The Inner You

This evening we will have a little talk about the "etheric body". But first let us briefly review what we know of our own constitution. We know that man has not only a physical body, but four bodies: the physical, the etheric, the mental and the spiritual. If your eyes were strong enough to see through the finer ether, that is, if you were clairvoyant, then you could see these bodies surrounding the physical.

We will not speak about the mental or the spiritual body but I will say that the spiritual body or the spiritual force is that which animates, that IS WHICH GIVES LIFE TO THE OTHER BODIES ORVEHICLES. We all know that when this spiritual force withdraws from the physical we are what is called dead. However it is not so simple.

Do we ever think of what happens when we go to sleep? What happens when we take an anesthetic? Why don't we feel pain? What happens when we take something as mild as aspirin or anacin? Well we simply dislocate the etheric body from the point of contact. Now the etheric body is the essence of your subconscious mind, the totality of your thoughts and feelings of which you are for the most part unconscious. You know that the subconscious is what makes you what you are why you are, It determines what happens to you, it is the greatest powerhouse in the universe, and when you begin to know about it and you try to work with it, then at that moment your life begins to change. We are creators, this is the truth whether we know it or not and by using our creative powers, our thought, we bring things into existence, good or bad, depending on our thinking. When positive we get positive results, if negative the opposite results. All this is due to the work of the subconscious which controls, motivates, molds our entire life.

Keep in mind that what we call the subconscious is another name for the etheric body, the soul or the heart. They all mean the same thing. We read for instance in the Bible the words: purify your heart. It means the subconscious, in other words. , your etheric body or subconscious controls your heart beat, your breathing, your digestion, assimilation, etc., etc., and the body functions perfectly but when we begin to tamper with it, when we interfere with it, it begins to go haywire, that is out of order. All the things we call good or bad come from the etheric body or subconscious and few of us realize that its power is greater than anything else in the universe except God or the Superconscious,.aspect of the Universal Mind, you can call it the Nature of God; it is the same power used by Divine Creation, the power called the Waters of Life, that causes plants to come out, that which guides the animal life. Don't you wonder how animals are able to take care of themselves? How much better they handle their bodies than we do? They operate by what we call instinct, and instinct is that which runs the etheric body of yours and of mine. The animals can't think, and possibly that is why they are happy. I do not know! However, we are learning how to think correctly and no one of us uses thought as well as we should. We listen, we absorb, but we do, not think. I told you that Alexander Carrel was planning to write a book, the title of which would be: "Man, the Unthinking". Because we don't think we are completely under the control or spell of the ideas that were planted in our subconscious previously. For this reason the Apostle Paul gave the advice, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind" and also to purify our hearts, our subconscious mind, to put new wine, that is higher ideals. I spoke to you about the emotions to cause you to realize that your emotional nature either makes you or breaks you. The whole work we have to do for our Spiritual evolution in Metaphysics is to get control of our emotional nature which is our creative energy, our power, our drive and to transmute it to a positive, constructive force. We do not realize that the way we use our emotions we do nothing else but destroy ourselves, and even we who are on the path and have some training have to work hard to reach the point where we can use our emotional nature 100% constructively; without doing any harm to ourselves.

We always say for instance, to justify our way of feeling, thinking or acting: "I can't help it I was born with it, or "I am very sensitive," Just as my grandmother or grandfather was." Now all this is making buffers, justifications, it is plain nonsense. It is not true. It is simply what is called your defense mechanism and mine, of course. You must know that Metaphysics throws out the idea of heredity altogether. One thing we know is that the etheric contains the driving force/ and all of the desires we ever had in our lives, reasonable or unreasonable, are found there and that these desires drive us in a particular direction. The question is what to do with them. Man was given dominion, the Bible says, and all religions say so. He was meant to enjoy life, to create and nature or God equipped him with this tremendous power of the etheric body and this power carves out the ether and produces physical manifestations at his bidding. You create your destiny by the way you use this power. How do you use this power? Positively? Consciously? Look at your life. All things that give you a feeling of frustration, or a sense of being beaten, a sense of loneliness are subconscious instincts. That is where your use of power has gone wrong. Something happened either in this life or in another life used a picture to be put there and you are now manifesting it. But one thing you can do and you must do, is to change the picture by the renewing of your mind. As an example, I will relate the following to prove that for every effect there is a cause: A woman was complaining about a severe cold and said, "I don't know how I got it". The teacher said to her, "You were stewed about something, you got upset with someone or about something that irritated you, that annoyed you". Then she remembered. She had moved from one hotel to another, and for a couple of hours two of her bags were mislaid. She fumed and fussed and was very much disturbed with the carelessness and stupidity of the people, Now you may say that it was only coincidence. Yes! I could agree if it was an isolated instance, but check yourselves and you will find that when you see people who have colds constantly, that they are people with so-called touchy dispositions. They are annoyed with many people very easily and that is very typical of colds. The subconscious is open to anything you want to put in it; accepts it and then reproduces the fuss by "fussing" up the whole physical mechanism.. We interfered. Try to find out, go about it from the constructive point of view. The subconscious is a complete power in itself but must be directed. Its possibilities are untold. We have not yet been able to visualize what we really will be able to do as human beings. Remember the Creator gave us dominion over all things; it is up to us to realize it.

