an appearance, as can the Buddha or the Christ.  Few of Those who form the Council Chamber at Shamballa can find the needed or adequate substance by means of which to appear; They cannot take a dense physical body, and have to be content with an etheric vehicle.  There are therefore three types of life, affecting the dense appearance of a human being during his restricted manifestation or incarnation:

1. The life of the spiritual man himself, transmitted from the Monad, via the soul for the greater part of manifested existence.

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2. The life of that sumtotal which is the elemental life of the fourth kingdom in nature, the human; this life is still an aspect (under the Law of Isolation or Limitation) of the life of the spirit of the earth.

3. The sumtotal of the life which is innate in atomic substance itself—the substance out of which all forms are made.  This is the life of the spirit of the earth.

We are not here referring to the soul in an atom or the soul of any form, great or small; we are referring exclusively to the life or first aspect.  This expresses itself as the will-to-be; it is only active, though ever present, during form life or the phase of created manifestation.  It is here that the Will factor makes its appearance and the relation between will, form and incarnation is to be found.