THERE are two causes of sickness and two types of death which we may discern, one which brings the ultimate blessing, healing and life, and that which only answers with cessation.
Pneumonia brings the rains within, where the patient is awash with such fluids as would drown him. As the fevers rise to dispel the cold, as the tremulous changes challenge the life within, they also in their own way, bring blessings. With both congestion and with heat there are effects upon the nature of the individual which exceed the physical condition and all that that implies.
As far as the body is wakefully concerned it has not the consciousness of death or an understanding of the threat of death. It is true that it may be labored under certain conditions - that the pulse will quicken and the astral body may be inflamed in accordance with the infliction - but it does not factor its own dissolution to be had in a permanent fashion. The body cannot and does not concede to cessation, or for that matter, to rest (totally at rest i.e. of the internal organs).
When the individual sleeps there are more life-renewing activities upon his physical body than there are (marginally) when he becomes awake and consciously animated. Although we perceive rest to be inertia because we believe that our body is relaxed into relative inaction, and we have little or no recollection of the time so past, this 'rest' is sublimated with a heavenly acceptance. When we give over to the condition of the stars, they shine within us. Our spirit-self is once more within its most active phase as well - given to its freedoms and its license that it lives patiently through the day for.
Many experiences we have during the wakeful hours are picked over and made much of during the nightly withdrawal. It is not meant to detract from the strength of the experience as we know our life in the world (and thus is not remembered well, at this stage of understanding) however much is reviewed (just as is after death) every night. Alongside this is also the aspect of our 'loosening' ourselves away from the day's dilemmas and a 'striking' of that which is found to be valuable, desirable or enlivening.
If the sleep processes could be fully interpreted there would be also a same insight into the spiritual worlds. Equally so we can study some of the forces which work within an individual during periods of certain illnesses, for these forces too may offer something of a spiritual insight, in that their operation has been called forth from our 'other' consciousness - that one which is effectively awake and away during the night, for of course, consciousness itself does never desist from its wakefulness. From our first beginnings it has been the ever-burning flame eternal, inspiring life around it through every trek it has ventured through. Although permeable and changeable, it does not stop, for to stop would mean that it could be no more.
When we stumble over the step out from our body's containing, leaving the gates of recollection here, we take our consciousness nightly (through the portals of the organs) into many, many spheres. Spirit can be naïve and genuine. We have soul experience, we have 'knowing' which comes from our kind, but we can never become much more during sleep by simply the process of lengthening the distance between ourselves and our physical body. Intrinsically the individual needs very much to be and to become within the world that the ego can rightfully go on to carry through within the spiritual realms. Very few all of a sudden become out of character or far wiser than they appear during their natural earthly life.
Having said that, it is interesting to note that the many influences which are remembered upon waking can be very contrary to the nature and the character and the morality of a man. So what is being said here, is that were you to interview the consciousness which has moved out from itself temporarily you would find no unique disclosure ordinarily, but that the actual remembrances as experienced by the waking individual are not indicative of his true self or even of his experience during the night.
If for example, a man or a woman has experienced a most troubling nightmare of sorts, or some sequence of events which can only be described as a form of lunacy to the waking consciousness, this is because the imagery has been drawn directly from the embodied recollective of resident elemental beings associated around their being. These elemental beings may or may not have been formed directly from the desires and the thoughts of the party who is experiencing the conflicting and disturbing nonsense. They may have attached themselves simply during the course of the sleep - something which is often brought to our attention by the very remembrances we are brought to. If we focus our discernment upon that which is and is not acceptable we can dismiss the elemental being at will, very quickly. They are everywhere and it is not something one should be overly worried about … but to know that we are subtly susceptible during the intermediate times between sleeping and waking and the impressions that are to be had there as well.
It is interesting also here to explain that during our nonsense or harrowing recollections of dream-time, there are often images of ourselves or our deciding, amongst the surreal forms we are given to. This teaches us how also the elemental beings can implicate our consciousness during the day consciousness (the early morning dream experience is part of this day consciousness made obvious) in that there are many images superimposed within our concepts that appear to have us within them, but do not.
There becomes a constant need to review and to reject (where applicable) the assortment of desires and corruptions as they present. This becomes much easier of course for the individual who has a speaking presence maintained within his mindset. Those who are given to narcotics will not be afforded the same discrimination to determine where they are amongst their own thinking, as they are 'asleep on their feet' so to speak, having given over their consciousness to a quasi-representation which flickers between this and t'other.
Now returning to the aspect of illness mentioned to be a blessing: it can be said all of the responses within the physical body which are exaggerated or stimulated because of a disease or a poison, of the body, mind or ego - all of the responses are inspired from the spiritual worlds, rather than the physical. Symptoms are responses to an underlying cause, they are never representative of their own beginning of reference.
You can consider for the point here, that firstly all life begins within the etheric vapors and condenses into its expression within the physical only after the spiritual blueprints have been called into being. This is the same also for our healing responses within our systemic constitution.
The organization which is the physical body works as a collective, a sympathetic, and as an integrated whole. The consciousness can superimpose itself over the body, as similarly as does our God to this Earth, in a relationship which does determine and govern much of its predispositions, drawing together and refining the whole - yet also, quite separate to the individual influences which belong to monadic sources respective to their own.
