As time goes on medicine will depend less and less on harsh drugs to accomplish its results. Already the motion is well under way. Gradually the mind and its power will take the place of many revered remedies. Then we shall find out that there is something even deeper than the mind, and so we shall go on in our cautious crab-like motion toward the world of spirit. When in the end we arrive there, would it not be passing strange if we should come back to the old ways of the gods, and find that the temples of the first day had the truths that shall come to general knowledge in the last day?

***

Puritanism worked a serious hardship upon the psycho-emotional part of human nature, by depriving it of participation in the pageantry of religion. The grandeur, pomp and glory of the Church was lost to those who left to find their own way of faith. Gone was the Infallibility of the Popes, gone were the Princes of the Church in their scarlet robes, gone were the Gregorian Chants and the mass, gone were the great cathedrals with their rose windows of priceless glass, gone were absolution and the confessional, and gone was the Apostolic Succession.

All this was swept from the life of the Protestant, and nothing of solemn beauty was put in its place. But it is not the province of the present work to argue the virtues or vices of the Church, or the spiritual reality or unreality of its rituals. These pages are concerned rather with the psychological results of depriving the human consciousness of religious ceremonial and symbolism, and of the emotional exaltation which comes from participation in such rites.

***

The rise of mystical organization in the modern scheme of life is the direct result of three centuries of Protestant Christianity and a hundred years of materialistic science. The spirit force at the root of things cannot be denied. Blocked by the organized literalism of both religion and science, the metaphysical energies in human consciousness were to break through the intellectual barriers men had set up, and create new channels that the old truths should not die.

The sages of ancient India reached out across time and space and raised up a Brahman in the West. He was Ralph Waldo Emerson, America's only great philosopher, and the moving spirit of the New England Transcendentalists. Visions came to Joseph Smith, and the religion of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints was born. Spirits rapped on the walls of the old Eddy homestead, and ageless spiritism became modern Spiritualism. Phineas Quimby, obeying the admonition of Christ to heal the sick, taught men the power of Truth within the self. Andrew Jackson Davis talked with spirits from the other side of death, and learned from them the mysteries of the Summerland. A little later, H. P. Blavatsky brought esoteric Buddhism to prosaic old New York.

If modern materialists are unhappy about the renaissance of the old mystic cults, they should remember that they have no one but themselves to blame for the condition. If these scoffers had given but an instant of sober thought to the natural structure of the human being, they would have realized that metaphysics is necessary to the survival of civilization.

***
 

Occultism is the ancient science which deals with the hidden forces of nature, the laws governing them, and the means by which such forces can be brought under the control of the enlightened human mind.

An occultist is one who believes in the reality of esoteric sciences, has studied them in a scholarly manner, has resolved to perfect his own consciousness according to their rules, and may, or may not, be able to practice the rituals and formulas of Transcendental Magic.

The occult sciences are the secret teachings of the World Saviors, prophets, seers, sages, and initiated philosophers, with which they instructed their most intimate disciples. This body of esoteric tradition has descended to the present time through the medium of secret religious societies, which therefore are in possession of a most sacred and peculiar knowledge of extra-physical energies, faculties, functions, and powers.

The most important of the occult sciences are magic, demonism, exorcism, alchemy, cabala, astrology and other forms of divination, spiritism, magnetism, esoteric cosmogony, and anthropology, the metaphysical physiology of man, and the extra-sensory perceptions.

The well informed student of occultism is one of the most universally learned of human beings. He must be acquainted with all of the important systems of world philosophy and religion, both Eastern and Western, and he must have a thorough understanding of ancient sciences and arts. There is no place for the superficial thinker in this field; and should he wander in by accident, it would be wise for him to depart in haste.

According to the rules of occultism, all particulars must be suspended from universal principles. In the case of healing, any particular cure must bear witness to some general philosophical pattern; that is, it must be explainable in terms of the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm -- between the universe and man.

Strangely enough, there is no place for miracles in the sciences of Magic. Occultism defines a miracle as an effect, the cause of which is unknown; but the cause must be equal to the effect which it produces. Knowledge is power, and esoteric knowledge bestows the larger power which appears miraculous to the uninformed. The great occultist Paracelsus said, "The beginning of wisdom is the beginning of supernatural powers."

***

Widely accepted among modern metaphysicians is the ancient belief in the reality of certain superhuman beings called Initiates and Masters. A number of sects have arisen which involve these Adepts in their methods of healing. Adepts are such disciples of the occult sciences as have attained to great knowledge and power, and have been initiated into the secret schools of the esoteric wisdom.... Prayers are addressed to the Masters with the full conviction that these Initiates will be aware of the supplications, regardless of distance; and will answer them with appropriate demonstrations of supernatural power. The wonderful stories which have been circulated about these Initiates and Masters are well calculated to increase faith in their ability to heal all manner of disease....

The diagnosis and treatment of disease by the study of the aura, or magnetic emanations of the human body, was practiced by the priests of the old Mystery cults....Dr. Kilner was able to devise for those without clairvoyant training a simple method of stimulating the human eye so that it is capable of seeing auras....

