When these four groups can be brought into close relation, and can work together for the release of humanity from disease, we shall then arrive at an understanding of the true wonder of the human being. We shall some day have hospitals in which the four phases of this one medical and remedial work will proceed side by side and in the fullest cooperation. Neither group can do a complete task without the others; all are interdependent. [255]

It is the inability of these groups to recognize the good in the other groups striving for the physical well-being of humanity which makes it almost impossible for me to do more specific teaching and more direct talking on these matters. Have you any idea of the wall of antagonistic thinking and speech against which a new or pioneering idea has to batter itself? Have you ever seriously considered the aggregated and crystallized thought-forms with which all such new ideas (and shall I call them hierarchical proposals) have to contend? Do you appreciate the dead weight of preconceived and ancient determinations which have to be moved before the Hierarchy can cause a new and needed concept to penetrate into the consciousness of the average thinking (or again should I say, unthinking?) public. The field of medicine is a most difficult field in which to work, for the subject is so intimate, and fear enters so strongly into the reactions of those who must be reached. The gulf between the old and established and the new and the spiritually demanded, needs much long and careful bridging. A great deal of the difficulty is, curiously enough, to be found fostered by the newer schools of thought. Orthodox medicine is slow, and rightly slow, in adopting new techniques and methods; it is at times too slow, but the case of the new mode of treatment or diagnosis must be rightly proven and statistically proven before it can be incorporated in the medical curriculum and method; the risks to the human subject are too great, and the good humanitarian physician will not make his patient the subject of experimentation. However, within the last few decades, medicine has advanced by leaps and bounds, the science of electricity and light therapy and many other modern techniques and methods have already been added to the various other sciences of which medicine avails itself. The demands of the intangible and the treatment of the nebulous - if such [256] peculiar terms are in order - are being recognized increasingly and are known to play an orthodox and recognized part in the newer approaches to disease.

The approach of the mental schools and cults, as they erroneously call themselves, has not proceeded so helpfully. This is largely their fault. Schools of thought such as Mental Science, New Thought, Unity, Christian Science, Chiropractic enterprise, the efforts of the Naturopaths and many others, hurt their cause, owing to the large claims which they make and to their unceasing attacks upon orthodox medicine and other channels of proven helpfulness and upon the knowledge (acquired over centuries of experimentation) of the academic schools of medicine and surgery. They forget that many of their claims to success (and they are often irrefutable) can be classed under the general heading of faith cures, and this can be done correctly or incorrectly. Such cures have long been recognized by the academic thinker and known to be factual. These cults which are in fact the custodians of needed truths, need above everything else to change their approach and to learn the spiritual nature of compromise in these days of evolutionary unfoldment. Their ideas cannot come into full and desired usefulness apart from the already God-given knowledge which medicine down the ages has accumulated; they need also to keep a record of their numerous failures, as well as the successes which they loudly proclaim. I would here point out that these successes are in no way so numerous as those of orthodox medicine and of the beneficent work done by the clinics of our hospitals which - in spite of failures and often gross stupidity - greatly ameliorate the pains and ills of the masses of men. These cults omit to state, or even to recognize, that in cases of extreme illness or accident, the patient is physically unable to affirm or claim divine healing and is dependent upon the work of some healer who works with no knowledge [257] of the karma of the patient. Many of their so-called cures (and this is the case also with orthodox medicine) are cures because the hour of the end has not yet arrived for the patient and he would have recovered in any case, though he often does so more rapidly, owing to the remedial measures of the trained physician.

All the above is said in no spirit of disparagement, but in an effort to prove that the many schools of thought - orthodox, academic, ancient, material or spiritual, new, pioneering or mental - are interdependent; they need to be brought together into one great healing science. This will be a science which will heal the whole man and bring into play all the resources - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual - of which humanity is capable. Orthodox medicine is more open to cooperation with the newer cults than are the neophytes of the science of mental control of disease; they cannot, however, permit their patients to be turned into guinea pigs (is not that the term used in these cases, brother of mine?) for the satisfaction of the pioneering cultist and the proving of his theories - no matter how correct when applied in conjunction with what has already been proved. The middle way of compromise and of mutual cooperation is ever the wisest, and this is a lesson much needed today in every department of human thinking. [258]

We shall now proceed to deal with our third and final section of thoughts around the basic causes of disease. The theme of karma has been little considered and I shall deal with it in a way larger than our particular subject perhaps warrants. [259]