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CHAPTER IV - Some Questions Answered - Part 3

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You will find (fairly soon perhaps) that healing groups will employ mantrams of a definite kind, and that in those mantrams the name of the Blessed One will appear.  But the mantram for His coming age is not yet for use.  The world is not yet ready for the potency which it would release.  Today, is there a more potent mantram than the oft spoken word:  "For Christ's sake and for the glory of His Name"?  But these works must be spoken with love and will behind them or else they are but an empty symbol and a sounding cymbal.  Forget this not.

On the Christ.

Some aspirants and disciples may experience an almost constant recollection of the Christ; that is due to their increasing sensitivity to the inner planes and particularly to the fact that so much of the matter in the astral body of the advanced aspirant is taken from (and is therefore sensitive to) the highest subplane of the astral plane.  It is also due to the fact that the Lord Maitreya with His workers is approaching nearer all the time to the physical plane.  The focus of His attention in the year 1936 was, for the first time, predominantly on the first subplane of the astral plane.  Hence the sensitives' correct and immediate response to His energy there expressed.  He is coming nearer in His thought and activity.  Should the peoples of the world respond to the presented opportunity, His forces and attention could penetrate more deeply and be predominantly on etheric levels with all that is implied in such a situation.

This, many sense subjectively and know; and great, therefore, is their opportunity and yours to constitute increasingly a channel for this force.

Remember that the work for which He comes and to which the attendant Hierarchy is pledged is to help Him in the "healing of the nations" as it is expressed in [362] the Bible.  This is a true statement of an imminent fact.  This healing will be brought about if men of goodwill everywhere measure up to their opportunity; if the work of the Christ and of His helpers is brought more definitely to the attention of the general public, and if there is an inner relaxation in the world of men which will permit the devas to work.  It is their readiness and their response to the near approach to the Christ which many consecrated servers are subjectively sensing, and which has somewhat perplexed them.  The devas can only be sensed and felt:  they cannot be approached by humanity as yet through the medium of the thought world and the use of the mechanism of thought in man.  There is no danger involved for the server if he becomes aware of these deva forces and their activities, via the Christ and through their responsiveness to His work and imminent appearance.

On the Phrase "Mother of the World."

The various ways in which the phrase can be used can mean quite a number of differing things.  It can mean:

1. The feminine aspect in manifestation, symbolised for us in many of the world religions as a virgin mother and in the Christian religion as the Virgin Mary. It is that substance which enables Deity to manifest.

2. Nature itself, the mother of all forms.

3. The moon also, who is the symbol of the generative, creative life which gives birth to forms and is therefore the symbol of the form nature.

4. The concentration of the feminine force in nature in some individual in female form who is then called the "World Mother."  Such an individual has never existed in our particular planetary life, though the avatars of a previous solar system, expressing itself through [363] planetary life, always took this form.  But not in this solar system.  The tradition of such appearances is purely symbolic, inherited from the previous solar system from which we inherited the matter of which all manifested forms are made.  This symbolism has come down from the far-off period of the Matriarchate, which had a religion that recalled the ancient ways of the earlier system and in which period of time Lilith symbolised the World Mother, until Eve took her place.

On the Sense of Futility.

In connection with the work of the healer with patients at the gate of death, he may experience a sense of futility.  Is it possible to know just what he can do?  Should he continue his effort to help the newly freed soul to go forward into the light?  In the face of all his knowledge (and he may have much), and in spite of his yearning desire to aid the departing one, there seems naught to do but to step aside, with a sense of utter futility, whilst the loved one passes through the gate which leads to what, my brother?  We can go up to the gates, but it seems as yet that we can go no further.  Even the deep-seated belief in the persistence of the immortal soul proves inadequate, and only serves to comfort the serving healer personally, but suffices not to reveal to him what help he can give.

There is little I can say as we wait, at this significant time, for the coming revelation.  That revelation is inevitable and sure, and such questions will not be raised two hundred years hence.  To this emerging fact, the growing sensitivity of the race to the subtler angles of life, and the vast amount of investigation carried forward on every side, is the physical plane guarantee.  This great truth and its guarantee is held steadily before us in the history of the "glorious resurrection of the Christ" and His after-death [364] appearance, and in the powerful but little understood ritual of the sublime degree in Masonry, wherein the Master is raised.

