It is on this point of understanding that so many worthy people go astray, particularly in the mental science movements, in the Unity movement, and in Christian Science. Instead of focusing their effort on achieving the pure life [212] of Christ in every day life, and acting as consecrated servers of their fellowmen and as channels for love, and becoming aware only of the consciousness of the whole, they are focused on affirming a future perfection - mentally and vocally - in order to have good health and physical comfort. They regard it as their right and due, to be gained by affirmation, and forget the hard work necessary to bring about within themselves those conditions which will make the divine manifested Christ present. They need to bear in mind that good health will be normal and declarative if the inner consciousness is harmless (and the majority of these people are guilty of a superior spirit of criticism), if they are decentralized from the lower self in the three worlds, and if they are "focused in heaven, thereby enabling the heavenly Son of Man Who is the Son of God to lead the heavenly life when far from the heavenly realm" - as an old Christian mystic, long forgotten, used to say. His words have been remembered by the Master M - and thus recalled to my attention.

Another school of thought, branding themselves untruthfully as occultists, are equally in error. They work, or rather profess to work, with the centers, only fortunately for them nature protects them often from themselves. They endeavor consciously to vitalize the centers, to burn away the protective web, and to raise the fires of matter before the fire of spirit has combined with the fire of the soul. They then fall victims to premature stimulation of the fires of substance before the balancing of the forces can take place. Disease, insanities, and many neurotic conditions, plus serious pathological conditions, then occur. Some of the glands become over-active; others are overlooked, and the entire glandular system and the dependent nervous system are in a state of complete imbalance. [213]

Knowledge concerning the endocrine or ductless glands is as yet in an embryonic state. Much is known anent the glands connected with the sacral center and about the thyroid gland, but to date, naturally, the medical profession does not admit that they are effects of the activity or the non-activity of the centers, or that a line of least resistance exists between the sacral center and the throat center. Something is known (not much) about the pituitary body, but its extreme importance as it affects the psychological response of the person is not adequately grasped. Nothing is known, factually speaking, about the pineal or the thymus glands, and this because neither the head center nor the heart center is awakened in undeveloped man, or even in the average citizen. That there is a considerable wealth of knowledge anent the sacral center (as the source of physical creation) and the conditioning effects of the thyroid gland is due to the fact that both these centers are awakened in the average man, and when the functioning is adequate [214] and the necessary interplay is established, you then have a highly sexed individual who is also a creative artist along some artistic line. This is very frequently seen, as you well know. When the ajna center and its externalization, the pituitary body, are also active, and the relation between the three centers - sacral, throat and ajna center - is awakened and beginning to function, and definite conscious relationship is being set up between it and the other centers (dependent upon ray, upon conscious objective and training), then you will have the practical mystic, the humanitarian and the occultist.