Theos-Talk Archives (January 2006 Message tt00269)

1/31/2006 3:12 AM

Dear Alice:

What are your questions?

Sorry I am sort of breath   Dal

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	From:  SYNTHESIS OF OCCULT SCIENCE  [WQJ Art   I    p 23 -  29]


	NATURE IS ONE WHOLE - NO MISSING LINKS


Back of occult science there lies a complete and all-embracing Philosophy.
This philosophy is not simply synthetical in its methods, for the simplest
as the wildest hypothesis can claim that much; but it is synthesis itself.
It regards Nature as one complete whole, and so the student of occultism may
stand at either point of observation. He may from the stand-point of
Nature's wholeness

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and completeness follow the process of segregation and differentiation to
the minutest atom conditioned in space and time; or, from the phenomenal
display of the atom, he may reach forward and upward till the atom becomes
an integral part of cosmos, involved in the universal harmony of creation. 

The modern scientist may do this incidentally or empirically, but the
occultist does it systematically and habitually, and hence philosophically.
The modern scientist is confessedly and boastfully agnostic. The occultist
is reverently and progressively gnostic. 


	ONE LIFE


Modern science recognizes matter as "living" and "dead," "organic" and
"inorganic," and "Life" as merely a phenomenon of matter. Occult science
recognizes, "foremost of all, the postulate that there is no such thing in
Nature as inorganic substances or bodies. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even
chemical 'atoms' are simply organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma
has an end, and their inertia becomes activity." (Secret Doctrine, Vol. I,
p. 626 fn.) 

Occultism recognizes ONE UNIVERSAL, ALL-PERVADING LIFE. Modern science
recognizes life as a special phenomenon of matter, a mere transient
manifestation due to temporary conditions. Even logic and analogy ought to
have taught us better, for the simple reason that so-called "inorganic" or
"dead" matter constantly becomes organic and living, while matter from the
organic plane is continually being reduced to the inorganic. How rational
and justifiable, then, to suppose that the capacity or "potency" of life is
latent in all matter! 



	PRIMORDIAL MATTER


The "elements," "atoms," and "molecules" of modern science, partly physical
and partly metaphysical, though altogether hypothetical, are, nevertheless,
seldom philosophical, for the simple reason that they are regarded solely as
phenomenal. The Law of Avogadro involved a generalization as to physical
structure and number, and the later experiments of Prof. Neumann deduced the
same law mathematically from the first principles of the mechanical theory
of gases, but it remained for Prof. Crookes to perceive the philosophical
necessity of a primordial substratum, protyle, and so, as pointed 

25

out in the Secret Doctrine, to lay the foundations of "Metachemistry"; in
other words, a complete philosophy of physics and chemistry that shall take
the place of mere hypothesis and empiricism. If one or two generalizations
deduced as logical or mathematical necessities from the phenomena of physics
and chemistry have been able to work such revolutions in the old chemistry,
what may we not expect from a complete synthesis that shall grasp universals
by a law that compasses the whole domain of matter? 

And yet this complete synthesis has been in the possession of the true
occultist for ages. 

Glimpses of this philosophy have been sufficient to give to minds like
Kepler, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer, and, lastly, to Prof.
Crookes, ideas that claimed and held the interested attention of the
scientific world. While, at certain points, such writers supplement and
corroborate each other, neither anywhere nor altogether do they reveal the
complete synthesis, for none of them possessed it, and yet it has all along
existed. 



	MONADS PERVADE THE UNIVERSE


"Let the reader remember these 'Monads' of Leibnitz, every one of which is a
living mirror of the universe, every monad reflecting every other, and
compare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit stanzas (Slokas)
translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative
source of the Divine Mind,...'Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed
mirrors of the atoms of the world, and cast reflection from its own face on
every atom'." - S.D., Vol. I, p. 623. 