Aid at the time of the "passing into the light" depends largely upon two things:  First, the amount of close contact between the dying person and the one who watches, and the level upon which that contact is strongest.  Secondly, upon the capacity of the watcher to detach and dissociate himself from his own feelings and to identify himself, through an act of pure unselfish will, with the dying person.  None of this is really possible when the bond between the two is purely emotional or based upon a physical plane relation.  The contact must be deeper and stronger than that.  It must be a personal contact upon all planes.  Where there is true soul and personality contact, there is then little problem.  But this is rare to find.  Nevertheless I have here given you a hint.

There should also be as little definite thought process as possible on the part of the watcher.  All that is required and possible at present is simply to carry the dying person forward on an ever-deepening stream of love.  Through the power of the creative imagination, and not through intellectual concepts (no matter how high), must the dying man be aided to discard the outer garment in which he has been encased and in which he has laboured during life.  This involves an act of pure self-forgetfulness, of which few as yet are capable.  Most people are swept by fear, or by a strong desire to hold the beloved person back, or are sidetracked in their aim by the activities involved in assuaging pain and deadening agony; they are dismayed also by the depths of their ignorance of the "technique of death" when faced with the emergency.  They find themselves unable to see what lies beyond the doors of death, and are swept by the mental uncertainty which is part of the great [365] illusion. There is as we know no sure touch in this process of dying.  All is uncertainty and bewilderment.  But this will end before long, and man will know and also see.

As regards those who have passed into the light, whom you want to help, follow them with your love, remembering that they are still the same people, minus the outer limiting shroud of body.  Serve them, but seek not that they should serve your need of them.  Go to them, but seek not to bring them back to you.

It is physical plane life that is the purgatory, and life experience that is the school of drastic discipline.  Let us not fear death, or that which lies beyond it.  The wise disciple labours in the field of service but looks forward steadily to the dawn of the "clear, cold light" into which he will some day enter, and so close the chapter for a while upon the fever and the friction and the pain of earth existence.  But there are other phases of life experience wherein the sense of futility and frustration meets the server in the world today.

From the angle of vision of a disciple, we might divide intelligent human beings into three groups, at the same time eliminating in our thought the dead weight of the unthinking masses who register desire but who as yet experience no sense of futility or frustration.  They desire and are satisfied; or they desire and are thwarted or jealous or angry at those who appear to have that which they want and demand, and which appeals to the life of the senses.  The three groups are:

1. Those personalities, integrated and intelligent, who are ambitious and pushing consciously forward, yet who meet with frustration.  This frustration is due either to world conditions which are too strong for them, or to the imposition upon them of their own watchful souls [366] which throws obstructions in their way in order to lead them into the light.

2. Those mystically inclined people and those rightly oriented visionaries who have not yet built in that mental scaffolding which will enable them properly to materialise their vision, through right thought processes.  They are many in number today, and their case is not an easy one.

3. Those disciples and aspirants who are attempting to work in the field of the world, yet who through karmic limitation, misapplication of the law, or some basic personality weakness, never achieve in this life their goal, and so are swept by an overwhelming sense of futility.

Beyond these three classes, acting as the opposite pole to the struggling masses, are the integrated functioning disciples of the world, who are achieving, and who are too occupied and too one-pointed to waste much time over feeling inferior or over mistakes and failures.

Therefore, by wisely placing the people who come to you for help in one or other of these three categories (allowing in your mind for the possibility of their passing into another and higher one) you will be able to help them more intelligently.

A large measure of the inferiority complex which affects so many people today is due most definitely to their reaction to the inflowing spiritual influences.  They know themselves to be greater than their achievements; they realise unconsciously and wordlessly their divinity, but the limitation of circumstance and the hindrances of the body nature are as yet too great for right response to opportunity and to reality.  Look for these souls and aid them by true understanding and by appreciation and cooperation,  [367] and thus dispel the illusion of non-accomplishment which haunts their footsteps.