Therefore in godly fashion, when we sorrow our own physical cooperative sorrows too, and when we pray and receive the higher powers into our imaginations and spiritual heart, our bodies rejoice also their being. They are sensitive and forever qualifying life as we interpret it minute by minute. As often as it occurs that our intentions during our day-consciousness depart the efforts which are incurred during the 'sleeping' period, we may in good faith believe that physical treatments shall pervade and restore a particular physical function, whilst our star-consciousness has determined a persistence of the same and particular symptoms.
So we have an inner conflict arising most commonly where we are naturally in argument with ourselves. The complaints do not in any way feel something of a blessing, particularly when they discomfort the consciousness making their presence apparent. The physical collective would choose only immortality; Lucifer would select and add to this eternal beauty and no suffering. Yet reality has it that we are not in these respects alike to our soulic endurances (which are indeed very beautiful, eternal and without pain or sickness) … we are physically, corruptible.
Remarkably the presence of illness within Man heralds particular powers of given virtue. There are paths we may choose consciously within our daily desires and aspirations that betterment comes to us because of our willing it to be so. There are paths also, persuasions of betterment which our consciousness (that operates during our starry interludes in sleep time) would also seek out and choose for us, knowing how effective these transactions are, working in this way.
There are mysteries to this understanding, for as one can imagine it is far from the whole story just for a man to sink into a sickness and believe himself redeemed. However, plainly, literally and effectively, a man may gather to himself attributes that simply were not actively possible before, through the experience and powers brought to him in the symptoms of sickness, pain and physical corruption.
At this point of the individual's evolutionary awakening we are cautioned in many directions as to what may or may not be fully desirable within a range of karma for any given person and their healing decided by us. You see, healing may restore one to a place from where they began, but it does not, as with sickness, enhance them further. Please remember at this stage of the teaching that the fundamental being of Man is unequivocally most plastic and durable to all Life. We are eternal beings, we are provided for and the troubles which torment the most pitiable within the worldly experience do not last for relatively very long.
Now the argument here is not one of whether or not to work for healing in the world. Compassion and empathy calls upon us to seek out all ways to alleviate suffering. It is at this place now from which we have just come, that we can find some differentiation about this matter to help us in deciding upon the subject.
The miracle of the healings of Christ, was that through His Intervention an individual not only received a respite from his physical aggravation but also was afforded the full power of virtue which he spiritually required. Physical healers there have been before and after Him who could effect their cures but take the soul no further. In point of fact, the results of many 'healings' have been deleterious because the spiritual connection was disturbed and the fellow concerned made paralyzed in that important area. In this way it was correctly said that we die a little death when we take antibiotics also. 'Spiritual' healers can cause such deathly processes as well, because the correspondence between the inflowing forces and the physical condition are no longer allowed to operate as the determining consciousness would have it. There is a predetermining and an interruption to what would have invoked much virtuous benefit.
However, when Christ confronted the sufferer, the sin and the disease, He came with a choice which was accepted by the day-consciousness of the man for betterment, which his star-consciousness would have enforced upon him. When the choice was brought into the day-consciousness and that day-consciousness embraced the goodness with clarity, that decisiveness in the being of that individual transformed the physical, restoring it accordingly, releasing also the starry-consciousness of its imposing and infill.
The Resurrected Body brought about a likeness which was unlike the previous likeness, didn't it? When Christ Himself had drawn the powers into His Physical Form during the Crucifixion, He did so in a way which affected the process to follow in Man further on. He took the day-consciousness of Man through to death, and brought the star-consciousness into his egoic reckoning. Bringing two realms together, the physical existence was to be blended through the divine insights of Man, that in his conscious abilities he could retain a power which he hitherto had not had within the spiritual worlds before.
This mystery has not been seen or realized in Man as yet. We are at the very beginnings of this transformation which is given to us in possibility, that we may negotiate two worlds with the powers enabled from both. For those who are the 'runners' for Humanity certain talents in this regard have been won, and yet the true transaction as is possible through Christ has not occurred at this time.
When He was seen in His resurrected Glory, the body which became visible (to many) actually resembled in truth that of their own form spiritually. It shall not be said that the form 'mirrored' that of the individual for a mirror is something of the reverse (in this world). It was that this form was the form that they knew within their star-consciousness. Although a woman may well have perceived a man, what is meant here is that the impression given to the new form of Christ was first and foremostly impressioned by the soul who stood before Him. This is another secret which suggests to us that the physical body is not as it appears and can be remarkably different.
At first the Christ when received was always unrecognized [John 20:14-15]… this of course may be understandable. But what was outstandingly remarkable was that His body shared substance with others, that when the day-night consciousness has become transcended into the one body, the physical properties become respecters to the desire and will of the one God within.
Christ's Will was to provoke the men into examining themselves consciously through Him and to find the possibility of this, however the nature of the physical world and its propensity is to corrupt over time. The willing of the spiritual star-consciousness in its call to the higher powers was given to remain prevailing during this period of physical uncertainty and corruption:
Truly, truly, I say to you, When you were young, you gird yourself, and walked where you would: but when you shall be old, you shall stretch forth your hands, and another shall gird you, and carry you where you would not.
-John 21:18 [American KJV]
This 'other' still calls within us dividedly, yet with the difference now being that Christ Himself has proved the glory of Death and will eventually assist the two in conjoining concurrently in Man.
To 'feed' within the world is to honor the world. We give to Life and all that it requires and the spiritual worlds will reward us. If there is to be a healing, we pray that Christ's presence be there for us at that time, so that the powers may still enter into us with a wholesome constancy and the spiritual consciousness may converse within us freely.
