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| Simplified Scientific Christianity |
The first part of the Rosicrucian Fellowship Healing Service is an inspirational reading. Its purpose is to rouse intense feeling in the participants. Intense feeling will take prayers deep into the spiritual worlds, where they can draw on Life Spirit, the source of all healing. The reading also brings the participants to a common focus on the white rose in the center of the Rosicrucian emblem. The service is a means to produce a thought form to receive and hold the healing force, which is then gathered from the inner worlds by the Invisible Helpers. After the reading, there is a long, deep prayer session. When the prayer session is finished, the reader covers the emblem and says: “We will now leave the liberated healing force with Christ and the Invisible Helpers to be used where it is most needed.”
Spiritual healing is a large and deep subject, worthy of volumes, too much for one short essay. Even big endeavors have small beginnings. It has been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. This essay is a baby step that may be faltering. It will focus on the final five words of the Healing Service, “where it is most needed”.
Plato, who Max Heindel told us was an Initiate, said much about healing. Some of what he said on the subject, that is relevant to our topic, is in the dialog named The Charmides, a dialog about temperance:
Plato taught holistic health thousands of years before the New Agers. Temperance was the means to bring body, soul and the whole being into balance. What temperance is, was never reached in the dialog, but that is irrelevant to our purposes. Plato’s view of healing is in rough agreement with the Rosicrucian philosophy, which also teaches that physical and spiritual healing are complementary for lasting cures, but more of that later.
In his late thirties, this writer came down with a serious case of pneumonia. When it persisted, further diagnosis found that he had a large, cancerous, bronchial tumor. It was a rare variety which has its origin when the lungs separate from the intestines in the embryo. At that time, intestinal stem cells sometimes go to the lungs where they produce a tumor. Cancer had been with him during his entire life, before it was discovered around age forty. Much to the chagrin of his physicians, he decided to do alternative therapy. He read a shelf of books on the subject, and settled on Gerson’s Therapy. This choice agreed with the findings of Michael Lerner, PhD, in his excellent book, Choices In Healing, published by MIT Press at a later date than this writer’s illness. The therapy was partially successful. The writer’s body was regenerated to vigorous health. The therapy held the cancer at a standoff, but the tumor remained. The therapy might have been completely successful, if the patient had used natural pancreatic enzymes, which are used in most successful alternative therapies, to break down tumors. He refused to do that because he didn’t want to live by taking the lives of animals. Eventually, surgery was necessary, but no other therapy was necessary because his health was otherwise excellent. In studying alternative therapy, he learned that malignant tumors are easier to eradicate than benign tumors. The reason for this is that the intelligence of the body, as a whole, knows what is more dangerous to it, and it goes after the source of danger in proportion to the degree of danger. Thus, the notion of treating the whole of the body, held by Plato and the Rosicrucian philosophy, proves true in practice. The intelligence in the body knows where healing is most needed.
The body does not have to be thought of as we normally think of it. The way we think of it is short-sighted. An evolutionary view of the body is much better for us. We usually think of it as a discrete thing of single use for one lifetime. Even students who believe in rebirth, see it as a form which is discarded at death. At best, successive bodies are seen as beads on a necklace of rebirth. Actually, the physical body is an evolutionary entity, a creation which passes through numerous stages and changes. The Rosicrucian philosophy tells us it began as a thought form in the Saturn Period, when our solar, creative manifestation was no more dense than a concrete thought. At that time we, were mineral-like, and our experience and service were to provide substance for things formed by other creative beings, much as our current minerals do now. The physical body persisted and evolved through plant-like and animal-like stages in the Sun and Moon Periods respectively, until it became a human form in the present Earth Period. Even in the Earth Period it has passed through many changes. In the Polarian Epoch its form (but not its size) was more like a virus than the magnificent organism it is now. A good way to begin to have a better idea of it, is to conceive of it as analogous to one of those videos published by art museums, wherein a face in one famous painting morphs into the face of another famous painting, and so on. The chief difference is that the human form passes in and out, through the spiritual worlds, in different evolutionary periods as it morphs. All of the experiences of form, substance and other physical qualities, are recorded in the heart of it. Nothing is lost. Every experience of form is incorporated into it. Everything that is, and was, is part of it. Everything becomes the basis of form in new creative expressions within the divine scheme of creation. This “everything” includes the errors we have made along the way by breaking the laws of nature in the various worlds we evolve through. There is a kind of wisdom and cosmic logic in this form, and there is divine intelligence of the Spirit that created it and works through it. Due to the limits of matter, and of our creative abilities, we cannot, at this time, manifest everything into one physical body and one lifetime. One might say we have a backlog of material destiny. With the help of the Recording Angels, we work out what is most needed in a given rebirth according to the logic of the whole. Thus, each edition of the body, and its lifetime, has its own logic, and that logic is in harmony with the logic of the whole evolutionary body. Healing, if it to be true and lasting, must be in harmony with this logic, in large and small.