But exhibitionism and neurasthenic hallucinations have to be cured primarily through individual self-effort, through decentralisation, transference of interest, and unselfishness. Neurasthenic tendencies are likely to increase instead of decrease for some time yet, such is the strain under which man labours today.  The present world condition forces him to find avenues of escape, and to revert to the curative power of his own creative imagination.  Release comes through acceptance of the drama of the whole and not of the part, and through steady occupation in creative work on the physical plane.

Methods of training will later be used and are already coming into their elementary stages through the work of the psychologists of the world.

On Scientific Parallels.

Students seem to think that we, the teachers on the inner side, have read every book that may be written, particularly those embodying the new and advanced truths, and that we are also in touch with the personalities of those who are the dispensers of the growing body of new knowledge in the world.  Such is not the case.  How can I explain to you the true state of affairs?  Only symbolically, I think.

As we look out over the world of the intellect and carry our thoughts from the points of living knowledge there to be found, we may become aware of areas of light (as we understand it) shining forth upon the physical plane.  Such areas indicate the shining light of some worker in the field, of some disciple, or of some member of the New Group of World Servers.  I know, for instance, that such areas are to be found (as regards the United States) in Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland and Rochester.  By a peculiar [368] mode of shining this indicates to me that there is to be found a centre where the newer knowledges anent man's body are to be found.  I know that there are other areas of light existing all over the world.  My work and the work of all the teachers in this transition period is to stimulate them and fertilise their minds with ideas.  Every theory they form in their search for truth, every book they write, and every conclusion they reach is not known to us.  They must carry their own responsibility and fail or succeed in arriving at the truth through their own self-initiated effort.

H.P.B. prophesied the work now being done many years ago when she spoke of the recognition ultimately to be accorded by science to an universally diffused omnipresent Deity (the ether of space is an entity, she also tells us) and that the mystery of electricity, when solved, holds for us the solution of most of our problems.  Many of the theories of modern science are laid down in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, though scientists have not gone far enough yet to recognise this fact; there the electrical nature of man is posited.  You would find it interesting and helpful to search out such passages.  Science, however, gives no place to the electrical force of the soul, which is steadily growing in potency.  A few of the scientists among the most advanced are beginning to do this.  The next step ahead for science is the discovery of the soul, a discovery which will revolutionise, though not negate, the majority of their theories.

Individual students might aid in this if they took some of the basic postulates of a scientist whose researches appealed to them, and endeavoured to discover in my books, for instance, or in The Secret Doctrine, those paragraphs which will throw occult light upon what he says, or which may negate his hypothesis.  Then they would be growing [369] [369] and using the analytical mind as a bridging factor between the world of human science and the occult sciences.                                                                                                                     

On Ions and Radiation.

Scientists have made statements to the effect that the air we breathe contains electrified particles positively or negatively charged, and they are able to produce artificially electrified air; that even an open flame in a fireplace ionises the air; that with suitable apparatus one may extract either the negative or the positive ions, and that patients exposed to the positively electrified ions developed feelings of fatigue, dizziness and headache, while if exposed to negatively charged ions a feeling of exhilaration was experienced; that positive ions increased the blood pressure and produced general discomfort, and negative ions lowered the pressure and brought a feeling of comfort and relaxation.

The question arises whether the healer's radiation has the effect of ionising the atmosphere surrounding the patient.  I must point out that to answer such a question accurately would necessitate two things:  the revelation of one of the mysteries for which mankind is not yet ready, and at the same time the giving of an answer which would be quite inexplicable to you, for there is no terminology adequate to the latent truth.  In this truth is embodied the whole story of duality—which is the story of the relation of the negative and positive aspects of the living process.  Certain things, however, I can point out:

1. The negative and positive ions with which the scientist deals are etheric in nature and, therefore, of the physical plane.  These unseen particles of substance which can only be traced through their effects and through interference with their activities, are rapidly moving particles in relation to each other and, at the same time, [370] are themselves affected by a greater controlling factor which keeps them so moving.

2. In dealing with disease, the patient can only truly be helped when the positive radiation of the healer overcomes the negative condition of the patient.

