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CHAPTER VIII - The Laws and Rules Enumerated and Applied - Part 2

We are assured in this ancient law that disease is an effect of the basic centralisation of a man's life energy. This life energy is not the same as the energy or force of consciousness, but consciousness is ever the directing factor in every expression of the indwelling life, for there is basically only one major energy—life energy.  Where the consciousness of the man is focussed, there the life energy will gather its forces.  If the consciousness is focussed on the mental plane or upon the astral plane, the life energy will not be so strongly focussed and anchored in the heart centre (the centre where the life principle is found), but only a part of its vital energy will find its way into the physical body, via the etheric vehicle.  The greater part will be retained (to use an inadequate word) upon the plane where the consciousness is predominantly functioning or—to word it otherwise—it will be conditioned in expression by the state of consciousness, corresponding to that level of awareness or place of contact with the divine Whole or the divine Consciousness which the point in evolution of the man makes possible.

The task of the healer is therefore to find out where this focus of consciousness is to be found; this brings us back to a point I made anent the patient being essentially either a mental or an emotional type, and very, very rarely indeed purely physical in his consciousness.  Where the consciousness is stabilised in that of the soul, there will be little disease present and the physical difficulties of the highly developed patient will then be associated with the impact of the soul energy upon an unready physical vehicle; at that stage only certain of the major diseases will affect him. He will not be susceptible to the little complaints and the [560] constant small infections which render the life of the average man or of the undeveloped man so trying and difficult. He may suffer from heart trouble, from nervous diseases, and from complaints affecting the upper part of the body and those areas which are controlled by the centres above the diaphragm; however, the difficulties brought about through the minor etheric centres (of which there are many), or by the centres below the diaphragm, will not usually be present—unless (as can be the case in a very advanced disciple) he is deliberately taking on conditions engendered by his world service for men.

As the majority of human beings are at this time centralised on the astral plane (or in the astral body), a clue to one of the greatest sources of disease immediately becomes apparent.  When the consciousness of the race shifts on to the mental plane—and this is slowly taking place—then the more widely known and prevalent diseases will die out and only the diseases of mental types or the diseases of disciples will remain to disturb the peace of individual man.  With these I have dealt in an earlier volume of this treatise. [viii]*

Mental Science is right in its recognition that it is the emotions of men (as expressed in that feeble imitation of reality which they call thought) which are responsible for much disease.  They are right in their effort to make the patient change his emotional attitudes and to react to life and circumstances and people along a different line.  But they are hopelessly wrong in believing that that is sufficient; in their ignoring of all scientific procedures connected with the etheric body, they have nothing which relates the emotional nature to the physical vehicle, and therefore there is a gap in their reasoning and a consequent fault in their [561] technique.  This renders their activities futile, except from the character angle.  When they do bring about a healing, it is because in any case the patient was predestined to recover, but they have served a useful purpose in correcting a character condition in which he was in constant danger of disease.  They have not wrought a cure, and in claiming it both the healer and the patient are deceived. All deception is dangerous and hindering.

It might be of service here if I indicate along broad and general lines some of the types of disease which a centralisation of the life force upon the astral plane, for instance, could produce.  I shall but list them; I will not deal with them in any detail for until the modern healer recognises the fact of the etheric body, and works scientifically and intelligently with it and its controlling centres of force, anything I could say of procedure would be futile.  I am endeavouring at this time to promote certain basic acceptances—such as the fact of the existence of the etheric body.

1. Constant introspection, all forms of morbid suppression and a too drastically enforced silence where fundamental emotions are concerned can lead to serious liver trouble, to constant gastric difficulties and to cancer.

2. Where hatreds and deep dislike are present in the consciousness, or where the man lives in a constant state of irritation against a person or a group, or again where the sense of being abused is present, there is a real possibility that the blood stream will be affected:  the man then will be susceptible to constant infections, to boils, to running sores and to the various blood conditions which are definitely septic in nature.

3. An irritable nature and one which is always in a state of fussiness, of bad temper, one which reacts furiously when things do not go as desired, may lead to disastrous [562] explosions which can be diagnosed as brain difficulties and temporary insanities; they may lead to constant headaches which undermine the constitution and bring about an inevitably debilitated condition.