	SCIENCE IS ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL


It may be humiliating to "Modern Exact Science" and repugnant to the whole
of Christendom to have to admit that the Pagans whom they have despised, and
the "Heathen Scriptures" they long ridiculed or ignored, nevertheless
possess a fund of wisdom never dreamed of under Western skies. They have the
lesson, however, to learn, that Science by no means originated in, nor is it
confined to, the West, nor are superstition and ignorance confined to the
East.
 
It can easily be shown that every real discovery and every important
advancement in modern science have already been anticipated centuries ago by
ancient science and philosophy. It is true that these ancient doctrines have
been embodied in 


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unknown languages and symbols, and recorded in books inaccessible to western
minds till a very recent date. 

Far beyond all this inaccessibility, however, as a cause preventing these
old truths from reaching modern times, has been the prejudice, the scorn and
contempt of ancient learning manifested by the leaders of modern thought. 



	WISDOM IS OPPOSED BY BIGOTRY AND SCORN 


Nor is the lesson yet learned that bigotry and scorn are never the mark of
wisdom or the harbingers of learning; for still, with comparatively few
exceptions, any claim or discussion of these ancient doctrines is met with
contempt and scorn. 

The record has, however, been at least outlined and presented to the world. 


As the authors of the Secret Doctrine have remarked, these doctrines may not
be largely accepted by the present generation, but during the twentieth
century they will become known and appreciated.  



	METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY A BASIS


The scope and bearing of philosophy itself are hardly yet appreciated by
modern thought, because of its materialistic tendency. 

A complete science of metaphysics and a complete philosophy of science are
not yet even conceived of as possible; hence the ancient wisdom by its very
vastness has escaped recognition in modern times. 

That the authors of ancient wisdom have spoken from at least two whole
planes of conscious experience beyond that of our ever-day
"sense-perception," is to us inconceivable, and yet such is the fact; and
why should the modern advocate of evolution be shocked and staggered by such
a disclosure? It but justifies his hypothesis and extends its theatre. Is it
because the present custodians of this ancient learning do not scramble for
recognition on the stock exchange, and enter into competition in the marts
of the world? 

If the practical outcome of such competition needed illustration, Mr. Keely
might serve as an example. The discoveries of the age are already whole
centuries in advance of its ethical culture, and the knowledge that should
place still further power in the hands of a few individuals whose ethical
code is below, rather than above, that of the ignorant, toiling, suffering
masses, could only minister to anarchy and increase oppression. 

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	SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE AND ETHICS

On these higher planes of consciousness the law of progress is absolute;
knowledge and power go hand in hand with beneficence to man, not alone to
the individual possessors of wisdom, but to the whole human race. 

The custodians of the higher knowledge are equally by both motive and
development almoners of the divine. These are the very conditions of the
higher consciousness referred to. The synthesis of occult science becomes,
therefore, the higher synthesis of the faculties of man. 

What matter, therefore, if the ignorant shall scout its very existence, or
treat it with ridicule and contempt? Those who know of its existence and who
have learned something of its scope and nature can, in their turn, afford to
smile, but with pity and sorrow at the willing bondage to ignorance and
misery that scorns enlightenment and closes its eyes to the plainest truths
of experience. 

Leaving, for the present, the field of physics and cosmogenesis, it may be
profitable to consider some of the applications of these doctrines to the
functions and life of man.
 
	The intellect derived from philosophy 
	is similar to a charioteer; for 
	it is present with our desires, and 
	always conducts them to the beautiful.  -- 	DEMOPHILUS 


		===========================================

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					II


"In reality, as Occult philosophy teaches us, everything which changes is
organic; it has the life principle in it, and it has all the potentiality of
the higher lives. If, as we say, all in nature is an aspect of the one
element, and life is universal, how can there be such a thing as an
inorganic atom!"

(1) Man is a perfected animal, but before he could have reached perfection
even on the animal plane, there must have dawned upon him the light of a
higher plane. 

Only the perfected animal can cross the threshold of the next higher, or the
human plane, and as he does so there shines upon him the ray from the
suprahuman plane. Therefore, as the dawn of humanity illumines the animal
plane, and as a guiding star lures the Monad to higher consciousness, so the
dawn of divinity illumines the 

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human plane, luring the monad to the supra-human plane of consciousness. 