3. The radiation of the healer has to permeate and overcome the resistance of the patient's disease—not of the patient, who may be mentally and emotionally negative to the healer, and therefore in a position to be helped.  This is done through the more powerful radiation of the healer.  The magnetism of the healer is then brought into play and, consciously and with intent, he can draw out and disperse those atoms of substance which are the seat and source of the patient's discomfort.  A hint is here given of one of the future physical plane modes of dispersing a disease.  The power of directing definitely the magnetic currents radiating from a source outside the physical body is not yet realised, but it will embody one of the new modes of healing.

The healing radiation, therefore, naturally affects the atmosphere around the patient.  As yet, however, that radiation is uneven and not rightly directed.  Some people radiate physical or animal magnetism; others astral or mental magnetism; still others radiate the energy of a fully integrated personality.  A few radiate the magnetism of the soul, the major attractive energy in all forms.  In the future the true healer must work through the radiation of the entire personality or of the soul.  I say "or" advisedly, for there are few as yet who can work with soul energy, but many who could work as integrated personalities if they so desired.  And when a man has achieved this power to radiate, what about the patient?  How is he to be brought into a condition wherein he will respond accurately to magnetic [371] radiation?  If he is an astral type, as are so many, will he be able to respond to the magnetism of a mental healer?  Can he be helped by the radiation of such a healer if he is himself a fully integrated human being?  If you say to me that Christ healed all types, I would here suggest that I am not considering in this short treatise the laws of healing as they are wielded by a Master of the Wisdom or by an initiate.  My book would otherwise be a futile effort.  I am writing for interested aspirants and for those who can heal on some level below that of the soul, but who as yet know not how to do it.  Later all this will be more fully elucidated.

On Vibration.

Some students make demand that I define what is the meaning of the word "vibration" and state exactly what a vibration is.  If I tell you that vibration is an illusion, as sensory perception is known by the soul to be, do you comprehend (limited as all human beings are by the reactions of a series of vehicles, all of them instruments of perception)? If I tell you that vibratory reaction is due to our possessing a mechanism which is responsive to impact, I am answering your question in part, but if this is true, what does it mean to you and from whence comes the impact?  If I give you the scientific definition (which you can discover in any good textbook on light, colour or sound), I am doing work that you can do yourself, and for that I have no time.  In my books are several definitions of vibration, either by inference or defined, and these you might search for, and upon them you might meditate.  If I elucidated for you here the relation between the Self and the not-Self, between awareness, that which is aware, and that of which it is aware, I am covering ground which a careful study of the Gita would aid you in comprehending.

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Let simplicity be your guide and one-pointed love your major objective.  Choose a field of service which has its definite limits (for all disciples are limited and cannot cover a planetary range in their thoughts), and work—mentally and physically—within those limits.  The completion of some self-appointed task within the field of karmic limitation and of environment where your destiny has cast you is all that is required of you.  What are you accomplishing really at this time?  Let your service lie within the field of contact where you find yourself, and reach not out over the entire planet.  Is there any greater or more important task than to fulfill your task and carry it to completion in the place where you are and with your chosen comrades?

Believe me when I assure you that I am not seeking to evade answering any questions, but if I can awaken you to the realisation of the necessity for "spiritual limitation" (as it is esoterically called when defining the career of a disciple within the limits of his task) and bring to your attention the need for achieving the goal you set yourself when you started to work, I shall have aided you far more than if I had defined vibration or pointed out to you just how much progress, through what process, you or others had made.

On the Future Schools of Healing.

These schools of healing are not to be developed in the near future, not before the close of this century.  Only the preparatory work is now being done, and the stage set for future unfoldments.  Things do not move so rapidly.  There has to be a growing synthesis of the techniques of such schools, which embody:

1. Psychological adjustments and healing,

2. Magnetic healing,

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3. The best of the allopathic and homeopathic techniques, with which we must not dispense,

