CHAPTER NINE

Remember, the turtle progresses

only when he sticks out his neck.

atom explosion and human bodies

GLORY be! I thought I had put behind me all discussion of astrals, deaths, and all that sort of thing, and now here's another load of questions all bearing on the same thing. For example, 'Does an atom explosion which incinerates thou-sands of human bodies simultaneously cause pandemonium on the astral plane, or how does it affect or disturb them?'

It does not do a thing to harm them physically, but it certainly causes an awful flap because thousands of people are going to come to the astral world in one awful huddle. Many of them will be scared sick, many will be insane with shock, so all available helpers are rushed to help those who are pouring in and are in a very distressed state. The scene, actually, would be very much like that when there is a truly bad calamity on Earth such as an earthquake or something at least as disastrous where helpers and volunteer helpers rush to use any means possible to lend assistance. The answer then is nobody in the astral world is harmed by the detonation of the bomb, but they are very much upset by the extra work in trying to care for so many people all at one time because, while such an event will have been foreseen, yet all these 'foreseeings' are probabilities and not necessarily actual events which are just bound to occur.

The next one asks, 'How do the Manus of nations supervise the affairs of their nation? Do they work through the United Nations Representatives, through the heads of nations, their cabinets and advisers, or how?'

If the United Nations was as had been hoped, that would have been the way for a Manu to work, but here is some-thing that you have to consider very seriously, it maybe distasteful to you, it may even be thoroughly shocking to you, but nevertheless it is actual fact.

This particular world is not a very advanced world, actually it is a penitentiary world, a hell, a hard school - call it what you will - and many of the Manus in charge of this world are themselves learning! As they gain experience and as they become successful, then, just like a departmental manager, they get promoted, and if the General Manager can make a success of things in his small branch then he might well be promoted to a much larger branch.

It really is necessary to look at things with an open mind and to remember that when on the Other Side in the astral one does not sit on a cloud and straum a banjo or pluck the strings of a harp; one has to work.

If you are in the kindergarten class at school you might think that the great big 'grown-ups' of twelve years of age in a class higher are real Gods who do nothing except tell the teachers where to go, and these twelve and fourteen year olds might think that the sixth-formers or thirteenth graders, or whatever you want to call them, are truly Gods of Creation. But these Gods of Creation still have to do homework, still have to attend classes, still have to gain experience. All right, people come to this Earth to gain experience, Manus look after this world (more or less) in order to, gain experience, and if there are a few fights between countries, well, it's teaching humans and it's teaching Manus as well.

In higher states, that is, with much more advanced worlds, Manus can get together and discuss things amicably so that there are no wars and no particular crime, but that is much too advanced for the hoodlums of the Earth. The Earth people are here to learn the hard way because they won't learn in the soft way, the kind way. If a chap comes along and takes a swipe at you with a club or shows an earnest desire to bonk you on the noggin and lay you out, well, it's useless to say, I pray, my dear fellow, that you will kindly desist from these unwelcome attentions. Instead if you are wise you will kick him where it will do most harm, and then let out a hoot for the police.

So the Manus of this world are learners. They are learning things just as you are, and when they have learnt to straighten up things a bit they will move on to something better. But, cheer up, you have to stay only about seventy years or so to a lifetime, the poor Manus have a longer sentence than that by far.

Now here is a little question tucked in, it is understood that the line of the Thirteenth Dalal Lama was all the same soul. "Could the Thirteenth be now in the Land of the Golden Light and still reincarnate in the Fourteenth?"

Well, that is the easiest question of all to answer because the Fourteenth Dalei Lama himself seems to have spilled the beans, to the press and admitted that he is not a reincarnation of the Great Thirteenth, which is just as well because the Great Thirteenth is a very active entity indeed in the astral world doing very much good, and I believe, rather sad that the present 'leaders' in exile in India are not doing much to aid suffering Tibet. But I dealt with that at some length in an earlier chapter of this book so perhaps I should not gild the lily or repeat myself when I need not.

Another person writes in referring to 'My Visit to Venus', but let me state here and now that I definitely, definitely, definitely do not recommend that 'book'. It is just a few pages containing some articles which I wrote years ago, and it contains some - well, I consider them off-beat - illustrations not done by me. This book containing parts of my work and filled out with a lot of blurb was published entirely without my permission and entirely against my wishes.