This is neither more nor less than the philosophical and metaphysical aspect
of the law of evolution. 

Man has not one principle more than the tiniest insect; 
he is, however, "the vehicle of a fully developed Monad, self-conscious and
deliberately following its own line of progress, 

whereas in the insect, and even the higher animal, the higher triad of
principles is absolutely dormant." The original Monad has, therefore, locked
within it the potentiality of divinity. It is plainly, therefore, a misnomer
to call that process of thought a "Synthetic Philosophy" that deals only
with phenomena and ends with matter on the physical plane. 

These two generalizations of Occult philosophy, endowing every atom with the
potentiality of life, and regarding every insect or animal as already
possessing the potentialities of the higher planes though these powers are
yet dormant, add to the ordinary Spencerian theory of evolution precisely
that element that it lacks, viz, the metaphysical and philosophical; and,
thus endowed, the theory becomes synthetical.

The Monad, then, is essentially and potentially the same in the lowest
vegetable organism, up through all forms and gradations of animal life to
man, and beyond. 

There is a gradual unfolding of its potentialities from "Monera" to man, and
there are two whole planes of consciousness, the sixth and the seventh
"senses," not yet unfolded to the average humanity. Every monad that is
enclosed in a form, and hence limited by matter, becomes conscious on its
own plane and in its own degree. 


CONSCIOUSNESS, therefore, no less than sensitiveness, belongs to plants as
well as to animals. 


SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS belongs to man, because, while embodied in a form, the
higher triad of principles, 

Atma-Buddhi-Manas, is no longer dormant, but active. This activity is,
however, far from being fully developed. When this activity has become fully
developed, man will already have become conscious on a still higher plane,
endowed with the sixth and the opening of the seventh sense, and will have
become a "god" in the sense given to that term by Plato and his followers.


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In thus giving this larger and completer meaning to the law of evolution,
the Occult philosophy entirely eliminates the "missing links" of modern
science, and, by giving to man a glimpse of his nature and destiny, not only
points out the line of the higher evolution, but puts him in possession of
the means of achieving it.

The "atoms" and "monads" of the Secret Doctrine are very different from the
atoms and molecules of modern science. 

To the latter these are mere particles of matter endowed with blind force:
to the former, they are the "dark nucleoles," and potentially "Gods,"
conscious and intelligent from their primeval embodiment at the beginning of
differentiation in the dawn of the Manvantara. There are no longer any hard
and fast lines between the "organic" and the "inorganic"; between the
"living" and "dead" matter. 

Every atom is endowed with and moved by intelligence, and is conscious in
its own degree, on its own plane of development. 

This is a glimpse of the One Life that--

	Runs through all time, extends through all extent,
	Lives undivided, operates unspent.

It may be conceived that 

the "Ego" in man is a monad that has gathered to itself innumerable
experiences through aeons of time, slowly unfolding its latent potencies
through plane after plane of matter. It is hence called the "eternal
pilgrim."

The Manasic, or mind principle, is cosmic and universal. It is the creator
of all forms, and the basis of all law in nature.

	Not so with consciousness. 

CONSCIOUSNESS is a condition of the monad as the result of embodiment in
matter and the dwelling in a physical form. Self-consciousness, which from
the animal plane looking upward is the beginning of perfection, from the
divine plane looking downward is the perfection of selfishness and the curse
of separateness. It is the "world of illusion" that man has created for
himself. 


"MAYA is the perceptive faculty of every Ego which considers itself a Unit,
separate from and independent of the One Infinite and Eternal Sat or
'be-ness." 


The "eternal pilgrim" must therefore mount higher, and flee from the plane
of self-consciousness it has struggled so hard to reach.