All of this seems very complicated. One feels that it will be a long time before one will be able to understand it enough to become a physical healer, perhaps several rebirths. That is true, if one is speaking about direct physical healing, like Christ, who reshaped bodies. Healing doesn’t have to be complicated. Wondrous things have been done without complication. Healings have come about through simple prayer done according to the will of the Father.
Prayer is an act of magic. Magic is an act of utilizing divine creative forces which transcend the forces normally active in the physical world. Though the spiritual forces used in magic supersede the regular laws of physics, they are not lawless. Max Heindel tells us that the more access we have to higher spiritual powers, the more moral restrictions are placed on us. The moral onus is huge. Even in a simple prayer of healing for a friend, it is important that some form of “thy will be done” be part of the prayer. It is also important to not violate the will of the recipient of the prayer. Healing through Life Spirit is a form of grace that Christ offers us. Though offered, we are free to receive it or not. Everyone has that freedom, and it is not to be overridden.
One must exercise good judgment about the appropriateness of restrictions to prayer. If one becomes too restrictive, not much prayer would be done. It might be okay to pray for someone without their knowledge, provided there is a proviso in the prayer that they accept the prayer at some level of their being. There have been times in this writer’s life when he has been saved from making serious errors by receiving unrequested prayers which, in his desperation, he was open to receiving. The principle in this seems to be that the more direct and specific an act of magic, the more knowledge (especially moral and spiritual knowledge) the practitioner must have, and the more acceptance is important as a factor. The Invisible Helpers request weekly acceptance.
Prayer is a skill which must be used with respect, knowledge, and care. Tolstoy tells a Russian folk tale of a man doing a kindness to a stranger he meets on a path. The stranger was an angel in human form who tells him that, because of his kindness, it is granted to him that whatever he wants done, will be done, until sundown. The man continues on his way and encounters someone being beaten, which he wishes wasn’t so, and his wish is granted. He has other encounters along the way, in which he wishes that things that he saw, were different from what they were, and his wishes were granted. He feels good about his deeds. At sundown he meets the angel again. The angel takes him back along the way and reveals that every act that he changed was not for the better, as he thought it was, and that he had actually interfered with something good in the making. His blessing was not that his wishes were granted. It was that he learned that more complete knowledge of what was happening is more important than merely having wishes granted to change things on the basis of appearances. It is like that with spiritual healing. The more specific and direct an application of healing, the more one must know to ethically apply the healing force. Sometimes the best prayer is a prayer to help the patient to understand why he/she is suffering. It took this writer four years of suffering with cancer, and five years after the surgery, to understand why he had the cancer. To this day, some forty years later, he still receives insights into it. Astrology was helpful in coming to understanding, but not as important as facing himself. He had to admit to himself that were some not nice things about himself that were behind the cancer. In most illnesses the patient doesn’t know why the illness has come about until well after death, most likely in second or third heaven, when the experience is digested and assimilated. What is most needed can be as important as where it is most needed. Wisdom and insight are often more important than removing symptoms. Oliver Wendell Holmes has a wonderful line of poetry about this: “Weep not for those who bear the cross, but for those who bear the cross without the glory.”
