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CHAPTER VIII - The Laws and Rules Enumerated and Applied - Part 5

One of the factors governing incarnation is the presence of what is called the will-to-live; when that is to be found, and when it is powerful in man, he is strongly anchored upon the physical plane:  when that is not strongly present or is withdrawn, the man dies.  Life in the physical body is preserved, technically and occultly, under the impulse of the powerful will-to-be of the incarnated spiritual man upon the magnetic power of the planetary life, inherent in every atom of the form nature; by means of these atoms—isolated and held by the Law of Attraction in form—he has come into being upon the physical plane.  This magnetic power is the expression of the will (if such a word can be applied to the sense of coherency which distinguishes the spirit of the earth) of the planetary entity.  It is a projection of his peculiar state of consciousness into an isolated form, created, occupied and indwelt by a soul, by a living man.

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I have several times used the expression "isolated form," for it is this peculiar aspect of isolation which conditions the physical body of a man (or of any living form, for that matter), rendering it detached, coherent and temporarily living its own life in response to the imposition of the livingness of the incarnating soul.  Temporarily, the united power of the segregated and isolated atoms—particularly the planetary structure of the spirit of the earth—is in abeyance as regards individual reaction to the planetary life.  Only the coherent, magnetic qualities persist in any form of activity and in conjunction with the will-to-live of the spiritual man or of any ensouling entity.  This creates a coherent form, held together by two aspects of livingness:  that of the spirit of the earth and that of the spiritual man. Therefore—to use words in an effort to arrive at understanding—two aspects of life and two forms of will or purpose are brought together.  The higher is evolutionary; the lower is involutionary in nature.  It is this which creates the conflict.  One type of energy is evolutionary and the other is involutionary.  It is these conflicting forces which present the problem of dualism—a dualism of the higher and the lower at many differing and varying stages.  The final phase of the conflict is fought out, or rather wrought out, when the Dweller on the Threshold and the Angel of the Presence face each other.  It is in that consummating event that the pull or conflict between the involutionary life and the evolutionary life, between the inchoate, magnetic will of the elemental forces (inherent in the atoms of which all three bodies of the personality are made) and the will of the spiritual man, on the verge of liberation from the magnetic control of substance, is brought to the issue.    The spirit of the earth has its correspondence in the created expression of the spiritual man; it is to be found in the existence of the personality elemental; this personality [640] elemental can be and frequently is an inchoate force, swayed entirely by desire, and no true personality integration is present; it can, however, be a highly organised and potent factor, producing what is called a high grade personality and an effective instrument for the spiritual man in the three worlds of his evolution.  This is followed later by the conflicts upon the Path of Discipleship and the Path of Initiation.  Then the livingness of the spiritual man, and his will to manifest divinely, dominate to such an extent that the death of the personality is brought about; this culminates at the time of the third initiation.  At that experience the monadic will comes in with such dynamic potency that the will of the elemental lives of the threefold personality is completely negated.

But (to return to our theme) the atomic substance, impregnated with the life of the spirit of the earth and with the driving force of its inchoate will, demonstrates as magnetic power and is constantly in conflict, within the body of manifestation of the informing soul, with the life of the soul.  This conflict or friction is the main cause of what you call disease.

Disease is inharmony; it is the fault of fire by friction; diseased areas are areas of friction wherein the atomic substance is temporarily asserting its own type of livingness and responding (sometimes to the point of death) to the magnetic pull of the will of the spirit of the earth.  If that pull proves adequately strong, the friction within the atomic structure, localised in the area of some etheric centre, will be of such a nature that the quality of the disease increases, the life of the spiritual man is slowly or rapidly withdrawn; the desire for existence, the spiritual will-to-be is not then as strong as the will to be reabsorbed—the will of the atoms constituting the physical body; the man, therefore, dies, in the usual sense of the term.

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The planetary life says, "The hour of reabsorption has arrived.  Return to me." The urge to return is at present the dominant note in the substance of the bodies of humanity; it is responsible for the universal ill health which distinguishes the mass of human beings; this tendency has been dominant for centuries; the attitude is, however, slowly changing, and the time will eventually come when the atoms of the bodies, or the elemental forces, will be sent back along the path of reabsorption only at the will of the spiritual man and in response to his express command, and not in response to the magnetic power of the spirit of the earth.