30


The complex structure that we call "Man" is made up of a congeries of almost
innumerable "Lives." Not only every microscopic cell of which the tissues
are composed, but the molecules and atoms of which these cells are composed,
are permeated with the essence of the "One Life." Every so-called organic
cell is known to have its nucleus, a center of finer or more sensitive
matter. The nutritive, all the formative and functional processes consist of
flux and re-flux, of inspiration and expiration, to and from the nucleus.

The nucleus is therefore in its own degree and after its kind a "monad"
imprisoned in a "form." Every microscopic cell, therefore, has a
consciousness and an intelligence of its own, and man thus consists of
innumerable "lives." This is but physiological synthesis, logically deduced
no less from the known facts in physiology and histology than the logical
sequence of the philosophy of occultism. Health of the body as a whole
depends on the integrity of all its parts, and more especially upon their
harmonious association and cooperation. A diseased tissue is one in which a
group of individual cells refuse to cooperate, and wherein is set up
discordant action, using less or claiming more than their due share of food
or energy. Disease of the very tissue of mans body is neither more nor less
than the "sin of separateness." Moreover, the grouping of cells is upon the
principle of hierarchies. Smaller groups are subordinate to larger
congeries, and these again are subordinate to larger, or to the whole. Every
microscopic cell therefore typifies and epitomizes man, as man is an epitome
of the Universe. 

As already remarked, the "Eternal Pilgrim," the Alter-Ego in man, is a monad
progressing through the ages. 

By right and by endowment the ego is king in the domain of mans bodily life.
It descended into matter in the cosmic process till it reached the mineral
plane, and then journeyed upward through the "three kingdoms" till it
reached the human plane. The elements of its being, like the cells and
molecules of mans body, are groupings of structures accessory or subordinate
to it. The human monad or Ego is therefore akin to all below it and heir to
all above it, linked by indissoluble bonds to spirit and matter, "God" and
"Nature." 


31

The attributes that it gathers, and the faculties that it unfolds, are but
the latent and dormant potentialities awaking to conscious life. The tissue
cells constitute mans bodily structure, but the order in which they are
arranged, the principle upon which they are grouped, constituting the human
form, is not simply an evolved shape from the lower animal plane, but an
involved principle from a higher plane, an older world, viz, the "Lunar
Pitris." 

"Hanuman the Monkey" antedates Darwin's "missing link" by thousands of
millenniums. So also the Manasic, or mind element, with its cosmic and
infinite potentialities, is not merely the developed "instinct" of the
animal. 

Mind is the latent or active potentiality of Cosmic Ideation, the essence of
every form, the basis of every law, the potency of every principle in the
universe. 

Human thought is the reflection or reproduction in the realm of mans
consciousness of these forms, laws, and principles. 

Hence man senses and apprehends nature just as nature unfolds in him. When,
therefore, the Monad has passed through the form of the animal ego, involved
and unfolded the human form, 

the higher triad of principles awakens from the sleep of ages and
over-shadowed by the "Manasa-putra" and built into its essence and
substance. How could man epitomize Cosmos if he did not touch it at every
point and involve it in every principle? If mans being is woven in the web
of destiny, his potencies and possibilities take hold of divinity as the
woof and pattern of his boundless life. Why, then, should he grow weary or
disheartened? Alas! why should he be degraded, this heir of all things!

	The peculiarity also of this theology, and in which its
transcendency consists, is this, that it does not consider the 	highest God
to be the principle of beings, but the principle of principles, i.e. of
deiform processions from itself, all 	which are eternally rooted in the
unfathomable depths of the immensely great source of their existence, and of
which 	they may be called supersensuous ramifications and super-luminous
blossoms.

			--Thomas Taylor. Introduction to Mystical Hymns of
Orpheus



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		THE CURE OF DISEASES


MORTAL ills and the needs of the stomach rank next after the instinct of
self-preservation among all the subjects which engage the attention of the
race. If we do not go on living we cannot do the work we think there is to
do; if we remain hungry we will lose the power to work properly or to enjoy,
and at last come to the door of death. From bad or scanty food follows a
train of physical ills called generally disease. 