To understand healing, it is helpful to understand how illness comes about. Illness becomes manifest in the concrete worlds in the way that everything becomes manifest in the creation. It follows the same cosmological path that healing does, and the same laws of nature. Illness entered our human stream of evolution at the time of what is called “the fall”. At that time our individualities were nascent, and weak, in self-consciousness. We were easily misguided. In fear and insecurity, born in the burgeoning awareness of the death of our dense physical bodies, we were led to believe that together, we could have immortality by using the creative force to generate new bodies at will. It was not a lie. It was a partial truth. The missing part of the whole was that, if the creative force was not used in harmony with the laws of the greater creation, we would introduce discord, and unintended consequences, in microcosm and macrocosm, into the creation, things such as hardening materialism, illness, and other woes. We cannot isolate our deeds.What happened at the fall, was that we, as Selves (there was no lower nature yet), chose to use the creative force before we knew how to use it harmoniously with the laws of nature. We were tempted, but we cannot blame the tempters, or the temptation, for our choices. All of this means that we, as creative spiritual beings, Selves, are skewed in our self-conceptions. We are not ill as Selves, which are spiritual beings, but we are in want of spiritual healing to correct the misconceptions we have about ourselves.
As creative beings, we manifest our creations in the concrete worlds. Our creations include our various bodies and our lives, much of which are created in concert with others. All manifestation in the concrete worlds begins with concrete thought. This is true even when the desire body purloins the concrete mind to its own ends. At the will of the thinker, concrete thoughts become clothed in desire. Desires motivate action or life in the ethers. Actions precipitate forms and conditions in the chemical, physical world. This simple cosmological train of vertical causation is far-reaching in explaining illness and many other things. For example, selfish thoughts produce selfish desires, which produce selfish actions, which produce limiting physical conditions, such as disease. Though simple, many of these manifestations become amazingly complex, especially when they are developed over several lifetimes, as we try to avoid unpleasant consequences.
In the same way that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, health begins in simple actions. The first step in spiritual, preventative medicine and healing, is thought control. The Rosicrucian philosophy teaches that the concrete mind is in the early stages of its development. It is still pliable, whereas the dense, physical body is our most mature vehicle and does not lend itself to immediate change. “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” With concerted effort, one can gain control of the concrete mind. That is what our concentration exercise is about. One can substitute positive thoughts for habitual negative thoughts. This requires one, in spirit, to be alert and aware of one’s thinking and thought patterns, so this is also a spiritual exercise in self-awareness. Doing this strengthens the thinker, the mind, and the archetype which, in turn, improves the quality of life, health and longevity. Thought control isn’t easy. Some of its benefits are immediate and others will take a while. It may take several lives to accomplish complete thought control. In any case, the goal is a worthy goal, and one of the better ways we can spend our energy.
Much of the Rosicrucian approach to health is prevention. Starting on the road to health by changing thinking is a top down approach. Top down methods often require time to be effective. It takes time for a thought to mature, and work through the higher worlds into the physical world. There are often circumstances when time is of the essence. If someone has suffered a severe wound and is bleeding profusely, or if someone has just suffered a stroke, it is no time to preach the virtues of changing one’s thinking. Emergency conditions require emergency action. Modern medicine has many excellent means to handle emergencies. Max Heindel points out that by changing one’s life by improving one’s diet, taking exercise, and developing positive attitudes, many illnesses and emergency conditions can be avoided. Even such a simple thing as curtailing overeating can decrease the likelihood of colds, and getting ample sunshine can do the same for the flu. Not all preventative practices are spiritually correct. Some methods of prevention in vogue in allopathy are not good, and many involve moral and social issues.