The etheric body is plastic substance which is pliable and can be molded, and what we are experiencing in life at this moment is what we have molded. "AS A MAN SOWETH, SO SHALL HE REAP." Think about it. We are the creators of our destiny, either consciously or unconsciously; unfortunately for the great majority, unconsciously. Yet we blame everyone and everything else for it but ourselves, even God. This is on account of our ignorance. We have to learn to associate ourselves with the constructive forces of Nature as we were told in our Theorems. Now the thing is this: if we mold, we can unmold. No matter what the problem is, if we accept the fact that the etheric is plastic substance and can be molded and unmolded, you can dissolve or dissipate what is now in your etheric body. You must put new wine in the bottle. The alchemists say: "solve and coagulate", in other words melt and re-melt. Then when you want to change the picture, replace the old one and forget it and think no more of it. Thus you make what is called a demonstration. The other thing you have to remember is that your etheric body is your feeling nature; it is the whole nervous system, it is the whole system of the glands and it has important bearing on your physical life. In psychosomatic medicine they are discovering that people who seem to have apparent physical ailments in reality have nothing wrong with them. Their organs are sound, their nervous systems are all right, and, their glands are sound, but, something is wrong with them. I will give you a good example:

A person has lost a limb and for months and perhaps years after will complain of a pain in the limb which has been lost. How is that? Do they really feel the pain? Yes, they do. How could a person feel pain when the limb is not there? This is the answer: that the etheric body of limb (foot) is still there and until it decomposes the pain is there. This is one of the proofs of the reality of the etheric body which is an exact correspondence of the physical body.

The physical body differs from the mental and the spiritual; it has an etheric counterpart of all the organs of all the glands and of all the nerves. Get a very clear picture of this finer body, your most important body, because it is the cause of all of your trouble and also of all your success. You know the subconscious is intelligent, but it does not reason. We reason, and make plans with the conscious mind. The etheric or subconscious accepts ideas planted into it with feeling. It is under the control of the conscious and we must therefore be very careful what we plant into it with feeling, for the subconscious will reproduce it. An example is what came up long ago at the University of Wisconsin. Eight students were given three or four cups of coffee around ten at night, and all of them reported insomnia. Next night they were given several glasses of milk and all slept well. What the students did not know however, was that there was as much caffeine in the milk as there had been in the coffee. What happens to the person who believes coffee will keep him awake is that when he drinks the coffee the subconscious mind says: "Coffee is coming down, let's keep him awake all night." Whatever you believe with feeling you will reproduce until you change the pattern. Your subconscious the etheric body1is pliable, and adjustable. You can adjust it by the power of auto-suggestion. Listen to this carefully: no matter what miracle you could possibly imagine for yourself, if you really believe it with deep conviction. your etheric will accept it and manifest it. What is more, it will continue to manifest until you change the image or the pattern. It has been said by Jesus, "According to thy belief it is done unto you. Whatsoever things you desire or pray to have, believe, and you shall have them."

You know another thing...like attracts like. Yet most of us wonder about the financial success of certain people we might think morally bad. We say, "How can a person like so and so have so much money? you know he cheats everybody and mistreats his family." The answer is really very simple; regardless of the type of person the individual is, he has a definite belief in his ability to make money. He believes in his ability-and he will make money. The law is impersonal and it is thus "Whatever you believe in, you will manifest." What are you going to do to manifest whatever you want? This is the all important question. You know what the drive is to use it and you must and you can if you really want to transform your life.

The first thing to do is to sit down and look at a problem you have in your life. See the picture clearly. Know what you want and think about it with clarity and real interest. Then the second thing to realize is that regardless of appearances it is working and that it will work. Believe it and do not look around every two minutes to see if it is working. In other words, plant it in the subconscious and let it grow! Leave it alone; how long it will take to manifest depends on your belief. If you want a quick manifestation then believe it firmly, and intensely. If not : it will take longer.{the third and most important point is the following: Once you have planted your picture and made your claim, KEEP YOUR MIND OFF YOUR PROBLEM! Don't think about it or talk about it. You are working with an etheric body in a finer ether and you must abide by the laws of that ether. You are making a law by what you believe in, and the etheric will always respond and reproduce that which you believe in. It never has and never will reproduce anything that anyone else has tried to place there, unless you have accepted it. It is your own baby.

When we begin the study of metaphysics, spiritual science, we only have a one-way street connecting with the subconscious. It. guides blindly by whatever we ignorantly plant there. Now, the other thing to do is to open the other lane, to traffic and make a two-way street; to deliberately put in what we want, and at the same time to get out what is now there. Purify your heart. Clean up, and polish the rough edges. Your etheric, your subconscious will take you anywhere and everywhere you want to go, IF YOU TRUST IT!

"I will say of the Lord (the law) he or it is my refuge, my fortress, my God: the all-powerful infinite One; in Him (or) It, I trust." Then work...and according to your faith it will be done unto you.