4. Surgical healing in its modern forms,

5. Electro-therapeutics,

6. Water-therapy,

7. Healing by colour and sound, and radiation,

8. Preventive medicine,

9. The essential practices of osteopathy and chiropractic,

10. Scientific neurology and psychiatry,

11. The cure of obsessions and mental diseases,

12. The care of the eyes and ears,

13. Voice culture, which is a definitely healing agency,

14. Mental and faith healing,

15. Soul alignment and contact,

and many other processes and procedures which belong to the healing art.  Some of the more ancient schools, such as the allopathic, call for a process of elimination in order to arrive at the vital and true contribution which they have to give.  Others of a modern and tentative experimental kind must be lifted out of the hands of the fanatics; for until fanaticism with its blindness and lack of intelligent synthesis dies out (as it inevitably will as the sixth ray recedes and the Piscean Age passes out), the new schools cannot exist as they should; there must be a keener understanding of the underlying and fundamental good in all the schools and a better grasp of the principles which underlie the true healing art, before the schools, referred to in Letters on Occult Meditation, can come into being. When, as is the case today, some healer or school lays the entire emphasis upon some patent cure-all and despises all other systems of diet or method, it will not be possible to establish the true schools.

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The period is coming in which we will pass through a cycle in which we will garner the fruit of the ages; in which we will skim (if I may so express it) the cream of the milk of human experience; and then with the best that the past can confer upon us, we will inaugurate those new enterprises which will speed humanity upon its way.  Among these new enterprises the healing art will be the foremost, because the most necessary.

We shall find that the work which is engaging our attention will fall into three categories:  these will work out sequentially and not simultaneously.

1. The training in the principles of the healing art, as we

a. Lay the foundation for later expansion in the New Age.

b. Seek to preserve that which is good and useful in the shift of the emphasis from the outer external man to the more subtle etheric and vital body.

c. Study this Treatise on the new healing which will meet with a measure of response, but which will only later enter into its true usefulness and mission.

2. Later, when a group can function together with impersonality as a unit and with true interplay of love, such a group can then begin to do some definite healing work, taking some case, for instance of known physical illness, of obsession, or of mental difficulty and—working under soul direction or some initiated chela and in conformity with the teaching outlined in this Treatise—seek to cure and aid.  The study of the art of dying is also to attract your intention and later that of the world at large.

3. Finally, there will come the forming of subsidiary groups to be taught and developed by the members of the pioneer healing groups, under soul instruction, or under [375] that of some initiated chela.  These subsidiary groups will work under group direction for the healing of people.  This will not be for some years yet, and not until the initiating group (or groups) can work with a measure of success and the group members have an intelligent grasp of the technique and principles involved in healing.  The exoteric developments of the New Age healing will grow out of the above.

There is no school in existence today which should be retained.  All of them embody some useful truth, principle or idea.  I would point out that a synthetic group would still be a separative and separated entity, and no such group is our goal.  It is the synthesis of the life and of the knowledge which is desirable, and not a synthesis of people.  There will be eventually, let us hope, hundreds and thousands of groups all over the world who will express this new attitude to healing, who will be bound together by their common knowledge and aims, but who will all express this to the best of their ability in their own peculiar field, in their own peculiar way and with their own peculiar terminology.  It is the subjective life unity that is of interest to the teachers on the inner side of life, and the production of a network of true healers all over the world.

A fresh start is now being made.  We shall and do inherit the wonder of the past acquired knowledges and the use of much of it will persist; all that is needed is the elimination of the undesirable and the misunderstood interpretations of known facts, and the misapplied information, also the cessation of selfish interest, financial exploitation and greed.  Modern surgery, modern sanitary methods, and modern medical science are full of wonder and usefulness.

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Letter to a Scientist

My brother:

I have a few minutes to spare this morning after dictating to A.A.B. and will attempt to throw some forward light upon the questions which you have posited.  I do not, as you will note, say that I will answer the questions.

The discoveries of science are as yet inadequate for the fulfillment of the prophecies I made in A Treatise on the Seven Rays.  Towards the close of this century and when the world situation has clarified and the period of reconstruction is drawing to a close, discoveries will be made which will reveal some hitherto unrealised electrical potencies.  I know not what other word to use for these electrical rays which will make their presence felt and lead to possibilities beyond the dreams of investigators today.  The coming science of electricity will be as different next century as the modern usages of electricity differ from the understanding of the Victorian scientist.