One of these issues involves the notion of overpopulation, which might not be an issue—“the Recording Angels are above mistakes”. Because of this, some pregnancies are considered undesirable, some are even considered merely inconvenient. It is now the law in the United States that abortion is legal. This writer is by no means pro abortion, but he does realize that abortion is a moral and spiritual issue that cannot be solved by laws for or against it. It is only by raising moral and spiritual consciousness that the issue of abortion can be resolved. Parturition is a natural process near the end of the causal train mentioned above. The Recording Angels are helping individuals to work out their destiny, and creative works, through this natural process. By the time of an abortion, a good deal of effort has been put into the intended birth by various spiritual beings. To abort is to thwart both destiny and natural processes, and it will, no doubt, have grave consequences. Some choose to go farther up the causal chain and use birth control. That is better, in that it avoids wasting energy and unwanted pregnancy, but it does nothing to redirect the creative energy, or fulfill destiny. It also does nothing to reform desire. Better is not best. The best is to go to the top of the causal chain and catch the impulse before it becomes a thought. In our times, most would consider this suggestion laughable. It might be, since so few are in control, or even want to be in control of their thinking. However, since we know better, it is our duty to address the issue of misuse of the creative force since it is so important. We must speak out even though we may not always be able to live up to the highest standard of conduct. If we don’t try, it will never happen. Our portion of the creative force is the greatest power that we have. It is the force which creates, sustains, transforms and dissolves everything in the cosmos, and the cosmos itself. All healing, and other forms of magic, are accomplished through its agency. Once aroused the creative force, and the procreative desire, are almost impossible to deny. If it is transmuted, it is the intense feeling that propels successful healing prayers. We have had many lives of developing the habit of uninhibited, and untransmuted, sexual expression. Society and most medical and psychological authorities teach that a free, fluent sexual life is healthy. From these things, we can see that the way to a completely healthy future for humanity is an uphill struggle. Since the creative force is central and fundamental to health and healing, this is centrally important. The Adversary, who harvests us for creative energy, and the experience generated by its misuse, knows this is important and does what it can to keep us in our deviant ways.
Most of modern medicine is bottom up, if even that. For many conditions, it merely manipulates apparent symptoms through pharmaceuticals. Often this merely shifts sufferings to “side effects”. This is done, even though the most basic courses in physiology teach balance, in the form of homeostasis, is necessary for the proper functioning of the human organism. The list of “side effects” on a label, or in a pharmaceutical advertisement, are terrifying. Due to materialism most physicians don’t know, or don’t believe, there is a top-down or spiritual approach to health and healing. When this writer mentioned his soul searching to find inner reason for his cancer, the physician told him to not do that, because it would only produce a burden of guilt. It didn’t. In fact, it relieved self-negation that had been with him most of his life.
Besides being bottom-up, modern medicine is a product of the “fall” in another way. We fell because we were made aware of the death of our physical bodies in such a way that we feared death. We took a wrong path to assuage our fear. Since then we have been preoccupied with death. Death has become the way that we deal with our problems. Our preoccupation with death is more than murder and warfare. If we have enemies to our crops, we kill the enemy — death. When the crop poisons are taken into our bodies they cause cancer. Then we try to kill the enemy that is cancer with more poisons like chemotherapy and radiation — death. We try to kill every other bacterium, fungus, or virus that we think threatens our health. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it tries to protect life with deathly measures, and the life forms, which are the final causes of disease, mutate and evolve while we, at the same time, are not evolving. We want to evolve by strengthening our immune systems. We want to evolve by changing our attitudes to something pro life, something pro-evolutionary.
There is another thing we do, with regard to disease, that we do in fear. We try to block disease. We seem to think disease is something that merely happens, almost something random. An illness, especially a major illness likely to end in death, doesn’t just happen. Almost all of the important experiences in life are destined. They are built into the archetypes of our lives and bodies as we prepare to come to rebirth. We build our archetypes with the help of the Recording Angels, “who are above mistakes”, as our healing service tells us. In illness we suffer. When we suffer, the effects of the suffering sinks into our inner being as soul material. Eventually, when the soul material from suffering is assimilated into the Spirit, the Spirit is awakened, learns from the experience, and makes corrections. Most of this learning and correction comes after death. Sometimes, learning and correcting takes more than one rebirth. Suffering is not an efficient means to soul growth, in the way that retrospection is, but it is sure and effective. This writer was improved in character from suffering his bout with cancer.