4. A frustrated sex life or a state wherein an unmarried person has had no normal expression of a natural and universal process, and to whom therefore sex remains a mystery (and at the same time a constant inner unrecorded subject of thought) will lead:

a. To a condition of great devitalisation with a consequent and unavoidable ill health which attends that type of person—the so-called obvious old maid or bachelor.  Needless to remark, there are many such unmarried people who face life wholesomely and do not come under this category.

b. To a constant effort to attract the attention of the opposite sex until it reaches a point where it becomes a nervous and most unwholesome tendency.

c. To the development of homosexual habits or to those perversions which warp the life of many intelligent people.

d. To the tumours—malignant or otherwise—which attack the organs of generation and which frequently make the subject an operative case.

There are other possible developments but upon them I do not propose to dwell.  I have here indicated enough to show the danger of a sense of frustration and a morbid (even if at the time an unrecognised) interest in sex.  This can evidence itself also in a dream life which links the brain, the mind and the organs of generation closely together and proves the fact of astral desire evoking the physical appetite; this demonstrates my contention that the physical body automatically responds—[563] even when unconscious in the hours of sleep—to astral control.  The cure, as you of course know, is a full creative outer life, particularly one which is of benefit to one's fellowmen and is not simply a transmutation of the sex urge into some form of creative thinking which simply remains thinking, but takes no shape or form on the outer plane of human life.

5. Self-pity, so prevalent a trouble, leads to acute indigestion, to intestinal trouble, to catarrh and head colds in the average person, whilst in the more advanced man it leads to chronic bronchial difficulties, gastric ulcers and unhealthy conditions connected with the teeth and the ears.

I could go on enumerating other emotional conditions which produce disease in the person where these conditions are present but this will suffice to give the experimenting healer a clue to certain possibilities which are responsible for the physical difficulties with which he is called upon to deal. We will have also (as I have pointed out elsewhere) to bear in mind conditions which have been inherited from previous incarnations or developed as a result of environing group, national or planetary karma.

There is no rule connected with this law because we are still dealing with the definition of causes producing the objective disease; these have to be grasped and accepted as working theories before the healer can efficiently deal with the situation.

We come now to the consideration of a law which is so inclusive in its significance and in its defining power that it might be regarded as stating the reason for all disease of any nature and at any time in the life history of the race or of individual man.  It is stated here and is only regarded as Law IV because of the necessity for the main contentions [564] of the three preceding laws being admitted, considered and studied; also because it is the major law conditioning the appearance of disease in the fourth kingdom in nature, the human kingdom.  It is essentially a law related to the fourth Creative Hierarchy, and it was definitely imposed and recognised as a law, governing humanity predominantly, by initiates working in the fourth rootrace, the Atlantean. Curiously enough also when humanity can function with its consciousness centred upon the fourth or buddhic plane, disease will die out and the fourth Creative Hierarchy will finally be freed from that great limitation.

LAW IV

Disease, both physical and psychological, has its roots in the good, the beautiful, and the true.  It is but a distorted reflection of divine possibilities.  The thwarted soul, seeking full expression of some divine characteristic or inner spiritual reality, produces—within the substance of its sheaths—a point of friction.  Upon this point the eyes of the personality are focussed, and this leads to disease.  The art of the healer is concerned with the lifting of the downward focussed eyes unto the soul, the true Healer within the form.  The spiritual or third eye then directs the healing force, and all is well.

This law starts off with the statement of one of the paradoxes of the occult teaching:  that good and evil are one and the same thing, though in reverse, or constituting the opposite sides of the one Reality.

Because man is a soul, and is spiritually determined to function as a soul, a state of friction is established between soul and personality; this friction is a major cause (if it is not the major cause) of all disease.  Here is a clue to the understanding of the phrase, "fire by friction," the third aspect of the divine "fiery nature" of God, for "our God is a consuming fire".  His nature, we are told also, is expressed [565] through electric fire, through solar fire and through fire by friction.  These three fires I dealt with at length in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire and hinted at earlier in The Secret Doctrine.