Disease reaches us also through too much food. So in every direction these
ills attack us; even when our feeding is correct and sufficient it is found
that we fall a prey because our Karma, settled by ourselves is some previous
life, ordains that we enter on this one handicapped by the hereditary taint
due to the wickedness or or the errors of our fathers and mothers. And the
records of science show that the taint in the blood or the lymph may jump
over many lives, attacking with virulence some generation distant very far
from the source. 

What wonder, then that the cure of disease is an all-absorbing subject with
every one! The Christian knows that it is decreed by Almighty God that He
will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and
fourth generation, and the non-believer sees that by some power in nature
the penalty is felt even so far.

All of this has given to the schools of mental and so-called "metaphysical"
healing a strong pull on the fears, the feelings, the wishes, and the bodies
of those to whom they address themselves, and especially in the United
States. That there is more attention given to the subject in America seems
true to those who have been on the other side of the Atlantic and noticed
how small is the proportion of people there who know anything about the
subject. But in the United States in every town many can be found who know
about these schools and practice after their methods. Why it has more hold
here can be left to conjecture, as the point under consideration is why it
has any hold at all. It is something like patent medicine. 

Offer a cure to people for their many ills, and they will take it up; offer
it cheap, and they will use it; offer it as an easy method, and they will
rush for it under certain conditions. Metaphysical healing is easy for some
because it declares, first, that no money need be paid to doctors for
medicine; second, that medical fluids and drugs may be dispensed with; and
third that it is easily learned and practiced. The difficulties that arise
out of the necessities of logic are not present for those who never studied
it, but are somewhat potent with those who reason correctly; - but that is
not usual for the general run of minds. They see certain effects and accept
the assumed cause as the right one. But many persons will not even
investigate the system, because they think it requires them to postulate the
non-existence of that which they see before their eyes. The statements
quoted from the monthly Christian Science in March PATH are bars in the way
of such minds. If they could be induced to just try the method offered for
cure, belief might result, for effects indeed often follow. But the popular
mind is not in favor of "mind cure," and more prominence is given in the
daily papers to cases of death under it than to cures. And very full reports
always appear of a case such as one in March, where "faith curers," in order
to restore life, went to praying over the dead body of one of the members of
a believing family.

During a recent tour over this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and
back, I had the opportunity of meeting hundreds of disciples of these
schools, and found in nearly all cases that they were not addicted to logic
but calmly ignored very plain propositions, satisfied that if cures were
accomplished the cause claimed must be the right one, and almost without
exception they denied the existence of evil or pain or suffering. 

There was a concurrence of testimony from all to show that the dominant idea
in their minds was the cure of their bodily ills and the continuance of
health. The accent was not on the beauty of holiness or the value to them
and the community of a right moral system and right life, but on the cure of
their diseases. So the conclusion has been forced home that all these
schools exist because people desire to be well more than they desire to be
good, although they do not object to goodness if that shall bring wholeness.

And, indeed, one does not have to be good to gain the benefit of the
teachings. It is enough to have confidence, to assert boldly that this does
not exist and that that has no power to hurt one. I do not say the teachers
of the "science" agree with me herein, but only that whether you are good or
bad the results will follow the firm practice of the method enjoined,
irrespective of the ideas of the teachers.

For in pure mind-cure as compared with its congener "Christian Science," you
do not have to believe in Jesus and the gospels, yet the same results are
claimed, for Jesus taught that whatever you prayed for with faith, that you
should have.

Scientific research discloses that the bodies of our race are infected with
taints that cause nearly all of our diseases, and school after school of
medicine has tried and still tries to find the remedy that will dislodge the
foulness in the blood. This is scientific, since it seeks the real physical
cause; metaphysical healing says it cures, but cannot prove that the cause
is destroyed and not merely palliated. That there is some room for doubt
history shows us, for none will deny that many pure thinking and acting pair
have brought forth children who displayed some taint derived from a distant
ancestor. Evidently their pure individual thoughts had no power over the
great universal development of the matter used by those human bodies.