The same applies to a record, 'The Power of Prayer.' I definitely do not recommend it. The quality is exceedingly poor and it was never meant to be reproduced as a record. It is just something that I made many, many years ago, and when I left North America to go to South America I was informed that this record had been made without my permission, without my desire, during my absence from the continent.

If you want a real record then purchase the Meditation record which I made specially for a record. This was made specially to help people meditate, and it may be obtained from:

Mr. E. Z. Sowter, 33 Ashby Road, Loughborough, Leicestershire, England.

I will tell you that Mr. Sowter has world rights for this record and for Touch Stones and many other things, and he is the only person who has my full permission and agreement to sell my records and Touch Stones. He also sells various other things of my design.

That is a free advertisement for Mr. Sowter who is a very decent man and who is trying to do good.

This book is not meant to be a catalogue of nice people, it is not meant to be a catalogue of crummy dopes on the outer fringe of sanity either, but I cannot let the book be completed without mentioning a very pleasant family indeed:

Mrs. Worstmann and her two daughters. You may recall that one of my books was dedicated to Mrs. Worstmann, a very pleasant, very highly educated woman whom it is a pleasure to know, and I have known her for several years, known her. while her husband was still alive on this. Earth, and I have been in touch with him now that he' is on the Other Side. Mrs. Worstmann, then, is one of the more enlightened types. Certainly she was enlightened enough to have two talented daughters, Luise who is a nurse in one of the better London hospitals; she is a good nurse, but she is good at so many things. She is artistic - well, I am not going to list all her virtues, they are too many to put down on these pages. I want to mention, also, her sister, Therese, another talented one. She also is a nurse, and she is very anxious to train as a surgeon, she has all the capabilities for it, every-thing except the money in fact. I have been looking around to see if there were any Insurance Schemes, which would enable a highly gifted young woman to get training as a surgeon. Unfortunately I have not yet found any such source, so if any of you, my Readers, know how to raise money whereby an entirely capable young woman can pay for her training at Medical School, then now is your chance to do good.

I make it clear, I make it absolutely clear, that this young lady has the ability to do some good for the world as a surgeon, and it seems rather dreadful that she may be deprived of the opportunity of doing that good through lack of money to finance her training.

Dealing with a surgeon-to-be, let us deal with hearttransplants. I have a question here, 'What about the current rash of heart transplants and other radical surgery inserting foreign organs, plastic valves, and tubing, etc. into a body. From a purely material, physiological standpoint this seems to be considered an almost miraculous scientific breakthrough, but does it do the trick? Will the use of various chemicals counteract the normal tendency of the body to reject any foreign material introduced into it this way? Or is such rejection inevitable simply because the substituting of a healthy new organ into a body to replace a diseased member, won't result in proper meshing between the still diseased etheric of the organ in question with the artificially introduced material counterpart? And, furthermore, is there any-thing really gained for the individual being operated upon if he has a few months or even years of invalidism added to his present stay on Earth, unless he really use the time gained thereby to learn some really worthwhile lessons - which would otherwise have been deferred to another incarnation?'

Well, that's a mouthful, certainly! Many hundreds of centuries ago in the days of Atlantis people could do transplants. It was possible in those days to graft on an arm or a leg, possible to replace hearts and kidneys and lungs, but it was a providential act of Nature that a civilization which did such things came to an end. They tried replacing brains, and they produced amoral monsters.

Basically there is nothing very difficult in replacing a heart. It is just a mechanical procedure. You have to cut out the heart and you have to trim the replacement heart to exactly fit the 'pipes' which are left. Any competent surgeon could do such an operation.

In the physical world one has a semi4nvalid. After all, when one does such a radical operation certain small blood vessels and nerves cannot be rejoined, the whole structure becomes impaired and so a very sick man is given an added sickness - impairment of his body. But still such a person could go on for an indefinite number of years, go on living a life of semi-invalidism.

In the astral world, however, there are two people who are suffering greatly by being 'cross-mixed'. One person is half in the astral, that is, he goes to the astral world during sleep only, and the other person is right in the astral but because his heart or other organ is still living he has a sort of sympathetic attachment through the Silver Cord of the person who now has that organ.

You sometimes get two radios; you switch on two radios in the same room, perhaps on the same programme, and if you switch off one then it does make slightly more volume to the second, there is some interaction between the two, and these are only radios, only things which some set of girls put together while they were talking about their latest boy friends and how mini their mini skirts would be the next season. When you get to living humans the interaction is much, much stronger, and it definitely, very definitely, impairs the efficiency of a person living in the astral world to be even 'sympathetically' connected to the body of another person.