It is our misdeeds — most notably our errant thoughts and desires—that crystallize into diseases and limiting medical conditions. Emerson said, with wit and wisdom, that “a sick man is a sinner found out”. The consequences of our misdeeds are indubitable, unless we do something about them. As a first step, accepting one’s condition as a consequence of one’s past behavior, is spiritually healthy. Accepting the conditions presented to us by destiny must not be passive. We are divine beings, and it our duty to actively participate in our destinies with creative transmutation. Attempting to block the consequences is not transmuting. Learning the spiritual causes of one’s condition is the next step toward transmutation. If the individual in the sick bed, who cries out “why me?” would pray and listen inwardly for an answer to that question, improvement and evolutionary progress could begin immediately, instead of having to wait until after death.
In passing, it must be mentioned that it is perverse to seek out illness. To do so is a mild form of masochism in need of psychological healing. Acceptance, as part of regeneration, is different from invitation.
Prevention is far more efficient in soul growth, than struggling with the consequences of past misdeeds. Blocking illness is not prevention. Blocking only defers destiny, even though we, in our spiritual darkness have become quite skilled at blocking through material science and medicine. Blocking doesn’t transmute, and sometimes it has immediate, harmful side effects. It is grossly inefficient to defer destiny to another rebirth. In our spiritual darkness, the best prevention is to know and understand one’s character, and then to transmute the flaws into virtues, into something positive. Astrology and retrospection are excellent tools to do this.
The goal of all healing methods is to render disease extinct. Proponents of blocking believe that can be done one disease, or family of diseases, at a time as they arise. This philosophy is ex post facto, after the disease has arisen. Max Heindel tells us something which demonstrates that this philosophy might not work:
“But man is a creator by means of his thoughts, and the evil thoughts, the thoughts of fear and hatred, do take form and in the course of centuries they crystallize into what we know as bacilli. The bacilli of infectious disease are particularly the embodiments of fear and hate, and therefore they are also vanquished by the opposite force, courage.”
“Bacilli” includes viruses and prions as well as bacteria. There are 320,000 known viruses that infect mammals, at the time of this writing. Blocking one microbe, or a family of microbes, may not protect us from the next one we are prone to create. Changing our thinking gets at the root of the problem. Fear exacerbates it. If there were to be a blocking method that would provide the same soul growth that would come from living out the ripe destiny, it would probably be a good thing. However, that doesn’t exist anymore than there is a pill to give courage to resist disease.
In ignorance of rebirth, and the principle of cause and consequence, fear has become institutionalized. Most nations and states have laws to mandate blocking procedures, especially for the most vulnerable, infants and little children. These laws cannot be avoided without eschewing “civilization”. This being true, the best parents can do to protect vulnerable little bodies, is to defer as long as possible, to allow the newborn organism to develop strength to withstand the shock of the process.
The developers, producers, deliverers and proponents of blocking are not bad people. It is likely they will not suffer a horrible destiny. Their intent is good. They are doing as well as they can with what they know. That they don’t know better is our fault for not providing better spiritual education.
In this, as in all things, we must weigh our options. The spiritual life is about sacrifice. Suppose an elderly aspirant has an important work to carry to completion in the final years of life. In such a case, using a blocking method in the face of a real and imminent threat, might be the judicious sacrifice to make. This writer has such a friend, of high regard, who has done so, and this writer considers it noble. In this world of limitations there are often no absolutes. We must always exercise good judgment.
Earlier in this essay it was stated that creative materialization follows a cosmological path. Our lives and bodies are creative materializations. Our lives and bodies begin with the Self, the Thinker, and follow the path of thoughts to desires to the ethers and, finally to physical forms. Before we come to birth, the Spirit creates an archetype of our lives, and the various bodies we need to live them. In this preparation, cooperation is required. Because we are only beginners at creating, we need help. Help is given by the Recording Angels who understand the workings of destiny, which we do not. For example, we may not understand what, from our destiny from past rebirths, is ripe for transformation in this rebirth. We also need help because our individualities have been misguided, which is what precipitated our fall. In our weakness we would shrink and shirk.
