(Transcript by Tob Hawk)
This evening we have a new phase of our subject to consider and because it is rather a large one I think we'll dive in immediately and consider some of its essential aspects. Most of us realize that the last 25 years we have observed a marked change in the attitude of many medical practitioners. We have seen them gradually move into a rather mechanistic attitude toward life, we have seen them developing more and more a prosperity complex and we have observed that the steady growth of scientific knowledge has not been accompanied in all cases by an adequate recognition of scientific responsibility.
Now such a situation is not universal but like most situations, that are not essentially right, it contains within itself something of its own remedy. We observe that human beings are extremists and this is as true of the scientifically trained man as of the person who has not developed such resources and so gradually in the very immediate past within the last three or four years we have seen a considerable breaking of this pattern, which has dominated most of medical thinking in the last two to three decades. Today the physician, coming under the general tension of the time, is finding himself less secure in his own practice and less satisfied with the results that he is getting. Being also somewhat under the scientific illusion, that nearly all mysteries are solved, the physician finds himself in a dilemma. He finds that an increasing number of his patients do not respond to his remedies. He discovers that his own knowledge, although he may be continuously advancing his studies, is not developing rapidly enough to meet the challenge of the world's ailments. Instead of being master of a situation, he finds himself more and more a slave to a problem for which he has no adequate solution.
Also the established and entrenched physician is observing the rise of a younger generation of men around him. A number of these men served in World War II. Many of them were bitterly hurt by the tremendous spectacle of man's inhumanity. They changed their basic attitudes, returned home far more religious, far more internally shaken than perhaps even they were willing to admit. These men, moving into the field of medicine, have had considerable effect upon the american medical association. They've had a tendency to split it open, they have divided themselves into progressives and reactionaries and what we call today the self-opinionated, self-satisfied, complacent position is now regarded as a reactionary. He is no longer held in the esteem that he was held in ten years ago and we can say something of the same for the scientists, 20 years ago a scientist was little less than a saint, today we wonder if he is not a little more of a demon than is necessary. We come to this conclusion simply because we perceive science gradually taking away from us practically all the securities that we know in the development of modern nuclear weapons and the advancement of knowledge in the direction of the common destruction of mankind. All these disillusionments are not limited to the layman's standing at one side and watching knowledge move by. The physician is sick, the scientist is sick. Nearly all human beings, sharing their common humanity in spite of their specialized intellectualism, are shaken and sorely afraid within themselves.
Out of this condition also has come a gradual enlargement of our attitude toward knowledge. In the last 10 years particularly man has been moving powerfully and relentlessly toward the restoration of a metaphysical concept of life. We find more and more, on our television shows, in entertainment, in reading, in drama, the introduction of mystical or supernatural factors. We also discover within our learned institutions more cognizance of these unexplained mysteries of life. The mood is moving in this direction, this mood is carried upon the surface of our insecurity. Were we more smug we would not have the mood, but because our smugness has been assailed we do have the mood. Being uncertain and rather much frightened we are beginning to hope certain things to be true about which we were totally indifferent prior to the rise of the present emergencies.
The general feeling and direction of this is represented by the rapid increase of religious healing in our churches. The new testament clearly indicates that among the ministries of Jesus, and as given to his apostles and disciples, was the healing of the sick. Until very recently the protestant communion comparatively ignored this. Some groups did make an attempt and on the level of evangelism we find examples. But for the more conservative groups the ministry of healing was largely neglected or regarded as impossible. There was not enough basic faith in their own belief to sustain them in such a daring experiment. Now we have an entirely different situation. We have some of the most powerful religious groups in christendom simply and openly acknowledging the healing ministry as basic to religion. We find also a considerable amount of success in the practice of healing in religious organizations. We also observe the number of churches that are engaging and maintaining psychological counselors, the emphasis upon basic psychological training for the minister and many things pertaining to this direction. I saw a book not too long ago “Psychology for the priest” under the imperator of the Archbishop of Quebec in which basic freudian psychology was made available to catholic priests for the use in their personal service with people. Such a thing as this 50 years ago would have been utterly impossible. But this opening up and breaking through is simply an inevitable consequence of the tremendous pressure which is moving in upon us and is making us feel ever increasing need for immediate consolation on practical levels.
In this level of thinking Mysticism plays a very important part in as much as Mysticism avoids most of the complications, that might arise from the introduction of schools of medicine into sectarian religious bodies. Here the possibility of conflict is considerable and the general attitude of criticism between scientific and religious bodies has not entirely abated, although it is continuously improving. Mysticism although breaks through such attitudes and as much as it is not built upon sectarian religion, nor is it built upon a denial of physical sciences or any material relating to them. The conflict that we have in the west has been almost unknown in Asia, in as much as in the east religion and science never having been officially divided, healing has always been regarded as an essential part of religious ministry and among those, who seek consolation from their faiths, are always the sick and those mentally, emotionally or physically troubled. The consolation of an extreme nature is perhaps exemplified in the great temple of the universe in Peking and it was before the communists took over, I was there and saw this courtyard of a temple, to which from all over china lepers came to die, convinced that whether their lives could be saved or not, that there was a tremendous spiritual consolation in their illness, bringing its natural end close to sanctuary, in a place where the spirit released from the body might then go on to a better and healthier and happier state. Religion and sickness have always been closely associated and in most parts of the world there's never been the competitive attitude, which we have noted in Europe and America.
A Mysticism, coming into the life of healing, meets a number of very basic requirements. In the last many years it has been my privilege to be rather close to a good many doctors, more of the serious and thoughtful kind of men, who would naturally be interested in the things that we are doing, therefore would represent a patient understanding group and of course in earlier life was also under a similar influence and about in the fact that my mother was also a physician. In this I've had some knowledge of what is happening and I do know definitely, that the serious doctor recognizes the tremendous importance of religion. Perhaps 50 years ago he thought of religion very largely merely a spiritual consolation, but he was practicing or advocating very much of what we now call psychology. To him religion was partly faith and partly psychology. I remember one old doctor whom I knew, who had a very splendid practice and was greatly beloved. This man told me that it is a secret with me and perhaps a few others. But he said “I am convinced that even the most scientific chemical medicines, those with the greatest probability of producing extraordinary and rapid results, that if these medicines were administered to an individual totally opposed to them with absolutely no faith in them or the physician, that even their chemical results would be reduced remarkably”. He said “I am convinced, that even with the most approved medicines, most expertly given, there is still a tremendous psychological overtone, that the medicine, separated from a respected position, will not have the same result, also the even the most respected and sincere physician administering the medication according to his fullest conviction will not have adequate results or as good results, if he is unable to command the sincere respect of his patient”.
