and pointed out that the great combination of forces which we call the pairs of opposites or the major dualities, govern [190] the underlying causes of health and disease. In making these statements, I am endeavoring to reduce our entire theme to one of the utmost simplicity. In so doing, some of the truth is lost, but it is essential that certain broad generalizations are grasped by the student before he begins to study the exceptions and to deal with minutiae and the detail of bodily defects or their opposites.

It has become a truism with students of the occult that the etheric body conditions, controls and determines the life expression of the incarnated individual. It is a secondary truism that this etheric body is the conveyor of the forces of the personality, through the medium of the centers, and thereby galvanizes the physical body into activity. These forces, routed through the centers, are those of the integrated personality as a whole, or are simply the forces of the astral or emotional body and the mind body; they also transmit the force of the personality ray or the energy of the soul ray, according to the point in evolution reached by the man. The physical body, therefore, is not a principle. It is conditioned and does not condition - a point oft forgotten. It is a victim of personality life or the triumphant expression of soul energy. It is for this reason that the science of psychology will, during the next two centuries, dominate modern medical science, except in the category of those diseases with which we will deal in our next section - those emanating from group life, such as tuberculosis, venereal diseases and cancer. Until the race is more definitely group conscious (something as yet far distant) it will not be possible to apply broad psychological generalizations to the diseases indigenous to our planet. We can, however, consider the handling of similar difficulties which arise in the individual unit; these are based on the conflict of the pairs of opposites and upon the lack of harmony to be found in the three major interlocking, directing systems. [191]

You have, therefore, three systems to carry in your minds, and one carrier or conveying agent, plus the basic occult fact that certain great opposing energies, working within the body, produce what we call disease. To the above factors I would add another needed correlation. I would remind you that we are concerned with forms of life, and that all these forms are creative within themselves, and can create potentially more forms or can provide environments in which these forms can live. Please note this mode of expressing a fundamental truth. The basis of all the occult teaching as regards manifestation is that the building forces exist, and that this statement is true whether you are concerned with the Life of a solar system or only with the consciousness of that body in which the human being moves and lives - along sound or unsound lines; we are dealing with the world body in which a human being lives.