 person to be
easily distracted and doubtfu l. Stuttering occurs when the tempo of
thoughts and speech lose their synchrony. Accentuated and
magnied, impressions conveyed by the ve senses may become
unreliable and overwhelming. These altered states of perception in
which reality becomes plastic and uctuating may be familiar to
those who have used psychedelic substances, involved themselves in
intense spiritual practices, or suered sudden emotional or physical
shock. This kind of experienc e represents a stress on the integrity of
the Heart-Kidney  relationship, the interaction between Shen and Jing,
Spirit  and Essence.
When Heart Qi is exaggerated, the Liver overheats and becomes
brittle like dry wood, and the Spleen  becomes scorched like parched,
sun-baked earth. The body and character lose their resiliency and
become sti, dry, and easily inamed. The muscle and joints may be
feverish and painful, eyes irritated, tongue sore, vision and hearing
distorted. This can devolve into a collapse  of Heart Qi, at which time
a person becomes hypersensitive, fragile, and close to the edge of
hysteria.
The key problems for Fire are dehydration, perturbed circulation
of blood, and instability of mental function. The Heart  is the home
of the Spirit  (Shen), and the Blood  houses the mind. By perfusing the
body with Blood, consciousnes s pervades all realms of soma and
psyche. Heat generated by exaggerated Fire consumes the body’s
Moisture  and dries the Blood. Yang destroys Yin. Metabolic activity
as well as the pace of thoughts and impressions in the mind become
unpredictable with surges of energy and emotion alternating with
periods of vapid dullness. Not knowing how he will feel from one
moment to the next causes Hector apprehension and insecurity.
In order to maintain uidity and steadiness, the Fire type requires
continual moisturization of the body and gentle inhibit ion of the
tendency toward extreme dissipation and excitation. When the
living sap of the body withers, life loses its softness, luster, and
juiciness. Hector needs to drink sucient liquids and avoidoverindulging in heating and drying foods such as curry, sugar,
alcohol, coee, tea, chili, and salt. He requires the time and space
for solitude and restitution, to regain inner calm and clarity.
Developing powers of discipline and discrimination, his Metal
aspect, and cultivating the rootedness of Water  through
identication with family, ancestry, and history will help him with
the steadiness that enables him to thrive.
MARIA: IS IT WARM IN  HERE OR  IS IT JUST ME?
Wearing an anxious smile, Maria ops onto a chair. Her eyes dart
around the room like a came ra, registering every detail. She appears
both nervous and excited about her visit. As she removes her jacket
she comments, “Is it warm in here or is it just me?”Harmonic  and Dissonant Patterns
In the harmonic Heart  pattern, the Liver and Spleen  maintain stability
while the Lung and Kidney  provide the tension necessary for
movement and adaptation. In the exaggerated Heart  pattern, the Liver
and Spleen  become hyperactive and the Lung and Kidney  become
hypersensitive and erratic. In the collapsed  pattern, the Liver and
Spleen  become drained and weake ned while the Lung and Kidney
become overbearing and congested.
Maria says, “I have a part in a lm right now, and I have itchy red
welts on my neck and face like hives. Can you do anything for that?
I’ve been controlling it with Benadryl, but it’s not worki ng so well
and it makes me feel jittery.”Asked about her health and what sorts of problems she’s had in
the past, Maria replies, “I’ve had a recurring problem with cystitis,
for which I’ve taken a lot of antibiotics. I get canker sores in my
mouth, and around my period I become sensitive, have hot ashes,
my hands and feet swell up so I can’t wear my ring or my good
shoes, and I have bad dream s. It’s also the time I’m most likely to
get a bladder infection.”
Maria comments that she has a weakness for stimulants like coee
and chocolate, especially before a performance. She uses them to
feel “on” and likes being high. She comments that she’s particularly
thirsty while she’s working, craving ice water or other cold drinks. I
ask if she ever feels cold, and she says that after a hot ash she may
feel a chill.
TREATMENT
Maria lies on her stomach and loosens her collar since the rst
acupuncture point is along the spine at the base of the neck. The
needle is inserted about three -eighths of an inch deep and is twirled
in place  for about fteen seconds. Maria reports when she feels a
sensation of fullness or heat at the point, after which the needle is
gently withdrawn.
She turns over so that points above each wrist on the Pericardium
channel can be treated. This time she reports a sensation of warmth
and tingling, after which the needles are removed. Points are used
along the Large Intestine  channel on the hand, the Lung channel
above the wrist, and the Kidney  channel below the ankle, and a
special point is used above the bridge of the nose between the
eyebrows. These needles remain in place for twenty minutes.
Maria volunteers that she felt more sensations than I asked her
about, not only tingling and heat, but also waves of vibrations going
up and down her back and legs. For a while she felt very hot and
her heart beat quickly; now she feels cool and her heart calm. She
wants to know if everyone has this experience and what these
feelings mean. Asked whether her sensations are pleasant orunpleasant, she replies that as long as it’s not abnormal, she likes it.
I reassure her that it is not abnormal since acupuncture is
experienced idiosyncratically by everyone. Although Maria wants to
keep talking as she lies on the table, I suggest that she close her eyes
and rest quietly.
INTERPRETATION AND  STRATEGY
Maria’s tongue  is red at the tip, and her pulse is soft, weak, and
rapid. Arising from hyperactivity of the Heart, the hives represent
Heat in the Blood  that is trying to escape through the skin, governed
by the Lung. This is an example of the Qi of the Heart  invading the
Lung, of Fire burning Metal. Red tongue, mouth sores, thirst, and hot
ashes are mounting evidence that there is too much Heat (Yang)
and not enoug h Moisture  (Yin). The fact that her pulse is also weak
and that she seeks stimulants to keep herself going indicate the
beginning collapse  of Qi.
Normally the Fire from the Heart  descends to warm the lower
region of the body, including the Kidney. In Maria’s case, the excess
Heat causes irritation and inammation of the delicate mucous
membrane lining the bladder and urethra, causing cystitis. The Heat
causes Moisture  to evaporate and be held in suspension under the
surface of the skin, manifesting as puness of the hands and feet.
Maria’s troubles reect the disturbed interaction between the
Heart-Lung  and Heart-Kidney. The dynamic of Fire and Metal, Heart
and Lung, organizes our boundaries. The secretion of the Heart,
which is perspiration, appea rs on the outer surface of the body,
while mucus, the secretion of the Lung, softens and lubricates the
skin and its underside.
The dynamic of Fire and Water, Heart  and Kidney, organizes the
continuum of our reality. The Heart  evokes our communication and
contact with the world, while the Kidney  processes our inner
impressions and establishes the root and substance of our individual
and ancestral identity. When the Heart  is dominant, the hot nature
of its Qi can damage the Yin of the Kidney  and Lung. It is necessaryto clear the excessive Heat and nurture Yin by generating Moisture—
Yin can be used to balance Yang.
The acupuncture point on the spine clears Heat in general, and the
points on the Pericardium  clear Heat from the Heart Network  and
calm the Spirit. The point on the Large Intestine  channel is specic
for red, itching skin and promotes elimination of Heat via the
bowels. The points on the Kidney  and Lung channels tonify those
Organ Networks  and distribute Moisture  upward  toward the chest and
head. An herbal prescription to harmonize the relationship between
the Heart  and Kidney  will disperse Heat, tonify Moisture, tranquilize
the mind, and stabilize the will.
Maria delights in the immediate transformation that occurs when
she connects with an audience, changing everyday reality into a
charged and intimate drama. She gravitates toward such peak
experiences. She is quick to share her feelings and give feedback
about her sensations. Eager to communicate and establish close
contact, she is open to forming a friendship in addition to receiving