Cooperation and assistance are necessary at every step of the cosmological path. In the world of thought, where we build the archetype, we need assistance because we are far from being perfect thinkers. We also need to cooperate because we do not live in isolation. Our individual archetypes must mesh with the archetypes of others, humans and even other kinds of beings. Even the stuff of the worlds and the bodies we form in those worlds, must be used with cooperation. Error is possible at every step along the way.
In creating the archetype the contents of the seed atom of each of our bodies is taken into account, and the archetype includes their contents. This means that each of our vehicles will be built according to how we have lived in them in the past, plus a little new creative advancement, which varies in quantity from individual to individual. According to past deeds and omissions, an individual might have a good mind and a self-centered orientation in the desire body, for example. The variety and the details are almost unlimited as we see in those around us, no two are alike. When the archetype is complete and ready, it is set spinning, so to speak, by the will to live. It is activated when conditions in the various worlds are such that the purpose of the life can be fulfilled—sometimes individuals are born ahead of the times, and sometimes individuals are born behind the times. In this, it is important to note, that the possibility of illness is built into our lives and bodies. We accept those negative possibilities if we haven’t learned from our past lives, and continue to err, as we have in the past. Illness comes from within, not from without. If we do not have the seeds of a disease within us, we will not contract that disease no matter how contagious it might be. Destiny is perfectly fair, if we can see clearly and deeply enough into it. It should be added, that all of us are sufficiently similar, in some respects, to contract a contagion of epidemic proportions. It is obviously unwise to act as though one is invulnerable to a contagious disease unless one knows without doubt that one is invulnerable—few are. In passing, it seems necessary to note that, if one rouses fear, or some other inwardly debilitating state, in another, that individual might activate the possibility which would not otherwise be activated. We are our “brother’s keepers”.
Spiritual healing follows the same cosmological path as coming to rebirth and manifesting a disease. It begins with a thought form. In the Rosicrucian Healing Service participants build a thought form through intense, feelingful prayer. The Rosicrucian philosophy teaches us that thought forms are vacuums. The healing thought form is a vacuum to receive and hold Life Spirit. All healing comes from Life Spirit. Life Spirit is the source of the Self, and all of its creative manifestations. The nature and character of Life Spirit is all-encompassing, and beyond our limited language. Nonetheless, Max Heindel has done a superb job of giving us some idea of Life Spirit in its attributes. He tells us the three attributes of Life Spirit are: life, light, and love. Each of these attributes seems to fit perfectly into a stage of the cosmological path of concrete manifestation.
The Life in Life Spirit means more than vitality. Vitality is found in the reflective projection of Life Spirit as the etheric subdivision of the physical world. The word that comes to mind when contemplating Life Spirit is “purpose”. If divinity is anything in its creation, it is purposeful. A life of purpose is an undeniable life. In its expression, even the vitality of life in the ethers seems impossible to thwart. In our nascent individualities, we fell because we were deflected from the cosmic purpose of the creation. We thought selfishly about our mortality. If an individual finds purpose in life, that individual becomes unstoppable. Imbuing the Self with purpose from Life Spirit is a first step to complete spiritual healing.
When an individual has a keen sense of truth, we say that individual is enlightened. The mind is formed from, and by, the light of truth, and its purpose is to give form to that light. The concrete mind is ruled astrologically by Mercury, who also rules phosphorous. The word phosphorous means “light bearer”. The more clearly the Spirit functions in the concrete mind, the more it can experience and express the light of truth, and the more true will be its thinking. Enlightened thinking is a second step toward complete spiritual health. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
One is always hesitant to speak or write about love, because of the awareness of one’s inadequacy at being a vessel for it. It is painful to recognize this inadequacy. It is a sweet pain because of its purifying and redemptive qualities, but it is still painful. It takes courage to love. On the other hand, love gives courage. However, we must love, especially if we want to heal, and be healed. Healing restores wholeness. Life Spirit is whole in every sense of the word. It is beautiful how the wholeness of Life Spirit is manifest in creation. Its life is manifest in selfhood, with purpose; its light is manifest in the concrete mind, in clear thought; and its love is manifest in the desire world, where it is most needed. The love of Life Spirit is the octave of love in the desire world. Love through attraction permeates everything in the desire world, even the nasty stuff. An influx of Life Spirit love into the desire world, rectifies everything in it. The Life Spirit love of Christ significantly and permanently changed the desire body of the earth, which made spiritual aspiration more available. Accepting the love of Life Spirit in grace, clears our attachments to our desires in what is called the forgiveness of sins. “Go and sin no more.” The healing power of Life Spirit is obvious, even to sinful eyes.