We have seen—as we considered the Laws and Rules to date—that fundamentally, disease and death are due to the withdrawal of solar life (the energy of the soul, sometimes called solar fire) either from some particular area of the physical body or from the entire body.  This fact should remind students of the need to distinguish between the force or life of the "lunar lords," inherent in every atom of which all organs and forms are made, and the energy of the soul which permeates the entire body as an integrating factor.  Speaking symbolically, therefore, there are times in which the life of these lunar lords are so dominant that the life of the soul is overpowered in some particular area, and the consequent withdrawal of the solar life produces disease; or—putting it another way—the friction which ensues when the lunar lords are not compliant produces disease.  Yet death is not indicative of a full victory of the lunar lords, but rather that under the plan of the soul, and because the life cycle is complete, the energy of the soul is entirely withdrawn, leaving the lunar lords alone. At times (because it is also in the planning of the soul) the lunar lords temporarily are the victors, though death does not follow; convalescence is significant of the gradual re-entry of soul energy and its subsequent control [642] of the lunar lords.  This aspect of soul energy is not that of those energies which represent and lead to the expression of soul quality.  It is life energy, coming from the Monad which passes through the soul as a channel and medium of contact; its direct channel is, needless to say, the sutratma.  It is not the antahkarana, or the creative thread or the thread of consciousness.  These are frequently rendered inactive when acute disease is present, and the life aspect is weakening or rapidly or slowly withdrawing itself.

You can see, therefore, why it is that those who have succeeded in building the antahkarana, the rainbow bridge between the Monad and the personality, have established a contact (nonexistent in the average man) between the Monad, the Source of Life, and the personality—the expression of that Life in objectivity.  The Monad then, and not the soul, controls the cycles of outward expression, and the initiate then dies at will and according to plan or the necessities of the work.  This, of course, refers only to initiates of high degree.  I felt these points to be interesting and also useful for you to know.  Another point, growing out of all the above, indicates the all-inclusiveness of the divine Life, for the lunar lords are aspects of that Life as much as is the energy of the soul.

It is therefore of prime importance that cremation should be encouraged, and not the present method of burial.  Cremation returns the life of the lunar lords more rapidly to the central reservoir of life than any other method, for "our God is a consuming Fire" and all fires have affinity with the central Fire.

Let us now study the rule which goes with Law VIII.

RULE FIVE

The healer must seek to link his soul, his heart, his brain and his hands.  Thus can he pour the vital healing force upon the patient.  This is magnetic work.  It cures [643] disease or increases the evil state, according to the knowledge of the healer.

The healer must seek to link his soul, his brain, his heart and auric emanation.  Thus can his presence feed the soul life of the patient.  This is the work of radiation.  The hands are needed not.  The soul displays its power.  The patient's soul responds through the response of his aura to the radiation of the healer's aura, flooded with soul energy. 

From just casually reading this Rule it will be obvious that its significance is vital to all successful healing work.  It sums up the two modes of healing, based on two capacities of the healer, founded on two groups of related aspects in the healer's personality, and indicating two different points in evolution on the part of the healer.  An analysis of this Rule will convey a still greater idea of its importance, for it indicates not only the lines along which the healer must train himself, but also certain interior relationships must be present, and these are dependent upon the point in evolution of the healer.  Again, in one case the patient's physical body is the objective of the healing art, whilst in the other it is the patient's soul which feels the effect of the healing energy.  In the first case the healer works with the prana or vital planetary fluid, and in the other with soul energy.

We can therefore, on the basis of this Rule, divide healers into two groups:  one group wielding the vital etheric fluid which we call prana, and the second group working on a much higher level and employing an ability to draw down soul energy into the body (or rather, the personality) of the healer and—from the required centre—to send it forth again into the appropriate centre in the patient's body, but this time through the stimulation of the patient's aura controlled by the patient's soul.  The two types of energy are of a widely different quality, for one is purely of the personality and is sometimes called animal magnetism, [644] and the other is of the soul, involving a type of work called radiation.

It should be noted here that in reality we have three types of healers:

1. The healer who works purely through magnetism and brings to bear the healing vital life of the planetary etheric body as it uses his individual etheric body as a channel whereby prana can pour into the vital body of the patient.

2. The healer who works on a higher level, and necessarily therefore with a higher type of patient; he uses the energy of his own overshadowing soul in conjunction with the energy of his individualised soul, and thereby radiates it forth into the soul of the patient, via both of the auras.

3. The healer who can employ both techniques and whose range of contacts and possibilities of usefulness are far greater than the other two.  He can employ with equal facility the energy of the soul or the vital pranic force, and has therefore mastered the two techniques which govern the two sets of related faculties.  This class of healer is much rarer than the other two.

At present, in the modern world, there is no true system of spiritual healing taught to would-be healers. There is instead an effort to base the whole procedure, plus the techniques employed, on purely mental levels, on systems of affirmation, modes of prayer, stimulation of the patient's will-to-live, and occasionally the use of magnetic or hypnotic passes in relation to the etheric body; various forms of applied subjective thinking are taught, but no true formula for an intelligent and expected cure, only the vague faith of the healer and of the patient and a blind autosuggestion [645] as to what the recognition and affirmation of divinity ought to produce.