This law states that because man is divine, the urge to divinity produces resistance in the vehicles of expression; this resistance will localise itself in the  area of the physical body and produce a point of friction; this friction, in its turn, produces a condition or an area of inflammation.  This eventually leads to disease of some kind or another.  It is possible, is it not, that you have here another clue—a clue to a problem which has caused so much concern in the metaphysical world:  Why do advanced people, spiritual leaders and those oriented to the spiritual life, suffer so frequently from physical difficulties?  It is probably because they are at the stage where the energy of the soul, pouring through the physical body, meets resistance from that body of a correspondingly intense kind.  This friction set up is so acute that disease is promptly the result.  This is not true of disciples who have taken the second initiation; their problem of ill health is otherwise developed.

Let us take this fourth law sentence by sentence and attempt somewhat to analyse the meaning:

1. Disease, both physical and psychological, has its roots in the good, the beautiful and the true.  This is but a distorted reflection of divine possibilities.

I have shown that disease is fundamentally psychological in nature; there are, however, diseases which are inherent in the resistance of the dense physical body (and not only the subtler bodies) to the impact of the higher energies, or which are inherent in the planetary substance or matter of the Earth itself.  Forget not that the physical body is constructed of such matter.  This first clause of the fourth [566] law tells us that three aspects of divinity produce disease.  This sounds impossible upon first reading the statement, but a careful study will reveal its essential truthfulness.  How can the good, the beautiful and the true, cause disease of any kind?  Let us see.

a. The Good.  What is the good?  Is it not the expression of the will-to-good?  Does not and should not this will-to-good work out on the physical plane in what we call goodwill among men?  Is it not possible that the soul, seeking constantly (on its own plane) to conform to the Plan which implements the divine will-to-good, endeavours to impel its threefold expression, the personality, to express goodwill—doing this at the right stage of evolutionary unfoldment and when it is active and functioning?  Yet, because of the resistance of the form nature, as yet inadequate to the desired divine expression, friction is immediately set up and disease eventuates.  I think that even a brief consideration of the above questions will demonstrate to you how probable it is that the soul's inclination to "the good" can bring about resistance upon the physical plane so that the turmoil thus engendered in the consciousness of man can and does produce disease.  This type of disease is responsible for many of the difficulties of advanced people, aspirants and disciples.  This "friction" produces then a secondary reaction and leads to those psychological conditions to which we give the name "depression, an inferiority complex, and the sense of failure."  This particular source of disease, "the Good," is one that primarily affects the mental types.

b. The Beautiful. Here you have a word qualifying the desire of all men for what they consider a desirable objective for their life pattern and that for which they [567] choose to struggle.  The beautiful, from the angle of a divine aspect, concerns the quality of life.  I would refer you here to our initial definition in the first volume of this treatise of the words spirit-soul-body; we defined them as life-quality-appearance.  Life is the energy in expression of the divine will-to-good; quality is the energy in expression of the soul, and this energy works at this time predominantly through the desire life and the determination of all men at every stage in evolution to possess, own and enjoy that which they regard as the beautiful.  A definition of "the beautiful" and the range of man's desires are widely different and dependent upon the point in evolution; it is all dependent however, upon the outlook on life of the one who is desiring and the place where he stands upon the ladder of evolution.  The inability of man to achieve at any time what he considers "the beautiful" determines his predisposition to disease, based upon the internal friction thus produced.    At the present point in racial development, the majority of people are swept into diseased conditions as a result of the friction brought about by their striving after "the beautiful"—a striving enforced as an evolutionary urge because they are souls and under the influence of the quality of the second divine aspect.

c. The True. It has been said that the true or the truth is that much of the divine expression as any man can demonstrate at his particular point in evolution and at any given stage in his incarnated history.  This expression of the truth presupposes that behind what he does manage to express there is much that he is unable to manifest; of this his soul remains persistently aware.  This inability to live up to the highest ideal of which the man—at his particular level—is aware and can conceive, in his clearest and best moments, produces inevitably [568] a point of friction, even if the man remains unaware of it.  One of the major manifestations of this particular friction and the diseased condition which it brings about is rheumatism; this is widespread today and has been for centuries; from the medical standpoint, there is no ascertained or attributable cause for it, though there are many speculations and conclusions among the orthodox.  It affects primarily the bony structure and is in reality the result or the inability of the soul to produce an expression of "the true" within the man, the instrument of the soul in the three worlds.  The man, in his turn, no matter how low his position on the ladder of evolution, is conscious ever of the unattainable; he is constantly aware of an urge to betterment.   These urges are not related to the expression of the will-to-good or to "the beautiful" (though he may be conscious of them also to a greater or less degree), but they are definitely related to the expression of something closer to the man's ideal as he sees it, and upon the physical plane.  Friction, therefore, takes place and disease of some kind follows.

