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Esoteric Healing - Chapter I - The Psychological Causes of Disease |
I would like first of all to point out that my purpose and
intent is not to write a medical treatise. I shall not, therefore, deal with the anatomy
of the body, nor shall I discuss the symptoms of diseases, except quite incidentally. I do
not intend to elaborate symptoms or consider the many [28] diseases with long names which
distinguish the race at this time; all such information you can gather from the ordinary
textbooks, if you so choose, and these you can study, if you care to do so. I find it
personally not particularly satisfying. We will start with the premise that there is
disease; that disease is an effect of inner causes; that man has made as vast strides in
the understanding of the effect of these causes as they produce changes in the outer
garment of man, as science has made in the understanding of the outer garment of God, the
world of phenomenal nature. The ameliorative and palliative and curative work of medicine and surgery are proved beyond all controversial discussion. The methods employed, such as the vivisection of animals, may rightly cause distress. In spite of all this the indebtedness of mankind to the medical profession is great, and the service rendered to humanity by the profession does largely offset the evil. That they know not everything is true; that there is a small percentage of physicians and surgeons (less than in any other profession) who are self-seeking and no credit to their craft is equally true; that they already know enough to be willing to admit how very much more there is to be known is also correct. But that it is a great and good and self-sacrificing group within the human family, is equally true. Forget this not. I deal with the subjective aspect of man, and with the secondary causes which have their roots in man's inner bodies and in the subjective side of nature itself. The major primary causes, as I earlier explained, are impossible for you to grasp. They lie beyond the capacity of the concrete mind. I seek to make clear what man may do to free himself increasingly from the accumulation of the past, both individually and as a group, and in so doing to clear his physical body of the germs of disease. It must, however, be borne in mind that many diseases are of a group [29] nature, and are consequently inherent in humanity itself. Just as the insect world devastates and destroys the vegetable kingdom, as any chance walker through the woods can note, so germs - individual and group - today devastate and destroy the human kingdom. They are agents of destruction and are performing a definite office and duty in the great scheme of things at present. The intent is for men to die, as every man has to die, at the demand of his own soul. When man has reached a higher stage in evolution, with deliberation and definite choice of time, he will consciously withdraw from his physical body. It will be left silent and empty of the soul; devoid of light, yet sound and whole; it will then disintegrate, under the natural process, and its constituent atoms will pass back into "the pool of waiting units," until they are again required for the use of incarnating souls. Again, on the subjective side of life, the process is repeated, but many have already learnt to withdraw from the astral body without being subject to that "impact in the fog," which is the symbolic way of describing the death of a man upon the astral plane. He then withdraws on to the mental level, and leaves his astral carcass to swell the fog and increase its density. I seek to point out, therefore, that my avoidance of medical technicalities will be deliberate, though we shall refer often to the physical body and to the diseases of which it is a prey. |
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