These psychological bridges are present and play a very large part more than we realize in the practice of medicine even as it is today. This is why undoubtedly certain revolutionary cures, widely publicized, have tremendous results for a few months and then never heard of again. Why we suddenly seem to develop immunities to certain medications or remedies. We know that the same thing happens in what might be termed a form of suggestion therapy, which loses its result gradually after the first impact wears off, as the patient no longer is able to create the same expectation, the same amazement, the same sudden extension of faith. The remedy becomes less and less effective and he searches for another cure. These things involve a great part of psychological or, we might almost say, metaphysical phenomena. They are closely involved in this entire theory of healing. Perhaps that is why healing is an art rather than a science, because it cannot be totally separated from the emotional content of human nature.
The mystic can bring to the problems of health certain distinct principles, which he may apply or may assist others to apply, which can have a benevolent effect upon his own nature. First of all, Mysticism creates in the individual an attitude, a basic attitude. This basic attitude is essentially positive. It is not sickness denying, it is not the individual declaring his infirmity to be an illusion, but it is an attitude of a certain sustaining interior courage. Mysticism causes the sick person to assume the reasonableness of his own condition, assume that he has caused it, earned it or deserved it for some reason or other. It also has impelled him to seek within himself for the faults or the mistakes by which his health has been disturbed. It causes him also to recognize the existence of a larger universe of justice, in which what appears to him to be a personal injustice or a desperate emergency perhaps not immediately explainable, that in some way this whole circumstance depends upon principles that are valid and true.
Consequently the mystic, whether he be sick or well, is inclined to take a constructive attitude toward life. This constructive attitude includes emotional temperaments. The mystic is not inclined to anger, to hate, to jealousy, to criticism, to condemnation, to suspicion. He has created within his own nature a kindly acceptance of life. He is also expecting to find good in others. He is rather inclined perhaps to overlook some rather obvious faults, but I suspect that in problems involving health it is better to overlook a thought than it is to overlook a virtue and usually a critic is not fair in these matters. Gaining the habit of criticism he criticizes everything, gaining the habit of suspicion he suspects everyone, and out of these negative attitudes he does nothing to assist his own health. The mystic likewise has a certain resignedness in his nature. He recognizes something that modern psychology is beginning to understand, but which it has not yet fully explored, namely the possibility of relaxing oneself into health. That very largely sickness is exaggerated and intensified by tension and that many ailments of a purely physical nature, so called, while perhaps not directly caused by mental or emotional excess, will be supported and sustained by such excess. That the person who has the ability to relax, has the ability to conserve energy.
This point brings our next consideration straight to us, namely that all sickness, or most sickness at least, depends for recovery upon the availability of energy. The individual must have means of restoring the vitality of his own life. The old doctor back in the long forgotten days used to give an iron to help the individual in the spring get over that lazy tired feeling that he always had. Then because he might have a little tendency to be sluggish after eating so many potatoes during the winter, that was a problem back years when everything green was frostbitten six months a year, in those days they used to give him a little bone set tea to get him started, and a little sulfur molasses to keep him going, and by the time he had a few of these remedies inside of himself, he was either convinced that he should feel better or that he couldn't feel worse and therefore began to recover.
Now the old theory of medicine from Paracelsus down to the present generation, well there's still some old-fashioned doctors among us, the theory was that the individual depended largely upon good health, upon relaxation, blood purification and adequate elimination. If he had all these things he was in pretty fair shape. Someone once said to a man whom knew in these fields “doctor, how long do you think i'll live?” “Rather long years”, - doc looked him over and said “you're in a pretty good shape”, says “you will live just as long as you keep your elimination regular, that's the length of your life”.
Now we find for example that for the elimination, nine times out of ten arises from nervous tension. That some form of intensity moves in on this situation, breaking these rhythms, creating further toxin and causing the individual to die by first of all creating acidity in the intestinal area. Most peace people begin to die in the great intestine and then it sort of spreads. This type of thinking had a certain religious mystical overtone to it even in the old age. The individual was taught, that to fear god, serve his fellow men, support his family, work 10 good hours a day, go to church on sunday - these were the secrets of health, not only physical health but spiritual well-being. That it was the person with nothing to do who got sick. It was the individual who forgot to be a friend, who began to develop acidity. That conduct therefore was very closely involved in the continuance of man's physical and super physical normalcy and health.
So we say that Mysticism is a wonderful form of preventive medicine, that it helps the person to remove the principal and most immediate causes, which can rapidly become involved in sickness. That by maintaining a certain gentle and genial optimism, the person helps to preserve the normalcy and proper function of the body. Every time the individual loses his temper, he loses something of his own life, every time he hates he creates a kind of abscess or ulcer in his own consciousness, that begins to eat away not only his normal love of mankind, but actually his ability to continue as a functioning person.
Paracelsus was convinced and others after him are not certain that he was wrong, he was convinced that most chronic ailments are merely the gradual physical revelation of chronic attitudes, and that the individual who has a certain unreasonable attitude in the first two thirds of life will suffer from an appropriate physical debility or disability in the last third of life. The diseases are to a measure cycle psychosomatic symbols of dispositions, that have been permitted to get completely out of hand. Now this may be a a broad statement, there are exceptions to it certainly, but these exceptions should not discourage the individual, for the majority of cases he should realize that his Mysticism is essentially a right attitude, that he should not be cultivating it simply because he wants to get well, but that through the natural doing of those things which are right, for the sake of that which is right. We are likely to enjoy an appropriate harvest in other fields of activity and life. If Mysticism was only to make us physically well, it would be only a small part of its own achievement, but because it seeks for the total health of man, through his total adjustment with life, the mystic may discover that he has attained, along with his interior stability, a considerable physical endurance beyond that which he might normally have expected. This is preventive medicine, the mystical attitude is strongly and definitely indicated.
Also a mystic is by nature close to the experience of the power of internals over externals. If he has not actually had a mystical revelation or spiritual experience, he has certainly an inward conviction of the possibility, of this atonement ,this experience of the presence of god in his own life. Therefore through the internalness of his devotion he has come close to the recognition of a universal life, a universal goodness and the universal power of deity in its own proper nature. Thus to the mystic all things are possible with god, because deity being deity all things are inevitably according to the law of deity, a man's experience in the direct apperception or apprehension of god is twofold - either that he discovers that in his contact with divinity he is renewed or is restored by this divine power or else in this experience he discovers that those ends which he desires are not right and therefore he accepts the rightness of god, assuming beyond question that not his will but the will of god be done in all things, therefore he gains one of two remedies either a tremendous interior expansion, or a powerful dedication to a patient acceptance of the divine will. Both of these attitudes are productive of good, for when we realize the amount of misery that arises from impatience, we realize also that it is one of those intensities which affect our health, perhaps bringing sickness and certainly causing the continuance of sickness, if it is already upon us.