It is interesting to note that this inability to express "the true" or to "be the Truth" is the real cause of death among men who are below the stage of discipleship and who have not yet taken the first initiation.  The soul tires of the frictional response of its instrument and determines to end the experiment of that particular incarnation.  Death, therefore, supervenes as a result of the friction engendered.  In studying these ideas, it should be remembered that:

a. The good controls the man, via the head centre, and the friction engendered is due to the inactivity of the centre at the base of the spine.  This centre controls the expression [569] of the first divine aspect in a man by its interplay with the head centre.  This interplay only takes place when the man has reached the stage of disciple or initiate.

b. The beautiful controls, via the heart centre, and friction is brought about by the failure of the solar plexus centre to respond.  A condition of friction is therefore set up.  The ending of this condition and the evocation of the right response from the solar plexus come when the forces of the solar plexus centre are raised and blended with the energy of the heart centre.

c. The true, as an expression of the divine, finds its point of centralisation in the throat centre; the failure of the personality to respond, and its inability to express the true, is to be seen in the relation of the sacral centre to the throat centre.  This relation, when lacking, produces friction.  There will be no real expression of "the true" until the forces of the creative centre below the diaphragm are raised to the creative centre of the throat.  Then "the Word," which is man essentially, "will be made flesh" and a true expression of the soul upon the physical plane will be seen.

2. The thwarted soul, seeking full expression of some divine characteristic or inner spiritual reality, produces within the substance of its sheaths a point of friction.

Much of this statement I have covered above.  I would, however, call your attention to the fact that in this sentence the emphasis is laid upon the fact that it is the soul which is responsible for producing the friction.  In the analysis of the previous sentence, the emphasis was laid upon the personality, because its failure to respond produced the friction and consequent disease.  Is it not possible that in this sentence [570] [570] we have the clue to the entire purpose of pain, of distress, and even of war?  I would commend this to your careful and, if possible, illumined thinking.

3. Upon this point, the eyes of the personality are focussed, and this leads to disease.

We have here a most interesting hint as to the medium of force direction.  The occult significance of the eye and the nature of its symbolism are little understood.  The reference here has nothing to do in reality with eyes in the physical body.  Here the words, "the eyes of the personality," refer to the focussed attention of the personality, emanating from the mental and astral bodies which are essentially the two eyes of the soul in incarnation.  The use of these two windows or eyes of the soul leads to a concentration of energy (in this case strictly personality energy) in the etheric vehicle.  This energy is then directed to the area of discomfort, and therefore to the point of friction.  This friction is sustained and increased by the forces which are focussed upon it.  People have little idea how much—objectively speaking—they increase the potency of the disease by the constantly directed thought which they expend upon it and by the attention they pay to that area wherein the trouble is located.  Energies, mental and emotional, are brought to bear upon the diseased area, and the "eyes of the personality" are a potent factor in sustaining the disease.

In this sentence you have, moreover, a clear and unequivocal expression of the fact that mental and emotional conditions lead to disease.  The activity of the soul and the impact of soul energy have to penetrate into the physical body, via the subtler bodies, and the point of friction (the outcome of resistance) is found first of all in the mental body, then is repeated even more potently in the astral body, and is reflected into the physical body; these (and this is [571] the a b c of occultism but is sometimes forgotten) constitute the personality, and the friction is necessarily to be found throughout.

It might be of interest to you to correlate what I have said in my other writing anent the eyes with the point made above.  As you well know, and as stated in The Secret Doctrine, the right eye is the "eye of buddhi" and the left eye is the "eye of manas"—this (when in relation to buddhi) referring to the higher mind and to man as he finally will appear.  In the average human being, and before reaching perfection, the right eye transmits the energy of the astral body when directed consciously towards an object of attention, and the left eye directs the energy of the lower mind. In between these two directing eyes is to be found the ajna centre, which is like a third eye or directing agent for the blended and fused energies of the personality; related to this third eye as it awakens and comes into functioning activity is what we call "the eye of the soul"; this is a point within the highest head centre.  This eye of the soul can and does transmit energy to the ajna centre and is itself the agent (before the fourth initiation) of the energy of the Spiritual Triad. This esoteric relationship is only set up when the soul is dominating its instrument, the personality, and is bringing all the lower activities upon the physical plane under soul direction.