It is my firm belief that replacing organs like this is terribly, criminally wrong, and really people should not permit such abuses of Nature. The reflections from the donor's heart show up in the aura of the recipient, and the two people may not have been compatible. The fact that one could be coloured and the other white has nothing to do with it. The basic rate of vibration, that is, the frequency of each person, has everything to do with it, and I certainly hope that such transplants can be outlawed.

It is a different matter if one is replacing an organ with a synthetic organ, because that is no worse than a person wearing glasses or a hearing aid or clothing, no worse than using a crutch.

I believe that medical scientists should be encouraged to devise artificial organs which could safely be used on humans, then there would be no cross-linkage between two entities which causes a handicap to both entities until both are free of their Silver Cords and living in the astral world. So, to answer this specific question, I am definitely opposed to organ transplants.

Here is another question, which should be of general interest. It is:

'Information or directions on how a few people working devotedly (som vier sine krefter til…) could bring about a change in the course of world affairs.'

If a few people would definitely think 'in step' on a specific subject, then whatever they think about could actually be so. Nowadays people cannot hold a thought for more than a second or two. If you doubt that, try it yourself, try and think about one specific subject while watching the seconds hand of your watch. You will find, if you are honest, that your attention will waver and wander far more rapidly than you would believe possible. Your attention will only stay more or less constant if you are thinking about something to do with yourself, something you want, something you want to do, something which affects you deeply. Anything else such as bringing help to another person, whom you have met - well, you cannot hold the interest for very long.

Peoples thought is not constant, and no, one thinks of the same thing at the same time with the same intensity. They are like a mass of people milling about, all walking but all out of step, whereas if people could think in step' then they could indeed accomplish miracles. If you want to think of this further, consider an army of men, consider a regiment of soldiers marching over a bridge. If those men marched in step across the bridge they would destroy it, and for that reason the men are instructed before going on to the bridge to break step. So they go over walking just as a disorderly rabble would walk, not in step, not in rhythm, and so the building up effect of many men walking in step is destroyed, there isn't the force there any longer, and the bridge is not damaged.

If you could get a number of men marching absolutely in step they would destroy any bridge that could be made, and if one kept up the marching they could destroy a building also because the constant pounding down and lifting up would build up such a series of vibrations that the amplitude or degree of vibration would increase and increase beyond the point where the natural elasticity of the bridge or building could encompass it, and then the bridge would just shatter like a broken glass.

If one could get - oh, half a dozen people, and get them to think definitely, deliberately in waves of the correct pattern, they could topple governments, or build governments, they could make one country pre-eminent over all others, and they could do things which now would be regarded as utterly impossible.

It is perhaps fortunate that it is not too easy to get people to think in unison at exactly the right frequency because, and I am telling you this quite seriously, it is not a joke, if one had a gang of crooks who were trained in thinking correctly they could think open a bank vault. Dear me, what a pity I haven't a nice little gang; it would be very pleasant to have a nice load of money, wouldn't it? Still, it is truly quite possible, and in fact in Atlantean days it was an everyday occurrence.

The Catholic chants are a relic of those bygone days, chants which some think are only two thousand years old, but they are still chants which have been built on the original songs of power of the Sumerians and the Atlanteans. Perhaps I should put it the other way round, Atlanteans and Sumerians because, of course, the Atlanteans are the oldest civilization of the two.

In those days it was possible to lift massive chunks of stone by thought, by having a trained mass of priests thinking at the same time - under their conductor so that the stone would lift straight up in the air.

If you think that is too fantastic remember that you can make a sound which will break a glass. If you sustain the sound you can break a glass or break a window, and thought is just another form of sound, that is, a vibration, everything is a vibration, and if you set the right vibration in motion you can accomplish anything.

Another question; 'Readers are wondering when will be the proper time for the free world to know of the Time' Capsules.'

The proper time is not yet. The proper time is not until the end of this civilization, the end of this civilization as we know it at present. Later - oh, not in your lifetime, so don't worry: - much later there will be earthquakes which will really shake the crust of the Earth and these Time Capsules will be thrown up to the surface ready to be opened. There are quite a number of them. One tremendous capsule is in Egypt; I suppose technically it is a capsule, but actually it is' a vast chamber deep beneath the shifting sands of the Egyptian Desert. The Chamber is an absolute museum of artefacts, which existed tens of thousands of years ago - yes, 'tens of thousands of years ago'.

