This is a profoundly simple rule, but it gives the clue to the causes of disease and to the reason for an established immortality; it will be understood with great clarity and comprehension in a few years' time and will then supersede those idealistic but factually unsound and untrue systems to which we give the name Unity, Mental Science and Christian Science. These systems present as immediate, demonstrable possibilities the stage of final liberation [192] from the natural and material limitations which today control all forms; they ignore the time factor, and overlook the evolutionary process and also the point of development of the person concerned; their position is based on wishful thinking and on the innate desire of the average human being for comfort and physical harmony, and gloss the innate selfishness of their presentation of truth with the concept that all is to the eternal glory of God. Unquestionably, disease and physical limitations of any kind will vanish, but this will only happen when the soul of the individual controls and the lower personal self becomes as much an automaton of the soul as the physical body is at this time the automaton of the emotional nature, of the mind, and occasionally (and only very occasionally for the majority of people) of the soul.

In undeveloped humanity, the conflict (from the angle of consciousness) is practically nil; you have less susceptibility to the subtler diseases emanating from the three interlocking systems, but at the same time a much greater responsiveness to the three indigenous diseases, to infectious [193] and contagious diseases, and to the great epidemics which sweep through nations and great planetary areas. As humanity develops, diseases become more personal (if I might express it in this manner) and are not so definitely related to the herd or mass condition, They arise within the persons themselves, and though they may be related to the mass diseases, they are based on individual causes.

It is at this point that the doctrine of reincarnation becomes of supreme value; the disciple begins to institute those conditions, to create those forms and build those vehicles which, in another life, will prove more suitable for soul control and more adequate instruments with which to carry forward the perfecting process which the soul demands. Let me point out that the disciple does not concentrate upon the physical body at any time, or begin with any physical emphasis to work at the elimination of disease or disharmony. He begins with the psychology which the soul teaches and commences with the causes which are producing the effects upon the physical plane. It is a slower process, but endures. Much of the violent autosuggestion of the systems allied to Christian Science and Unity are only temporary in their effects and are based upon a process of scientific suppression, plus a refusal to recognize existent factors. They are not based on truth. In a later life, the suppressed condition will again emerge in ever greater potency and will continue so to do until such time as it is ignored altogether and the life emphasis is laid on soul contact [194] and the life expression is extroverted into service to others.

In connection with physical disease and its relation to the centers (regarding these as focal points for incoming energies from some source or another) it might be useful if certain broad generalizations were made here, remembering that to all of these there may be exceptions, particularly in the case of the health or the non-health of disciples.

1. Each of the seven major centers governs or conditions - from the material angle as well as from that of the soul and of the life principle - the area of the physical body in which it is found, including the multitude of lesser centers of energy and plexi of force which may be found therein.
2. The three great basic and manifesting divisions of divinity are to be found symbolically present in every center:
   1. The life principle, the first aspect, discloses itself when the entire center is esoterically unfolded or awakened. It is present all the time in latency, but it is not a dynamic factor producing monadic stimulation until the end of the great cycle of evolution.
   2. The quality or soul aspect is gradually disclosed in the process of evolutionary unfoldment and produces, in time and space, the definite effect which the center has upon its environment. This quality is dependent upon the ray (either of the personality or the soul) which is the source of the incoming energy, or upon the ray governing the astral body in the case of the little evolved; it is also dependent upon the point in evolution and upon the radiatory influence of other centers.
   3. The appearance in the etheric body of a developed or a developing center indicates the place of the man upon the ladder of evolution, his racial affiliations, and his conscious goal; this latter can range all the [195] way from an emphasis upon the sex life, and consequent activity of the sacral center, to the goal of the initiate, which brings the head center into activity. All this produces a consequent effect upon the surrounding tissue, substance and organic forms within the radius of influence of the center. The area of this influence is variable according to the activity of the center and this is dependent upon the point of development reached by the individual and the preponderant type of energy to which the individual reacts.
3. The incoming energy is transmuted within the center into forces. This involves a process of differentiation into secondary energies of the primary energy involved, and is an automatic happening; the rate of transmutation process, the strength of the resultant aggregation of forces, and the subsequent radiatory activity (producing conditioning results upon the dense physical body) are dependent upon the extent of the unfoldment of the particular center involved and its awakened or unawakened state.