In the perfected man, there is to be found, therefore, the following distributors or distributing agents of energy:

 

1. The eye of the soul. . . .

agent of the Spiritual Triad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Will.

2. The third eye. . . . . . . . .

agent of the soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Love.

3. The right eye. . . . . . . . .

distributor of buddhic energy.

 

4. The left eye. . . . . . . . . .

conveyor of pure manasic energy.

 

5. The ajna centre. . . . . . .

focussing and directing point for all these energies.

 

 

[572]

In the disciple and the man who is beginning to function as a soul, you will have:

 

1. The third eye. . . . . 

distributor of soul energy.

2. The right eye. . . . .

agent for astral energy.

3. The left eye. . . . . .

agent for lower mental energy.

4. The ajna centre. . .

focussing point of these three energies.

 

In the average man, the situation will be as follows:

 

1. The right eye. . . .

agent for astral energy.

2. The left eye. . . . .

agent for mental energy.

3. The ajna centre. .

distributing station.

 

As occult knowledge increases a whole science of energy distribution will be built up around the eyes and their symbolic function, and their esoteric use will be understood.  The time has not yet arrived for this, though already the power of the human eye when focussed on a person, for instance, is known to attract attention.  One hint I can give you:  the optic nerve is a symbol of the antahkarana, and the entire structure of the eye ball is one of the most beautiful symbols of the threefold deity and the threefold man.

4. The art of the healer is concerned with the lifting of the downward focussed eyes unto the soul, the true healer within the form.

In its most obvious and lowest connotation this phrase simply says that the healer must help the patient to look away from himself, that he must aid him to raise and reorient the directed energy so that the "point of friction" is no longer the object of attention and a new preoccupation is presented.  This has long been the attempted practice of all healers but it has a far more esoteric meaning than [573] they have realised and one which I find it somewhat difficult to explain.

We have seen that the point of friction (responsible for the disease) has been caused by the good, the beautiful and the true in conflict with the forces of the lower man.  This, we have also seen, is a fundamental law and one which he knows he must accept and with which he must intelligently work.  How, therefore, can he apply this law and produce the results for which he is striving?

These downpouring energies of the soul enter the physical body, via the etheric vehicle, and are responsible for the frictional trouble and its consequence, disease; they have "descended into contact" via the sutratma and are anchored in three main centres, major centres, as you well know. From these, according to a man's nature, ray, development and weaknesses and limitations, they are distributed to the various areas of the physical body and either cause points of friction or manifest themselves as divine qualities.  Where friction and resultant disease are present, and the patient is fortunate to have a trained occult healer available (either an initiate or an advanced disciple), these energies will be sent back—either with or without the cooperation of the patient—to their distributing points, the three higher centres, and this according to the type of energy which is producing the trouble.  They cannot be sent out of the body altogether, via the head centre, for in that case the man would die; but they can be esoterically "driven to their point of emanation, from the point of friction, but not to their Source," as an ancient book on healing states.

The energy is sent from the infected area (to use an unsuitable word but we lack the correct words for these new sciences) into the point of friction and from thence to the centre which controls that area and by means of which soul energy entered the dense physical body.  The [574] healer is therefore working with the two aspects of the physical body simultaneously—the dense and the etheric. From that centre, the energy involved is gathered up and returned to one or other of the three major centres, or (if one of these higher centres is itself involved) the energy is gathered up and driven into the head centre and there retained.  It must therefore be borne in mind that this phase of the healer's work falls into two parts:

1. The stage of esoteric "lifting up" or "driving forth." This itself falls into two phases:

a. The phase of gathering the energy.

b. The phase of refocussing it in its distributing centre.

2. The stage after the healer's work has been accomplished and the patient is either better or the work has not been successful.  In this stage, the energy which has been "driven forth" is returned to the centre and the locality where the point of friction had been.