True healing, however, is based on certain broad principles which require definite mental acceptance; the methods, nevertheless, which are employed are as definitely physical, using the etheric currents and the centres in the etheric body, as the laying on of hands and the establishing of relations which affect the physical body, and which are not at all of a mental nature and do not require to be appropriated and held by the mind of the patient.  The etheric body is physical in nature, and this must not be forgotten and needs frequent reiteration.  As we have earlier seen, there are three basic principles, affirmed and believed by the healer who is greatly aided if the patient accepts them also:

1. There is no reality in separation.  The planetary etheric body is a whole, unbroken and continuous; of this etheric body, those of the healer and the patient are integral, intrinsic parts.

2. There is an unbreakable (though probably unrealised) relationship between the healer's etheric body and that of the patient, which can be used when once contact has been induced, for a definite circulation of energies.

3. The channels of relationship can be conductors of many different types of energy, transmitted by the healer to the patient.  In this fact lies both hope and danger.

There are other principles, but in connection with this Rule these three are essential and explanatory.  Much consequently depends upon the knowledge, the understanding and the perceptiveness of the healer.  The danger in both radiatory healing and magnetic healing consists in the fact that [646] where there is no trained healer, the amount of prana brought in or of soul energy distributed may produce death, as well as life.  A healer may charge his etheric body with so much prana and project it so violently into the etheric body of the patient that he may do far more harm than good.  Only long practice can teach the healer the right amount of energy to emit, and to learn this he would do well to use as little energy as possible, gradually increasing the quantity as he attains skill in action.  Speaking in a broad and general way, and with the reminder that there are many exceptions to all rules, the magnetic healer will work with less developed people than will the spiritual healer using soul radiation, and he will deal primarily with those diseases which are found below the diaphragm.  Spiritual healers work primarily with the upper part of the body, through the centres above the diaphragm and with the head centre, thereby controlling all centres in the entire body.  Their work is most delicate and subtle and involves far greater risks.  The true healer who is an initiate employs both methods with equal facility.

It is interesting, though not particularly useful to you, to point out that there are two other classes of healers who are sometimes found.  They work quite differently to either of the methods mentioned above.  They are:

1. Certain healers—few and far between—who have set up a relation with the spirit of the earth, the Ruler of all the lunar lords.  Under certain formulas and given a certain amount of practice, these healers can invoke his aid and—in fact—command it.  I do not advise any interested student to ponder overmuch along this line or to endeavour to set up a contact or to invoke his aid.  Only initiates of high degree can deal safely with this powerful involutionary Elemental; they do so [647] only in connection with epidemics and international catastrophes such as the world war, in which thousands and thousands of bodies were involved.  An individual not highly developed who endeavoured to establish rapport would probably only succeed in stimulating the lunar lords of his own little system to such an extent that his lower nature would be unduly energised—sometimes even to the point of death.

2. Other healers, not as few as in the above group but relatively few, work in cooperation with a healing deva. Such devas exist and have the power of bestowing life.  They are to the involutionary lunar lords what the great Lives at Shamballa are to us.  They are not a menace to humanity but are not readily reached, except at a certain stage upon the Path where, symbolically speaking, a door or point of contact exists between the two evolutions, for the devas are not upon the involutionary arc. Relations are established through affinity, but this can be brought about only by the deva, and not by the healer.  If the healer is very advanced, his Master may instruct one of the serving devas to aid him.  Only healers of great purity and of completely selfless motive can attract these angels, and when they do, the potency of their healing is much greater; they make fewer mistakes.  They do not, for instance, attempt to heal patients for whom there is no healing possibility.  The Angel of Death (and this time I am not speaking symbolically but am referring to an existing deva) will not permit a healing deva to collaborate:  they are only permitted to approach where healing is indicated.

We might now take the sentences in this Rule and study their meaning, as there are more significances in them than appear upon the surface.  The first sentence in each [648] paragraph of this Rule starts with an important injunction to the healer:

The healer must seek to link his soul, his heart, his brain and his hands.  Thus can he pour the vital healing force upon the patient.

This is the technique of the lowest type of true spiritual healer, and for this reason two of the aspects of the dense physical body are included:  the brain and the hands.  The healer works, therefore, through a triangle and two lines of energy.  The situation can be depicted in the following diagram:

The triangle is completed when the healing work is done and the energy is withdrawn from the hands to the brain again and from thence returned by an act of the will to the soul. When the healer (through practiced alignment) has linked up with his soul, he then draws the soul energy down into his heart centre, from whence he transfers it to the brain, where it is definitely focussed. Using the ajna centre as a distributing centre, he then uses his hands as the agency through which the directed energy can reach that area in the patient's body where the seat of the trouble is to be found. He passes the energy into the patient's approximate centre which governs the distressed area, from which it [649] permeates the surrounding part of the body, penetrating both to the centre of the trouble and to the limits of the distressed area.