The next point that we should bear in mind then relates not necessarily to the patient but to the physician. Here we have, as Paracelsus and other of the earlier physicians pointed out, the doctor himself and his interior spiritual needs. The physician mystic has a larger and greater probability of helping his patient, than a materialistic physician. The physician whose nature is such, that it touches with a certain warmth from within itself the emotional nature of the patient, the physician to whom the patient is inevitably drawn by the essential nobility and goodness of that physician, has more confidence in the man of integrity than he has in a person lacking this, he has more respect for the devout doctor than he has for the unbelieving doctor. Also because the majority of patients have a positive belief in something, it is hardly right and proper that their medical attention and care should be placed in the keeping of a person, whose attitudes and convictions are not equal to their own and in psychology particularly, if the psychologist by his materialism offends a devout patient, the power of that psychologist to assist the patient is practically destroyed. It is therefore true, that a physician must have something still in him of the priest of old from those days, when the followers of the god Asclepius were priest physicians forever. Where they spoke not merely as mortals, but as instruments and servants of the gods. That the power of the physician is tremendously enhanced by the auric dignity of his own interior dedication to divine truths and rules, and laws. The physician under this type of realization emerges also as the counselor, as the father, as the kindly ancient leader. The strength which the patient instinctively feels the need for at a given time. Thus the physician as priest has far greater remedial opportunities, then the one who simply depends upon routine and about whom the patient never comes to any clear psychological concept or attitude. Thus the physician, as many of them have told me, find a large part of his own fulfillment in his dedication in the sense that he is a minister upon the earth of the healing power of heaven, that it is not the position that cures, but that it is god that cures, and the physician is the servant of a divine way, and in all matters, while the physician may administer the immediate remedy, the great work of restoration is in the keeping of laws, principles and powers superior to man. This attitude helps to preserve the integrity of the doctor, helps to preserve his humility, helps him to be close to the simple people who so desperately may need not only his medication but the sense of his spiritual strength in a critical period of life. Thus the physician is friend, companion as counselor and leader, is tremendously enhanced by his own mystical apperceptions or dedications.
Also this has an important effect upon his own interior sources of knowledge. In spite of all that we may say medicine was and remains a highly intuitive art. Today we would not be inclined to think of it as intuitive, but again there is certain circumstantial evidence, which we should not permit to deceive us. We live in a time when intuition generally is penalized. If a patient goes to the physician and the doctor intuitively diagnoses this case and is unable to treat the patient successfully, the patient has recourse to law. He can go to court and gain a very large settlement on the grounds that the physician has not made the necessary tests, has not required the necessary laboratory work, in order to assure a scientific diagnosis. I know many doctors who diagnosed the ailment and then send the patient to the laboratory, costing the patient money that he did not need to spend, simply because in the last five years that same doctor has been sued perhaps for a total of three or four hundred thousand dollars by disgruntled patients on the grounds that he tried to save the money, now this can happen.
So we have two sides to some of these questions. The patient believes today that he must have the full treatment. If he doesn't get it, he will hold the doctor responsible. But in the older days, when such tests were impossible, the doctor depended almost solely upon intuition. His means scientifically were limited, his medications were limited, yet he did amazingly well, if he had a strangely open and receptive heart and mind. Doctors develop this even today in the course of practice and if they are reasonably dedicated and reasonably sincere a professional career of 20 or 30 years will bring with it a tremendous intensity of intuitional power. They will have a strange grasp of the ailment, they will almost appear to read the patient's mind and discover the various locations of tension, and stress, and discomfort. This intuitiveness they may or may not be able to directly use, they may not feel that it is safe for them to attempt to circumvent the so-called laboratory reports. They may however, when the time comes to treat, treat from their own intuition rather than from these reports, they are now protected by the reports and many positions do this, because they have learned that these powers can be developed. Many times they do not even know what to call power, they simply refer to it as a hunch, but they have it and most great doctors have had it greatly, and have depended upon it far more than the patient could ever realize, for some of the almost miraculous cures which they have been able to at least apparently affect.
So intuition, or an interior grasp of value, is one of the rewards that comes with sincerity in life and where the individual's dedications gradually extricate him from self-interest and self-gain, he has a tendency to have a clearer insight into the essential values of life. He is more useful to himself and to others and is able to fulfill his responsibilities as a physician more adequately and more honorably. The combination therefore of a patient with a certain mystical apperception of truth, and a physician with a certain mystical dedication to his own healing art, these two coming together in the presence of modern scientific knowledge and advancing themselves on all levels by means of this knowledge as well as by means of their intuitive power, form the most fortunate combination that can arise in the healing arts and in such a combination there is the greatest probability of a permanent or valuable improvement in health situations.
The next point that is think to be brought up is that the average person, from a mystical standpoint, may or may not have mystical interests during that period in life in which many of his habit patterns are most firmly established. Thus it may be that Mysticism increases in him together with his physical discomforts, in other words he begins to get religion when he begins to hurt somewhere. This is not an uncommon situation. Men in pain are amazingly devout, the moment however that the pain ceases the devotion has a tendency to thin down also. The situation means that in the majority of instances the truest and most complete forms of therapy, particularly preventive medicine, cannot be brought to bear from the case. The individual is already in trouble, his life has already been adversely affected by his own conduct, by his attitudes, by his intemperances and by his intolerances. He therefore comes to therapy in the desperate search for a physical remedy, for a spiritual ailment. He is desirous of some mechanical means of correcting the effects in character. He likes to assume that through medication the ailment can be corrected. In many instances, in most instances however, the only thing that can happen is that certain symptoms will be alleviated. It is true that some ailments require only this for a reasonable recovery. It may also be true, that under long and careful observation and treatment, comparatively serious ailments can be cleared or brought to a condition in which they will no longer prove a discomforting factor. But in a great many cases those innumerable instances in which the patient drifts away from the physician because the results have not been satisfactory or adequate, we do actually realize, that the physical remedies are not sufficient, that the physician has not reached into the core of the mouth, that he has not won either the confidence or the internal allegiance of his patient, nor has he been able to create in that patient a sense of the patient's own contribution to his problems.
