It is obviously impossible for me to enlarge upon this subject, for it is not possible to give even a slight indication which could lead, at present, to any process of verification. What I say will have to be taken on trust and is dependent upon what I believe is recognized as my proved veracity and [243] integrity. I shall, and can, say but little - only enough to indicate one fruitful cause of disease and one of such great age that it is inherent in the life of the planet itself. These diseases have no subjective or subtle origin; they are not the result of emotional conditions or of undesirable mental processes. They are not psychological in nature and therefore cannot be traced to any activity of the centers. They originate from within the planetary life itself and from its life aspect, having a direct emanatory effect upon the individual atoms of which the dense physical body is composed. This is a point of importance to remember. The source of any disease of this nature induced by the planet itself, is due primarily, therefore, to an external impact of certain vibratory emanations coming from the surface of the planet, engendered deep within the planet, and impinging upon the dense physical body. These radiations play upon the units of energy which, in their totality, constitute the atomic substance of the body; they are unconnected in any way with the blood stream or with the nervous system. They are consequently impossible to trace or isolate, because man is today so highly organized and integrated that these external impacts immediately evoke a response from the nervous system; the modern physician is at present unable to distinguish between the diseases arising from within the patient's own interior mechanism - tangible or intangible - and those which are in the nature of extraneous irritants, producing immediate effects upon the sensitive organism of man's body. I am not here referring to infectious or contagious difficulties.

Perhaps one point which I might helpfully emphasize is that it is this obscure planetary effect (obscure to us, at this time) upon the physical body which is the major cause of death where the purely animal form nature is concerned, or the forms of life present in the animal and vegetable [244] kingdoms, and to a lesser and slower degree in the mineral kingdom likewise. Death, as far as the human being is concerned, is increasingly due to the planned intent and planned withdrawal of the soul, under the pressure of its own formulated intent. This is true to some degree of all who die, except those who are of so low a grade of intelligence that the soul is practically little more than an over-shadowing agency. Of all who die, highly developed or not, the later stages of dissolution, effective after the conscious withdrawal of the soul (conscious on the part of the soul and becoming increasingly conscious on the part of the dying person), are taken over by this death-bestowing power of the planetary life itself.

In the case of the subhuman kingdoms in nature, death is the direct result of this obscure activity of the planet. The only idea as to its functioning which I can give you is that the soul of all non-human forms of life is an inherent aspect of the substance of which the planet is itself constructed; this soul can be withdrawn according to cycles, undetermined yet by science but fixed and certain in their working - apart from great planetary accidents or the direct action of the fourth kingdom in nature. This innate planetary power leads to the death of an animal and - in the larger sweep of evolution - to the extinction of a species; it leads also in time to the death of the forms of the vegetable kingdom and is also one of the causes which leads to the autumnal cycle in the year, producing the "sere, the yellow leaf," the loss of verdure in the grass, and those cyclic manifestations which indicate not alone death, upon a temporary and passing scale, but the complete cessation of vitality within a form. "Times of perishing" are cyclic manifestations of the "destroyer aspect" within the planet itself. These are necessarily difficult matters for you to grasp. [245]

With man, death takes on two aspects of activity; the human soul differs from the soul in the non-human forms in that it is itself a full and - on its own plane - an effective expression of the three divine aspects; it determines within certain limits - based on time conditions and spatial necessity - its entrance into human form and its exit therefrom. Once this exit has been made and the soul has withdrawn the thread of consciousness from the brain and its life thread from the heart, certain life processes still persist; they are now under the influence of the planetary life, however, and to these the physical elemental (the sumtotal of the living atoms of the body nature) is responsive. I would have you note the occult paradox that death is the result of living processes. Death, or the death-producing energy emanating [246] from the planet, brings about the complete disruption of the bodily organism and its reduction to its essential elements - chemical and mineral, plus certain inorganic substances which are susceptible of absorption into the soil of the planet itself. Death, as the result of soul activity produces, therefore, the withdrawing from the body of the "light body and of the subtle bodies," leaving the dense form and its component parts to the benign processes of planetary control. This dual activity produces death - as we know it from the human angle.

It is necessary here to point out that this ability of the planetary Logos to extract the life essence innate in each atom, produces what might be called deterioration in the structure of the form at any point from whence this life essence is emitted. This brings about conditions which eventually become apparent visually; thus disease and the "tendency to die" become recognizable. Therefore, the withering of a flower, death from old age in an animal or a tree, and the many diseases of the human being are all brought about by the pull of the powerful life of the planet, speaking esoterically; this is an aspect of what is called, erroneously, the Law of Gravitation. This law is - again speaking esoterically - an aspect of the Law of Return, which governs the relation of a unit of life in form to its emanating source. "Dust thou art; unto dust thou shalt return" is a statement of occult law. In the curious evolution of words - as any good dictionary will show - the word "dust" comes from two roots, one meaning "wind" and the other "falling to pieces." The significance of both these meanings will be apparent and the sequence of ideas is arresting. With the withdrawing of the wind or breath, a falling to pieces eventuates, and this is a true and significant statement. As the greater life absorbs the lesser life, the disappearance of that which the life has informed takes place; this is true of all forms in the [247] subhuman kingdoms as they respond to the drag or pull of the planetary life; it is true also of the human form as it reacts to the call of the soul to return its life principle to the soul, via the sutratma, and to return as consciousness to its registering source.

As you well know, the great distinction between the human kingdom in the three worlds and the other kingdoms in nature is the factor of free will. In the matter of death, this free will has, in the last analysis, a definite relation to the soul; the will of the soul is either consciously or unconsciously followed, where the decision of death is concerned, and this idea carries with it many implications which students would do well to ponder.