There are two ways in which he uses his hands, and two methods which he employs:

1. The laying on of hands.  This method is employed when the diseased area is strictly localised.  The hands are laid on the centre in spine or head which may govern that area—the right hand being laid upon the spinal centre and the left hand on the part of the body immediately in front of the special area and over the part of the abdomen, chest or head in which the patient complains of distress.  They are held in this position as long as the healer can hold the triangle of soul, heart and brain clearly in consciousness.

2. The use of the hands in action.  Here the healer, having ascertained the difficulty and then located the needed centre up the spine or in the head, creates a circulation of energy (through the action of his hands) through the centre in the patient's body controlling the distressed area, and thence outwards through that area towards himself.  He uses the right hand first, holding it momentarily over the diseased organ or area and slowly withdraws it towards himself; he follows this rapidly with the left hand which works in the same manner.  Both hands, you will note, are now being used positively.  No part or aspect of the healer's body or bodies is ever permitted to be negative, and the fiction that the right hand is positive and the left hand is negative will have to be discarded.  If one hand was negative, the healer would be liable to absorb into himself those diseased atoms which, when successful, he draws out of the area of distress.  These do not respond to the action of his [650] hands through the medium of the centre in the patient's body nearest to the seat of trouble, but are drawn out through the area which has responded to the disease.

In the first case, through the laying on of hands, of silent hands, of quiet hands, the energy flow is between the two hands, back and forth within the diseased area; the spinal centre is used all the time, and the activity set up, when successful, burns up and absorbs the forces causing the trouble without penetrating the body of the healer.  In the second case, the forces are withdrawn by the action of the energy passing through the hands, applied one after the other in a regular time rhythm.  They pass through the hands, but are unable to focus themselves there, owing to the concentration of the healing energies within the hands.

Healers on the second, third and fifth rays use more generally the mode of laying on of hands or magnetic healing.  This term applies to the direct act of laying on of hands upon the patient's physical body, and not to the action of the hands in the second method, when the hands are immersed in the etheric body of the patient and are definitely working in etheric matter.  Healers on the first, fourth and seventh rays use the mode of "hand immersion," as it is sometimes called.  The sixth ray healer is rare and is successful only when highly developed; he will then use both methods interchangeably.  

All spiritually advanced healers use both hands.  Healers are, however, advised first of all to ascertain their ray, and then to perfect themselves in the type or mode of healing best suited to that ray; then, when adequately efficient and able to use facility and skill, they can add the mode of healing which is not so adaptable to their ray type.  People on the sixth ray are advised to abstain from the healing art until they have arrived (consciously) at the [651] initiate stage.  When both modes of magnetic healing have been mastered, the healer may employ both alternately in the act of healing, or he may use the mode of magnetic passes first so as to set up a changed activity in the diseased area, and then finally use a definite laying on of hands.

At the close of the healing period the "sealing of the triangle" takes place.  The energy, hitherto passing into the hands through the ajna centre from the brain, is withdrawn into the ajna centre, and from thence directed—by an act of the will—to the soul.  The healing force is literally "turned off" and redirected; it is no longer available.

During the entire period of healing the healer says nothing.  He is making no affirmation and uses no healing mantram.  The process outlined here is that of the effect of energy or soul potency playing upon force.  This is a point to be emphasised.  The task of the healer is to preserve an attitude of intense concentration upon the triangle "existing in living lines of energy" (as it has been called) within his own fourfold aura—health aura, etheric body, astral body and mental body.  This he must preserve intact and stable for the entire period of healing.  Soul-heart-brain must be linked in such a "lighted" manner that a true clairvoyant would see a brilliant triangle in the healer's aura; the highest point of the triangle (that of the soul) he might fail to see unless he were himself highly developed, but he could not fail to see the signs of it in the inflowing energy to the heart and from the heart to the brain.  The work done is silent work.  There is therefore no loss of power at any time, as there always is through the spoken word or affirmation.  It is not possible to hold the triangle geometrically correct and magnetically polarised if there is any sound made by the healer.  This presupposes an advanced stage of alignment and of concentration and will [652] indicate to you some of the lines along which the healer's training should go.

This mode of healing "cures disease or increases the evil state, according to the knowledge of the healer."  In some respects (though this is a stage of healing which is not the highest) it is nevertheless the one most responsible because, in the case of radiatory healing, the soul of the patient is working in cooperation with the healer and it is the soul then which has the major responsibility.  In magnetic healing, the healer needs to cooperate closely with the patient's physician or surgeon dealing with the case; he will supply the technical knowledge, and thus prevent the healer from making mistakes.