Turning now to medicine we find the Italian Count Mattei promulgating a
system of cure by the homeopathic use of subtle vegetable essences which may
well give pause to those who would make universal the curing by faith or
mind alone. Some of his liquids will instantly stop a violent pain, restore
sight, give back hearing, and dissipate abnormal growths. His globules will
make a drunken man sober, and, given to the nurse who suckles a babe, will
cure the child who takes the milk. The drunkard and the child do not think
about or have faith in the remedies, yet they cure. Is it not better to
restore health by physical means and leave the high teachings of the
healers, all taken from well know sources, for the benefit of our moral
nature? 

And if Christian healers read these lines, should they not remember that
when the prophet restored the widow's son he used physical means - his own
magnetism applied simultaneously to every member of the child's body, and
Jesus, when the woman who touched his garment was cured, lost a portion of
his vitality - not his thoughts - for he said "virtue" had gone out from
him? 

The Apostle also gave directions that if any were sick the others should
assemble about the bed and anoint with oil, laying on their hands meanwhile:
simply physical therapeutics following a long line of ancient precedent
dating back to Noah. Moses taught how to cure diseases and to disinfect
places where contagion lurked. It was not by using the high power of
thought, but by processes deemed by him to be effectual, such as sprinkling
blood of animals slaughtered in peculiar circumstances. Without declaring
for or against his methods, it is very certain that he supposed by these
means subtle forces of a physical nature would be liberated and brought to
bear on the case in hand.

The mass of testimony through the ages is against healing physical ills by
the use of the higher forces in nature, and the reason, once well known but
later on forgotten, is the one given in the article of January, 1892, - that
diseases are gross manifestations showing themselves on their way out of the
nature so that one may be purified. To arrest them though thought ignorantly
directed is to throw them back into their cause and replant them in their
mental plane.
This is the true ground of our objection to metaphysical healing practices,
which we distinguish from the assumptions and so-called philosophy on which
those methods are claimed to stand. For we distinctly urge that the effects
are not brought by any philosophical system whatever, but by the practical
though ignorant use of psycho-physiological processes.

William Q. Judge
Path, September, 1892


---------------------------------------------------



 
		OF OCCULT POWERS AND
		    THEIR ACQUIREMENT

THERE are thousands of people in the United States, as well in the ranks of
the Society as outside, who believe that there are certain extraordinary
occult powers to be encompassed by man. Such powers as thought reading,
seeing events yet to come, unveiling the motives of others, apportation of
objects, and the like, are those most sought after, and nearly all desired
with a selfish end in view. The future is inquired into so as to enable one
to speculate in stocks and another to circumvent competitors. These longings
are pandered to here and there by men and societies who hold out delusive
hopes to their dupes that, by the payment of money, the powers of nature may
be invoked.

Even some of our own members have not been guiltless of seeking after such
wonderful fruit of knowledge with those who would barter the Almighty, if
they could, for gold.

Another class of earnest theosophists, however, have taken a different
ground. They have thought that certain Adepts who really possess power over
nature, who can both see and hear through all space, who can transport solid
objects through space and cause written messages to appear at a distance
with beautiful sounds of astral bells, ought to intervene, and by the
exercise of the same power make these earnest disciples hear sounds
ordinarily called occult, and thus easily transmit information and help
without the aid of telegraph or mailboat. But that these Beings will not do
this has been stated over and over again; for the kingdom of heaven is not
given away, it must be "taken by violence." It lies there before us to be
entered upon and occupied, but that can be only after a battle which, when
won, entitles the victor to remain in undisturbed possession.

As many have seemed to forget these rules, I thought it well to offer them
the following words from one of those very Adepts they seek to meet:

The educing of the faculty of hearing occult sounds would be not at all the
easy matter you imagine. It was never done to any one of us, for the iron
rule is that what powers one gets he must himself acquire, and when acquired
and ready for use, the powers lie dumb and dormant in their potentiality
like the wheels in a music box, and only then it is easy to wind the key and
start them....Yet every earnestly-disposed man may acquire such powers
practically; that is the finality of it. There are no more distinctions of
persons in this than there are as to whom the sun shall shine upon or the
air give vitality to. There are powers of all nature before you; take what
you can.

