Theos-Talk Archives (June 2005 Message tt00475)

June 23 2005

Dear Frank, and friends:


I appreciate what you say about translations -- as I know a few languages
and have seen translations made into literal nonsense.


However you write: "I have heard from high enlightened sources 
that the Masters make only those theosophists sick which are transgressors."

As far as I know the "Masters" would never "make only those theosophists
sick which are transgressors," as that would be interfering in their Karma.


Perhaps, "leave them to their Karma" might be a happier phrase.

Here is the reason as I see it:

If as is said the inner Path to wisdom is through the practice at all times
of altruism, it is our own "skandhas" that react on us in the "personality"
(they are monads acting under universal Law) that might make us sick when we
distort them by evil desires and actions.  

Sickness, then, should serve to remind us we are making mistakes.

Of course, let me add that some illnesses come to us from our past Karma --
and the source of those illness is not at present known to us.

----------------------------------

Some of the statements made herein are of value, I think:


THE CURE OF DISEASES


MORTAL ills and the needs of the stomach rank next after the instinct of
self-preservation among all the subjects which engage the attention of the
race. If we do not go on living we cannot do the work we think there is to
do; if we remain hungry we will lose the power to work properly or to enjoy,
and at last come to the door of death. From bad or scanty food follows a
train of physical ills called generally disease. 

Disease reaches us also through too much food. So in every direction these
ills attack us; even when our feeding is correct and sufficient it is found
that we fall a prey because our Karma, settled by ourselves is some previous
life, ordains that we enter on this one handicapped by the hereditary taint
due to the wickedness or the errors of our fathers and mothers. And the
records of science show that the taint in the blood or the lymph may jump
over many lives, attacking with virulence some generation distant very far
from the source. What wonder, then that the cure of disease is an
all-absorbing subject with every one! The Christian knows that it is decreed
by Almighty God that He will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children
even to the third and fourth generation, and the non-believer sees that by
some power in nature the penalty is felt even so far.

All of this has given to the schools of mental and so-called "metaphysical"
healing a strong pull on the fears, the feelings, the wishes, and the bodies
of those to whom they address themselves, and especially in the United
States. That there is more attention given to the subject in America seems
true to those who have been on the other side of the Atlantic and noticed
how small is the proportion of people there who know anything about the
subject. 

But in the United States in every town many can be found who know about
these schools and practice after their methods. Why it has more hold here
can be left to conjecture, as the point under consideration is why it has
any hold at all. It is something like patent medicine. 

Offer a cure to people for their many ills, and they will take it up; offer
it cheap, and they will use it; offer it as an easy method, and they will
rush for it under certain conditions. 

Metaphysical healing is easy for some because it declares, first, that no
money need be paid to doctors for medicine; second, that medical fluids and
drugs may be dispensed with; and third that it is easily learned and
practiced. The difficulties that arise out of the necessities of logic are
not present for those who never studied it, but are somewhat potent with
those who reason correctly; - but that is not usual for the general run of
minds. They see certain effects and accept the assumed cause as the right
one. 

But many persons will not even investigate the system, because they think it
requires them to postulate the non-existence of that which they see before
their eyes. The statements quoted from the monthly Christian Science in
March PATH are bars in the way of such minds. If they could be induced to
just try the method offered for cure, belief might result, for effects
indeed often follow. But the popular mind is not in favor of "mind cure,"
and more prominence is given in the daily papers to cases of death under it
than to cures. And very full reports always appear of a case such as one in
March, where "faith curers," in order to restore life, went to praying over
the dead body of one of the members of a believing family.

During a recent tour over this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and
back, I had the opportunity of meeting hundreds of disciples of these
schools, and found in nearly all cases that they were not addicted to logic
but calmly ignored very plain propositions, satisfied that if cures were
accomplished the cause claimed must be the right one, and almost without
exception they denied the existence of evil or pain or suffering. There was
a concurrence of testimony from all to show that the dominant idea in their
minds was the cure of their bodily ills and the continuance of health. 

The accent was not on the beauty of holiness or the value to them and the
community of a right moral system and right life, but on the cure of their
diseases. So the conclusion has been forced home that all these schools
exist because people desire to be well more than they desire to be good,
although they do not object to goodness if that shall bring wholeness.