Where death is definitely indicated and the "signs of death" are noted by both the doctor and the healer, the healer has not need to stop his work.  By continuing it, he may increase the evil condition, but will nevertheless be aiding the patient by hastening normally the act of dying.  The old proverb is basically not true in all cases, that "where there is life there is hope."  Life can and often is prolonged after the will of the soul is towards the withdrawal of the soul life; the life of the atoms of the lunar lords can be fostered for a long time, and this greatly distresses the spiritual man who is aware of the process and the intent of his soul.  What is kept alive is the physical body, but the interest of the true man is no longer focussed there.

There inevitably comes a point, for instance in the case of malignant disease, where the physician knows that it simply is a question of time, and the spiritual healer can learn to recognise the same signs.  Then, instead of the present silence on the part of both healer and doctor, where the patient is concerned, this remaining time will be employed (if the patient's faculties permit) with due preparation or the "beneficent and happy withdrawal" of the soul; the patient's [653] family and friends will share in the preparation.  In the early stages of the new world religion, this attitude towards death will be inculcated.  An entirely new concept of death, with the emphasis upon conscious withdrawal, will be taught, and funeral services, or rather the crematory services, will be joyous events because their emphasis will be upon release and return.

The magnetic work, however, will cure if the patient's destiny indicates it, if the soul intends to prolong the life cycle unexpectedly in order to fulfill some duty, or if the patient is very far advanced spiritually and the Hierarchy requires his services for a longer term.

Let us now consider radiatory healing.

We shall now be dealing with a very different situation than that of the one we have just been considering.  In radiatory healing, the patient (either consciously or unconsciously) is working with the healer and is cooperating with him.  The basic premise in radiatory healing is that the patient is a person who has, at least to some degree, established rapport with his soul.  This having been brought about, the healer knows that a channel of contact can be counted upon and that the soul interest can be evoked in its representative, the man upon the physical plane.  He knows also that success in radiatory healing is dependent, to a great extent, upon the ability of his own soul to establish a firm relation with the soul of the patient.  When the patient is conscious and able to cooperate, the work is greatly helped; according to the healer's capacity to avail himself of alignment and recognised contact will be the quality of the aid he will be able to give to the one who needs his assistance.  When the patient is unconscious, even that provides no real hindrance, provided the healer can bring his soul and the patient's soul into relationship; in [654] fact in some cases the unconsciousness of the patient can be a help, for too earnest, emphatic and impatient help can offset the work—quiet, silent and controlled—by the healer.

Once, however, the rapport is established, the work of the healer simply consists in holding the relationship steady; no interference must be permitted in the work being done by the patient's soul, set in motion by the aid of the healer. The Master Jesus on the Cross could not respond to any saving process (even had He desired to do so) because the soul body—as is always the case at the fourth initiation—was destroyed; there was nothing to respond to the evocative power of an outside person, interested or loving.  As an adept and as one in whom monadic consciousness was firmly established, the powers then available to Jesus could not be used in the saving of His physical body.  At the same time, it must be remembered that He would have no desire to save it, because He now possessed the power (demonstrated later in the Gospel story) to create a body at will in order to meet His needs.  The subtle and subjective sin of the apostles was that they were not interested in evoking the living activity of the Master on His Own behalf (even though He would never do so; this they did not know), but were entirely preoccupied with their own grief.  The evocation, had they attempted it, would have been useless, but the good that might have come to them and the revelation they might have received as to the deathlessness of the soul would have greatly illuminated them and might have produced a Christianity built around a living Christ and not around a dead Christ.

In radiatory healing, we are told that "the healer must seek to link his soul, his brain, his heart and auric emanation." You will note two points connected with this particular instruction which differ from that given in the case of magnetic healing:

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1. The order of the triangle of energies created is different.

2. The means of contact are subtle and not tangible.

The energy released follows a direct line of contact with the brain, and the healer starts with a closed triangle and not with an open one, as in the case of magnetic healing. The triangle created is a simple one, and there is no physical contact and outlet as in magnetic healing:

The brain of the healer is involved, but there is no physical contact of any kind with the patient.  The result is a constant circulation of force from the soul back again to the soul.  This causes necessarily an augmenting and an energising of the threefold personality of the healer, and therefore of his auric emanation.  His aura would be seen by a clairvoyant as greatly extended, in rapid motion, and energised by light from his own soul, but with all its radiation turned in the direction of the patient.  By this means the healing force of the healer stimulates all the three personality vehicles of the patient; the patient's soul is aided in the work it has to do.  The healer will consequently find it necessary to stand at that side of the patient in which the trouble is located, so that the radiation of his aura can more easily penetrate.  This is the easiest way, but not the most effective.  Where the patient's vitality is strong, he [656] should lie on the side, and the healer should stand behind the patient so that the energy pouring through, which the healer may be using and which is potently energising his aura with soul energy, may affect the patient's aura and thus facilitate the entry of the healing radiation, which the healer is contributing, to the centre or centres needed.  Where the patient is very highly developed, the healer should stand at the patient's head.  His personal effect is not then so great, but that does not matter because it is not needed; the soul of the patient will be adequate to the task.  All that is needed is that the aura of the healer, blending with that of the patient, creates a zone of quiet rhythmic activity around the head centre.  No physical contact by the hands is now required, and the healer must on no account touch the patient.