There are aircraft of a very very different type than those in use, now, aircraft which work by anti-gravity so that the power of the motor is not expended in supporting the weight but is used just to propel the vehicle forward. I will tell you quite truthfully that I have seen such an aircraft.

One device would be especially of interest to the housewife or to the person who has to carry weights. It is a sort of handle which attaches to whatever has to be carried, and then one just catches hold of the handle as when one is carrying a basket. If the parcel or bundle is heavy then the handle is depressed more, if the parcel is not very heavy then the handle is not very far depressed. Each of these devices was constructed so that no matter whether the parcel weighed a ton or ten ponds, the person had no more than about a pound of effort to expend.

Anti-gravity was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly common thing in centuries long past, but the priests of that day, who also were the leaders of the armies, got a bit cross with each other, and each side tried bigger and better weapons than the other, with the result that they blew their whole civilization in the air, and it came down as a radio-active dust.

Later, when these Time Capsules are opened, television in three dimensions will be seen, and not just 3-D by means of two cameras or two lens, but a thing in which there appear to be actual people, miniature size, of course, acting out plays, dances, and even debates.

Photography too was different in those days, there were no such things as the flat photographs which we now see. Everything was in the 'solid', more 3-D than 3D itself. The nearest thing is the very, very crude holograms with which scientists are just experimenting - in which you can almost look behind the object you had photographed. Well, in the days of Atlantis you could look behind!

Hundreds of centuries ago there was the mightiest civilization the world had seen up to that time, but there' was such a cataclysm that people became almost demented, those that were left, and they had to start just about from the savage state and the present so-called Age of Science has barely reached what would be called the kindergarten stage when Atlantis was at its peak.

Many people disbelieve in Atlantis, which, of course, is just utterly foolish. They are like the fishermen who go out fishing - and because they dont catch anything - they say that all the fish are died off….(end of this extract)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE Old Man snorted in the throes of pre-occupation, all these letters, all these questions, how to put within the compass of one book answers which would really help people, because that is the purpose of a book, isn't it? To help or to amuse. And this isn't an edition of comic cuts, it's meant to help, so let's get on with the first question.

No, that is not true at all. People have the weirdest ideas about kharma, perhaps they haven't read my books properly. I sometimes get a letter from a person who writes so happily, 'Oh, Dr. Rampa, I read "Wisdom of the Ancients" last night, tonight I am going to read "Chapter of Life". I managed to go through "You Forever" in two hours. Well, of course that is just a waste of time, it doesn't do anyone any good, and it doesn't do an author any good to know that his books are being skimmed like that. These books are meant to be studied. Kharma is of vital importance to all of us, and in my books you have an opportunity of knowing what kharma is all about. It means, in brief, that if you do something wrong you pay for it. If you do something good, something pays you. As I have said before, it is like a bank account. You are like a storekeeper who has good and bad, on the shelves. If you sell something that is good then you get paid by good, if you sell something that is bad you get paid by having an overdraft. Now get this qulte clear;

whatever you do does not necessarily and automatically have an effect on any other person or creature. It depends entirely upon the circumstances. If, for example, you take a dagger (dolk) and stick it into a person, then, of course doing a good deed, are you? In that case then you do not have kharma against you. But if you do something which has an effect, a bad effect upon a person you have never heard of, an effect which you certainly did not anticipate, then you do not have to come back and pay off that person. I advise you, though, to read my books more thoroughly and then you will know a lot more about kharma.

Question: What are we doing down here anyhow?

When we leave here what is our objective, not just playing about in the astral, but what do we really want to do in the end?

The Overself cannot of itself experience desire, suffering, pleasure, etc., as we know it on Earth, and so it is necessary for the Overself to have some other method of gaining knowledge. People upon Earth are just extensions of the Overself, which can gain knowledge. For example, suppose you have a bag and you cannot get inside the bag and you cannot see inside the bag. If you can get it open enough to get your hand in, your hand, which is an extension of your other senses, can feel around inside the bag and can 'tell' the brain what there is inside. In much the same way the Overself gains information through the extensions called human beings.