oused,	and
the	calibratable	high	energy	that	accompanied	the	teachings.	All	enlightened
beings	tell	the	populace	to	ignore	their	personality	or	personhood,	but,
instead,	to	focus	on	the	teachings.	Typical	of	the	misunderstandings	and
distortions	that	prevail	in	religion,	mankind	does	just	the	opposite	and
worships	the	personages,	the	dates,	the	times,	and	the	places	they	visited	and
ignores	the	teachings.
The	prevalence	of	the	teachings	of	the	Christ/Buddha/Krishna/Avatar
seems	to	have	been	signaled	recently	by	the	transition	of	the	consciousness
level	of	mankind	from	the	negative	realm	at	190	to	cross	over	the	line	of
Truth	and	Integrity	of	200	to	its	present	level	of	207.	The	significance	of	this
major	event,	which	has	happened	for	the	first	time	in	the	history	of	mankind,cannot	be	understated.	By	analogy,	we	know	that	just	on	the	physical	level,	a
change	of	only	a	few	degrees	in	the	prevailing	global	temperature	has
profound	effects	on	the	entire	planet	and	all	life	on	it.	In	contrast,	the	shift	in
man’s	consciousness	from	190	to	207	is	far	more	significant	and	profound	in
its	total	and	eventual	effects	than	any	change	in	the	temperature	of	the	planet.
If	the	Second	Coming	of	Christ	is	to	be	revealed	by	a	sign,	then	that	sign
has	already,	and	only	very	recently,	appeared.	Unmistakable	in	its	implication
and	promise	for	all	mankind	is	that	profound	shift	from	falsehoods	distorting
the	consciousness	of	mankind	to	that	of	truth.
It	could	be	that	the	arm	of	the	child	can	reveal	to	us	the	first	light	of	a	new
dawn	for	civilization.	It	was	said	that	it	will	be	by	the	innocence	of	the	child
that	man	is	led	to	God	and	to	heaven.	It	is	actually	only	by	the	innocence	of
the	child	within	that	the	door	to	truth	can	be	opened.
The	innocence	of	the	child	remains	undisturbed	and	unsullied	within	the
consciousness	of	everyone.	It	is	the	very	basic	‘structure’	of	consciousness
itself.	The	analogy	to	current	life	is	that	the	hardware	is	unsullied	by	the
software	which	is	processed	through	the	computer,	just	as	the	camera	is
unaffected	by	the	images	transmitted	through	its	lens.
Rediscovery	of	The	Pristine	State
While	we	speculate	about	the	limitations	of	the	consciousness	of	mankind,
it	is	actually	the	individual	who	transforms	society	in	a	manner	that	is
invisible	and	unsuspected.	Force	is	vulnerable	to	an	infinite	number	of
oppositions,	but	power	has	no	possible	opposite	or	enemy.	Like	space	itself,
power	is	immune	to	attack	and	forever	invulnerable.	People	think	they	are
ruled	by	their	unruly	minds	and	that	they	are	the	victims	of	circumstances.	All
this	sums	up	how	a	person	feels	from	moment	to	moment.	Thus,	people	see
themselves	as	victims	of	their	stream	of	consciousness	or	feeling	states	and
transitory	circumstances.	The	prevailing	view	is	that	there	are	no	options	to
one’s	current	state	of	mind	and	feeling	tone	or	emotions.
This	succumbing	to	‘it’	(the	mind)	and	‘out	there’	(the	world)	is	accepted
as	natural	and	normal.	Few	people	suspect	that	there	is	actually	any	other
option.	By	self-examination	and	inward	focus,	one	can	discover	that	all	states
of	consciousness	are	the	result	of	the	execution	of	an	option.	They	are	not
unchangeable	certainties	determined	by	uncontrollable	factors	at	all.	This	can
be	discovered	by	examining	how	the	mind	works.
One	is	not	really	ruled	by	the	mind	at	all.	What	the	mind	reveals	is	an
endless	stream	of	options,	all	disguised	as	memories,	fantasies,	fears,
concepts,	etc.	To	get	free	of	domination	by	the	mind,	it	is	only	necessary	to
realize	that	its	parade	of	subjects	is	merely	an	arbitrary	cafeteria	of	selectionswending	their	way	across	the	screen	of	the	mind.
One	is	not	‘forced’	to	feel	resentment	by	a	negative	memory,	nor	does	one
have	to	buy	into	a	fearful	thought	about	the	future.	These	are	only	options.
The	mind	is	like	a	television	set	running	its	various	channels	for	selection,
and	one	does	not	have	to	follow	any	particular	temptation	of	thought.	One	can
fall	into	the	temptation	of	feeling	sorry	for	oneself,	or	angry,	or	worried.	The
secret	attraction	of	all	these	options	is	that	they	offer	an	inner	payoff	or	a
secret	satisfaction,	which	is	the	source	of	the	attraction	of	the	mind’s
thoughts.
If	these	payoffs	are	refused,	it	will	be	discovered	that,	at	all	times,	behind
the	thought	screen,	there	is	a	silent,	invisible,	thought-free	space	of	joy.	This
is	an	option	that	is	always	available,	but	to	be	experienced,	it	has	to	be	chosen
above	all	other	tempting	options.	The	source	of	joy	is	always	present,	always
available,	and	not	dependent	on	circumstances.	There	are	only	two	obstacles:
(1)	the	ignorance	that	it	is	always	available	and	present,	and	(2)	valuing
something	other	than	peace	and	joy	above	that	peace	and	joy	because	of	the
secret	pleasure	of	the	payoff.
The	experience	of	the	presence	of	God	is	available	and	within	at	all	times,
but	awaits	choice.	That	choice	is	made	only	by	surrendering	everything	other
than	peace	and	love	to	God.	In	return,	the	divinity	of	the	Self	reveals	Itself	as
ever	present	but	not	experienced	because	it	has	been	ignored	or	forgotten,	or
one	has	chosen	otherwise.
When	Is	The	Future?
To	choose	to	experience	the	presence	of	God	occurs	outside	time.	It	is
therefore	nowhere	in	the	future;	it	is	available	only	in	the	present.	No	other
condition	is	necessary	or	even	possible	because	the	present	moment	is
permanent;	it	never	changes;	it	never	disappears	into	yesterday	or	tomorrow.
In	fact,	it	is	inescapable.	Everyone	is	actually	safe	in	the	exact	moment	of
now.
By	observation,	it	will	become	apparent	that	the	only	thing	that	seems	to
change	is	appearance.	The	now	stands	still;	the	screen	is	permanent.	Although
a	movie	script	changes	and	a	story	unfolds,	even	then	it	can	do	so	only	within
the	precise	instant	of	now.
‘Now-ness’	is	the	primordial,	overreaching,	all-powerful,	unchangeable,
and	absolute	requirement	to	experiencing.	It	is	the	essence	of	awareness	of
being	and	existence.	It	is	impossible	to	exist	anywhere	at	all	except	in	the
drastic,	radical	reality	of	now.	This	instant	is	all	there	is.	One’s	own
consciousness	as	Self	is	the	only	Eye	by	which	anything	can	be	experienced
or	known.	The	inner	sense	of	reality	is	bestowed	by	the	Self	on	the	‘outer’surroundings,	which	is	what	makes	them	seem	real.	The	sense	of	realness	is
therefore	a	projection	of	consciousness	by	the	self,	originating	from	the	Self.
One	is	therefore	not	the	witness	of	a	‘real’	world;	one	is	actually	the	source	of
its	seeming	reality.	The	world	is	actually	entertainment.	Like	amusement,	it	is
meant	to	be	worn	lightly.


 danger ous as the
depths of the ocean; both ar e dark and full of unseen
monsters.) W e are all living with the wr eckage of failed
ideals that once seemed lik e perfect solutions. Each solution
matches a pictur e of what the dark side is all about.
If you think that shadow aspects lik e fear, anger, anxiety,
and violence ar e the r esult of demonic possession, the
solution is to purif y the aﬄicted person. Demons can be
driven out with rituals, cleansing of the body, fasting, and
grueling austerities. This is not a primitive notion. Millions of
moder n people hold fast to it. Y ou can’t pass a newsstand
without seeing a glossy magazine that pr omises a new you
through some kind of puriﬁcation, whether it’s a diet thatwill over come your craving for bad foods or a checklist for
ﬁnding the right spouse by avoiding the wr ong types of
people. “ Clean up your act” is the moder n version of
purifying fr om demons.
Akin to this e xplanation is the notion that cosmic evil has
been loosed in the world. If this is your e xplanation for the
shadow, the natural solution is r eligion. R eligion aligns you
with cosmic good in its battle against cosmic evil. F or
millions of people this war is very r eal. It e xtends to every
aspect of their lives, fr om se xual temptation to abortion, the
rise of godless atheism, and the decline of patriotism. The
Devil cr eates every for m of human suﬀering and wr ong-
doing. Only God (or the gods) has the power to defeat Satan
and r edeem us fr om sin. Y et it’s har d to settle whether
religion defeats the shadow or actually mak es it str onger by
arousing str ong feelings of sinfulness and guilt, shame and
fear about the tortur es of a hellish her eafter.
Since we pride ourselves on living in an age when
superstition no longer rules our lives, these time-honor ed
explanations of the dark side ar e no longer the only choices.
People can tur n their backs on cosmic evil and tak e personal
responsibility. The dark side has been updated as sickness,
a branch of mental health. Along this path lies a huge ar ray
of treatments. A ddicts ar e sent into r ecovery pr ograms. The
anxious and depr essed ar e sent to psychiatrists. Out- of-
contr ol rage-aholics wind up in anger -management classes
after ramming a car on the fr eeway when they can’t contr ol
themselves.
Given all these e xplanations, each of which leads to a
deﬁnite solution, why is the shadow undefeated?
This may seem lik e a gloomy pr ospect, but in fact the ﬁrst
step towar d dealing with the shadow is to acknowledge its
power. Human natur e includes a self -destructive side. When
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung posited the ar chetype of the
shadow, he said that it cr eates a fog of illusion that
surrounds the self. Trapped in this fog, we evade our owndarkness, and thus we give the shadow mor e and mor e
power over us. It’s no secr et that the Jungian appr oach to
archetypes quickly tur ns very intellectual and complicated.
But the stubbor n power of the shadow isn’t comple x at all. I
ﬂicked on the television while taking a br eak fr om writing
this paragraph. The famous billionair e Warren Buﬀett was
being interviewed about booms and busts in the economic
cycle.
“Do you think ther e will be another bubble leading to a
huge r ecession?” the interviewer ask ed.
“I can guarantee it,” Buﬀett r eplied.
The interviewer shook his head. “Why can’t we lear n the
lessons of the last r ecession? L ook wher e greed has gotten
us.”
Buﬀett gave a small mysterious smile. “ Greed is fun for a
while.
People can’t r esist it. However far human beings have
come, we haven’t gr own emotionally at all. W e remain the
same.”
In capsule for m, ther e’s the shadow and the pr oblems it
poses. In the fog of illusion, we don’t see our worst impulses
as self -destructive. They’r e irresistible, even fun. Hence the
enormous popularity of r evenge dramas as entertainment,
whether in Shak espear e’s theater or a spaghetti W ester n on
the silver scr een. What could be better than unleashing all
our hidden rage, demolishing the enemy, and walking tall in
triumph? The shadow e xerts its power by making the
darkness seem lik e the light.
The world’s wisdom traditions have spent most of their
energy and thought meeting the same primal dilemmas.
Creation has a dark side. Destruction is inher ent in natur e.
Death inter rupts life. Decay saps vitality. Evil is attractive.
No wonder the fog of illusion eventually seems lik e a nice
place to be. If you face r eality head- on, the dark side is too
overwhelming to bear. Yet ther e is a counterfor ce that has
steadily—and successfully—over come the dark side. Thewreckage of failed solutions k eeps us fr om seeing it. The fog
of illusion insulates us fr om it. Y ou would never guess,
dialing past the disasters and hor rors of nightly television,
that human beings have always had the power to ﬁnd
peace, e xaltation, and fr eedom fr om darkness.
The secr et lies in the wor d “consciousness.” When people
hear this, a look of disappointment cr osses their faces.
Consciousness is old hat. W e’ve hear d about consciousness-
raising ever since feminism appear ed, along with other
varieties of liberation. Higher consciousness is held out as a
promise by countless spiritual movements. Y ou might even
be tempted to thr ow consciousness onto the pile of wr ecked
ideals, because in the face of sincer e attempts to raise our
consciousness, the shadow plagues the world with war,
crime, and violence, just as it plagues individual lives with
pain and fear.
We have come to a cr ossroads. Either consciousness
belongs with the other false answers, or it hasn’t been tried
in the right way. I’d lik e to suggest that the latter is true.
Higher consciousness is the answer—the only lasting answer
—to the dark side of human natur e. It’s not the answer
that’s at fault her e—it’s the application. Ther e are countless
paths to healing the soul, just as ther e are countless
alternative tr eatments for cancer. But no one has enough
time and ener gy to e xperiment with all of them. It’s vital to
pick a path that tak es you wher e you want to go. For that to
happen, a much deeper analysis of the shadow is r equir ed.
If you appr oach the darkness superﬁcially, it will always
persist, because the shadow isn’t as simple an enemy as
sickness, a demon, or a cosmic devil. It’s an aspect of r eality
so basic to cr eation that only complete understanding can
successfully confr ont it.
The T ruth of One RealityThe ﬁrst step in defeating the shadow is to abandon all
notions of defeating it. The dark side of human natur e
thrives on war, struggle, and conﬂict. As soon as you talk
about “ winning,” you have lost alr eady. You have been
dragged into the duality of good and evil. Once that
happens, nothing can end the duality. Good has no power to
defeat its opposite once and for all. I know that this is har d
to accept. In each of our lives ther e are past actions we ar e
ashamed of and pr esent impulses we ﬁght against. All
around us ar e acts of unspeak able violence. W ar and crime
devastate whole societies. P eople desperately pray to a
higher power that can r estor e light wher e darkness pr evails.
Realists long ago gave up hope of seeing the good side of
human natur e over come the bad. The life of Sigmund F reud,
one of the most r ealistic think ers who ever confr onted the
psyche, came to a close as the raging violence of Nazism
devour ed Eur ope. He had concluded that civilization e xists
at a tragic cost. W e must r epress our wild, atavistic instincts
in order to k eep them in check, and yet despite our best
eﬀorts ther e will be many defeats. The world erupts in mass
violence; individuals erupt in personal violence. This
analysis implies a ter rible kind of r esignation. The “good
me” has no chance of living a peaceful, loving, or derly life
unless the “bad me” is shoved down into the darkness and
caged in solitary conﬁnement.
Realists