The situation is summed up for us in the words:  "Thus can his presence feed the soul life of the patient.  This is the work of radiation.  The hands are needed not."

Speaking symbolically, it is almost as if a great vortex of power were set up by the contact between the two auras and by their high vibration:  by its means the soul of the patient can work more easily.  An initiate, if present, would see a golden stream of energy pouring straight down through the energised bodies of the patient's personality into the centre nearest to the area of trouble.  Approach is made via the head centre directly to the point of difficulty, and towards this point the aura of the healer is also directed.  The mental attitude of the patient is strengthened and clarified by the mental emanation of the healer's aura; his emotional reaction, often very powerful, is equally aided to attain dispassion and quiet, and the etheric and health auras have a definite effect upon the corresponding aspects of the patient's aura.

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Radiatory healing is brought about by the mingling of the two auras, both of them responsive to soul contact; the soul aspect of both persons (under control of the soul) is then directed towards some area of the patient's physical body.  This produces a tremendous effect upon the diseased area, and the centre in that same locality becomes exceedingly energised.  The work of the healer during this process is one of intense quiescence.  Having made his contact, he simply waits and has nothing more to do but to hold his soul alignment steady and permit nothing to disturb his personality vehicles.  His task was accomplished when he made his own soul contact and then reached out and contacted the patient's soul.  This he could do because he knows all souls are one:  eventually the art of healing will be one of the demonstrating factors in proving the unity of all souls.

This rule, therefore, concludes with the words:  "The patient's soul responds through the response of his aura to the radiation of the healer's aura, flooded with soul energy."  It is consequently a question of the soul energy of both parties meeting on all three levels of human awareness.  The expression "the soul" is here in the singular because unity (if only for a moment) has been reached.  The soul of the patient recognises this unity by the "occult quickening" of his own aura and by its responsiveness to the entering radiations from the healer's aura.  This flooding with soul energy through the medium of related auras is, all of it, directed as one unified effort towards the area of disease in the patient's body.  You can see, therefore, that-consciously or unconsciously-the work can go forward and produce either healing or that "quickening of atoms which leads by soul direction unto release," as the Old commentary calls the act of dying.

When it becomes evident that it is the patient's destiny to die, the technique of the healer alters somewhat.  He [658] then takes his place at the patient's head, and from that point deflects all his own radiations to the seat of the disease, causing necessarily a great acceleration of vibratory activity.  The patient, in the meantime, consciously through brain recognition or unconsciously under soul direction, begins the process of withdrawing all consciousness from the body.  This is why so many people are in a coma prior to death.  When this act of the withdrawal of consciousness has been started, the work of the healer ends.  He "shuts off" his soul contact and reassumes control of his aura as a medium of his own spiritual expression; it becomes no longer an instrument for healing by radiatory activity, and leaves the patient alone automatically to complete the withdrawal of the consciousness thread and the life thread, from the head and heart centres.

This is a broad and general outline of the processes followed in magnetic and radiatory healing.  I have here given you the skeleton structure of the idea, but not the details; more can be inferred and given when we study the seven methods of healing with their ray implications.

This teaching has been given in such a manner that the student will have to hunt through its pages and gather together the facts needed, and thus formulate the first stage of the procedure of spiritual healing; unless he is himself a spiritual healer and ready to read between the lines and to distinguish between symbolism and fact, he will be misled and his work rendered useless.  This is intended; for the healing art—when perfectly applied under correct formulas—can be dangerous.  It must be remembered that although energy is thought, it is also, from a higher point of view, fire.  The entire technique, procedure, and formulas will have to be discovered, subjected to experiment and the results noted before the true spiritual healing can take place; [659] by the time this investigation has been completed, it will be a safer matter than it is today.    In the meantime, much good can be accomplished and a great deal learnt if those interested read, study, meditate, carefully experiment, and thus gradually build up this much needed science as a co-partner in the medical science of modern times.

Let us now consider Law IX.

In Law IX and Rule Six we shall be dealing with such basic fundamentals that our problem will be to formulate the teaching in such a concise manner that vast themes may be briefly handled, and at the same time appear clear and simple.  This law is in reality a definition of the Law of Evolution, but given from the spiritual angle.  The Law of Evolution—as commonly understood—concerns the evolution of the form aspect as it is gradually fitted to be an exponent or an expression of soul energy, and later of monadic energy.