When the Overself has sufficient knowledge, when the Overself is so advanced that no more knowledge on the Earth cycle is desired, then it calls home all the puppets which are humans, and they all merge again into the Overself, they become united in 'Oneness'; that is the ultimate form of existence, because although it seems to be just one entity, each part of the entity lives in rapport with the other part. You have heard of twin souls - well, on the Earth plane - it is impossible for twin souls to get together, but when they return to the Overself twin souls are reunited to form a

perfect whole, and they live in a state of very great bliss until it occurs to the Overself that perhaps there is yet a higher form of knowledge which could be investigated. And then the Overself sends out puppets, not on the Earth plane, but on some super super plane, and the whole cycle is repeated. The puppets gather in the knowledge throughout a period, which to us is eons of time. Again, when sufficient experience or knowledge has been garnered, the Overseif calls in the puppets, twin souls are again united in an even greater state of bliss.

Now here is a question from Miss Newman. She says, 'How should animals be destroyed so that death is painless and their astral body is not harmed?'

The best way is to inject some drug which causes the animal to lose consciousness, and then the method of disposing of the animal is not so important because there would be no pain. If an animal is made unconscious first, then it can be killed by some very rapid death-producing drug and that does not cause pain for the astral nor for the Overself. There is only distress to the astral when the physical is tormented by a slow killing.

Now here is something, this is a question from a young man whom we call 'Argie'. He will recognize himself. He is a remarkably brilliant young man who is his own worst enemy. He is a young man with truly unusual talents, and he is not using those talents to the best advantage because he wants to rebel against all authority. Argie has had a rough time, mostly of his own making. We will give two questions from Argie. The first:

'Genius in children; how does a child become a genius?'

In most cases the entity on the Other Side, before coming back to Earth, realizes that there is some special and specific task to do. It resizes that after a certain number of years it (the entity) may leave, and may perhaps leave a caretaker' in its place, so the entity makes plans whereby it comes down to Earth and is born into a body with a memory and an ability to do that which, has to be done. For example, an entity may decide that something has to be done about a certain form of music, so it comes down with a memory of that almost intact. Then, just about as soon as it can speak or move of its own volition, the entity finds it can compose and play, and then it is said, We have a genius, we have a infant prodigy. Most times the poor wretched child is in front of a cine camera or something, or dumped on a stage to make money for people who do not know what its all about, and the child is so busy making money that the inherited memory peters out.

In those cases where there are no stage shows and no cine shows the child may play divinely, and may compose exquisite music, and then when he reaches a certain age, let us say twenty years of age, the entity realizes that his task is done. and he lets some other entity take over while he, the original occupant, moves on. This is called transmigration of souls, and it is far far more common than is generally supposed.

Argie has a second question, and here it is: 'Why do negroes rarely need tuition to play musical instruments?'

Negroes are a special type of people. Their basic vibrations are such that they are 'in tune to the music of the spheres'. Often a negro can hum music which he has never heard before, often he can just pick up a musical instrument and play it because that is his basic make-up.

You get certain classes of people such as North Europeans who are very cold and very analytical. They are very frigid in their attitude. That is their make-up. But if you get the Latin type of people, they are warm in their make-up, quick to smile, quick to pass a joke. They can see the funny side of things, particularly if the misfortune happens to someone else. That is their make-up.

Negroes, for many years, have had a hard life, a life of persecution, and the only thing which has sustained them has been their musical make-up, their ability to derive consolation and solace from religious music. As such it is part of their birthright, part of their heritage, part of their basic make-up. Negroes are usually very, very musical because their basic frequency is such that they sub-consciously pick up music from other sources in much of a way similar to the poor wretched man wearing a hearing aid who sometimes picks up transmissions from the local radio taxi cab company.

Well, let's get on with it; here is a question, "I am a loving. mother of a five year old boy, and your books, true as they are, scare me for what my son and all the other young children will have to suffer owing to events bigger than themselves. I can see him torn into pieces by atomic bombs and all grim pictures like those. His life lines on both his hands are abruptly interrupted at an age of about thirty to forty. I can find some consolation in your books for what concerns my death, but has ever a mother of any religion rejoiced at the death of her only son?"