 Awaken to a new consc iousness in
which distance and time constraints can be overcome just by a change ofstate. An awakened state that knows and trusts in the power of your
thoughts and feelings to live a wishes fulfilled life.
In all of your waking hours, I encourage you to stay closely aligned to
your originating Source of being. Practice thinking like God (your highest
self) thinks. As I pointed out in a previous book, Excuses Begone!, when
your contemplations are a vibrational match to originating Spirit, you are
synchronized with Divine mind, attracting and fulfilling your desires. You
have the same power as originat ing Spirit, as long as you don’t replace your
Divine nature with ego’s thoughts, which are essentially the mental
meanderings of your false self.
While awake, use your mind to repeatedly remind yourself of your true I
am that I am nature.  Remember that universal one subconscious mind
creates in a way known only to itself. It is the great mystery. Learn to live in
that mystery, making every effort to use all of your mental and feeling
powers to manifest the life you desire, all the while staying in an
uncompromised state of love. Here is what Erich Fromm wrote on this
subject of living the mystery : “Rather than be confronted with an
overwhelming proof of the limitations of our understanding, we accuse the
dreams of not making sense.”
You needn’ t be concerned with how it will all work out; all you need to
know is that you are always connected to your Source of being, and that
you and God are truly one. Just as no scientist can tell you how a caterpillar
knows how to turn itself into a butterfly and then migrate thousands of
miles without the benefit of a brain, you must simply accept the great
mystery of life and death and stay as closely aligned with this miraculous
thing we call creative Source of all being as you possibly can. You don’t
have to understand it all; all you need do is remain in a state of love while
reprogramming your subconscious mind to develop the habits  of a God-
realized being, rather than an ego-dominated person.
As the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran observed in his classic book The
Prophet, “Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.” I
urge you to follow the poet’ s advice and open up that gate and come to
know a new external you, in your dreams awake, and never forget your own
Divine magnificence.
Three Suggestions— As you lie in bed preparing for your nightly slumber, reme mber that
the last thought  you have in your mind can last up to four hours in your
subconscious mind. That’ s four hours of programming from just one
moment of contemplation prior to going into your unconscious state. Create
a reminder like a prayer or mantra to place by your bed. Write these words
and read them as you get comfo rtable: I am going to use these moments to
review what I intend to manifest into my life. Keep that sign there to remind
you how to spend your presleep moments nightly.
— Reproduce this quotation from Saint Germain in The “I AM”
Discourses  and repeat it at least three times  as you prepare to go to sleep as
a daily/ nightly reminder that you are sending forth the greatest decree
possible: “‘I AM’ the Governi ng Presence, governing in Perfect Divine
Order, commanding Harmony, Happiness, and the Presence of God’ s
Opulence in my mind, my home, and my world.”45 Make a serious effort to
feel the sustaining power of this in your body.
— If before dropping off to sleep you are assailed by worry, distress, or
fear, do not stay in bed. Get up, turn on the light, take a few deep breaths,
read from a spiritual text, medi tate for a few moments in front of a white
candle, say a prayer—do anything other than staying there lying  down. You
cannot defend yourself against these onslaughts while remain ing snug in
your bed. If distressing feelings come back when you return to bed, get up,
turn on the lights, and try someth ing else. When you finally do feel peaceful
back in bed, repeat the I ams  from suggestions one and two on the previous
page and drift off to sleep ready to have your ears opened and your
instructions sealed.
OceanofPDF.comCHAPTER NINE
MAKING  IT ALL COME  TOGETHER
“Turn back to the higher planes and plunge into the cosmic ocean once
again … People think that it is in the details that they will find the light, the
precision, they ar e looking for, but this is an illusion: you will find far mor e
light in what is vague and indistinct … The human soul needs immensity;
only in immensity can it be happy and feel fr ee to br eathe.”
— O MRAAM  MIKHAËl  AÏVANHOV
This final chapter will assist you in achieving that immensity  that your
soul is seeking. It is comprised of seven questions for you to contemplate
and explore as you begin your wishes fulfilled life. The questions are based
on the five wishes fulfilled foundations and the three opening chapters.
These questions, along with my ideas and suggestions, are in no particular
order of importa nce—they are offered in the hope that as you finish reading
this book, you have a strong aura of all things are possible  swirling around
in your consciousness. Once you decide to live from this Divine awareness,
your life takes on an air of appreciation for the mysterious and a belief in
the miraculous. All of your God-realized wishes will indeed be fulfilled.
Question #1: Does It Feel Natural?
There will be times when you doubt your ability to attract into life the
successful fulfillment of your wishes, including the ideal person you would
like to be. I realize these words appear to contradict what I’ve written
earlier in this book. However, I’m addressing this question from the
position of the overly conditio ned ego that’s been trained to believe it’s
preposterous to think you can become what you would like to be by simply
assuming the feeling in your body of your wishes being fulfilled.
Neville alerts you to this disruptive influence with these words:
The time it takes your assumption to become fact, your desire to be fulfilled, is directly
proportionate to the naturalness of your feeling of already being what you want to be—ofalready having what you desire.
The fact that it does not feel natural  to you to be what you imagine yourself to be is the
secret of your failur e. Regardles s of your desire, regardless of how faithfully and intelligently
you follow the law, if you do not feel natural  about what you want to be, you will not be it.46
Think about what you plan to manifest—then use your imaginat ion to feel
what that feels like in your body. Does it feel natural to you? I mean, does it
really feel like this is the you that you are deciding to be? If you’ve been
sickly for most of your life and you are assuming the feeling of a healthy
body, does it feel natural to see yourself as a picture of perfect health? Do
you feel that with your imagination and God, all things are possible? If
you’ve been overweight, or addicted, or poor, or victimized, or unlucky, or
weak, or anything at all that is incongruous with your perfect well-being,
can you feel natural when you assume the feeling of your new ideal?
Do you feel entitled to prosperity, health, happiness? If that feels
unnatural, you must take on this task that Neville defines in this way: “The
essential feeling of naturalness can be achieved by persistently filling your
consciousness with imagination— imagining yourself being what you want
to be or having what you desire.”47
I readily admit that there are some things that you might desire or wish for
that will never feel natural to you. This came up in an interview  I recently
did on a telecas t for a national television network. The interviewer asked,
“Do you mean to tell me, Dr. Dyer, that if I do all that you recommend, and
follow the Law of Assumption to the letter, I can become a linebacker for
the New York Giants?” Now this man was about 5 feet 7 inches tall and
weighed maybe  150 pounds—a small man imagining himsel f in a very
large man’ s physical position on a professional football team.
I asked him, “Does it feel natural for you to be playing that position on
the Giants?” His immediate response was, “Not at all.” And thus, I
reminded him that the time it takes  your assumption to become reality is
proportionate to the naturalness of being it.
In my opinion,  the interviewer would be doomed to failure  with his
assumption. However, I’ve seen professional basketball players who were 5
feet 7 inches tall, in a professio n populated by giants—and not only could
they play at an all-star level, but they could jump high enough to dunk abasketball. Whe n interviewed, they said without hesitation, “It feels natural
to me, even though no one else can imagine it happening.”
This is relevant to you, because it’s actually rare to desire what simply
feels unnatural. If being healthy, prosperous, happy, successful, strong,
int