It will be obvious to you that this form of healing work is possible only to the highly trained person, and it is therefore needless for me to elaborate further on this technique. It is useful nevertheless to see at times the distant goals.

All that is at present possible in reference to this statement is to turn the patient's attention (if he is capable of responding to suggestions) towards the soul, and help him, with simplicity to hold his consciousness as close to the soul as he can.  This will aid in clearing the channels down which energy can flow, and also along which energy can be automatically withdrawn because energy follows thought.

In the last analysis, true esoteric healing is a simple matter in comparison with the intricate and complex detail [575] anent the human mechanism and its diseases with which the modern physician has to cope.  The spiritual healer concerns himself with the area in which the disease is to be found, with its controlling etheric centre and its higher correspondence, and with the three energies coming from the soul which are responsible for producing the point or points of friction.  The remainder of his work involves the use the creative imagination, the power to visualise and a knowledge of scientific thinking, based upon the fundamental and universal law that "energy follows thought." This visualisation and this scientific thinking do not (where healing is concerned) involve the construction of thoughtforms.  It involves the ability to move and direct energy currents.

5. The third eye then directs the healing force, and all is well.

The third eye referred to here is that of the healer and not that of the average patient; this the healer uses in conjunction with the eye of the soul.  In the case of the healing of a very advanced person who is consciously able to cooperate, the third eye of the patient can also be active, and by this means two very potent streams of directed energy can penetrate into the area where the point of friction is located.  In ordinary cases, however, and where no occult knowledge is present on the part of the patient, the healer does all the work, and this is desirable.  The cooperation of the unskilled and those emotionally involved in their trouble is of no true assistance.

The few hints given in the analysis of the sentences composing Law IV will provide much food for thought, and we will now proceed to consider the rule connected with this law.

It should be remembered, as we study these laws and rules, that the laws are imposed upon the healer and provide [576] the unalterable conditions under which he must work; he may not and cannot evade them.  The rules, however, he imposes upon himself, and they constitute the conditions which he is advised to follow if he seeks success.  Much depends upon his understanding of the rules and on his ability to interpret them correctly.  They are a translation or an adaptation of the ancient rules which have, since time began, conditioned all occult healers, working under hierarchical impression.  In the early days of their use they were submitted to and accepted by members of the Hierarchy at that time—the time or age of ancient Lemuria—and had then to be interpreted differently to the modern interpretation; the modern meaning is only now in process of emerging.  It might be said that:

1. In Lemurian times these rules were accepted by members of the Hierarchy.  Unless you were a member you could not ascertain them or work with them.

2. In Atlantean times they were externalised to the extent that disciples who were not yet initiates or who had taken only the first initiation were given them and permitted to use them.  It is their Atlantean interpretation which largely colours the modern approach to their comprehension, but it is not adequate to the opportunity and the more mental type of human being.

3. Today, in our Aryan race, a new significance is emerging, and it is that significance and the new interpretation which I shall endeavour to impart.

Rule I was not subjected to the new interpretation because it was so obviously modern in its implications.  In fact, the first rule was not part of the original ancient text from which these important rules have been taken, but is relatively very modern, being formulated early in the Christian [577] era.  It is a clear and concise rule and implies what should be the nature of the healer's thinking.

1. He must know the type of thought which conditions the patient.

2. He must be able to penetrate to the source of the difficulty, or to its psychological background; therefore, he must use thought power.

3. He must be able to relate cause and effect; the relating agent is ever the mind.

In old Lemuria and Atlantis the mind was practically entirely quiescent and not really functioning at all; it is only in this present race that the mental nature of man is becoming dominant, and therefore the new and modern interpretation of these rules (based on the mind principle) is now in order, and with this we shall proceed to deal.

RULE TWO

The healer must achieve magnetic purity, through purity of life.  He must attain that dispelling radiance which shows itself in every man when he has linked the centres in the head.  When this magnetic field is established the radiation then goes forth.