This law, which might be termed the Law of Perfection, deals with the interior energies which are responsible for the working of the Law of Evolution.  It is the higher aspect or the determining cause of the lower; the laws subsidiary to the Law of Perfection are loosely called (by the neophyte) the spiritual laws, but of these he knows little and unifies them all in his mind under the general idea that they are an expression of the love aspect of Deity.  That is essentially true, from the quality angle, if it is recognised at the same time that the love aspect is essentially pure reason and not an emotional sentiment expressing itself through kind actions.

The rule which accompanies this law deals with the relation of love and will, and is consequently of high importance to the initiate.  I would remind you here that the [660] only true healer is the initiate, and therefore the last two laws (Law IX and Law X) can only be truly understood by the initiated disciple.  They are, however, profoundly interesting intellectually to the beginner, the enquirer and the aspirant, because (theoretically at least) he can grasp some of their meaning, though he is as yet quite incapable of "keeping the law"—spiritually understood.

LAW IX

Perfection calls imperfection to the surface.  Good drives evil from the form of man in time and space.  The method used by the Perfect One and that employed by Good, is "perfect harmlessness".  This is not negativity, but Perfect Poise, a completed point of view, and divine understanding.

This law is profoundly simple and means exactly what it says.  It can be interpreted in two ways:

1. It concerns the spiritual development of man through the medium of form, and the mode or law whereby the latent hold of matter—impregnated by selfishness and by all that is recognised as evil—is removed, and man stands free.

2. It can also be interpreted in terms of healer and patient.  Oft the effect of the activity and knowledge of the true healer is to bring to the surface (in an acute form) the evil (disease) within the form. The result of this can either be the elimination of the disease and the securing of health, or the form will succumb to the increase of the difficulty and the probability is that the patient will die.  It is therefore fortunate that the average healer is so futile that such a dire possibility is not present!

The method employed under the Law of Perfection is called "perfect harmlessness," and that was ever the method used [661] by the Christ, the Perfect One.  It is not the harmlessness enjoined so often by me as I speak to aspirants, but a harmlessness imposed by the spiritual man and by his natural destiny.  It is an ignoring of the effect or the result upon the form nature.  Frequently I have told you that the Hierarchy works only with the spiritual nature or with the soul of humanity, and that—to the Master—the form is regarded as relatively of no importance.  Release from the threefold form is ever regarded by the spiritual man as the greatest possible good, provided it comes to him under law, as the result of his spiritual destiny and of karmic decision:  it must not come as an arbitrary act, or as an escape from life and its consequences upon the physical plane, or as self-imposed.  Of this strange working of the Law of Perfection (strange to man's limited point of view), the war (1914-1945) was a striking instance.  Millions died; more millions suffered cruelly in their form nature, and many more millions underwent (and are still undergoing) the mental agony of insecurity, suspense and poverty.  Nevertheless, two major results of a spiritual nature, working under the Law of Perfection, resulted:

1. Souls were released from a backward and decaying civilisation—for such is your vaunted civilisation from the angle of the Hierarchy—and will return in better bodies to a civilisation and a culture more in conformity with the needs of the spiritual man.  The main reason why there has been such a complete destruction of the old forms (physical, emotional and mental) is that they constituted a complete imprisonment of the soul and negated all true growth for the masses of men.

2. From the rich to the poor, from the intelligent to the ignorant, one thing is now clearly grasped and will increasingly colour human thinking:  happiness and [662] success are not dependent upon the possession of things or upon material good.  That idea is the mistake of organised labour as it fights and strikes for more money in order to live more richly; it is also the mistake of the general public as it reacts to the action of labour, for it rebels against the curtailment of the steady inflow of material goods.  Humanity has made this mistake for untold ages, and has erred grievously in its emphasis upon that which benefits the form.  This is the good in the Russian position as it wars on capitalism and lays an emphasis upon education.  However, its ruthlessness and cruelty and (above all else) its suppression of the rights of the individual citizen to certain of the essential freedoms may eventually negate the beauty and the hope of the initial idealism.  Russia is right in her idealism, but terribly and basically wrong in her techniques. The United States and Great Britain are at a midway point.  They have a vision but know not how to materialise it and make it true, for they favour not (and rightly) a totalitarian regime.  The capitalistic spirit and the latent fascism of the United States are at this time a definite menace to world peace, and the capitalists are blocking the efforts of the men of goodwill.  Great Britain is at present impotent, financially ruined, her old imperialistic policies entirely in the discard, and her people discouraged:  she is therefore so preoccupied with the struggle to live (and she will live) that there is little time, interest or energy left to make the vision true.  There is, as you know, always a correspondence between the individual man and the world of men as a whole.  Just as today practically every human being has something wrong with him physically—eyes, ears, teeth or bodily ills of some [663] nature—so humanity is sick and awaiting healing.  The healing will be brought about through the medium of the New Group of World Servers and by the men of goodwill, aided by the Hierarchy, from which planetary centre the healing energies will be drawn.  Imperfection has been drawn to the surface; the evils to be eliminated are known to everybody, and this has all taken place under the influence of the Law of Perfection. I am dealing here with the general situation rather than with the individual relation between the healer and a patient.  I do so for the simple reason that only an initiate of experience and of understanding can keep this law or obey this rule, and of such there are only a very few on earth today.  The sickness of humanity as a race, and as a result of aeons of wrong living, of selfish purpose and of greed, has produced a mass of physical ills; today millions of children are born either openly diseased or with the seed of disease in them.  When the evil which has made its presence felt, and when the imperfections which have been drawn to the surface have been cured or driven back to their own place, then—and only then—will physical disease come to an end or yield easily to treatment.