 Indicative of the trends are these: The possibility of capturing the rays of the planets in dew; research in the Druidic lore of the mistletoe, as a medium for the astral light; and investigation into the crystals formed in human blood, by the process of drying....

Jerome Cardan, wrote a book on the occult significance of moles on the body, and in the lines of the forehead....The Chinese can accurately predict the number of children a woman will bear, from the small lines in the corners of her eyes; and they will also determine the length of life from the angle of the cheek bones....

[T]he practice of metaphysical medicine is justified by thousands of years of tradition and sanctified by the veneration of ages.

***

A mystic may, or may not, believe in a personal God. To most Christian mystics, Deity is to some degree personal, capable of likes and dislikes, and able to hear and answer the prayers of the faithful. Among Oriental mystics the Divine Nature is usually regarded as impersonal, and is adored as the Universal Reality, to be glorified rather than supplicated.

***

The practice of the mystical disciplines must result ultimately in the attainment of the mystical state. A strange enthusiasm (from the Greek enthousiazein, to be possessed by a god), rises up and fills the consciousness of the mystic, and he is obsessed by a powerful ecstatic emotion of exaltation or rapture. While thus transported he feels himself one with God, and a part of all that lives.

***

In recent years a number of religio-psychological cults have arisen which are attempting to rescue the spiritual values in psychology from the rank materialism of most academic practitioners in the field. It is possible that one of the reasons why scientific psychology has not lived up to the hopes and expectations of its enthusiasts is, that in borrowing its principles from the ancient temples, too much of the religious and philosophical parts of the doctrine were rejected and ignored.

***\

[S]ickness comes from wrong thinking and not from other spiritual, moral, or physical causes....It is assumed that sickness has no real existence, but is an illusion resulting from the failure of the individual to preserve the clarity of his spiritual viewpoint....There is no such thing as disease, therefore I am not sick.

***

Hypnotic therapy belongs in the class of mental healing. It is the technique of creating an artificial receptivity in the mind, so that suggestions for the correction of character defects and functional ailments will be more readily assimilated by the intellect. The practice of hypnotic therapy is encouraged in Europe, and recognized as an important branch of psychology, but the entire field is practically ignored in America, due probably, to unfortunate religious prejudices, rooted in a complete misunderstanding of the principles involved. Hypnotism is a mechanical art, and not a spiritual mystery, as so many believe.

Students of the processes behind suggestion, or mental healing, should bear in mind the often quoted story of the dyspeptic farmer who went to the local doctor to get something for his bad stomach. The physician wrote out a prescription and told the man to take it the first thing in the morning. A few days later the patient returned and said that nothing had ever done him so much good. A little adroit questioning revealed that the farmer had not taken the prescription to the druggist to be filled but had eaten the paper itself.

***

That Deity is outside of, or apart from its creation, is a doctrine of Christianity, one that only a few great religious systems teach. All enlightened pagans taught that the material universe is the physical body of the creating Principle. Plato called the universe the "Eternal Animal," and the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria described the world as "the body of a Blessed God." The modern occultist accepts this philosophical doctrine. He does not seek in the distant heavens for the Spiritual Cause of all things, but finds the creation itself bearing splendid witness to its indwelling divinity.

The "personality" of the solar system, the sun, with the group of celestial bodies which revolve round it, is composed of four kinds of substance; mental substance, emotional substance, functional substance, and physical substance. In the solar system these spheres of substance are called planes, and together, these make up the personality of the solar God. These four strata are the four worlds of the philosophical Cabala, and it was in the substance of these four worlds that the four Adams came into being.

Man has a body to correspond with each of the planes of nature. Each of these bodies of man is composed of the substance of the plane in which it originated. It grows and develops in that plane, it is subject to the laws governing that plane, and ultimately it disintegrates back into the basic matter of that plane. These four bodies are the four Adams, and the physical body is the last Adam, the one that fell into matter and put on the coat of skins.

***

One who would try to deny symptoms of disease, and go on as though they did not exist, should be fully aware that he is a hypochondriac, with symptoms that are entirely imaginary.

***

Seen clairvoyantly, the pineal gland is located near the center of a magnetic field or aura varying from twelve to sixteen inches in diameter. This aura has no exact or definite boundaries, nor are its radiations entirely uniform. Rather, it appears as a pulsing, flickering field of energy which becomes intensified under stimulation or irritation, and fades to an almost imperceptible condition as the result of extreme mental or vital exhaustion.

***

A synthesis, by which all the processes are observed in proper relationship to each other, demands a methodical, systematic adjustment of the clairvoyant vision to each of the special divisions of vibratory rates which constitute the complex process of function.

The human aura is divisible into ten principal levels or planes, and it is necessary to focus the clairvoyant attention upon each of these levels in its proper ascending order of vibratory refinement.

***

Serious diseases of the pineal usually involve the rational powers. The disturbance may not be accompanied by any serious pain, but it is particularly observable in the eyes; the pupils may contract and there is a tendency to stare without focusing. Some hallucinations of an optical nature may be experienced, and the imagination becomes distorted. Lesser disturbances are associated with fatigue, lack of coordination and continuity of thought, supersensitivity, loss of appetite, nausea, lowered circulation. In all cases where morbid psychology exists apart from morbid pathology, derangements of the pineal may be suspected.