Now the doctor will tell you, quite fairly, that the first day he preaches to his patient he will lose most of them. The patient does not wish to be educated, he wishes to get out of an immediate discomfort with as little change in his personal characteristics as humanly possible. He does not even like to contemplate for five moments a minor change in diet, exercise, ventilation or emotion. He simply wishes to be exactly as he is, but to suffer none of the unpleasant consequences of being what he is. The doctor knows this and of course it is a very discouraging and unhappy state, which in time may corrupt corrupt and corrode a good doctor and cause him to become totally indifferent of a situation about which apparently he can do nothing. The answer to this however lies also in the realization that the physician is under embarrassment by the attitude of his patients. The patient is disillusioned and a vicious circle is set up and this vicious circle very largely arises from the circumstance that neither the patient nor the physician have a sufficient interior strength to withstand the corrosion of life conflict. The patient cannot retain his faith, the doctor cannot retain his optimism. The two factors are gradually broken down and they break down to the degree of the lack of internal resources in both persons. If the doctor has deep enough roots in value, he will continue regardless of disillusionment, to hold to these things which he knows to be true. The patient, who has sufficient interior mystical appreciation, will never permit generalizations to interfere with his basic concept of life value. He will not condemn or criticize but will try to understand and out of the end of criticism and condemnation a certain good can be achieved. All of this we want to point out as a sort of prologue or prelude to the basic contributions that Mysticism can make in the improvement of human health.
Now Mysticism, as prevented medicine, could probably reduce the need for curing and treating 40 to 50 percent. A great many ailments could be controlled simply by attitudes. Others of course that are a little out of control could be brought back more rapidly if the importance of attitudes could be generally accepted. The physician also would find a great deal of time saved, a great deal of responsibility conserved, if he could come into a closer and more harmonious relationship with his patients on a basis of simple human understanding, rather than on all the levels of so-called professional relationships, which are for the most part formal and today rather distant and cold. They do not have the necessary warmth or understanding, which helps to give the best relationships.
For the moment then we are going now to go back to the individual and various ideas that may help to keep him out of the doctor's office or, at least, to create a basic pattern, so that if medication should be necessary he can approach it reasonably, properly, naturally and with a certain common humanity of respect and understanding. Let us then assume to start with that attitudes, set up rates of vibration within the structure of man, his auric or magnetic field changes its color values and its vibratory rates with every move that passes through him. Passing also these energy rates into the body through conditioned energies. Pure energy is pure light, conditioned energy is conditioned light and conditioned light is very much like the water supply of a city passing through innumerable pipes before it finally reaches your faucet. Even the passing through of all of these pipes, it passes through some that are not clean or sanitary, or have within them foreign matter that could be dangerous or poisonous, then this water coming into your faucet is conditioned by an unhealthful situation and from such disasters as this epidemical diseases have been known to originate. Thus the water itself, once it is contaminated, must be purified or the contamination will spread to all forms of life that come in direct contact with that water.
The energy moving from your own energy fields through the innumerable nerve channels, both physical and ethereal, this energy is conditioned. It is conditioned by your thoughts, by your emotions, by your habits, by your attitudes and finally reaching the physical body it is further conditioned by the state of that body, until it may reach some area in which it is needed in a highly contaminated condition. Under such contamination we find that energy is unable to restore damage, is not available for the vitalizing of function and cannot perform its proper functions as a means of protecting, preserving, restoring the health of the individual.
Buddhism and most oriental religions take the firm position that the contamination of energy has to arise within the individual himself. The man surrounded as he is by a very powerful antiseptic field that even so-called contagious diseases are generally not transmitted from an unhealthy body to a healthy one. They are really communicated from one unhealthy body to another unhealthy one. Now that may be that the second person who appears to take the disease showed no previous symptoms of that ailment, therefore we may assume that he received it by contagion or by infection. Technically this is true, actually however contagion and infection are only possible because of the depletion of the energy field of the individual, who is going or to be the recipient of some bacterial inroads of one kind or another. Thus while the person is not responsible perhaps for the particular germ that attacks him, he is responsible for the fact that he is vulnerable.
Now we also realize that within the human body are nearly all forms of germs, bacteria and viruses, by which the individual may be adversely affected. In other words we do not have to take diseases from other people, we have the potential for most serious ailments always present within ourselves, but while our energies resources are maintained on a reasonable level, we are equipped by nature to successfully resist the inroads of these infections. Thus the bugs in us already are not encouraged to multiply or to increase and we may go through an entire lifetime with little if any trouble from them, not because they are absent, but because they will not develop their more dangerous aspects in a body, which is in a reasonable state of health.
It means from this that the beginning of sickness is nearly always devitalization, and devitalization is not simply lack of physical vitamins, it is not lack of nutrition alone. If nutrition would make us strong the american citizen would be the healthiest man since the greek cyclops, because the american today eats more than perhaps any other people. Having more to buy it with than most, he eats from two to three times as much as he needs and his selectivity, going heavily to rich foods, should make him exceedingly robust. As a result of that he's sick all the time. It is not his physical intake, which is the assurance of his vital resource. The physical intake supplies only certain types of energy. The real source of individual vitality is the magnetic field.
Therefore we observe in actual fact that an individual, who is strongly moved from within himself, has more vitality than can possibly result from a person moved by circumstances outside of himself. An individual, whose health is poor, finds a work in life that interests him and immediately his health is better, not because he has changed his diet, but because he has changed his mind. Available energy resources are blocked in us by our own negative relationships with life, and any emotion or attitude, which will bring down the corners of our mouths, cause a skull or cause us to lose an harmonious and rather blissful expression of features, any emotion which disturbs unpleasantly our faces, as Levata points out, is also hopelessly and completely bad for us at any time and under any condition. The idea of righteous indignation is false. It is not righteous indignation that should concern us. Where things are wrong and we realize that they are wrong it is positive understanding and not indignation that is needed, because the energy used in the indignation might otherwise be used in repairing the situation and most indignation leads to nothing.
So the person, having his energy resources available to himself, finds that he is drawing off these resources constantly in fear, in worry, in dissatisfaction, frustrated ambitions or just plain old-fashioned scatteredness, lack of self-discipline, organization, orientation, lack of pattern, lack of a program by means of which his life unfolds in a meaningful sequence of events. Thus drawing off energy it is the same situation as we have when we put too many electrical outlets on a circuit, ultimately something blows out and the thing that goes is usually the fuse and if we don't have the fuse so that it can go, maybe we put a penny in the fuse box then perhaps our line will go, because we have destroyed this the stop gap or the safety factor that has been introduced for our own protection.