This is perfectly clear and strictly according to the Secret Canon. "When
the materials are all prepared and ready, the architect shall appear"; and
when we have acquired the powers we seek, by educing them ourselves from our
inner being, the Master will then be ready and able to start into exercise
that which we have obtained.
But-even here is an important point. If the Master can, so to say, wind the
key and thus start the machinery, He can also refuse to give the necessary
impulse. For reasons that have to do with the motives and life of students,
it may be advisable for a while not to permit the exercise of these powers
which "lie dumb and dormant in their potentiality." To sanction their use
might in one lead to the ruin of other lives, or in another to personal
disaster and retardation of true progress.

Therefore the Master says that quite often he may not only refuse to give
the start, but yet further may prevent the wheels from moving.

THERE ARE THE POWERS OF ALL NATURE BEFORE YOU; TAKE WHAT YOU CAN.

    					Rodriguez Undiano
	Path, February, 1889.




-------------------------------------------


 
		REPLANTING DISEASES FOR FUTURE USE


The ills I wish to speak of now are those of the body. Our moral nature will
be purified and ennobled, widened and strengthened, by attention to the
precepts of the saints and sages who through all the ages continue speaking
for our benefit. And I refer to these with a view to "mind-cure" and
"metaphysical healing."

In the article on the "Cure of Diseases" I stated our real ground of
objections to the practices demonstrated variously, as the practitioners
have been Theosophists, Christians, or followers of mind healers, to be
directed to methods which in fact introduce a new sort of palliative that
throws back into our inner, hidden planes of life diseases otherwise passing
down and out through the natural gateway, our bodily frame.

A consideration of this subject requires that we enquire awhile into the
complete nature of man. This inquiry has been made before by much greater
minds than mine, and I only hand on what they have found and what I have
corroborated for myself. Mind-healers and Spiritual Scientists and the rest
do not make any reference to this subtle nature of ours except to admit
though to be powerful and to say that the "spiritual body is pure and free
from disease." Mind itself is not described by them, nor is it stated that
the "spiritual body" has any anatomy possible of description. But the field
of Theosophic research is not devoid of an anatomical enumeration, so to
say, of the parts of the inner body-the "spiritual body" of some of these
schools-nor of the "mind" spoken of by them all.

The mind is manas of the Hindus. It is a part of the immortal man. The
"spiritual body" is not immortal. It is compounded of astral body with the
passions and desires. Mind is the container of the efficient causes of our
circumstances, our inherent character and the seeds that sprout again and
again as physical diseases as well as those purely mental. It is the mover
who is either voluntary in his motion, free if it will, of moved hither and
thither by every object and influence and colored by every idea. From life
to life it occupies body after body, using a new brain instrument in each
incarnation. As Patanjali put it ages ago, in mind lie planted all seeds
with self-reproductive power inherent in them, only waiting for time and
circumstances to sprout again. Here are the causes for our diseases. Product
of thought truly, but thought long finished and now transformed into cause
beyond our present thought. Lying like tigers by the edge of the jungle's
pool ready to spring when the hour arrives, they may come forward
accompanied by counteractions due to other causes, or them may come alone.

When these seeds sprout and liberate their forces they show themselves in
diseases in the body, where they exhaust themselves. To attack them with the
forces belonging to the plane of mind is to force them again to their hiding
place, to inhibit their development, to stop their exhaustion and transfer
to the grosser level of life. They are forcibly dragged back, only to lie
waiting once more for their natural expression in some other life. That
natural expression is through a body, or rather through the lowest vehicle
in use in any evolutionary period.