The East has ever emphasised magnetic purity but has totally ignored physical purity as the Occident understands it; the West has emphasised external physical purity but knows nothing about magnetic purity; this latter is largely based (somewhat erroneously though not entirely so) on the effect of the auric emanation and its purity or non-purity. The healer, in this rule, is advised to:

1. Achieve magnetic purity through purity of life.

2. Attain a dispelling radiance through linking the centres in the head.

[578]

3. Establish a magnetic field through the utilisation of this magnetic field.

Result:  RADIATION.

The interesting part of this rule is its linking the two possible forms of spiritual healing—radiatory and magnetic—into one activity.  The true healer automatically blends both modes of healing and uses both methods simultaneously and automatically because he works through the magnetic area, contained within the radius of influence of the three head centres, or within the triangle which is formed by so linking them.

In Lemurian days, the healer achieved his ends by the use of drastic physical disciplines, thus gaining the needed purity.  The goal, as you know, of hierarchical effort in those days was to teach primitive man the uses and purpose of the physical body and its intelligent control; the man who mastered the body and was in control of it as a machinist is in control of a machine, was then in was then regarded as an initiate.  Today, it is mastering the personality which makes a man an initiate.  Celibacy, careful modes of eating, and bodily cleanliness, plus the rudiments of Hatha Yoga (embryonic physical, athletic control—muscular control primarily) were strictly emphasised.  This achieved, so-called purity permitted the free flow of the pranic currents from the healer to the patient, via the sacral centre and the throat centre—the spiritual healer working through the throat centre, and the point of reception in the patient being the sacral centre; neither the heart nor the head centres were used.  Prana, to define it for your purposes, is the vitality of the planet, its vital emanation; it is this prana which is distributed or transferred by a natural healer (one without any training, without much essential knowledge or with little, if any, spiritual [579] orientation). He heals but does not know how or why; prana simply flows through him in the form of a strong current of animal vitality, usually from the splenic centre and not from any of the seven centres.

These drastic physical disciplines are often attempted today by well-intentioned aspirants; they practice celibacy, strict vegetarianism, relaxation exercises and many kinds of physical exercises, in the hope of bringing the body under control.  These forms of discipline would be very good for the undeveloped and the lowest type of human being, but they are not the methods which should be employed by the average man or the practising aspirant.  Concentration upon the physical body only serves to enhance its potency and to feed its appetites and bring to the surface of consciousness that which should be securely secluded below the threshold of consciousness.  The true aspirant should be occupied with emotional, not physical, control and with the effort to focus himself upon the mental plane prior to achieving a stabilised contact with the soul.

In Atlantean times, the shift of the attention from the dense physical body to the emotional vehicle began slowly to be made.  The initiate of that time began to teach his disciples that the physical body was in reality only an automaton, and that it was the desire body, and the nature and quality of their habitual desires which should be considered if purity was to be attained.  It was in this race, therefore, that personal magnetism first began slowly to show itself.  The early and the primitive Lemurian was not in the least magnetic as we understand the word, but in Atlantean days a certain measure of magnetic radiation showed itself, though not to the extent which is now frequent and possible.  The first dim outline of the halo could be seen around the heads of advanced Atlanteans. Magnetic purity became a possibility and a goal, but was dependent upon emotional [580] control and the purification of the desire nature; this produced automatically a much greater measure of purity in the dense physical vehicle than the Lemurian initiate ever achieved.  Diseases of the body became both subtle and complex, and the first psychological diseases appeared and the various ills which are definitely based upon the emotions. With this type of difficulty we have dealt in an earlier part of this treatise.  The healer in those days worked through the solar plexus centre and (if an initiate) through the heart.  There was still no magnetic area or field of energy in the head.

   Today, in our Aryan race, magnetic purity is not dependent upon the physical disciplines; it is still—for the mass of the people—dependent upon emotional disciplines, but in the case of the true healer in the New Age it is dependent upon the "lighted magnetic area in the head." This provides a field of activity for the soul, working through the head centres and focussing itself in the magnetic field which they enclose.  When all the powers of the body and the directed attention of the healer are centered in the head, and when the astral body is quiescent and the mind is active as a transmitter of soul energy to the three head centres, you then have an established radiance, or energy emanation which is a potent force in healing.  The radiation is intense, not so much from the familiar aspect of light, but from the extent of its emanating rays of active energy which can reach the patient and energise the needed centre. All the centres in the body of the patient can be receptive to this energy, and not just one, as in the previous two types of healing.