What we call various types of sickness and difficulty are just exactly like the symptoms resulting from the blown out fuse or the burned out power line. It represents too heavy a load upon energies. It is perfectly possible for those who have studied these magnetic phases of medicine to realize, for example, that a good old-fashioned hate lasting for one hour will take more energy out of your magnetic field by disruption then probably to work with a pick and shovel for two or three weeks. You've lost your energy factor, you have exploded it, you have run it off as though you had opened a faucet and left it run. You have also energized negation as by an explosion and as a result of this the more intense the emotional outburst, the more immediate the reaction of fatigue. The individual is worn out and these high spells are followed by low spells, just as we have in the case of the paranoid, we have these tremendous alternations of tension and pressure. Wherever there is an exhaustion and waste of energy, there is an equivalent sudden down trend in energy, resulting in depression, morbidity and melancholia.
The more we permit these pressures therefore to build up, the more continuously we nurse them, the more energy we drain off for no good purpose whatever. As this energy is not available for the normal functions of the body, these functions are gradually affected and in the physical body there is a psychic polarity, for every type of energy, that exists in the magnetic field or the auric background of the body, in the magnetic field there are also bridges between these poles of energy and their corresponding bodily organic centers and functions. As man's emotions play upon these various parts of his nature, he disturbs one field or another, and if he chronically disturbs one field he will gradually develop the chronic symptomology in the physical body.
The first evidence of symptomological pressure or tension will be in what you might call functional ailment. You will find the disturbance of function. This disturbance of function will be found to closely follow moves. The individual becomes angry, this is followed by palpitation or tachycardia. The individual takes on certain mental and emotional stress and develops digestive symptoms. These symptoms represent the beginnings of polarizations between energy abuses and physical functional requirements. As time goes on and the abuse continues, the structure is more and more damaged by functional derangement, until there comes this mysterious point, which cannot be immediately determined and which cannot be accurately measured. The point in which functional disorder changes into structural disorder or organic trouble. Gradually the nervous symptomology begins to emerge in the form of a disease, representing damage to structure rather than nervous disorganization of function. The moment damage sets in, the problem of remedy becomes increasingly difficult. It is possible that certain ailments can be treated even after organic difficulties are present, but we can say without any question of doubt, that no repair in this department makes the structure as good as it would have been had it not been damaged. We can get to be comfortable, we can go along perhaps and carry our life with reasonable dignity, but no structure that has been organically damaged, will be quite as good as it was before, therefore every effort should be made to prevent this subtle transition between functional and organic arrangements. The moment the functional problem begins to show itself, a temperamental problem should be implied, should be immediately investigated, because happy, adjusted, contented people are not usually the victims of definite and difficult functional ailments, unless of course as in rare cases they result from accident or from neglected causes in childhood and things of that nature which can occur, but if they arise suddenly in the middle stream of light without adequate explanation, we may begin to suspect that they arise from nervous tension.
Now the doctor long ago, the old family physician, when he saw these psychological symptoms of varying degrees of hypochondria appearing, usually suggested the long sea voyage, a vacation, a change of air or something of that nature or perhaps even a change of relatives. Whatever was suggested was with the subconscious realization that the individual was making himself sick or was being made sick by circumstances around him. Well whether he's making himself sick or circumstances are making him sick, the most immediate remedy available to him is what might be termed “the mystical approach to life” and the moment he finds that his present way of life is not serving him well, he should look for another and superior way that can serve him better and can help him to meet these pressures, which will in a short time develop into discomforts of perhaps serious magnitude and if neglected long enough may be incurable ailments.
Mysticism then can begin at any time of life, the sooner the better. Very few persons have really begun too soon, the majority wait too late. But whether there be a sickness or no sickness, the mere fact that the individual becomes interested, or begins to give some consideration to emotional, psychical, mystical or religious overtones, this in itself indicates that somewhere within the subjective nature of ourselves a need has been expressed, a need has been recognized interiorly and that this need, having gradually come to be defined in the mind out of experience, out of consciousness, out of problem and relationship, this need should be given immediate attention and should become the basis of a restoration or reconstruction of any way of life that seems to have too many negative features.
The Mysticism for the average person begins through the smoothing out of certain untranquil attitudes. There are always two ways of approaching this, although there is only one fact involved. The individual may approach Mysticism in an effort to understand others or he may approach Mysticism in an effort to understand himself. While these are two prongs, they belong to one fork, for they are both essentially the same thing in different appearances. Assuming that the individual is of the more familiar and accepted type, he feels that his primary need is to be able to adjust to other people. He feels that something is wrong in his relationships. First various circumstances of which he is the natural activating principle are not going well. He is doing things and the results are not what he hoped to attain. The second possibility is that other people around him are doing things which he is unable to accept, or which cause natural indignation or resentment in himself, and he finds that he cannot control these instincts.
Lack of Mysticism is best expressed in the simple recognition that we cannot control the negative attitudes of ourselves, and that we gradually come to accept that these negative attitudes are causing us unhappiness, and out of unhappiness are undoubtedly laying the grounds to cause a sickness. When a person therefore says to himself “I know better, but can't do it, I believe in certain things, but when the moment arises the belief isn't strong enough to change action” or “I think about it afterwards and I know what I should have done, I see where was wrong but not until it is too late really to do anything about it”. Where thoughts like this begin to move in upon the individual, he is ripe for a reorganization of his life factors. Our main trouble in this type of reorganization is that we follow the habit of the medieval doctor, who did not know as much as we have learned later. We try to treat symptoms. The ancient doctor treated symptoms, wherever it hurt he put the poultice. The next doctor, came along a little later, he treated diseases. He opened the books of Galen and Avicenna, he found that a certain remedy was indicated for gallstones, so he handed it out to everybody who had gallstones and some got better, some got worse and some died, so then the physician went back and read Galen some more. But he was treating ailments. Now we're beginning to recognize that you don't treat symptoms and you don't treat diseases, you treat people and the individual who may happen to have some of these diseases happens to be also an individual and he has individual ways of having the most common ailment. Therefore the patent procedure of simply treating a disease may help some but it will injure others, because this disease is now a part of a temperament, it is a characteristic of a person. Consequently it is involved in the personality of the sufferer, so now we treat people.