And, indeed, one does not have to be good to gain the benefit of the
teachings. It is enough to have confidence, to assert boldly that this does
not exist and that that has no power to hurt one. I do not say the teachers
of the "science" agree with me herein, but only that whether you are good or
bad the results will follow the firm practice of the method enjoined,
irrespective of the ideas of the teachers.

For in pure mind-cure as compared with its congener "Christian Science," you
do not have to believe in Jesus and the gospels, yet the same results are
claimed, for Jesus taught that whatever you prayed for with faith, that you
should have.

Scientific research discloses that the bodies of our race are infected with
taints that cause nearly all of our diseases, and school after school of
medicine has tried and still tries to find the remedy that will dislodge the
foulness in the blood. This is scientific, since it seeks the real physical
cause; metaphysical healing says it cures, but cannot prove that the cause
is destroyed and not merely palliated. That there is some room for doubt
history shows us, for none will deny that many pure thinking and acting pair
have brought forth children who displayed some taint derived from a distant
ancestor. Evidently their pure individual thoughts had no power over the
great universal development of the matter used by those human bodies.

Turning now to medicine we find the Italian Count Mattei promulgating a
system of cure by the homeopathic use of subtle vegetable essences which may
well give pause to those who would make universal the curing by faith or
mind alone. 

Some of his liquids will instantly stop a violent pain, restore sight, give
back hearing, and dissipate abnormal growths. His globules will make a
drunken man sober, and, given to the nurse who suckles a babe, will cure the
child who takes the milk. The drunkard and the child do not think about or
have faith in the remedies, yet they cure. 

Is it not better to restore health by physical means and leave the high
teachings of the healers, all taken from well know sources, for the benefit
of our moral nature? 

And if Christian healers read these lines, should they not remember that
when the prophet restored the widow's son he used physical means - his own
magnetism applied simultaneously to every member of the child's body, and
Jesus, when the woman who touched his garment was cured, lost a portion of
his vitality - not his thoughts - for he said "virtue" had gone out from
him? 

The Apostle also gave directions that if any were sick the others should
assemble about the bed and anoint with oil, laying on their hands meanwhile:
simply physical therapeutics following a long line of ancient precedent
dating back to Noah. 

Moses taught how to cure diseases and to disinfect places where contagion
lurked. It was not by using the high power of thought, but by processes
deemed by him to be effectual, such as sprinkling blood of animals
slaughtered in peculiar circumstances. Without declaring for or against his
methods, it is very certain that he supposed by these means subtle forces of
a physical nature would be liberated and brought to bear on the case in
hand.

The mass of testimony through the ages is against healing physical ills by
the use of the higher forces in nature, and the reason, once well known but
later on forgotten, is the one given in the article of January, 1892, -- 

that diseases are gross manifestations showing themselves on their way out
of the nature so that one may be purified. To arrest them though thought
ignorantly directed is to throw them back into their cause and replant them
in their mental plane.

This is the true ground of our objection to metaphysical healing practices,
which we distinguish from the assumptions and so-called philosophy on which
those methods are claimed to stand. For we distinctly urge that the effects
are not brought by any philosophical system whatever, but by the practical
though ignorant use of psycho-physiological processes.

William Q. Judge
===============================================

Best wishes,


Dallas

------------------------------------------------
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Reitemeyer
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 6:07 AM
To
Subject: Re: H. Roerich claims Re: A B

>If a translator makes SUCH errors the work shouldn't be regarded as a
translation at all.

K------, if you were able to see theosophical books "translated" into 
German you were in danger to get a heart attack.

To give but a minor example: In Daniel Caldwell's German version of "The 
Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky" there appears the known term "lay 
chela". They translate it as "mundane chela", whatever that may be! HPBs 
important esoteric post as "Corresponding Secretary" - which BTW was vacant 
after departure until KT resumed that post in 1898 - is translated as 
"Executive Secretary"...

The big plus among the theosophicals sects is that mention of translation 
errors are censored by the infallible and advanced officials, so there is no

worry that the poppycock they produce will evercome to light: The members 
from the subclass are illeterate and are satisfied with the books - if they 
are buying and reading them at all, which most do not - and the public is 
also desinterested in it.

Only the few theosophists trying to be loyal to HPB:. in spirit get sick 
from it.

But it seems it is their problem. I have heard from high enlightened sources

that the Masters make only those theosophists sick which are transgressors.
That may be the reason why you meet always sane, healthy, agile, diligent 
members!

Frank