how it’s used by the mind. What we devote to love, is usedfor love’s purposes. So we work within the worldly illusion,
politically, socially, envir onmentally, etc., but we r ecognize
that the r eal transfor mation of the world comes not fr om
what we’r e doing, but fr om the consciousness with which
we’re doing it. W e’re actually just buying time while the r eal
transfor mation of global ener gies has a chance to kick in.
The miracle work er’s purpose is spiritually grand, not
personally grandiose. The high cosmic drama is not your
career, your money, or any of your worldly e xperiences.
Your car eer is certainly important, as is your money, your
talent, your ener gy, and your personal r elationships. But
they’r e important only to the e xtent that they ar e devoted
to God to use for His purposes. When we outgr ow our
immatur e preoccupation with the small self, we transcend
our selﬁshness and become cosmically matur e.
Until we ﬁnd that cosmic maturity, we’r e childish. W e’re
worrying about our car payments, our car eer
advancements, our plastic sur gery, our petty hurts, while
political situations car een towar ds disaster and the hole in
the ozone looks worse every day. Childishness is when we’r e
so pr eoccupied with things that ultimately don’t matter, that
we lose our essential connection with things that do.
There’s a diﬀer ence between childish and childlik e.
Childlik e implies spirituality, as in tender ness, and a
profound not-knowing that mak es us open to new
impressions. Childlik e is when see ourselves as childr en in
the ar ms of God. W e lear n to step back and let Him lead the
way.
God isn’t separate fr om us, because He’s the love inside
our minds. Every pr oblem, inside and out, is due to
separation fr om love on someone’s part. Thirty -ﬁve
thousand people a day die of hunger on earth, and ther e’sno dearth of food. The question is not, “What kind of God
would let childr en starve?” but rather, “What kind of people
let childr en starve?” A miracle work er returns the world to
God by making a conscious change to a mor e loving way of
life. W aiting with cynical r esignation for the world’s collapse
makes us part of the pr oblem, not the answer. We must
consciously r ecognize that, for God, “ther e is no or der of
diﬃculty in miracles.” L ove heals all wounds. No pr oblem is
too small for God’s attention, or too big for Him to handle.
Every system in the world—socially, politically,
economically, biologically—is beginning to crumble under
the weight of our own cruelty. Without miracles, it could be
argued that the gig is up, that it’s alr eady too late to save
the world. Many people ar e convinced that the world is
headed for an inevitable major collapse. Any thinking
person knows that the world is in many ways moving in a
downwar d spiral, and an object con tinues to move in
whatever dir ection it’s cur rently headed. Only the
application of a str onger counterfor ce can change its
direction. Miracles ar e that counterfor ce. When love r eaches
a critical mass, when enough people become miracle-
minded, the world will e xperience a radical shif t.
This is the eleventh hour. The Course tells us that it’s not
up to us what we lear n, but only whether we lear n through
joy or thr ough pain. W e will learn to love one another, but
whether we lear n it painfully or peacefully is entir ely up to
us. If we continue in our dark ways and we manifest nuclear
war, then even if ther e are only ﬁve people lef t on the
planet at the end of the conﬂagration, those ﬁve people will
have gotten the point. They would sur ely look at one
another and say, “ Let’s try to get along.” But we can bypass
the scenario of a nuclear Ar mageddon if we so desir e. Most
of us have alr eady suﬀer ed our own personal Ar mageddons.
There’s no need to go thr ough the whole thing againcollectively. We can get the point later, or we can get the
point now. Knowing that we have a choice is a genuinely
adult understanding of the world.
After Dor othy had gone thr ough her whole dramatic
journey to Oz, the good witch told her that all she had had
to do was click her heels together thr ee times and say, “I
want to go home,” “I want to go home,” “I want to go
home.” Ther e had been no need for the long traipse down
the yellow brick r oad. Dor othy, who I’m sur e was outraged,
said, “Why didn’t you tell me that?” The witch r eplied: “Y ou
wouldn’t have believed me!”
In ancient Gr eek tragedies, ther e’s a common device
called “ Deus e x machina.” The plot builds up to a disastr ous
climax, and just when it looks as though all hope is lost, a
god appears and saves the day. That’s an important piece of
archetypal infor mation. A t the last moment, when things
look the worst, God does tend to appear. Not because he
has a sadistic sense of humor, waiting until we’r e totally
desperate befor e showing us his muscle. He tak es so long
because it’s not until then that we bother to think about
Him. All this time, we thought we wer e waiting for Him.
Little did we know, He was waiting for us.
5. REBIR TH
“This is what is meant by ‘The meek shall inherit
the earth’: They will literally tak e it over because
of their str ength.”
It is time to fulﬁll our purpose, to live on the earth and think
only the thoughts of Heaven. ‘Thus shall Heaven and Earth
become as one. They will no longer e xist as two separate
states.’There are times when miraculous thinking is not easy,
because our mental habit patter ns ar e per meated with fear.
When that’s the case—when our anger, jealousy or hurt
seem stuck to our hearts and we can’t let them go—how do
we work miracles then? By asking the Holy Spirit to help us.
The Course tells us that we can do many things, but one
thing we can never do is call on the Holy Spirit in vain. W e
are told that ‘we don’t ask God for too much; in fact, we ask
for too little.’ Whenever we feel lost, or insane, or afraid, all
we have to do is ask for His help. The help might not come
in the for m we e xpected, or even thought we desir ed, but it
will come, and we will r ecognize it by how we feel. In spite
of everything, we will feel at peace.
We think ther e are diﬀer ent categories of life, such as
money, health, r elationships, and then, for some of us,
another category called “spiritual life.” But only the ego
categorizes. Ther e is r eally only one drama going on in life:
our walk away fr om God, and our walk back. W e simply
reenact the one drama in diﬀer ent ways.
The Course says ‘we think we have many diﬀer ent
problems, but we only have one.’ Denying love is the only
problem, and embracing it is the only answer. Love heals all
of our r elationships—to money, the body, work, se x, death,
ourselves, and one another. Through the miraculous power
of pur e love, we let go our past history in any ar ea and
begin again.
If we tr eat miraculous principles lik e toys, they will be lik e
toys in our lives. But if we tr eat them lik e the power of the
universe, then such will they be for us. The past is over. It
doesn’t matter who we ar e, wher e we came fr om, what
Mommy said, what Daddy did, what mistak es we made,
what diseases we have, or how depr essed we feel. Thefutur e can be r eprogrammed in this moment. W e don’t need
another seminar, another degr ee, another lifetime, or
anyone’s appr oval in or der for this to happen. All we have to
do is ask for a miracle and allow it to happen, not r esist it.
There can be a new beginning, a life unlik e the past. Our
relationships shall be made new. Our car eers shall be made
new. Our bodies shall be made new. Our planet shall be
made new.


cancer and the need for cancer research in new fields.
... A bill is before Congress, the Pepper -Neely bill, to
appropriate a hundred million dollars for cancer research
with something like the zeal and bigness with which it went
for the release of atomic energy, turning the job over to the
scientists with resources generous enough to solve the
problem.
This alone would make a good theme for a broadcast, just
an example of the use a great democracy can make of its
intelligence and wealth. But the subject has been made
peculiarly gripp ing by unprecedented happenings yesterday
before the subcommittee which is holding hearings on this
bill, and of which Senator Pepper is chairman.
He invited a witness, a refugee scientist, now a resident of
New York, Dr. Max Gerson, and Dr. Gerson placed on the
stand, in quick succession, five patients. They were chosen
to represent the principal preva iling types of cancer, and in
each instance they showed that the Gerson treatment had had
what is conservatively called “favorable effect on the course
of the disease.” That in itself is remarkable, but it is the more
so because Dr. Gerson’ s treatment consists mainly of a diet
which he has evolved after a lifetime of research and
experimentation. To say that Dr. Gerson has been curing
cancer by a dietary treatment is medically impermissible, for
the reason that there must be five years without recurrence
before such a statement is allowed. Dr. Gerson has cured
tuberculosis and other illnesses with his diet, but in the
U.S.A. he has only been worki ng on cancer for four and a
half years....
Yet anything that offers even a possibility of treating
successfully at least some of the four hundred thousand
existing cancer cases in this country is stirring news, no
matter how conservatively it is formulated. There would be
no Pepper -Neely bill to appropriate a hundred million dollars
for cancer research if the existing research were coping with
the need.... I have  spoken  about this carefully and abstractly, which
underplays some  of the shock and delight of the experience
yesterday at the hearing of the Pepper Committee. It is one
thing to talk about chemistry and diet and vitamins and other
factors in medical science. It is another to see, as the
Committee yesterday saw, a seventeen-year -old girl, who
had a tumor at the base of the brain, which was inoperable,
and which had paralyzed her. Yesterday, she walked without
assistance to the witness chair, and told clearly about her
case and her treatment.
There was a sturdy man, who had been a sergeant in the
army. He had had a malignant tumor, also at the base of the
brain, which had been operated on but needed deep X-ray
treatment, and this he could not receive because of the
danger to the brain. Yesterday he was the picture of health as
he testified, and quite naturally he was proud of his
remarkable recovery.
There was a woman who had had cancer of the breast
which spread. Yesterday she was well, and testified with
poise and confidence.
A few cases showing such improvement cannot, of
themselves, affect the outlook of the medical profession. But
they are attested  facts and not flukes, and as such they have
to be accounted  for. And there are many, many more cases
which could have been cited.
It would  seem to be the business of medical research to
leap on such facts and carry every hopeful indication to a
final conclusion....
So the advocate s for the Pepper -Neely bill can argue that,
unless we learn  now how to deal successfully with cancer,
many millions of persons now living in this country are
condemned to die from cancer. A hundred million dollars is
little more than a token payme nt for America to make, in
order to avert such a sweep of death, and they can then point
to the Gerson dietary approach as a most promising field of
research....Dr. Gerson was an eminent if controversial figure in pre-
Hitler Germany. He was bound to be controversial because
he was challenging establis hed practice in treating
tuberculosis by diet. He has been assistant to Foerster, the
great neurologist of Breslau, and for years assistant to
Sauerbruch, one of the great physicians on the Continent.
The Sauerbruch-Gerson diet for skin tuberculosis is well-
known to European medicine, and the account of it is part of
accepted medic al literature. Dr. Gerson told the Pepper
Committee that he had first come upon his dietary theory in
trying to cure himself of migraine headaches. Later he
treated others, among them a man with skin tuberculosis as
well. Dr. Gerson was an acknowledged dietary authority in
Weimar, Germany, and was responsible for the German army
of his time being placed on dehydrated, rather than canned
food.2

PUBLIC  RESPONSE  TO THE  BROADCAST
Raymond Gram  Swing continued with his network radio broadcast and
brought in some additional news too. After he ended, the telephone
switchboard lit up at the Americ an Broadcasting Corporation in New York
City. People called in from all over the nation to learn about the Gerson
Therapy. But other, darker, more powerful commercial and political forces
had been listening as well.
The executive directors of pharmaceutical companies producing
cytotoxic agents for cancer treatment—members of the PMA— threatened
to cancel all radio advertising contracts for their drugs sold over the counter,
an annual loss in revenue for ABC amounting to tens of millions of dollars.
Within two weeks of that fateful radio broadcast which apprised people of a
potential cure for cancer, after thirty years at the same job Raymond Gram
Swing was fired from his position as a newscaster for the ABC network.
You might also wish to know what happened to the Senate’ s 227-page
Pepper -Neely anticancer bill of 1946—Document No. 89471. By efforts ofthe lobbyists working with four senators who were also medical doctors, the
bill was defeated. Today, Document No. 89471 is stored in boxes and
gathers dust in the archives of the U.S. Government Printing Of fice.
Meanwhile, since the Pepper -Neely bill was buried, the number of people
getting cancer each year has worsened beyond what anyone could have
predicted. According to Reno, Nevada, oncologist, homeopath, and internal
medicine specia list W Douglas Brodie, M.D., H.M.D., in his book Cancer
and Common Sense, the annual incidence of cancer has increased from
402,000 in 1946 to 1.9 million in 1996.3 Thus, during a half century since
the defeat of Senator Pepper ’s proposed anticancer legislation, the yearly
occurrence of cancer among the American populace has more than
quadrupled.4 Worse still, medical journalist and author Michael Culbert
points out even more graphical ly that at the stroke of midnight, upon our
ringing in the twenty-first century, every forty-five seconds thereafter a U.S.
citizen is destined to die from cancer. That number adds up to about 1,900
Americans per day.5
Oncologists informed about nutrition estimate that diets filled with fruits
and vegetables instead of fats and animal proteins—along with taking
greater amounts of exercise, more stringent weight control, and avoidance
of cigar ette smoke—could reduce cancer incidence by up to 40 percent.
This program would amount to nearly 4 million fewer worldw ide cases of
malignancies per year.
Thus, dietary and lifestyle improvements among Americans as advocated
by Dr. Max Gerson more than fifty years ago would be particularly
effective as the means to preve nt occurrence of the four most frequently
occurring life-threatening malignancies in the United States. According to
the November 30, 1998, issue of Newsweek  magazine:6
1. Prostate cancer  strikes with a minimum of 184,500 cases predicted in
1999. Among American men today, 17 percent will be diagnosed with
prostate cancer during their lifetimes. But improved diet, nutrition, and
general lifestyle would reduce that proportion to 13.6 percent.
2. Breast cancer  hits with a minimum of 180,300 cases estimated for
1999. Among American women  today, 14 percent will be diagnosed with
breast cancer during their lifetimes. But improved diet, nutrition, and
general lifestyle would reduce that proportion to 7 percent.
3. Lung cancer  happens with a minimum of 171,500 cases anticipated for
1999. Among everyone in this country today, slightly more than 7percent will be diagnosed with lung cancer during their lifetimes. Still,
improved diet, nutrition, and general lifestyle (especially eliminating
exposure to tobacco smoke) would lower that proportion to just 0.35
percent.
4. Colon/r ectal cancer  shows up with a minimum of 95,600 cases
expected in 1999. Among the populace of the United States, 6 percent
will be diagnosed with colon and/or rectal cancers during their lifetimes.
But improved diet, nutrition, and general lifestyle could reduce that
proportion to 1.5 percent.
“In spite of all the advances in chemotherapy and surgery,” report
officials of First Circle Medical, Inc., of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a main
manufacturer of antimalignancy  hyperthermia equipment, “ove r 1,800,000