On the plane of metaphysics or Mysticism we have the same principle involved. We don't treat symptoms that is a temper fit. We don't treat ailments that is a bad disposition. We treat people and when we start treating people we find out what Buddha taught, namely that whenever we start to treat people we treat only one thing which they all have in common - ignorance. Now ignorance is not present as or indicated by the inability to read and write. Ignorance is represented by the inability of the individual to make what he knows to be a constructive decision. If he isn't intelligent enough to do what he knows, he is ignorant, regardless of what he calls it, and weakness is therefore a form of ignorance. It is ignorance because the same kind of attitude which makes it quite impossible for the individual to do what is right, gives him multitudinous resources to do that which is not right, therefore we cannot say he's too weak, he is too ignorant to make the right decision, and the height of wisdom, the height of knowledge and the height of education leads to the power of right decision and without that the individual is not learned, regardless of his other attainments. So in the case of the mystic, Mysticism works with people. Mysticism escapes one of the most common difficulties that affect those seeking self-improvement and that is a head-on clash with their faults. The individual says “I am a liar, now for every time tell a lie I'm going to kick myself for doing it”. So pretty soon the individual begins to deceive himself about having told the lie, so that he won't be able or required to kick himself, or he'll find a new vicarious atonement to take the place of the kicking. You cannot treat him in this way. You cannot treat by simply forcing the individual to a head-on collision with his own faults. To do so is to present him with so terrible and apparent problem, that he simply falls to pieces in the presence of it. If he starts counting his faults the result is most discouraging. He finally decides he might as well die with his faults than to try to kill himself correcting them.
Actually this decision is not necessary because now, with Mysticism we are not working with faults, we're not working with temper, we're not working with a bad disposition, we're not working with the tendency to lie or to inebriation, we're not working with immorality or on morality. We're working with people, we're working with a human being, and if we begin to straighten out the inner consciousness relationships of that human being with the patterns of values in life, the unpleasant harvest from which he is suffering will gradually cease of itself. This is the principle of Zen, this is also the principle of Taoism, that Mysticism consists of the person coming into a degree of interior awareness of value, and the moment this awareness of value is stronger than a bad habit, the habit ceases. The moment the interior is stronger than the exterior, the exterior can no longer dominate, it no longer tries and there is no conflict, because the individual is forever trying to do what he wants to do. It is the purpose and end of Mysticism therefore, that his wants shall be re-educated at their root and that his primary desire will be to do that which is so, or that which is factual, or that which is true, and if this becomes his desire rather than his duty, if this becomes the thing he wants to do, then all impediment to doing it will be removed. It is only when he wants to do something else, that the impediment is greater than the resolution.
In Mysticism consequently we have a basic and proper approach to what you might term religious therapy. We have the mystical position cultivated not in order to get over symptoms or to correct dispositional faults, but upon a very simple basis, namely the natural desire of the individual to come to a state of conscious realization of his own divinity and his own relationship to the universal plan. When the individual experiences the guard consciousness in himself, recognizes his relationship to universal truth, this realization in itself begins this gradual process of removing the symptomological excesses. He will no longer be moved to certain action and as a result he will no longer be faced with certain inevitable reactions. The mystical situation also depends not upon a highly intellectualized concept, but upon one of the simplest and most natural and easy of all processes, and that is the devotional. Man is naturally, as Aristotle said, “a religious animal”. Man wishes to believe, man wishes to have faith, and the greatest sorrow that comes to the life of man is the loss of faith and that is why this present generation is working such a hardship upon man, it has undermined his faith, it has taken from him the power of simple and direct belief in value. Yet though this power has been apparently obscured and corrupted, still the instinct to it is present in nearly every human being, including the majority of agnostics. An agnosticism is a defense, it is a sick, hurt person rebelling against pain, rebelling against being disillusioned in a value. The agnostic is not a person who has made a positive adjustment with unbelief, but rather who has broken in some way his natural relationships with something he desperately wanted to believe, but which was taken away from him by a disillusioning circumstance.
Mysticism consequently has immediate and obvious advantages, it cuts through what might be termed the levels of intellectualism. The highly educated person has no greater capacity for Mysticism than the uneducated person. It has no respect for races, barriers, creeds or sex. It does not depend upon areas or locations, nor does it have any essential historical connotation. Mysticism is the universal availability of hope, which is possible to all individuals who are willing to hope, who are satisfied to make a motion toward hopefulness in themselves.
Now usually, as we have said, Mysticism arising in a cultivated or civilized people results from this illusion. It results from man losing faith in the physical world, upon which he has trusted his fortunes. He has departed from his own interior strength and invested his security in the collective strength of his kind. This collective strength has failed and he suddenly finds himself cast back upon his own resources, perhaps after generations in which these resources have been neglected and in which no direct effort has been made to cultivate them or make them available to him. Thus he suffers from disorientation, yet with it all he still has the basic instinct to hope. He also has a powerful desire to believe, he wishes and wants to believe in good, he wants to believe in the victory of right over wrong, he wants to believe in peace, in security, he wants to believe in the reality of integrity, he wants to believe that people are good and most of all he wants to believe that he is good, in spite of the evidence which he produces against himself by his very conduct in life. Under the pressure then of pain, sorrow, loss or frustration, this person having demonstrated to his own satisfaction that his previous supports are inadequate, turns almost instinctively toward a mystical outlook on life. If at this critical time he can come into the contact with something that meets this need, we find him moving toward it with very little personality resistance. He may not understand it, he may promptly abuse it, but still he is impelled toward it by the need and natural appetite of his own soul. In this situation the danger of abuse or of wrong indoctrination is not as great as it will be a little later, after a certain amount of reorientation has taken place. The immediate pressure of pain has been removed and the individual begins to think again in terms of temporal advantage. But in the moments when the real pain is upon him is a surprisingly honest person and proof has been shown that under pain and stress tremendous strength of character is revealed and many doctors are amazed at the wonderful fortitude of their patients in the presence of bad news. The individual seems to gain an heroic status stature in the presence of real problems and real dilemmas. It is small inconsiderate and inconsequential things that have a tendency to cause the greatest amount of concern and stress.
Meaning from this the Mysticism, coming in as a natural factor in the very makeup of man, can at the right time exercise a very strong and lasting influence, and it is cultivated, as we have said, not by the use of strength but by this attitude of letting go, of relaxing away from the dependence, the total dependence upon circumstantial factors. This is expressed for example in Mysticism through the prayer, which has always been a tremendous therapy in the life of man, because prayer accomplishes several purposes. The individual, entering into a state of true prayerfulness, enters into a state of receptivity, he enters into a state of detachment from personal attitudes or from the pressures of his own will, his own determination. Prayer is a restoration of childhood. It is the individual seeking parental guidance, seeking the help of the elder, seeking also guidance and protection from the archetypal overself, which is instinctively called upon when other things more tangible or more obvious have failed. In Mysticism prayer therefore begins to bridge the interval between the person and a root, or source, that is greater than the person. Prayer begins to reach out for help, for guidance, for consolation, but it is a lawful reaching, for it is based not upon our common conspiracies but upon an urgency and upon a prior acceptance of the essential or basic fact, that the answering of prayer must involve man's obedience to whatever the power may be which he supplicates.