This is a great wheel that ever revolves, and no man can stop it. To imagine
we can escape from any cause connected with us is to suppose that law and
order desert the manifested universe. No such divorce is possible. We must
work everything out to the last item. The moment we evolve a thought and
thus a cause, it must go on producing its effects, all becoming in turn
causes for other effects and sweeping down the great evolutionary current in
order to rise again. To suppose we can stop this ebb and flow is chimerical
in the extreme. Hence the great sages have always said we have to let the
Karmic effects roll on while we set new and better causes in motion, and
that even the perfect sage has to endure in his bodily frame that which
belongs to it through Karma.

The inner anatomical structure should also be known. The ethereal body has
its own current-nerves, for want of a better word, changes and method of
growth and action, just as the gross body has. It is, in fact, the real
body, for it seldom alters throughout life, while the physical counterpart
changes every moment, its atoms going and coming upon the matrix or model
furnished by the ethereal body.

The inner currents emanate from their own centers and are constantly in
motion. They are affected by thoughts and the reflection of the body in its
physiological changes. They each act upon the other incessantly. (Every
center of the inner body has its appropriate correspondent in the physical
one, which it affects and through which it is in turn acted upon.) It is by
means of these subtle currents-called vital airs when translated from the
Sanscrit-that impressions are conveyed to the mind above, and through them
also are the extraordinary feats of the sèance room and the Indian Yogi
accomplished.

And just as one may injure his body by ignorantly using drugs or physical
practices, so can the finer currents and nerves of the inner man be thrown
out of adjustment if one in pride or ignorance attempts, uninstructed to
deal with them. 

The seeds of disease being located primarily in the mind, they begin to
exhaust themselves through the agency of the inner currents that carry the
appropriate vibrations down upon the physical plane. If left to
themselves-aside from palliations and aids in throwing off-they pass out
into the great crucible of nature and one is free from them forever.
Therefore pain is said to be a kind friend who relieves the real man of a
load of sin. 

Now the moment the practices of the mind-curer are begun, what happens is
that the hidden inner currents are violently grasped, and, if concentration
is persisted in, the downward vibrations are thrown up and altered so as to
carry back the cause to the mind, where it is replanted with the addition of
the purely selfish desires that led to the practice. It is impossible to
destroy the cause; it must be allowed to transform itself. And when it is
replaced in the mind, it waits there until an opportunity occurs either in
this life or in the next rebirth.

In some cases the physical and psychological structures are not able to
stand the strain, so that sometimes the return of the downward vibrations is
so great and sudden that insanity results; in other cases disease with
violent characteristics set in. 

The high tone of thought enjoined by some schools of healers has the effect
of making the cause of trouble sink deeper into hiding, and probably adds to
concentration. But any thought would do as well, provided concentration is
persisted in, for it is the concentration that makes the effect, and not the
philosophy. The system of affirming and denying make concentration easier. 

For when the practitioner begins, he immediately brings to play certain
inner forces by virtue of his dwelling on one thing. The veriest savages do
the same. They have long taught it for various purposes, and their ideals go
no higher than food and sleep, fetishes and superstitions. 

When one is thus operating on another who is willing, the change of inner
nerve currents is brought by sympathy, which in these cases is the same as
the phenomenon so well known in physics by the name of induction. When a
person is operated on-or against, I call it-the effect is either repelled or
produced. If produced, it is by the same induction brought about without his
knowledge and because he was not stronger than the operator. 

Here is the danger again. The schools of hypnotists are teaching how to do
it. The mind-currents and "metaphysicians" are doing the same. An army of
possibilities lurks under it all: for already there are those practitioners
who deliberately practice against their opponents, sitting by day after day
to paralyze the efforts of other people. It is like dynamite in the hands of
a child. Some day it will explode, and those who taught it will be
responsible, since instead of being taught it ought to be warned against.
The world could get along with what disease there is, if it only turned
attention to high ethics and altruistic endeavor. For after a few centuries
of right living the nations would have purged themselves and built up a
right moral building well founded on the rocks of true philosophy, charity,
and love. 

William Q. Judge
Path, October, 1892


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Dallas