It will be apparent to you, therefore, that the process of following a healing ritual is only one phase of the work to be done, and that the relation of healer and patient is basically an educational one; it must be an education tempered by the physical condition of the sick person. You will find, as you work along these lines, that it will be necessary to have short expositions of the work to be done, of the restitutions which the patient must be prepared to make in order to facilitate the inflow of the healing force. He must be induced to "clean the slate" (if I may use such a symbolic [389] phrase) if the work of healing is to be successful under the Law of Karma.

If I were asked to say what is the major task of all healing groups, such as the Hierarchy seeks to see functioning in the future, I would say it is to prepare human beings for what we should regard as the restorative aspect of death, and thus give to that hitherto dreaded enemy of mankind a new and happier significance. You will find that if you work along these indicated lines of thought, the entire theme of death will constantly recur, and that the result of this will be new attitudes to dying and the inculcation of a happy expectancy where that inevitable and most familiar event occurs. Healing groups must prepare to deal with this basic condition of all living, and a major part of their work will be the elucidating of the principle of death. The [390] soul, we are told, must return to the one who gave it. To date that has been an enforced and dreaded restitution, one which engenders fear and which leads men and women everywhere to clamor for the healing of the physical body, over-emphasizing its importance and making them regard the prolongation of earthly existence as the most important factor in their lives. During the next cycle, these wrong attitudes must come to an end; death will become a normal and understood process - as normal as the process of birth, though evoking less pain and fear. This comment of mine is in the nature of a prophecy and should be noted as such.

Healing groups and individual healers will find it necessary at times to confront their patients with the fact of death; one of the undertakings of disciples in my Ashram and in the Ashram of the Master K.H. is to interject the theme of death into their conversation with other seekers for truth, into their thinking and into their discussions with each other, and particularly with those they seek to heal. It will not be easy and it must not be done in a precipitate manner, but it is a subject which cannot and must not be avoided or evaded. Healing groups working out from an Ashram lay not the emphasis upon bodily healing, but upon [391] timing and upon the cycles of work or of physical plane living, and the cycles of restitution or physical plane death.

This entire section with which we are now engaged, called The Basic Requirements, has reference in reality to the processes of dying, to the conditions of the material world or the three worlds of incarnated service. The restitution of the body to the general reservoir of substance, or to service in the outer world of daily physical living, the restoration of the soul to its source, the soul upon its own plane or - in reverse - to full responsibility within the body, are dealt with in this first point. The elimination of the life principle and the consciousness aspect is dealt with in the second point, and the theme is not that of character building, as some might surmise. I touched upon character and personal qualities in my opening remarks in this section because all true understanding of the basic principles of death and life is facilitated by right action, based on right thinking, which eventuates in right character building. I seek not, however, to enlarge upon these elementary prerequisites. The processes of integration as I seek to consider them here concern the integration of the soul into the threefold body, if karma so decides, or into the kingdom of souls, if karma decrees that what we call death lies ahead of the man.