Few have done the work to evolve the ability to directly access Life Spirit. Christ-Jesus could, at will. Most who do reach Life Spirit, do so in response to urgent need, and it is done through extreme appeals. Even in Rosicrucian Healing prayer meetings, where there is a procedure designed to access Life Spirit, it doesn’t happen often. Rarely does a prayer session end with all participants having tears streaming down their cheeks. Our prayers are effective anyway, but they are not as potent as our hearts would have them be. We draw damlpness, when we want a gushing stream. Fortunately, taking our inadequacies to heart, in the face of dire suffering, spurs us to strive more ardently, so eventually we will succeed. We have a promise that we will succeed, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater…”.
Few have done the work to directly receive Life Spirit, either as a healer or a patient. The experience of seeing Christ in Life Spirit even temporarily blinded Saul physically, and he was a strong soul. Even those around him were struck speechless. The experience of Life Spirit is not to be understood from this as something terrible, because actually it is wonderful. It is also something subtle and powerful. Many would miss the experience, if presented with it, because of its subtlety, and because of their focus on worldly things. In others the effect might be explosive due to the contamination in their souls In most, it would be wondrous, but also wasted, because of their inability to use it. This is why obedience is essential in patients seeking to receive spiritual healing. We don’t pour molten gold on the ground, we make a mold to hold it and display its rare beauty. Life Spirit is more precious than gold. Life Spirit is love-wisdom, and it is whole, so it knows where it is most needed.
Complete spiritual healing to wholeness is our ultimate goal, but it is a distant goal, for both patients and those who would be healers. This goal is not reached in one leap. Waiting and idling will certainly not bring us to it. We must do what we can, when we can. There is plenty of unnecessary suffering in the world which we can assuage according to our abilities. Some of the suffering is urgent. As said earlier, if someone is bleeding profusely, we don’t preach about Life Spirit, we apply a tourniquet where it is most needed. Some form of healing can be of avail at any step of the cosmological path from the spirit to the dense physical body.
Soul searching in extreme pain, or other suffering, is difficult. Relieving this extremity might be the tourniquet most needed. Drugs might do that, but it doesn’t have to be a drug, and it is better if it isn’t. Pain killing drugs are often inefficient to this end, because they cloud the consciousness. There are other means.
Life Spirit does not only follow the path of cosmological manifestation. It can be transduced into its reflective projection, the ethers. This is one of the goals of the Rosicrucian Healing Service. This goal is to produce an etheric panacea to be applied with great effectiveness, where it is most needed. With it, conditions can change with remarkable results quite quickly. This kind of healing is also not an everyday occurrence. The reasons why it isn’t, are almost too repetitious for this essay: few are doing the work (and it is hard work) of producing the panacea, few are pure enough, and soulful enough, to handle it; and there are few patients who are open enough to believe in receiving it, and of them, few are persistent and obedient enough to be vessels for it.
All is not lost for want of soulful and pure healers to handle the panacea. There are alternatives which might not be as thorough in healing, but are still effective in relieving suffering. There is one alternative that most people can fit themselves to perform. It is etheric healing which is also called magnetic healing. At one time it was taught at the headquarters of the Rosicrucian Fellowship. A magnetic healer is someone who has a robust, etheric, vital body, especially rich in life ether. One can enrich the life ether component of the vital body with a diet rich in raw, vital foods. More can be done with raw, fresh-pressed vegetable juices, taken immediately out of the juicer before the ethers dissipate. Max Heindel used raw milk for this purpose. Raw milk is richest in life ether immediately upon leaving the animal. A magnetic healer must be sensitive to etheric flows in his/her body and be able to control them.