Now, you are pre-supposing that your son will inevitably be killed or maimed in a forthcoming war, but remember that if you give him a good education and let him specialize in something he can be one of those protected. It is a sad thought that cannon fodde? is usually the person who is easily replaceable, whereas if a man is a specialist of use to his country he will be protected. So give your son a really good education. And in the matter of the hand lines, please be assured that if these are the only indications of the termination of his life, then they mean nothing except possibly a change of career. You should never take it as definite that death will occur unless there are about seven confirming indications. Too often palmists are guilty of criminal negligence in saying that a person is going to die, etc., etc., when it just means that they are going to change job and change location.

The Bardo Thodol was written in English, it was just translated into that language by some creepish Christian who altered things a bit to make it tie in with the Christian belief of hellfire and damnation. There is no hellfire and damnation, that is all a bolster up (støtte) their own power in much the same way as some misguided parents frighten their children by threatening to call in a policeman if they don't behave. Of course we are not happy when we are judging ourselves, it really does give us a pain when we see what stupid clods we have been. The self-contempt can be quite hellish, in fact, and well justify the description of 'hellfire'. As one who has total recall I tell you most emphatically that there is no torture, no atrocious pain, no ferocious suffering.

Spirits who haunt old houses have nothing to do with current entities. For example, a person dies in tragic circumstance's, and much energy is generated, but the person can go to a completely different plane and even be reborn while the energy which was generated will be dissipated in the form of hauntings. Its much the same as heating a piece of metal; the heat remains in the metal, although gradually fading, for quite a time after the source of heating has been removed. Here is a thought for you - it is quite possible for a person who dies in extremely difficult circumstances to have his energy as a thought form which haunts a place, and even to haunt the new-born incarnation who caused all the trouble in the first case?

Nervous force is the power, which generates the etheric, and nervous force properly directed can rotate a paper cylinder, as I say in one of my books. Everybody, whether animal or human, is a generator of electricity, even the Earth has its magnetic force, its magnetic field if you prefer to call it that. And just as a radio programme has to have a carrier wave to support it, so does a human have to have an etheric consisting of nervous force or energy which propagates the aura. This in its turn originates from certain cells in the brain. The food we eat goes into the blood, and some of that food well mixed with oxygen goes to highly specialized brain cells, and provides the food for the generation of an electric current which powers the thought impulses. This is nervous force. If you find it difficult to believe, remember that you can get a device consisting of a zinc case with a few chemicals and a carbon rod inside it. If you connect that to a piece of wire inside a glass bulb from which air has been withdrawn you get a light, don't you, an electric light. So you get electricity from chemical reaction, and in the human you get electricity from chemical reaction provided by the food we eat.

I have a letter here from Mr. H. Mr. H. writes, 'I have enclosed two questions which you may care to answer. I would be very interested in the answer to question one, and would like to expand it a little. In addition to the matter of personal responsibility, which I think very important, I am confused on the matter of personal identity. This really boils down to the definition of the word " I ". While I can see that in many ways "I" am not the same " I " that I was twenty years ago and presumably will not be the same as twenty years hence, yet I retain a sense of identity between these various I's.

However, if an Overself can operate ten puppets what happens to the sense of "I", and when all puppets are dead does the Overself then continue to operate ten astral puppets, and continuing the thought into the future, what happens if the ten puppets half succeed in liberating themselves?

On a more particular note I have often wondered why it was necessary for you to pick such an arduous route for your joumey to the West. Would it not have been possible for you to go to a university in India or Europe, and could not funds have been deposited in the West for your use? Many of your troubles seem to have stemmed from a lack of money.

Well, Mr. H., let's see what we can do to answer your queries. Actually I think most of them have already been answered in this book or in previous books, but let us write you an imaginary letter.

'Deat Mr. H. You really are in a state of confusion, aren't you? Much of your confusion arises from the fact that one has to write in three dimensional terms and attempt to describe the operation of an Oversell working, say, in a nine dimensional plane of existence.

'You say that you think a puppet loses personal identity. But of course, if you think about it, that is not the case.

Look at that matter like this: Forget all about anything outside the body, and assume for the purpose of this explanation that the body is "compartmental". The brain, then, represents the Overself and everyone knows that the brain directs the hands, the fingers, etc. The fingers represent puppets and the brain can suggest that the fingers do something, but the fingers are still separate entities or separate individuals, they can feel and they can become highly skilled. In fact at times they seem to work of their own volition.

