THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER VII

MENTAL DESTINY

Section 18

Thoughts are the seeds of a disease.

Diseases are the slowly accumulated sediments of thoughts which have passed through the parts affected. Thoughts which have been at home in the mental atmosphere of a doer, readily enter a body through the openings and centers of the four systems and the openings in the head, and leave these sediments. When these same thoughts are entertained in the heart, they play around and through the organs of the particular system with which they are connected. So the old familiar thoughts leave sediments upon entering and again while they dwell in the respective parts.

Once one has entertained a thought, it remains in one’s mental atmosphere until it is balanced. While it so remains, it moves in cycles and can enter the physical body when the conditions of the mental, psychic and physical atmospheres are favorable. A thought may be in the mental atmosphere of several and even many human beings at the same time. Mental atmospheres and thoughts can intermingle if they are alike, irrespective of the distance between the people. Life and death of the body do not make any difference as far as the existence of the thought, or the existence of the atmospheres of the doer, or the character of these atmospheres and their attitude towards the thoughts are concerned. When there is a new body, the thoughts which have not been balanced are there, and they must enter it to produce the effects which will later manifest as a physical ailment.

A thought is always entertained in the heart, and dwells also in the bodily part to which it belongs. Distance and dimensions make no difference where thoughts and their actions are concerned, because thoughts are independent of dimensions and distance. While a thought thus dwells in a part of the body, it awakens and stimulates it and attracts the blood to it. Usually the one who holds a thought is not conscious of this effect. All he knows is what the subject is of which he is thinking, and the sensations which accompany the thinking. So a person who wants to acquire a piece of land does not know that his thought dwells in his digestive system and excretory tracts. If he seeks the property by fair means the thought will not affect the health, but if he holds the thought of fraud, extortion or oppression, this will leave its mark in that system and may later appear as some affliction there.

Each thought is related to one of the four systems in the body, and when it is entertained in the heart, dwells also in the system to which it is related and more particularly in a special part thereof. Some parts belong to several systems. If the thought is right it brings health; if wrong, disease, and the disease may settle in any one of these parts. In the digestive system dwell thoughts of food, drink and physical possessions of all kinds. In the circulatory system dwell thoughts of anger, envy, enmity, jealousy, revenge and ingratitude, as well as their opposites. In the respiratory system dwell thoughts of pride, ambition, servility, conceit, remorse, and their opposites. Sexual thoughts dwell in the generative system and may be concentrated in an organ in it. That system includes not only the local organs, but also the spinal cord, the quadrigemina, pituitary body, optic thalami, pineal body, the optic nerves and the eyes, also the organs in the throat, mouth and breasts, and it ramifies in the kidneys and suprarenals.

While each of the four systems is distinct, yet they all cooperate in the maintenance of the body. One system depends on the others. For instance, the liver is one of the organs of the digestive system, but the circulatory system is there through the arteries and veins; the respiratory system is there not only because it works through the blood, but because a finer physical air and the psychic breath pass in the airy body directly through the liver as well as through every other part of the body; and the liver acts also, in the radiant body, in the production of sex germs and so contributes to the generative system. All four systems are correlated with the brain and the solar plexus by nerves. The fluids and airs of the fourfold physical body act and interact in all systems. Blood, lymph, nerve fluid and breath go to all parts of the systems. Because the systems are connected and contributory and cooperate through certain parts, thoughts dwelling in one system often affect the others. All are kept going by the respiratory system, which system corresponds to the life world.

While a thought is entertained in the heart, it receives attention from rightness-and-reason; and so is put in touch with the respiratory system. Therefore a thought can be affected by and acted on through the respiratory system. Indeed there is what is called the science of breath, or pranayama, the object of which is to control thoughts through the respiratory system and in this way to effect, among other things, the cure of disease by mental means. As whatever disease a thought may be later exteriorized in the physical world, the essence is the thought. Breathing corresponds to thinking and is indeed the ultimate physical cause of disease. Breathing carries the thought and causes the deposit of the thought through the blood, and silently speaks disease into existence.

A thought that is being entertained is and emits a sound in the life world. The life world, as well as the form world, passes in and through all parts of the body somewhat as the systems do. By a thought these worlds are put into touch with the physical structure of the body. So a thought while it dwells in a part of a human body sounds in a region of the life world, which is, from the standpoint of the physical plane, in that part. In sounding, it speaks. At once the form world in its part that affects the body adjusts itself to the spoken sound. Elementals build form according to the spoken sound; that is, they build the sound into an invisible form. Around and through this form, radiant, airy, fluid and solid physical matter is then carried. The elementals build themselves into the form, which then becomes solid. Other elementals pour themselves in and become the physical sediment of the thought. This is done by the breath and the blood, with healthy or diseased tissue as a consequence.

In the course of this precipitation are built health and disease as the forms in which thoughts appear physically. The thought provides the form and desire fills out and animates it. Just as there are different forms in which thoughts are exteriorized in the body, so there are different desires that inhabit and energize these forms. The desires are in forms that fit them. Desires will fill out any forms made by the corresponding thoughts. Every feature of a face or body has its form, which is exteriorized thought, and in every feature, line and formation, lives desire of the appropriate kind sealed therein by the form from the thought. So, too, a disease presents a structural form.