Magnetic healing is a two step process. The first step is to remove the sluggish ether, called miasma, causing a blockage, or pain and suffering. It is helpful to have etheric clairvoyance to locate the miasma, but it isn’t mandatory, if one has sufficient sensitivity. The healer must take care to not draw the miasma too deeply into his/her own vital body, lest the condition be taken on. When the heavy ether is removed it is important that it is either disintegrated in fire or flushed away in water so that it doesn’t return to the patient or someone else. The effect is immediate. This writer has been writhing on the floor in pain from cramps at one moment, and free a moment later, when having the offending ether lifted off by a proficient magnetic healer. Unfortunately, it took this writer many years to learn the inner cause of his cramps. The second step is optional. It depends on the needs of the patient and the strength of the vital body of the agent. It is a matter of judgment. If the vital body of the patient is weak, and the vital body of the healer is strong, the healer can give the patient a charge of ether from his/her vital body. The healer must be as careful about giving as he/she is about drawing off. If too much of an etheric flux is given, the healer can be exhausted and vulnerable. An overly needy patient can unconsciously draw too much of the etheric flow for the good of the healer. Healers are usually compassionate souls who are vulnerable to having this happen. This is another reason why healers must be sensitive, self-conscious, and controlled.
Many aspirants doubt their ability to do even a little healing of any kind. It is true that some people do have more of a capacity to heal than others. They likely started in a previous rebirth. Most people should be able to do a little healing. If in no other way, they can pray. One never knows one’s ability, if one doesn’t try. Some start by drawing a headache off of a loved one. This writer has a friend who began in her youth, with sensing and relieving the pains of the pets she loved. Now is almost always a good time to start something new for the benefit of others.
Sometimes “where it is most needed” means in the desire body. Many need relief from the pressure of unhealthy desire patterns, sometimes called complexes. Spiritual counseling and psychotherapy can help. This kind of healing is especially difficult because the lower nature, the false ego, which has its home in the desire body, from whence it controls life more than is good for the individual. Often this lower nature doesn’t want the desire body to be purged and transformed to the service of the Self, because it would be deprived of its tyranny. Working from the inner worlds, Invisible Helpers are more successful in coping with the lower nature of the patient, because of the healing harmonies pervading the desire world, and because the dense physical body, which is the prize, is not immediately at stake. However, sometime the work has to be done in the body in full waking consciousness to be complete. Astrology is extremely helpful in this kind of healing. With astrology, the desire nexus can be accurately located, despite the devious tactics of the lower nature. Astrology can also indicate positive character attributes, as alternatives to negative behavior. One of the best things about astrology is that it indicates times when help will be most effective. Timing is all-important in all forms of healing.
With or without astrology, this kind of soul healing is often unpleasant for the healer. When an individual is at the point when illness becomes healing (they are two sides of the same coin), things are being worked out, literally. Some of what is being worked out may have begun as bad thoughts several rebirths ago. Often there has been an internal struggle. By the time that a behavior has become something that requires healing, when it is ripe, it has had time to grow, fester, mutate and even take shape in the aura, it is usually unpleasant. It is analogous to sweating out nasty stuff in a febrile physical condition, it stinks. When “where it is most needed” is in the desire body, the personality is likely unpleasant, to say the least. It is easy for the agent to be repulsed, attacked, or drawn into conflict as a projection of an inner enemy. Soul healing is not easy or pleasant. Some practitioners find it helpful to pray long and deeply for patients. It is hard to dislike someone for whom you have prayed with all of your heart. Insights about what to do often come when connecting with someone in prayer.
Soul healing has been mentioned, in passing, merely to awaken interest in the possibility. It is too large of a topic for a short essay, which might already be too long. Too much fuel can smother a fire. Fortunately, if one’s heart is in the right place, there is intuition. All knowledge about healing is only to serve intuition. The intuition not only knows what is most needed, it knows where it is most needed.
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Contemporary Mystic Christianity |
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