The heart is another mechanism which cannot be controlled (except in abnormal cases) by the brain-Overself, because if the brain, representing our Overself, got in a bad temper, then conceivably it could stop the heart from beating and that would destroy the entire mechanism of brain-Oversell and the organs-puppets. So, you see, the actual Overself provides the substance from which the human astrals are made, and each entity or human body has full control and full choice of action always provided that such action will not jeopardize the Overseif-human organism.

Take a big firm with many branches. There you have a chairman of the Board of Directors or a President. You have many departmental heads, and many general managers to staff all the district branches, and all these people work with their own responsibility while working within the frame-work of company policy. They do not have to tell the chairman'of the Board of Directors every little thing, nor do they have to telephone him every moment about decisions which they are qualified to make.

The chairman of the Board of Directors or the President, call him what you wish, represents the Overself, and all the departmental heads and managers are the puppets.

You ask what happens when the puppets die, is the Over-self, derived of its ten or so puppets, immobilized, you say. Let me ask you a question; what happens if one of the branch managers retires or is removed for some particular reason? The firm or branch does not close down. Instead a fresh manager, or puppet, is appointed. And anyhow in this chapter and possibly the chapter before I have already discussed how puppets return to the Overself.

Yes, I could have taken an easy, way. I could have gone to a university, I could have had sacks of gold all around me, but tell me, Mr. H., what sort of knowledge would I have gained then? I would be the reflection of other peoples' knowledge, some of it which is, admittedly, faulty. I would not have gained the knowledge of life which I have at present and which is very painfully firsthand, believe me. People who go to a University and learn everything the soft way merely learn the opinion of others from printed pages which hay be years out of date. In a University a student may not dare to question the precepts of another. One is taught that it is impossible to do a thing except in the way specified in the text book, but the people who have not been to a University just go ahead and possible thing anyway.

Royce of Rolls-Royce, Edison, Ford, and thousands of other very intelligent men did not go to a University, so they did not know that the thing which they wanted to do was "impossible", they did not know that such a thing was "impossible" because they lacked the education (!) to read the text books which really are the opinions of other people. And so Royce, Edison, Ford and others just went ahead and invented the things which text books would say were "impossible". So attendance at a university can be a drawback.

That should straighten out a few questions for you, Mr,. H., and I hope that you now find your thoughts are more settled.

Another question asks why we have illness and how would it be possible to detect illness through the aura. Well, illness and disease come either from within or without. When it comes from without - a germ or virus can be caught from another person and it is not the 'fault' of a body that catches it.

When we have a case of illness from within, that is, when the disease comes from within, the body chemicals are affected because everything comes from thought, what the electricians call electro-motive force comes into play. Thought is electric impulses. When we think we generate electricity. The electricity is thus the electro-motive force which causes our muscles to work, or even upsets our body chemistry. If a person is frustrated, worried, sad, bad tempered, etc., or has an abnormal emotion, their thoughts generate an electric current which is defective. It may not have the necessary correct wave form, and because the electric current is defective it causes wrong messages to go to the glands and the glands' secretion change to cope with the wrong thoughts and the wrong messages caused by those wrong thoughts. After a time - the most susceptible part is affected by the changed secretions, or changed chemical balance of the body. It may be the muscles that are affected, and so one gets, perhaps, muscular dystrophy, or it might be something to do with the bones, it might be arthritis, or, if some wrong message uses a disturbance in the stomach, the gastric juices may become too acid, too strong, and then we might have an ulcer. Closer to home, if the messages are too localized and affect the brain, then there might be a brain tumor (svulst).

If the chemistry can be studied then it can be corrected by hormone treatment or some other appropriate treatment and the disease can be cured if it is caught in time. If too much damage has been done, then it can't be cured but can be alleviated. The person should remedy the thing or emotion that caused the damage in the first place by getting more balanced outlook, by controlling the emotions, or by changed set of circumstances such as fresh job, fresh partner, etc.

All these things can be seen in the aura. Whether happens to a body can be seen in the aura. Looking at the aura is like looking at radar pictures. You can see land or a storm disturbance which is quite beyond ordinary sight.

Whether an illness starts from 'within' or 'without' it can be detected from the aura. If one catches an infection from some other person then it takes a certain time for that illness to manifest substantially in the physical, yet in the aura at the exact instant when the infection took place it shows quite clearly, it shows like lines of stress.

If the illness is caused from 'within' - then a periodical examination of the aura will show the danger of an illness quite a long time before the body is seriously affected, and so the illness can be cured almost before it has become apparent.