When the karma or life-pattern of the patient permits, these energy rays (emanating from the magnetic field in the healer's head) become what is called a "dispelling radiance"; they can drive away the forces which create or [581] aggravate the disease.  When this dispelling radiance is unable (because of the destiny of the patient) to bring about a physical cure, it can nevertheless be turned to the dispelling of subtler difficulties, such as fear in some form or other, emotional imbalance and certain psychological difficulties which greatly enhance the problem with which the patient is faced.

Healers would do well to remember that when the three centres in the head are linked up and the magnetic field is therefore set up and the radiance is present, the healer can then use the ajna centre as the directing agent for this "dispelling radiance."  It is interesting to note that the two major centres in the head (corresponding to atma-buddhi, or the soul) are the head centre and the alta major centre, and that these correspond esoterically to the distributing agents of the right and the left eyes, as do the two glands in the head:  the pineal gland and the pituitary body.  You have, therefore, in the head three triangles, of which two are distributors of energy and the third is a distributor of force.

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It is with these triangles that the trained healer eventually works and which he consciously employs.  The time when this will be possible still lies very far ahead.  At present the healer must work through visualisation and the power of the creative imagination.  As he imagines, through visualisation, the relationship of these interlaced triangles, superimposing them the one upon the others, beginning with the first, he is doing a definite work of creative placing, then of creative vitalising and finally of creative directing.  In these three words:  placing, vitalising, directing, you have the results indicated as to what obedience to this rule will enable the healer to accomplish.  The attention is placed; the magnetic field is spiritually vitalised; the generated vital radiance is then distributed and directed correctly through the medium of the third triangle.  This sounds a somewhat complicated procedure but after a little practice this healing exercise of placing, vitalising and directing becomes an almost instantaneous and automatic accomplishment.

We come now to the consideration of a long and somewhat complicated law and one which attempts to cover so much ground that at first reading it is apt to be confusing.

LAW V

There is naught but energy, for God is Life. Two energies meet in man, but other five are present.  For each is to be found a central point of contact.  The conflict of these energies with forces and of forces twixt themselves produce the bodily ills of man.  The conflict of the first and second persists for ages until the mountain top is reached—the first great mountain top.  The fight between the forces produces all disease, all ills and bodily pain which seek release in death.  The two, the five and thus the seven, plus that which they produce, possess the secret.  This is the fifth law of healing within the world of form.

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It has been impossible hitherto to give the subject-matter of this law because it is only today that teaching anent LIFE (and life as energy) has been possible.  Also the teaching anent the five and the two energies which meet in man have only lately been given out by me, for the first time in any detail, although they were hinted at in The Secret Doctrine.  I wonder sometimes if any of you realise the epoch-making importance of the teaching which I have given out anent the seven rays as manifesting energies.  Speculations as to the nature of the divine Trinity have ever been present in the discussions and thinking of advanced men—and that since time began and the Hierarchy started its agelong task of influencing and stimulating the human consciousness—but information anent the seven Spirits before the Throne of the Trinity has not been so usual and only a few writers, ancient or modern, have touched upon the nature of these Beings.  Now, with all that I have given you concerning the seven rays and the seven Ray Lords, much more can be discovered; these seven great Lives can be seen and known as the informing essences and the active energies in all that is manifested and tangible upon the physical plane as well as on all the planes of divine expression; in saying this, I include not only the cosmic physical plane (composed of our seven systemic planes) but the cosmic astral and the cosmic mental planes also.

In this rule the healer is expected to accept certain basic ideas which will serve to develop his understanding; certain broad and general axioms are laid down which will form a sound foundation for all future work.  The main point to bear in mind is that this rule relates entirely to the physical plane (dense and etheric) and to the effects which the conflict between the energies and the forces produces within the physical body.  The forces are those energies which are limited and imprisoned within a form of any kind—a body, [584] a plane, an organ, a centre; the energies are those streams of directed energy which make impact upon these imprisoned forces (if I may so call them) from within a greater or more inclusive form, from a subtler plane, thus making contact with a grosser vibratory force.  An energy is subtler and more potent than the force upon which it makes impact or establishes contact; the force is less potent but it is anchored. In these last two words you have the key to the problem of the relationship of energies.