 I’m learning to realign my prior ities
and take life day by organized day. That is why the press conference
figures second. My breakfast figures first.
Rewriting your appointment book in this way can help you live
Ayurvedically every single day. And to live Ayurvedically is to live a long,
happy, fulfilled life. Of course, there will be times when you cannot keep up
with your Ayurvedic routine. Don’t let that frustrate you. Accep t the breaks
just as you’ve learned to accept commercials interrupting your favorite
television show. They’re part of life. Be patient, and learn to calmly pick up
the threads afresh.
Have a happy, healing, A yurvedic day!
OceanofPDF.comBCHAPTER 7
the delicious route
to healing
My kitchen is a mystical place, a kind of temple for me. It is a place wher e
the surfaces seem to have significance, wher e the sounds and odors carry
meaning that transfers fr om the past and bridges to the futur e.
— Pearl Bailey
efore we talk about Ayurveda and its food philosophy, let us travel
twenty years back and a few thousand miles away to an apartment
complex in New Delhi, where the stars are still shining, the air is crisp, and
the streets are quiet. In this predawn hour, my mother rises from bed.
Fifteen minutes  later, she is kneading the dough to make  bread.
Meanwhile, lightly spiced fresh  green peas sizzle in the wok. The school
bus arriv es in twenty minutes, but that is enough time for Mom ’s practiced
hands to cook and pack a complete meal for both my brother and me.
By the time the first ray of sunlight peeks into our living room, our
mother has bathed and said her morning prayers. Soon a familia r sing-songvoice floats across the street into her waiting ears:
“Lo aa gayi taazi subah ki mirchi, gobhi, palak.”  (Hindi for “Here’ s
your morning supply of fresh peppers, cauliflower, and spinach leaves.”)
Mom sprints down the stairs armed with an empty basket, a few rupee
notes, and vocal cords ready for exercise (this last being essential for
haggling with the vegetable vendor over the prices). Many energetic
exchanges later, she waltzes back up, her basket brimming with vegetables
and fruits in all shades of red, orange, yellow, and green.
Domestic help is readily availab le in India, but my mother prefers to do
the cook ing herself. “I like to connect with my food,” she smiles. “When I
examine a bunch of cilantro for freshness, inhale the citrusy burst from an
orange, or cut green-pepper juliennes, I am not only taking pleasure from it,
but also enriching it with my love.” Who can ar gue with that?
Chhhannnggg!
Tiny mustard seeds descend into a pool of hot clarified butter, making a
sound like raindrops pelting a tin roof. While they pop and crackle in the
pan, a pinch of asafetida, a strongly aromatic spice, joins them. The air fills
with fragrance. Moments later, the cumin seeds dive in, followed by dried
fenugreek leave s, turmeric, coriander, cayenne, salt, and finally a cup of
diced fresh vegetables.
A few hours later upon returning from school, I fling my satchel on a
chair and bend over the sizzling wok to inhale the incredible aroma. How
inviting they look — those potatoes, cauliflower florets, and peas —
wrapped in their glistening coat of bright red pepper flakes,  sun-yellow
turmeric, and black mustard seeds! When they’re done, Mom sprinkles
them with freshly chopped cilantro leaves.
We settle eagerly on the chatai  (straw mat) on the kitchen floor. One by
one, whole wheat chapatis (Indian bread) are lifted hot off the griddle,
smeared with ghee, and delivered to our waiting plates. Accompanied by
sweet-and-sour mango chutney and tall glasses of cool homemade lassi
(yogurt drink), such spicy veggies and ladelfuls of lentils are featured on
our lunch menu all summer.ayurvedic nutrition: naturally healthy
It’s time to tell you why I am rhapsodizing about my eating routine. My
family’ s food tradition epitomizes the Ayurvedic philosophy of nutrition.
That is:
1. Eat a wholesome vegetarian meal. According to Ayurvedic beliefs,
food should be a pure, positive input. If it is derived by taking a life,
it loses its enlivening qualities. The Ayurvedic belief is that meat is
tamasic  — carrying the negative emotions of terror, panic, and
helplessness that an animal experiences while being slaughtered.
Thus, such tamasic foods can give rise to feelings of dullness,
depression, and aggression. But if you cannot give up meat, read the
next chapter for recommendations on when and how to eat it.
2. When you set out to balance  your meals, look to harmonize  flavors
— not balance nutrients. The reason? Ayurvedic living means
listening to your body, and the body does not understand the
language of carbohydrates and proteins. It responds to the scent of
lemon, the sight of green peppers, the taste of curry.
Does this mean that a vaidya will encourage you to eat chips, desserts,
and whatever else you like with abandon? Of course not. The Ayurvedic
encouragement to “give your body foods it likes” assumes that your body
will ask for foods that nourish it. If your physiology is in balan ce, this will
happen naturally. But more about that in a moment.
How vital a role does food play in the Ayurvedic system? The clue lies
in a recent rema rk one of my friends made. I coaxed her to consult a vaidya
for a long-standing problem of insomnia. Upon her return she phoned me,
sounding a little doubtful: “Well, I’ve come back with a grocery list!” I told
her she had hit the nail right on the head. T o the vaidya, food is medicine!
Ayurvedic heale rs follow this elementary logic: food and drink are
substances that you physically, consciously put inside your body. Your
body’ s most minute channels — its tissues and every one of its trillions of
cells — assimilate this intake, proving in a very basic sense that “you are
what you eat.” If what you eat is not healthy, you cannot be healthy. That is
why food should form the foundation of the healing process. AncientAyurvedic texts go so far as to say “Anna Bramha,”  or “food is a form of
God.”
To a first-timer, a vaidya’ s food guidelines can be somewhat puzzling.
The vaidya doesn’ t say “eat more protein” or “avoid sodium,” but instead
reels of f a seemingly random list of foods to choose and those to avoid. T o a
person suffering skin inflamma tion, for example, the vaidya may say “eat
more fresh cheese, broccoli, and pears, but avoid garlic, mayonnaise,
vinegar, and ketchup.”
What is the reasoning here?
By making changes in the contents of your platter, the vaidya is trying
to restore harmony among your doshas. The dietary recommendations
might initially seem tough — even impossible — to follow. But the vaidya
knows that, if followed for some time, these “tough” changes will receive
support from your body’ s own intelligence.
I know of a fifteen-year -old who, when asked by a vaidya to eat brussels
sprouts, shot back with “What’ s that?” But thanks to a mother who was
willing to place her trust in the vaidya’ s methods, the boy had to follow the
recommended diet. One month later, he reported a surprising change in his
eating habits: “I find myself wanting more brussels sprouts — and I can’t
imagine how I ever ate ketchup!” To the vaidya, this was no surprise. It was
a corrob oration of a truth that our wise ancestors discovered over centuries
of observation.
That truth is simple: your current health problem or “disorder” is a
result of your body’ s innate intelligence being compromised. In Ayurveda,
there is an interesting term for this: pragya aparadh  (pragya  means
“intellect,” and aparadh  means “mistake” — thus, “a mistake of the
intellect”). When the intellect commits a mistake, the taste buds  that should
naturally want sweet foods, for example, start craving pungent ones.
the six tastes
To understand this concept fully, let us begin with the basics of Ayurvedic
nutrition by talking about the six tastes. According to Ayurveda, everygrain, fruit, vegetable, or beverage on earth — whether natural or
manufactured — has one or more of six basic tastes. The Sansk rit term for
taste is rasa,  and these six rasas are:
1. madhura: sweet
2. lavana: salty
3. amla: sour
4. katu: bitter
5. tikta: pungent
6. kashaya: astringent
Further, each taste