In connection with your query anent the photography which concerns itself with departed souls, I would advise you that understanding of process will come from a study of the photographing of thoughtforms.  A beginning was made in this connection by the great French scientist, d'Arsonval, of Paris.  A.A.B. can tell you something of this if you do not already know.  Light on the subject will come through this, through the perfecting of the plates of reception and their greatly increased sensitivity, and through the relating of electricity to photography.  You may deem it well-nigh impossible to make plates of much greater sensitivity than those in use in the best equipped laboratories.  But this is not so.  Along this line of thought-photography and electrical equipment, will come the solution.  It is the thought of those on the other side, and their ability to project [377] thoughtforms of themselves, plus the providing of adequately sensitive plates or their equivalent, which will mark a new era in so-called "spirit photography".  People frequently are so preoccupied with the tangible instrument on this side of the veil that they neglect the factor of what must be contributed from the other side by those who have passed over.

The work will be done from there, with the material aid which as yet has not been provided in the outer scientific field.

To bring this about, collaboration of a conscious medium (not a trance medium, but someone who is consciously clairvoyant and clairaudient) will be required.  There are many such growing up among the children of today, and the next generation after them will provide still more.  The separating veil will disappear through the testimony of the thousands of those who can see phenomena and hear sounds which lie outside the range of the tangible.

You say that the spirits state that they cannot stand electricity.  What is meant is that they cannot stand electricity as it is at present applied.  This is an instance of the inaccurate statements passed on by ignorant mediums or by those who on the other side have no more understanding of the laws of electricity than they probably had in the physical body.  There is nothing but electricity in manifestation, the "mystery of electricity" to which H.P.B. referred in The Secret Doctrine.  Everything in Nature is electrical in nature; life itself is electricity, but all that we have contacted and used today is that which is only physical and related to and inherent in the physical and etheric matter of all forms.

It must be remembered that the so-called "spirits" are functioning in the illusory astral body, while advanced "spirits" are only functioning as minds, and can therefore [378] be reached solely by minds and in no other way.  It will never be possible to photograph the mental vehicle; only the astral body will be susceptible of photographing.  The grosser the person in the body, desire and appetite, the more easily will he be photographed after passing over (if anyone wants to photograph him!), and the more advanced the person, the more difficult it will be to get a photograph.

As regards the use of radio as a means of communication with the "spirit world," the present electrical instruments are too slow in vibratory activity (if I may use such an unscientific term) to do the work; if astrally clothed "spirits" approach them they are apt to have a shattering effect.  Yet the first demonstration of existence after death, in such a way that it can be registered upon the physical plane, will come via the radio, because sound always precedes vision.  Think on this.  However, no radio now exists which is sufficiently sensitive to carry sound waves from the astral plane.

Future scientific discoveries, therefore, hold the secret.  This is no evasion on my part, but a simple statement of fact.  Electrical discovery is only in the initial stage and all that we have is simply a prelude to the real discovery.  The magic of the radio would be completely unbelievable to the man of the eighteenth century.  The discoveries and developments lying ahead in the twenty-first century will be equally unbelievable to the man of this century.  A great discovery in relation to the use of light by the power and the directive agency of thought will come at the end of this century or the beginning of the next.  Two small children—one living in this country (U.S.A.) and one in India—will work out a formula along scientific lines which will fill in some of the existing gaps in the scale of light vibration, carrying on from the high frequency rays and [379] waves as you now have them.  This will necessitate instruments hitherto undreamt of but really quite possible.  They will be so sensitive that they will be set in motion by the power of the human eye under the focussed direction of thought.  From then on tangible rapport with the spirit world will be possible.  I cannot do more than give you the clue.

I am also handicapped by the complete ignorance of A.A.B. on these matters which involve electrical knowledge and terms.  There is no seed thought in her mind on which I can work or from which I can expand the idea.  She can explain what I mean if you ask her to do so.  But even if she had a training such as you have, I could not explain clearly, as the discovery must first be made, and this will revolutionise all present ideas, even whilst growing out of them.  An ordinary treatise on electricity such as is studied by electrical engineers would have been completely incomprehensible to even the most highly educated man two hundred years ago, or even one hundred, and so it is now. In the meantime, work with thought photography as a prelude to the coming science, for out of that and the gradual development of more sensitive modes of registering and recording subtle phenomena will come the new idea and possibilities.  Does it mean anything to you when I say that electricity and photography are closely related because the human being is electrical in origin and nature?  This must be demonstrated on the physical plane by the aid of the needed sensitive apparatus.

February, 1944