Therefore man places himself in the position of being receptive to god, receptive to good, receptive to the presence of a divine factor in life. This receptivity is a declaration of allegiance. It is the individual affirming a union with this power and an acceptance of the rules, laws and principles which this power may require or demand. It is also the individual opening his nature to the motion of whatever is the best available part of himself. The magnetic field during prayer reveals certain psychological changes, which become extremely important. First of all the color of the field changes, because in prayer, not verbally merely muttered, but arising from the desperate need of the soul, arising out of the dark night of human travail, prayer in this case is a complete catharsis, it is a letting go, it is an acceptance that there is only one possible answer that life, problem and person must be returned to the guide and guardian care of a sovereignty greater than personal will or personal ambition. The individual therefore takes the attitude of trusting his weight upon infinite principles. In letting go the fight, in affirming that he cannot fight, but that rather he must ask for help and for guidance rather than to continue to follow his own egoism and batter his head against inevitables. This change in his psychic chemistry is represented by a tremendous simplifying of the vibratory pressures of the magnetic field. The field relaxes, lets down. The individual is no longer fighting, he is pleading. He is no longer demanding, he is beseeching. He is no longer asking for what he wants, rather he is asking for guidance as to what the universe wants. This reversal of position also produces a very wonderful psychological effects upon the person. Believing intuitively and instinctively as man does in the existence of this sovereign good, the individual is inevitably inclined to assume, that a sincere request, an honest and simple and devout supplication, will not go unanswered or unconsidered. That in some way this constitutes a kind of partnership, a new situation is set up. Each man united to his god is a majority. Each individual who feels that he has made his peace with the divine power at the root of life now senses a tremendous security in that power and feels that with the aid of this power all things, that are right and good, become possible. This has a tendency to renew or restore weakness of resolution. It causes the individual to sense that he is in partnership with that which cannot lose, therefore that he is now in a stronger relationship with life than ever before. But that that relationship depends from that time on on keeping open the channel between himself and the invisible divine source of his strength. If he offends that source, he deprives himself of that resource.
Thus a pact or a an agreement is instinctively and intuitively set up and the individual now has a friend, now as someone that understands, can never again be alone, can never again feel that the pressure of exteriors is in any way equal to the power of interiors and out of the simple but solid assurance that value bestows the orientation of the individual begins. Now he may abuse this it is quite possible that he will, and then under heavy sectarian indoctrination he may carry certain attitudes to an unreasonable and unhelpful extreme. If he does he will then bring down upon himself an appropriate retribution, he will ultimately be caused to perceive that this also is a pressing cause of trouble, but assuming that he remains reasonably simple, reasonably devout, he now experiences a partnership, he begins to see a world in which divine factors are increasingly obvious to him. Having come to the simple interior experience, that god does run his world. that universal principles and universal laws do exist, and that partnership and cooperation with these laws is the secret of personal security, as these things become more evident to us our attitudes about unreasonableness, or falseness, or our doubts about providence, or our suspicions and our criticisms are appropriately reduced.
Once we have interiorly sensed the thing as it is, we cannot be fooled quite so much by outward appearances or by so-called accidents and incidents. We begin to fight to keep things in order rather than to fight to take them apart. The individual who previously, without anchorage within himself, considered it a bad day in which he did not find something wrong with something, now finds it a bad day when he cannot find something right with something. Whereas previously he was searching for darkness and trying to prove its existence, he is now seeking for light and is forever discovering it, for what we look for, we find. The mystic, having decided to look for something good, finds it. The materialist without this determination, without this decision to search for good, does not have the same attitude, he does not have the power to perceive the light in its relationship to the enveloping darkness, you may see the darkness more than the light.
Mysticism, through prayer therefore and through interior orientation, helps the person to live in a world ruled over by divine truth, a world of the one, the beautiful and the good, a world essentially sublime, and from this sublimity of experience he gains an increasing tolerance of the appearances of things, which would appear to deny this sublimity. He begins to understand, how it is, that in some things truth is more deeply locked than in others, and that what we consider to be evil is merely truth, locked in error. That it is not really evil, but the inability of the other person to see the good that we have begun to discover, and instead of becoming proud over the discovery we realize that mutual happiness and mutual good should impel us and encourage us to share in the purposes and labors of distributing the sense of good, and that the person who doesn't have it is our splendid opportunity and not something which we should turn from with irritation and resentment.
As we go with this same situation just a little further, we also recognize that Mysticism is therapeutic in another way, namely that it has a strong moderating influence upon the various ambitions and attitudes of persons. The moment the individual begins to change a sense of value, he is not so likely to be a slave of wrong value. Most persons sicken and die because of their servitude to wrong values. Inordinate ambitions are resulting in many many deaths every day, young executives in their 40s and 50s dropping dead simply because they are pressing too hard, fighting too hard, trying too desperately to live above the normal and reasonable probabilities of a sane career. Trying to satisfy the selfishness of others and their own ambitions, they are destroying themselves.
Mysticism by changing our standard of values makes it unnecessary for us to compete with other foolish people. It enables us to recognize what is right for us, what we can do and how we should do it, but it also gives us a certain realization that value is not essentially material. We are here, we have to meet the burdens of being here, we must face the costs of our lives, but the great values of life do not lie in unreasonable or inordinate ambitions or accumulations. Thus the person can be relieved of that tremendous pressure, which may drive him to an early grave.
Seeking rather a moderation in all things, moderating his desires to his means, moderating his means to his ideals and principles, he can live well, simply, generously able to contribute something to the common good, but not a slave to the passions and pressures of the economic pattern, which is driving us so far astray in this present generation. So Mysticism by moderation helps us to keep smooth, keep calm, keep orderly and keep quiet inside of ourselves, and from this quietude, which is one of the great fruits of Mysticism, we can do things simply, naturally, graciously, with a minimum of tension and a maximum of efficiency. There is no efficiency in disorganized activity. The individual, whose actions are under compulsion, wastes both time and energy in addition to setting up situations that may be regretted for the rest of a lifetime. By smoothing out these intensities the individual takes on only such burdens as are suitable to him, handles his problems and affairs with dignity and honor, is indifferent to the exceptional excess or success which may demand compromise of principles, and under such conditions he enjoys a far greater measure of health and contentment, than would otherwise be likely or possible.