 E X
Aaron, 6
Abode of Song, 30
aconite, 46
acupuncture, 50
Africa, 63, 66
Albertus Magnus, 37, 79, 108, 133, 134
Alchemical Citadel, 134
Alexander the Great, 8
Alexandrian School, 8
Alipili, 145
alloys, 59–60
Alphidius, 85, 134
aluminium, 60
Amerindian, 65
Amida Buddha, 32
anaesthetics, 50
An Ch'i Sheng, 34
animals, 19–20, 31, 34, 54–55, 72, 79, 86–87, 93, 100,
103, 105, 109, 116
anvil, 67
aphrodisiacs, 49, 102
Aquinas, Thomas, 37
Arabi, ibn, 128
Arabic alchemy, 42, 128
Arhats, 126
Aristotle, 81, 82, 134, 145
arsenic, 46, 60, 132
Artephius, 141
artiﬁcial gold, 58–60asparagus, 54
astrological symbols, 73
astrology, 7, 8, 35, 40, 71–80, 85, 105, 139
astronomy, 2, 50
athanor, 67, 69, 141
Attis, 25
automatic writing, 116, 119
axis mundi, 116
Azazel, 66
Babylonian alchemy, 8, 32, 40, 63, 134, 145
Bacon, Roger, 49, 79, 108, 134, 144
barley water, 59
Bayeux T apestry, 74
bellows, 67, 125
Bellows Blowers, 9, 11, 38, 114
black ( nigredo ), 65
Blofeld, John, 13, 143
body of glory, 104
Boehme, 9
Boethius, 75
Book of Lieh Tzu, The, 102
Book of Medicines, The, 19
botany, 2, 50
brain, 51, 105
brass, 59–60
bronze, 55, 59
Buddha, 105, 116
Buddhism, 1, 32, 104, 105, 126, 128, 140, 145
Budge, A. E.W., 107
buﬀalo, 16, 18, 83, 102
Buﬀon, 135
Burckhardt, Titus, 43, 124, 139, 141burning of the books, the, 34
Bushel, The, 74–75
butterﬂy, 54
Byzantine alchemy, 8, 107
caduceus, 125
cassia, 54
cauldron, 6, 10, 41, 67, 100, 124–125
cavity of the spirit, 100–101
celestial wife, 138
cereals, 40, 77, 102
chakras, 101
Chaldean alchemy, 73, 134–135
Chang Chung-yuan, 95
Chang K uo, 27
Chan Tzu-liang, 47
Chao Ti (Emperor) 18
charcoal burners, 11, 37
chemistry, 11, 50, 64, 89, 135, 143–144
Cheng W ei, 78
Cheng Y in, 3
ch'i, 79, 81, 84, 89–94, 116, 119, 132, 137
Chia I, 138
chih, 53, 55
Ch'ih Fu, 107
Chou Tun-i, 86
Christianity, 134, 145
Chuang Tzu, 1, 14, 23–24, 56, 77, 96, 99, 103, 128–129
Chu Hsi, 103
Chung-li Ch'uan, 27, 126
Ch'u Y uan, 138
Cinderella, 30cinnabar, 15, 23, 38, 42, 45, 53, 55, 56, 58, 61–62, 67,
104, 116, 123, 13, 135, 138
cinnamon, 54
cock, 39, 62, 128
comets, 71, 74
Confucian Classics, 34
Confucianism, 2, 92, 128
conjunctio, 125, 140, 145
Contraries, The, 137
Coomaraswamy, A. K., 82
copper, 55, 60–61, 73, 84, 86, 132
corpse-free hsien, 4, 17
crane, 27–30, 39, 54, 127
creation craftsmen, 66
cyclic viewpoint, 77, 80, 84–88, 92, 101, 103, 137
cypress, 53
dead air, 99
de Alchemica, 133–134
de Groot, 92, 137
de Medici, Catherine, 108
Deity of the Stove, The, 67–68
Democritus, pseudo, 125
dew, 4, 20, 53, 102
dew mirror, 117
diamond body, 104
digitalis, 46
Dionysos, 25
Dipper, The, 74
Divine Spring, The, 31
dog, 103
dragon, 5, 18, 19, 28, 39, 83, 86, 103, 123, 125, 127,
135dyeing, 50
Dying God, 25
Earth August T ext, The, 116
earthly immortal ( ti hsien ), 17, 98
Earth Mother, 42, 63–65, 124–125
earthquakes, 71
eclipses, 71–72, 74
Edward the Confessor, 74
egg, 39, 42, 69, 124, 132
Egyptian alchemy, 6, 8, 56, 86, 107, 113, 134, 139, 145
Eight Great P owers, The, 105
Eight Immortals or Genii, The, 18, 25–26
Eight Precious Things, The, 38
electroplating, 60
elements, 81–88
Eliade, Mircca, 63, 64, 95, 104, 129, 143, 147
Elixir of Immortality, 3, 7, 9, 20, 35, 135
Elysian Fields, 30
embryo, see foetus
Emerald T ablet, The, 85, 128, 139
Empedocles, 81
Enoch, 20
ether, 83
evergreens, 54
evil eye, 40
exorcism, 69, 114, 116
fairy world, 21, 43
Fang-chan, 34
fate, 22, 40, 73, 75, 78, 80, 119
feather, 28, 126
feng-shui, 119festivals, 64
ﬁeld of the elixir, 100
ﬁre and water, 4, 81, 100, 124, 125
First Ancestor, The, 65
ﬁve, 81, 128
Five Animal Antics, The, 103
Five Colours, The, 85, 128
Five Elements, The, 9, 80, 81–88, 90, 123
Five P owers, The, 85, 90
Flamel, Nicholas, 140
ﬂight, 109, 126–127
Fludd, 8, 144
foetus/embryo, 63, 91, 98, 99, 104, 124, 138, 139, 143,
146
Fo-ti Ting, 53
Four Seasons, The, 79, 81, 90
Four Spiritually Endowed Creatures, The, 127
freezing spirit, 99
Fu-hsi, 87
fungi, 13, 54
Fung yu-lan, 89
furnace, 10, 15, 21, 60, 63, 67, 98, 115,


 be cheaply raised, but the health giving power of their
products is low. The authorities have studied  the likelihood of drugs in the feed being
carried over into human food, but have overlooked the most important aspect, which is that the livestock products produced on drugged feeds often do not contain the
natural substances necessary to maintain health in the human consumer. It would be
better for the public if drugs were not used in livestock production so that the farmers
would have to feed the stock properly and weak animals would not live to be sold as food.
   Hogs raised by confinement feeding frequently are so weak they can hardly walk,
have poor thin fuzzy hair, diarrhea, sore eyes, and deformed jaws. The farmers know very well that they cannot feed their brood sows and hens in this way, for the babies
would be born or hatched dead, deformed, or so weak that most would die, so they
keep the prospective mothers in green fields of grass where they get fresh food. The
food faddists' idea that fertile eggs are be tter is correct, but not for the reason usually
given. The male chicken's fertilization of the hens has no food advantage, but it is the
green grass pasture on which breeding hens are kept that makes the difference.
   Many farmers seem to have forgotten that all livestock including chickens relish
tender green grass better than any other feed, and do best when eating it. Cattle
especially thrive on good grass above all,  and beef from grass and grain feeding
combined has a rich red color, fragrant golden yellow fat and a taste that is in a class
by itself. Eggs from chickens receiving gr een grass have brilliant orange colored
yolks that do not easily break in the pan, and a delicious flavor entirely different from the musty tasting confinement eggs. And oldtimers remember how good fresh country
pork used to taste, with its sweet aromatic fat, not slimy and rancid like commercial pork is today. It is still that good when the pigs are raised in green fields. Chicken
feeds now are such a fake that the mills even put in a yellow dye to imitate the skin appearance given by the yellow carotene vitamin normally in a healthy chicken.
Feedlot beef often shows dark streaks of ro t in the center of the bones, and if the
segments of red meat are pulled apart one can see that the fibrous muscle sheaths have
already been turned brown by microbes, because the meat lacks the anti-microbic
defensive powers found in normal animals. Most livestock on the market today are like old-time sailors who have been eating stale food on a long sea voyage, weakened
and sickened by scurvy and beri-beri.
   The livers from confinement fed livestock are abnormal and show the depletion of
vital substances by their pale yellowish or pinkish color. Healthy livers are dark wine
red. This was evidently known in very early times, for weak and worthless creatures
were called "white livered" or "lily livered." The liver condition is a good indicator of quality.

17. SMOKED AND SALTED MEAT AND FISH
   Food scientists have published extensivel y on the deterioration of fatty materials in
smoked and salted meat and fish. There are certain microbes which are able to thrive
in spite of the salt in these items, and these microbes split up and deteriorate the fatty
materials into fatty rubbish  which causes arteriosclerosis. The bluish or greenish
iridescent colors in hams are due to these microbes.
   Bacon, ham, corned beef, etc., are really hardship foods invented long ago so the
livestock could be butchered in the fall and the meat preserved for winter use. These
foods have little nutritional value, actually poor foods by any standard, yet sell at a
high price due to the labor expended on them. Now that it is possible to store meat by
freezing there is no longer any reason to eat  these stale items. Thin broiled slices of
fresh or frozen pork taste far better than bacon, and what could taste better than a
roasted fresh leg of pork? There is no longer any reason to eat bacon and ham.
   It has been known for many years and repeatedly proven by animal experiments that
burned, smoked, or heat browned materials are a powerful and certain cause of cancer
if applied or eaten over a long period of time. These materials are also extremely toxic
to the body in general. Cigarette smoking for instance causes cancer not because of
the materials used but simply because of the burning and consequent production of
tars. There are other known causes of cancer, such as certain chemicals, and some
unknown causes as well, so it certainly would not be correct to say that smoked foods
are the cause of cancer. But they are definitely a contributing cause, and so is any
other food if it is excessively browned or subjected to smoke or oily fumes in cooking
or in processing.

18. GENERAL FOOD PRACTICES
   Many people have a perverse obsession in wanting to "make" something out of food, and keep it
around for days. They mess about with recipes, meas uring cups, grinders, mixers, graters, slicers,
juicers, blenders etc, putting in long hours of work damaging their food so it will choke their arteries
and give them cancer. Those chipped-up slaws, cakes and pies, biscuits, ground-up casserole dishes,
hamburgers, brown gravy, big pots of stew or dried beans and ham that are re-heated for three days, are
slow tickets to misery and the graveyard. Paradoxical as it may be, the people that do such things the
most are often the ones we admire the most, for their conscientious good intentions and energy, even if
it is misdirected and destructive. Some of the nicest widows and sick people I know are like this. They are constantly chipping and chopping, marinating, mixing things together. These good people mean to do the right thing, bless their hearts, but they just have the wrong idea. Original food items should not
be looked at as raw materials to "make" some artifici al thing out of. Foods are very delicate materials,
which can be easily damaged. With few exceptions, anything you do to food reduces its health value.

   This brings us to the essential point: Treat f ood gently, until it goes between your teeth. Don't grate
and grind it. Prepare and serve it as nearly intact as you can. tutting it up only enough to get it in the pot or serve it conveniently. Don't over-cook it to a mush, don't overheat it, don't brown it. Realize that you
can eat better without all this self-destructive hard work. Try the following menus. Also see diet section
page 39.

19. MENUS AND BEVERAGES

BREAKFAST MENU
FRUIT, VEGETABLE, OR JUICE COURSE
Your choice of raw fruit, like apple, orange, gr apefruit, (no lemon or lim e) pear, grapes, melon,
bananas, strawberries, etc. Your choice of celery sticks, raw carrots, broccoli, cabbage, etc. Your
choice of juice fresh-squeezed then and there. Canned tomato juice as second choice.
MEAT OR EGGS COURSE
Eggs (no more than three) boiled, scrambled, poached, any way you like except fried. Oil is not necessary for scrambling. Keep the heat low and tumble them continuously with a spatula to keep from
browning.

Your choice of any FRESH meat, poultry, or seafood. Not cured meat or sausage or imitation meat. Try
some pork chops, or other cuts of fresh pork or beef cut thin so they will cook fast. Don't let them
brown, see cooking section page 35-38.
STARCH COURSE
Potatoes, cooked any way you like except fried or browned. Can be quickly cooked if sliced, even
quicker and better if parboiled previously. See be low and pages 35-38. Eaten with butter and salt,
potatoes are a treat.
BEVERAGE
Try not to drink much fluid with meals, not even s oup. Have your beverage earlier or later. See below.

LUNCH OR DINNER MENU
MEAT COURSE:
Your choice of any FRESH meat, poultry, or seafood, cooked any way you like as long as it is not
ground up, fried, or browned. Vapor  cooking per pages 35-38 is the best and easiest. Pork chops, steak,
stew meat, small roasts, chicken, veal, turkey, fish, shrimp, oysters, crabs, clams. No imitation meat, no
cured meat, no ham, no bacon, no sausage.
VEGETABLES:
Your choice of at least two or more vegetables, at least one being a green or leafy kind like turnip
greens, cabbage, broccoli, spinach, etc. Either cooked or raw. Potatoes, any kind, cooked any way but fried. If you vapor cook, you can fix all of this in th e same bowl. Try cauliflower, zucchini, celery, etc.