The physical part of all this is done by the breath through the blood. Blood is a stream in which life by the breath and desire by the blood, are carried to all parts of the body. A part of the psychic atmosphere and its feeling live in the nerves and in the blood. The psychic atmosphere comes in with the breath and goes out through the pores, and comes in through the pores and goes out with the breath. In this way feeling-and-desire swing with the breath in and out of the heart and the blood. In the blood stream are two forms of life, the red and white corpuscles. The red build up the body when they are in the arterial stream, and remove effete matter when they return in the venous stream to the heart. The red are vitalized from the physical atmosphere by the air breath as it comes in through the lungs. The white are chiefly vitalized by the water breath which comes through the pores. They can absorb and kill bacteria and poisons and thus protect the body against disease.

There is an increased flow of blood to any part of the body in which a thought dwells. The one who thinks is usually not conscious of this and does not know what part of his body his thought dwells in. When the thought is proper the balance of constructive and destructive actions of the blood is not disturbed and the sediments of the thought are built into the normal tissues of the body. When the thought is improper there is either an increase in or a diminution of the flow of blood. The increased flow results in a temporary congestion of the part where the thought dwells; the diminution results in anemia of that part. From chronic congestion come enlargements, fibrous growths and other chronic inflammatory processes. From anemia come a lack of healthy tissue, wasting away and a readiness of the body to receive infectious diseases.

Sometimes the effect of a thought upon the body becomes apparent at once. Thoughts of anger may interfere at once with the circulation of the blood and cause choking, temporary blindness or a stroke. Thoughts of passion may use up the body so as to cause exhaustion or trembling. Thoughts of fear cause contractions, inanition or trembling or pallor.

Diseases due to infection are precipitations of thoughts, just as are diseases which are slow in their development. If there were a perfectly healthy body it could not be infected with any disease. An infection can take hold only where a body or an organ in it has been made ready to receive it. Long continued precipitations of thoughts in it make the organ ready.

When these sediments have reached a certain stage in accumulation as well as in development, a disorder will occur. Condition and place being ready, the time comes with the recurrence of the thought cycle. The form of the affliction is furnished by a thought, and this form is energized by a desire of the sufferer. So in the case of a tumor, abscess or sore, the form is always a part of a thought exteriorized, and a desire lives in it. In the case of infections there is the addition that the forms of the bacteria are parts of thoughts of the sufferer, and the spirits, so to speak, of the bacteria are desires of his.

Usually the results of accumulated sediments of thoughts are not manifested at once as disorders. Even if an ulcer or a fever appears or if an infection is caught suddenly, the sediments which permit the sudden appearance have been gradually stored for a long time. The sediments were concreted and collected only with the cyclic appearance and entertainment of a certain thought. It takes a very long time before the sediments of a thought and the disturbances in the flow of the breath and blood caused thereby, will affect tissue so that it becomes abnormal. Abnormality may increase for a considerable time before functional disorder or pain is felt in the part. Often a person in whose body the foundation of one ailment has thus been laid dies of another. The new body may then be born free from any actual malady, but the old diseased condition is impressed on the aia and is carried as a predisposition to that disease. It may be that conditions in the new life do not favor an appearance of the affliction. Then it will be carried as a tendency and its impression will remain on the aia, until there is an opportunity for it to manifest again physically. Then it will be transferred to the breath-form and manifest, first as a predisposition, and then as an established disease. In the aia of everyone are potentially many diseases.

If the history of many an illness were known it would reveal causes and a course with a long continued development having many suspensions and reaching over many lives. For instance, cancer is not an ailment of immediate growth, even if it appears after a tear or at a point of irritation. In almost every case cancer is the slow development of hermaphrodite or dual cells. These cells are in every human body. In fact, at one time human bodies were composed of this kind of cell and they may again become the normal cells of human bodies. But now bodies are composed chiefly of male cells and female cells, while the double cells are few and abnormal, though they are more powerful than the single-sexed cells.

Cancer may be the growth of thousands of years. It is usually caused by sexual thoughts and appears about the middle period of life and later, seldom in youth. In later life a person ought not to entertain sexual thoughts. If he does entertain them at this improper season sediments may cause a cancer by weakening single-sexed cells and forcing them to succumb to double-sexed cells. This little cancer will not be noticeable as such and the person will die of some other cause. In the next life at the time when unseasonable sexual thoughts have this peculiar result, the cancer will be formed again, be more pronounced, a little larger, but still unnoticeable. So the history goes on, a cancer being formed each time at the critical period in life. The last stage is the one in which the malignant growth of new tissue appears, at the usual cycle. Another cause of this disease is selfishness, the kind that wants to eat up others for one’s selfish ends. Such thoughts may aggravate the sex thoughts in the development of the cancer.

Cancer is likely to become more frequent in the new age with the development of thinking. On the one hand, cancer compels thought as to its cause and shows that the doers as they develop should stop sexual thinking, and on the other hand, thoughts in this age are affecting the cells more than before. Therefore, the old causes, some of which have been dormant for thousands of years, are now more frequently and readily exteriorized as this disease. Because of the cause and origin of disease, these have a part in the mental destiny of the human.