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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