SALAD:
Your choice of the usual salad items such as lettu ce, red leaf lettuce, raw carrots, celery, tomato,
cabbage, red cabbage, avocado, melon. Go slow on such things as green peppers and onions, unless
you have a strong stomach. If desired, season


 such an organism to be nowhere and
everywhere at the same time would seem fantastic. In
essence, the quantum world is but another step down on
the scale of invisibility. Unlike the tiniest bacteria or
viruses, a single photon, electron, or any other object in the
quantum world can neve r be seen using any extension of
sight and touch. They are truly everywher e and nowhere at
the same time.
This fact hardly concern ed medicine until very recently,
because the smallest virus is still many millions of times
larger than an elementa ry particle. Also, germs are quite
stable in time and space, while quantum objects wink in
and out of existence unpredictably. If Pasteurella pestis
lurks in your blood, it is there, absolutely and deﬁnitely,
unlike the ghostly mesons that leave faint ﬂashes on a
photographic plate for a few millionths of a second, only to
vanish out of material existence, and most unlike the
neutrino, which can pass undetected through the entire
Earth as though nothing stood in the way.
The vast diﬀerence in scale between medicine and
quantum physics safely kept the two sciences on separate
ground until 1987, when a French immunologist, Jacques
Benveniste, performed an experiment that is outrageous to
all nonquantum views of the world. On the surface, the
experiment began innocuously. Dr. Benveniste took a
common antibody called IgE (standing for immunoglobulin
E type) and exposed it to certain white cells in the blood
called basophils. It is well known what happens when these
two interact—the IgE antibody clamps on ﬁrmly to speciﬁc
receptor sites and waits. What it is waiting for is an
invading molecule ﬂoating by in the bloodstream that needsto be defended against. In this case, the invader  is not a
germ but an antigen, a substance that causes allergies.
If you are allergic to bee sting, the molecules of bee
venom would  not be in your body more than a few seconds
before they triggered the IgE antibody. It in turn would set
oﬀ a comple x chain reaction in the cell that throws the
body’s allergic response into high gear; the basophil would
release a chemical called histamine, which causes the
swelling, redness, itching, and shortness of breath typical
of an allergy attack. The mystery  in allergies is that the
antigens, the oﬀending substances entering the body, are
generally harmless—wool, pollen, dust—and yet the
immune system treats them like the deadliest enemy. To
ﬁnd their cause, allergies have been thoroughly studied at
the molecular level, and one of the results is a ﬁrm grasp of
IgE.
This sets the stage for Dr. Benveniste’s dramatic
experiment. He took some human blood serum full of white
cells and IgE and mixed  it with a solution prepa red from
goat’s blood that was certain to trigger the release of
histamine. This second solution contained an anti-IgE
antibody, which represents bee venom, pollen, or other
antigen. When the IgE and the anti-IgE hit, the reaction in
the test tube went oﬀ exactly as it would in a person with a
bad allergy, and large  amounts of histami ne were
produced.
Benveniste then diluted the anti-IgE tenfold and added it
again—still the same reaction. He kept on diluting, time
after time, and as before, about half of the IgE (40 to 60
percent) continued to react. This was extremely surprising,
because he was well past the limit where the solution
should be chemically active. He decided to dilute the anti-
IgE even more, making it a hundred times weaker each
time, until he knew that there was no anti-IgE at all. His
last dilution contained 1 part antibody to 10120 parts water;if written out, this number would be expressed as 10
followed by 120 zeroes. Using a constant called Avogadro’s
number, he conﬁrmed mathematically that it was
impossible for the water to contain a single molecule of
antibody. When he added this “solution,” which was now
just distilled water, the histamine reaction was set oﬀ with
the same power as before. (The classic Humphrey Bogart
movie, To Have and Have Not, contains the quirky line,
“Have you ever been stung by a dead bee?” In this case,
the bee is also invisible.)
Although his result was an absurdity, Benveniste
duplicated it seventy times, and asked other research
teams to repeat it in Israel, Canada, and Italy—all  came up
with the same result. They all discovered that you can
trigger the immune system with an antibody that isn’t
there. In our terms, Benveniste had uncovered the ghost of
memory—he himself speculates whether water contains the
phantom imprint of the molecules that were once in it. His
results were reluctantly published in the June 1988 issue of
the prestigious British journal Nature. Its editors frankly
declared their repugnance at the result, stating quite
rightly that “there is no physical basis” for it. The human
white cells were acting as if the anti-IgE was attacking
them from everywhere when in fact it was nowhere.
—
Medicine is reluctant to walk through the quantum door,
even though this experiment clearly opens it.* It was widely
held that Benveniste was lending credence to the methods
of homeopathy, a medic al system invented two hundred
years ago by a German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, and
still popular throughout Europe. The term homeopathy
comes from two Greek roots that mean “similar suﬀering”;
this points to the fundam ental homeopathic principle that“like treats like.” Homeopathy approaches  all diseases
using Benve niste’s meth od: tiny amounts of antagonistic
substances are taken by the patient to build up immunity or
to drive out a disease if it is already present.
When conve ntional medicine administers a smallpox
vaccine, it appears that homeopathic logic is at work—the
dead virus in the vaccine stimulates anti-smallpox
antibodies in the body. (This method of ﬁghting smallpox
goes back to ancient China, where doctors knew to take
scabs from the sores of smallpox victims and rub them on
small cuts in the arms of those they wanted to protect from
the disease.)  Unlike vaccination, however, homeopathy is
based on symptoms rather than on the actual organisms
that cause a disease.
Using an elaborate system of poisons and toxic herbs that
mimic the symptoms of true disease, the homeopath gives
the body a taste of what he wants to cure. Ground-up Nux
vomica  seeds, for example, which contain strychnine,
would be given to counteract chronic fatigue and
irritability, because they produce these symptoms
themselves. Benveniste’s experimen t in fact did not
endorse homeopathic logic as a whole but only a corner of
it, by showin g that the body can react to a micro dose of a
foreign substance. The rest of homeopathy remains
ambiguous. (The principle of “like treats like” is accepted
in Ayurveda, and even broadened to say that every part of
the body is matched by herbs, minerals, and even colors
and sounds that can be used to treat it. However, Ayurveda
does not follow the homeopathic logic that the body should
be made sick in order to make it well.)
The deeper import of Benveniste’s experiment, I believe,
is brought out by one of the quantum diagrams from the
last chapter:A bodily process, we noted, is like a bucket brigade, a
chain of events passing from one step to another, with the
exception of the ﬁrst bucket (B). This bucket appears as if
out of nowhere, even though we can obviously see that it is
triggered by some initial impulse (A). What Benveniste did
so beautifull y was to strip this model down to its barest
essentials:
We continually cross over from the state of no molecules
to one. If you try to remember the ﬁrst time you ever drove
a car, the brain chemicals  present on that occasion have by
now vanished. (Most of them disappeared before the drive
was over.) When you re-create that memory today, seeing
the car and feeling the steering wheel in your hands, you
are triggering cellular reactions that begin “nowhere,”
since your brain cells are as empty of the old molecules as
Benveniste’s water.If you can explain how the bodymind gets from no
molecules to one, then a great many mysteries about the
brain will be cleared up. After that ﬁrst tiny bit of matter,
the rest of the sequence follows laws of nature that are well
known. Aside from homeopathy, I see a much clearer
example in the strange psychiatric cases known as multiple
personalities. Nothing in the mind-body ﬁeld seems quite
so inexplicable, for when a person with multiple
personalities shifts from one to the other, his body shifts
too.
One


