It is the centers which hold the body together and make it a coherent, energized and active whole. As you know, when death takes place, the consciousness thread withdraws from the head center and the life thread withdraws from the heart center. What has not been emphasized is that this dual withdrawal has an effect upon every center in the body. The consciousness thread, anchored in the head center, qualifies the petals of the lotus called in the oriental literature the "thousand-petalled lotus," and the petals of that lotus have a relationship and a definitely qualifying effect (both radiatory and magnetic) upon the petals in every one of the other major centers within the etheric body; the head center preserves them in qualifying activity, and when this quality of conscious response is withdrawn from the head center an immediate effect is felt in all the petals of all the centers; the qualifying energy is withdrawn, leaving the body via the head center. The same general technique is true of the life thread which is anchored in the heart, after passing (in alliance with the consciousness thread) into and through the head center. As long as the life thread is anchored in the heart it energizes and preserves in livingness all the centers in the body, sending out its threads of life into a point which is found at the exact center of the lotus, or at the heart of the center. This is sometimes called "the jewel in the lotus," though the phrase [623] is more frequently applied to the monadic point at the heart of the egoic lotus on its own plane. When death takes place and the life thread is gathered up by the soul and withdrawn from the heart into the head and from thence back into the soul body, it carries with it the life of each center in the body; therefore, the body dies and disintegrates, and no longer forms a coherent, conscious, living whole.

Related to these centers, and reacting in strict unison with them, is the endocrine or glandular system, through which system - during incarnation - life or energy flows unimpeded and under right direction in the case of the highly developed man, or impeded and imperfectly directed in the case of the average or undeveloped human being; through this system of glandular control, the human form responds or does not respond to the surrounding world energies. In connection with our present theme of healing, a man can be sick and ill or well and strong, according to the state of the centers and their precipitation, the glands. It must ever be remembered that the centers are the major agency upon the physical plane through which the soul works, expresses life and quality, according to the point reached under the evolutionary process, and that the glandular system is simply an effect - inevitable and unavoidable - of the centers through which the soul is working. The glands therefore express fully the point in evolution of the man, and according to that point are responsible for defects and limitations or for assets and achieved perfections. The man's conduct and behavior upon the physical plane is conditioned, controlled and determined by the nature of his glands, and these are conditioned, controlled and determined by the nature, the quality and the livingness of the centers; these, in their turn are conditioned, controlled and determined by the soul, in increasing effectiveness as evolution proceeds. Prior to soul control, they are conditioned, [624] qualified and controlled by the astral body, and later by the mind. The goal of the evolutionary cycle is to bring about this control, this conditioning, and this determining process by the soul; human beings are today at every imaginable stage of development within this process.