In considering the general subject of imperfection and of evil, we are dealing here with causes (and this the initiate must ever do); when these causes are themselves removed, then the effects will also disappear.  Christian Science and Unity are therefore right in their general theory and premises, but totally wrong in their emphases and methods.  In the long run, all the work they do today is relatively futile, except in so far that they preserve and enunciate the Law of Perfection, even though they do so in a muddled manner and their teaching is tainted with the universal selfishness.

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You have oft been told that there are two modes of achievement; the long hard way of evolution, in which aeons are taken to arrive at relatively small results, or the short, still harder but much more rapid way of initiation.  For ages it remained a question (a moot point, do you not call it?) whether the world of men would choose (and had better choose) the slow but safe method.  It is a method in which imperfection is only very gradually eliminated, without much strain and with small effort on the part of man.  It is a mode whereby good is only slowly realised and evil only slowly, very slowly, driven out.   The will-to-good of Shamballa is, under the usual evolutionary system, only faintly present, and many, many aeons would still lie ahead of humanity before even the present point of human development could have been attained.

But something happened which had not been foreseen even by the Hierarchy.  During the past two hundred years the entire picture has been altered.  Individual men, in adequate numbers, achieved initiation and entered the Ashrams of the Masters, and through the decision of these successful aspirants, and subject to their continued activity, it was decided by them but for humanity that the rapid hard way was to be tried.  Since that time three factors have been present:

1. The factor of tremendous progress in raising the consciousness of mankind, en masse, to much higher intellectual levels.  To this the growth of education, the discoveries of science and the control of the material plane and of the air bear testimony.

2. The factor of worldwide distress, of economic disaster, of world wars, of natural cataclysms and of the myriad occurrences and difficulties which make individual life, national life and planetary life so hard these days.  No one is exempt and there is no distinction shown.

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3. The factor of the growth of knowledge anent the Hierarchy and, above all else, of the spiritual Plan. This has necessitated the presentation of a goal to man by the working aspirants and disciples, plus the outlining of the techniques of the Path whereby that goal can be reached.  This has not been accomplished by the religious church groups throughout the world, but by members of the Ashrams. All that the churches have done is to preserve in the public mind the fact of God Transcendent, whilst ignoring the fact of God Immanent, to testify to the existence of the Christ whilst travestying His teaching, and to teach the fact of immortality, whilst ignoring the Law of Rebirth.

Humanity is, therefore, progressing rapidly upon the Upward Way, and two things can be looked for as a consequence:  first, that the imperfections and evil (one latent and the other active though retreating) will become increasingly apparent to intelligent man, and secondly, that the mode of their elimination will also become known.

I deal not here with the nature of imperfection or the purpose of evil.  Do I need to point out to any of my readers how inescapably both are present?  I might point out that imperfection is inherent in the nature of matter itself and constitutes an inheritance from a previous solar system.  I might indicate that evil emanates from that hierarchy of evil Forces which are the material correspondence to the spiritual Hierarchy; this is related to the fact that all our planes are composed of substance of the cosmic physical plane.  It might also be stated that when the imperfection of matter is realised and corrected, and when the interest and emphasis of humanity is turned away from material conditions, then the Forces of Evil will have nothing in the three worlds (the three lower levels of the cosmic physical plane) [666] upon which to work; there will be nothing they can influence, and no mode of influencing man will then exist as far as evil is concerned.  I cannot expect you at this time to comprehend the meaning of my words.  They are, however, related to the words in the Great Invocation which say, "and seal the door where evil dwells."  There is a door into an evil realm and into blackness, just as there is a door into a world of goodness and light; the devil is to man who is dedicated and consecrated to evil what the Dweller on the Threshold is to the spiritual aspirant.