 Mother T eresa comforting a child, whereas their
antibody levels are depressed when watching war scenes. David Spiegel’ s
studies from Stanford University have taught us that women facing
metastatic cance r who participate in caring support groups live, on average,
twice as long a s those who d o not. W e know that men suf fering heart
attacks w ho bel ieve that their w ives love them do better than  those whodon’ t, a nd a simple monthly phone call from a caring cardiac nurse can
double t he survi val time of a heart patient. Even studies with animals have
found th at tende rness and af fection can reduce their risk for disease. In an
intriguing study from Ohio State University, two groups of rabb its were fed
a high-cholesterol diet. In one group the rabbits were regularly petted and
cuddled by the animal technicians. Rabbits in the other gro up, fed the
identical diet, did not receive any petting. At the completion of the study,
the rabbits that were treated tenderly had only 10 percent as much fat
deposited into their blood vessels as their touch-deficient peers. Love is
metabolized into physiology and can make the dif ference between health
and sickness, life and death.
These sc ientific reports do not surprise most of us. W e have a ll known
the e xuberance and vitality that we experience when we feel loved. Most of
us a lso know t he anguish and despair that come from sep aration and
rejection. People  suf fering the lo ss of love have changes in the c hemistry of
their brains that influence ev ery cell in their body. The se changes
substantially inc rease their risk f or a wide range of illnesses, from cancer to
heart disease. Similarly, the exhilaration, enthusiasm, an d comfort
generated by love create life-af firming transformations that enliven both
emotional and physical well-being. Love makes us feel good because it
creates the biology of delight,  joy, and safety. Love is healing, love is
nourishing, love is good for us.
Love transforms biology.
What Is Love?
Knowing that love transforms o ur physiology in the direction o f improved
health and vitality, we are ready to address a fundamental question: What is
love? Poets, philosophers, and songwriters since time immemorial have
waxed e loquent on this perennial subject. No word in any language is
embraced as personally as love. It elicits in each of us a lifetime ofmemories and desires, weaving  together the innocence and pas sion of our
bodies, hearts, and souls.
For most people, love is an emotion, a sentiment, a feeling that can
consume your thoughts and molecules. Falling in love is an altered state of
consciousness, in which your perceptions, interpretations, and choices are
transformed. Wh en you are in love you become carefree and open to new
experiences. Y ou become vulnerable and invincible at the same time. Y ou
become renewe d, exhilarated, and joyful. Love detaches you from your
usual mundane and trivial conce rns and opens your awareness to the magic
and mystery of life. Love reminds you that you are alive.
Love ins pires you to do great things. Through the power of love you tap
into your primordial ener gies an d become a mythical being. L overs aspire
to epic undertak ings to demonstrate the power of their love. Love connects
you with archetypal lovers. Y ou  relish reenacting the recurrent love stories
that precipitate out of the myth ological realm of the human su bconscious.
Every c ulture te lls its love stor ies. From Cupid and Psyche to  Rama and
Sita to Romeo and Juliet to Sp encer T racy and Katharine Hepburn, these
romantic stories reenact the hell of separation and the heaven of reunion
that hum an beings experience through love. These perennial love stories are
the keys that open the door to universal love.
Personal Love as Concentrated Universal Love
The great spiritual traditions from every culture inform us that unity is the
ultimate truth of all existence. T he one undivided Spirit partitions itself into
infinite beings. Once having fra gmented, however, the parts are driven by
fundamental forces to reestablish unity. Atoms endeavor to become
molecules. Celestial bodies seek  to join solar systems. Human beings strive
to mer ge with their beloved. Love at its essence is the quest for spirit, and
the longing for communion. The need to fulfill that longing for oneness
resonates deep in our personal and collective memory. Through all the
striving to find fullness outside ourselves, we know at some preconsciouslevel tha t the only true source o f love is the infinite, unbounded ocean of
spirit within our own being. The more in touch with spirit we are, the more
loving we feel and behave.
Most people are not directly  in tune with their spiritual essence.
Therefore, Natu re, in her compassion for human beings, has p rovided the
opportunity for us to fall in love  with each other. This provides us a glimpse
of th e transformational power o f spirit. Personal love provides us with a
taste of universa l love, but desp ite how grand we feel when we are in love,
it is not enough. W e are eterna lly driven to experience more love, more
intimacy, more wonder because our soul is driven to experience the ultimate
reunion with spirit.
When you recognize that love a nd spirit are the same, you will see your
longing for love as a hunger for more awareness, more communion, more
connection with  the universal i ntelligence that underlies the world. Every
act of love is an act of divinity, an expression of spirit.
Make a commitm ent to see ever y act of love as an expression of  spirit. A
sweet look from a child, giving money to a homeless person, helping a
stranger change  a flat tire, bringing a spouse flowers, volun teering at a
hospital—each of these acts is b oth personal and spiritual. They bring you
greater j oy by helping expand y our concept of who you are. Every act of
love loo sens the shackle of ego imprisonment. Every act of love  gives you a
taste of spirit and brings you a step closer to integrating the t imeless into
time-bound existence. Love creates the experience of present-moment
eternity, and the more we experience eternity the younger we  grow. The
deeper we tap i nto and express our core, which is spirit, the more loving
and liberated we feel.
Think about love. T alk about love. Seek out love. Encourage love.
Commit yoursel f to expressing l ove in every interaction of your  life. This is
the way your soul remembers its perfection. All lessons in life are lessons in
love. Liv ing a spiritual life means seeking out love in every situ ation. Make
love the most im portant thing in your life and you will grow y ounger and
live longer.Love at its essence is the quest for spirit.
Communicating Love
Love is spirit in motion. Love m oving from one heart to anoth er generates
the biology that reverses aging. Love has to be expressed in order for it to
serve yo u and those you love. Y ou can express your love for another person
in three basic ways:
Y ou listen attentively to what they are saying.
Y ou express in words or actions your appreciation for them.
Y ou touch them lovingly with af fection.
Each of these demonstrations o f love happens spontaneously when you
fall in love. Lo ok at any couple smitten with love. They hang on each
other ’ s every word. They wax poetic about the things they find attractive,
brilliant, and exceptional in ea ch other. They express their a ppreciation
through objects of love, from flowers to jewelry to homemade cookies.
Finally, they cannot keep their hands of f each other.
Whether you are in the first stages of a new romance, have b een in a
committed relationship for years, or are visiting an old friend from college,
these three faces of love are important. Show your love by being fully
present. Express  your appreciation in words and deeds. Be af fectionate.
Consciously practice these principles of love. As a result, you  will grow
younger and live longer.
Love, Sex, and SpiritSexual e ner gy is  the primal cre ative ener gy of the universe, an d all things
that are alive arise from sexual ener gy. In animals and other life forms,
sexual ener gy expresses itself exclusively as biological creativity. Animals
beget more animals. In human beings, sexual ener gy can be channeled into
creativity at all levels—physical, emotional, and spiritual. In any situation
that makes you feel attraction, arousal, alertness, passion, interest,
inspiration, excitement, creativity, or enthusiasm, sexual ener gy is at work.
All these dif ferent manifestation s of sexual ener gy express themselves in
your phy sical body as sensations. Whenever you are sexually aroused, there
is an accompany ing feeling in y our body. Whenever you feel enthusiastic,
inspired, joyful, ener gized, or passionate, there is also an acc ompanying
feeling—a certa in physical sensation. The


 feeling. Why is there such a predominant
emphasis in your world today on physical and mental growth and a
conspicuous neglect of emotional growth? Several general
explanations could be advanc ed, but I would like to go immediately
to the root of the problem.Numbing of Feelings to Avoid Unhappiness
In the world of feeling you experience the good and the bad, the
happy and the unhappy, pleasure and pain. Contra ry to just
registering such impressions  mentally, emotional experie nce really
touches you. Since your struggle is primarily for happiness, and
since immature emotions lead to unhappiness, your secondary aim
becomes the avoidance of unhappiness. Unhappy circumstances
exist in every child’s life; pain and disappointment are common.
This creates the early, mostly unconscious, conclusion: “If I do not
feel, then I will not be unhappy.”  In other words, instead of taking the
courageous and appropriate step of living through negative,
immature emotions in order to aord them the opportunity to grow
and thus become mature and constructive, the childish emotions are
suppressed, put out of awareness and buried, so that they remain
inadequate and destructive, even though the person is unaware of
their existence.
Although it may be true that you can anesthetize your capacity
for emotional experience, and therefore cannot feel immediate pain,
it is also true that you dull your capacity for happiness and pleasure
while not really avoiding the dreaded unhappiness in the long run.
The unhappiness you seem to avoid will come to you in a dierent
and much more painful, but indirect, way. The bitter hurt of
isolation, of loneliness, of the gnawing feeling of having passed
through life without experiencing its heights and depths, without
developing yourself to the most and best you can be, is the result of
such a wrong solution.
Using such evasive tactics you do not experience life at its fullest.
By withdrawin g from pain, you withdraw from happiness and, most
of all, you withdraw from experience. At one time or another—and
you may never remember the conscious declaration of intent—you
withdrew from living, loving, and experiencing—from everything
that makes life rich and rewarding. The result is that your intuitive
powers are dulled together with your creative faculties. You only
function to a fraction of your potential. The damage you haveinicted upon yourself with this pseudo-solution, and go on
inicting upon  yourself as long as you adhere to it, is one that
eludes your comprehension and evaluation at the present time.
Isolation
Since this was your defense against unhappiness to begin  with, it
is understandable that unconsciously you ght tooth and nail
against giving up what seem s to you a vital protection. You do not
realize that not only do you miss out on life’s richness, life’s
rewards, your own full potential, but you do not really avoid
unhappiness. This painful isolation was not willingly chosen by you
and therefore it is not accepted as a price to be paid. Rather, it came
as a necessary byproduct of your pseudo-solution, and with this
defense mecha nism at work the child in you hopes and ghts for
receiving what you cannot possibly receive. In other words,
somewhere deep inside, you hope and believe that it is possible to
belong and to be loved while you dull your world of feeling into a
state of numbness and thereby prohibit yourself from truly loving
others. Yes, you may need others and this need may appear as love
to you, but now you know that it is not the same. Inside, you hope
and believe it possible to unite with others, to communicate in a
rewarding and satisfying way with the world around you, while you
put up a wall of false protection against the impact of emotional
experience. If and when you cannot help but feel, you are busy
hiding such feelings from yourself and others. How can you receive
what you yearn for—love, belonging, communication—if you
neither feel nor express the occasional glimpses of feelin gs that the
still healthy part in you strives for? You cannot have it both ways,
though the child in you never wants to accept that.
Since you “protect” yourself  in this foolish manner, you isolate
yourself, which  means exposing yourself much more to that which
you strive to avoid. Hence you miss out doubly: You do not avoid
that which you fear—not really and not in the long run—and you
miss out on all you could have if you would not run away fromliving. For living and feeling are one. The love and fulllment you
must increasingly crave for makes you blame others, circumstances,
the fates, or bad luck, instead of seeing how you are responsible for
it. You resist such insight because you sense that the moment you
see it fully, you will have to change, and you can no longer cling to
the comfortable but unrealiz able hope that you can have what you
want without meeting the necessary conditions to get it. If you want
happiness you must be willin g to give it. How can you give it, if you
are unwilling and unable to feel as much as you are capable of
feeling? Realize that it is you who caused this state of unfulllment,
and it is you who can still change it, regardless of your physical age.
The Need to Exercise the Emotions
Another reason for resorting to this unsuccessful pseudo -solution
is the following: As in everything else, feeling and emotional
expression can be mature and constructive or immature and
destructive. As a child you possessed an immature body and mind
and therefore, quite natural ly, an immature emotional  structure.
Most of you gave your body and mind a chance to grow out of the
immaturity and to reach a certain physical and mental maturity. Let
me give you an example on the physical level: An infant will feel the
strong urge to use its vocal cords. It has an instinct with the function
of prom oting the growth of certain organic matter through strong
use of the vocal cords. It is not pleasant to hear a baby screaming,
but this period of transition leads to strong healthy organs in this
particular aspect. For the baby, not going through this unpleasant
time by suppressing the instinctual urge to scream would eventually
damage and weaken the respective organs. The urge to indulge in
strong physical exercise has the same function. All this is part of the
growing proce ss. To stop the growing process with the excuse that
there is a danger in overexertion would be foolish and damaging.
Yet this is done with your emotional self. You stop its functioning
because you consider the growing transitional period so dangerous
that you proceed to stop growth altogether. You not only hinderexcesses as a result of this reasoning, but you also hinder all the
transitory functioning that alone can lead to constructive, mature
emotions. Since this is more or less the case with every one of you,
the growth period of experiencing and maturing has to happen now.
When your mental processe s mature, you have to go through
transition periods too. You not only learn, you are also bound to
make mistake s. In your younger years you often hold opinions
which you later grow out of. While later you perceive that these
opinions are not as “right” as they seemed to you during your youth
and see another side that earlier eluded you, it was nevertheless
benecial for you to go through those times of error. How could you
appreciate truth if you had not gone through error? You can never
gain truth by avoiding error. It strengthens your mental faculties,
your logic, as well as your range and power of deduction. Without
being allowed to make mistakes in your thinking or your opinions,
your mental faculties could not grow.
Strangely enough, there is much less resistance in human nature
to the necessa ry growing pains of the physical and ment al sides of
the personality than to the growth of the emotional nature. Hardly
anyone recognizes that emotional growing pains are necessary too,
and that they are constructive and benecial. Without consciously
thinking about it in these terms, you believe that the emotional
growth process should come about without growing pains. Most of
the time it is completely ignored that this area exists at all, let alone
that it needs growth; neither do you know how such growth is to be
accomplished. You who are on this path ought to begin to
understand this. If you do, your insistence on remaining deadened
and dulled will nally give way and you will no longer object to
going through a period of growth now.
Allowing Immature Feelings to Surface
In this growing period, immature emotions have to express
themselves. Only as they are allowed expression for the purpose of
understanding their signicance will you nally reach a point whenyou no longer need such immature emotions. This will not happen
through a process of will, an outer mental decision which represses
what is still a part of your emotional being, but through an organic
process of emotional growth wherein feelings will naturally change
their direction, their aim, their intensity, their nature. But this can
only be done if you experience your emotions as they exist in you
now.
When you were hurt as a child, your reactions were anger,
resentment, hate—sometimes to a very strong degree. If you prevent
yourself now from consciou sly experiencing these emotions, you