Now in all nations and among most peoples your prayer disciplines are supported or strengthened by other mystical procedures. These mystical procedures are generally covered under the heading of concentration, or meditation, or some form of internal metaphysical visualization of values. Under such concepts we have the mandala systems of Tibet and China, we have the various religious images symbolisms, which we find in so many religions, where certain symbols, figures, emblems or effigies become indicative of certain attitudes of consciousness. These all have to do, as in the case of Sufi Mysticism, with the individual gradually supporting by his interior imaginative faculty certain convictions of his own conscience or consciousness. He begins the creative integration of positive resources.
Now have you ever noticed how a life, locked in a psychosis, can gradually lose all boundaries of reality and live in a totally imaginary world. An imaginary world filled with pain and hurt and suffering and misery. A world which has no real existence, except in the person, who is dedicated to this kind of an interpretation of things. Imagination has crucified this person, has created in them a misery that is more terrible than most diseases can ever be. Yet this same imagination. the same imaging power within the self, can if turned into a positive direction, in a positive way, begin the creation of a rich interior mystical life. The purpose of imagination is really that man may anticipate by his own functions the truths which he knows to be true. In other words man may not immediately experience the blessedness of total interior adjustment, but because he believes that it exists he can begin to visualize it, to sense its motion within himself, to create symbols of it in his own consciousness, until by degrees he builds within himself the kind of a world he wants to live in. Now if he does this psychotically and under pressure, he will simply become an introvert, he will simply lock his inner life, therefore it is not that he shall use this mystical garden of Sardi, as the muslim called it, as an escape. He is not going to leave this world for an imagination world and huddle there till he dies. This is not the purpose of Mysticism. But the purpose of Mysticism is that man shall experience something interiorly of the possible world of good, of beauty, of truth and of life, by which he is sustained and from which he is actually divided only by the narrow curtain of his own objective consciousness.
Thus Mysticism as visualization, or contemplation, or meditation consists of the internal sustaining of a realization. It is the individual conjuring with his own interior power, a mood, a concept of things which transcends intellection and causes this person to build a rich life of true value within himself. It just as the political reform is forever trying to set up an ideal commonwealth, so the mystical reform is forever trying to set up within himself an ideal self, a self the very nature and quality of which is identical with god and good. The mystic is seeking to experience or to know, inwardly first, as verification and fulfillment, that these things which he intellectually and emotionally believes can be made to be true, can be experienced or known as truth, can be vindicated by experience.
As he goes inward and begins to work with this magic garden which he is creating, he finds also here an alchemy constantly operating. He discovers that he can weed out mistakes in this imaginary laboratory just as easily as he can in life. He perceives inwardly that certain moods, attitudes, reactions destroy the beauty of his secret garden. He sees how an hour of temper can frost this beautiful plant of the soul, which he is trying to cultivate. He becomes faced with a simple fact either to preserve the beauty of this internal life or else to sacrifice it and he comes ultimately to know that this decision is his own and that by the wrong use of energy he simply destroys the dream that he himself has built. That he actually commits therefore a most serious offense because the attack upon value in reality is an attack upon the whole fairy land of the soul. It is an attack upon all the beauty, all the truth, all the essential goodness that he has learned to love and venerate, and the immediate reaction of wrong action upon a person, who has already attained some measure of internal mystical integration, this reaction is so obvious, so undeniable, so discomforting and disappointing in itself, that it is seldom repeated. The individual is now under the censorship of values, values arising from quietude.
You also learns that this quietude contrary to common belief is not negative and it is not artificial, it is not weak, but he discovers a tremendous vibratory industry going on in this quietness. He discovers for example that as he comes into quietness he becomes the best of himself. He has thought that he had to prove his own abilities by going out and doing things. He suddenly discovers that in quietude he first knows himself, that in quietude he first finds himself and that in quietude he also finds the fulfillment of those things which are most valuable. He finds first the pause for reflection, he finds the possibility of deepening and broadening his feelings, he becomes aware of his own feelings and what they really mean for the first time, and he goes still deeper into this mystical situation, he also discovers that he is continuously occupied, that he is busier than he ever was before and yet what he is doing, this tremendous motion, that he feels within himself is above thought. He cannot say that he is thinking of this or thinking of that, he is simply completely engaged, totally occupied and out of this total occupation, that gradually dawns this sense of becomingness, this sense of intimate relationship, gradually out of this he seems to find a kinship with life in total. He finds that individual things are not as important as he thought but that total things are experienced in the interior quietude of life. Also that these things experienced are not rationalized, nor made logical, nor is it essentially necessary that they should be. We do not have to explain that which we know, we only have to explain what we don't know and hope someone else will believe. We don't have to justify that which by experience is total good. There is no need to be logical because we are not dealing with logical theorems. Logic and reason are means by which we are seeking for something, trying to find that which is hidden, but if we discover that which is hidden and experienced by direct participation the consciousness of that thing, its logic and its reason are no longer significant. Therefore logic and reason belong to the pathway, but realization belongs to the end of the path and that which is realized interior is no longer subject for debate and discussion, and knowing this the mystic will not debate, nor will he enter into controversy with any man on any belief. All he will try to do is to so preserve the calmness of his interior life, that he will lure the other person towards a calmness also, and by not entering into controversy will free the other person of further illusion, and if the other person is sensitive at all, perceiving quietude and its effect, he will search for the same within himself.
Therefore Mysticism is not a doctrine for conversion, it is the individual substituting an experience for an opinion, and man discovers, by this inward fact, that opinions may lead to sickness, falseness, and death. But that experience, honorably and honestly interiorly required and brought about by proper means, will forever reveal life, truth, and beauty. Consequently interior experience through realization, through contemplation, through mystical appreceptions will gradually bring the health and the body into a conformity with laws of principles and of beauties and thus assist us in the maintaining of health.
So when we do not feel good, let us be still and seek for the root reality in ourselves. If we can achieve to this, we will understand our more passing feeling and we'll discover in all probabilities how this feeling is telling us a beautiful story that we need to know, instead of being frightened by symptoms we will immediately be grateful, that they have revealed to us something that must be brought to our consciousness, and which once having reached our consciousness and caused us to correct the error, will no longer need to burden us, afflict us or create difficulties for us. In this way we have in Mysticism a powerful instrument in therapy.
