Songs of a cheering and inspiring character, adapted to the feelings of the patient, and skilful instrumental music are important aids in healing. Thoracic expansion, singing, dramatic oration, and even conversation bring out the noblest elements of humanity. As love produces that full inspiration, which is called a sigh, all higher emotions are truly inspiring for pulmonary elevation assists emotional and moral elevation. Spirit-stirring songs are the most efficient means for ethical culture as well as thoracic and cerebral development. Singing ranks high among hygienic and ethical exercises, but dramatic oration trumps all exercises for overall invigoration and shows its happy effects in leading actors.
We’ve been led to believe that when we get sick, it’s our genetics. Or it’s just bad luck—and doctors alone hold the keys to optimal health. For years, Lissa Rankin, M.D., believed the same. But when her own health started to suffer, and she turned to Western medical treatments, she found that they not only failed to help; they made her worse. So she decided to take matters into her own hands. Through her research, Dr. Rankin discovered that the health care she had been taught to practice was missing something crucial: a recognition of the body’s innate ability to self-repair and an appreciation for how we can control these self-healing mechanisms with the power of the mind. In an attempt to better understand this phenomenon, she explored peer-reviewed medical literature and found evidence that the medical establishment had been proving that the body can heal itself for over 50 years. Using extraordinary cases of spontaneous healing, Dr. Rankin shows how thoughts, feelings, and beliefs can alter the body’s physiology. She lays out the scientific data proving that loneliness, pessimism, depression, fear, and anxiety damage the body, while intimate relationships, gratitude, meditation, sex, and authentic self-expression flip on the body’s self-healing processes. In the final section of the book, you’ll be introduced to a radical new wellness model based on Dr. Rankin’s scientific findings. Her unique six-step program will help you uncover where things might be out of whack in your life—spiritually, creatively, environmentally, nutritionally, and in your professional and personal relationships—so that you can create a customized treatment plan aimed at bolstering these health-promoting pieces of your life. You’ll learn how to listen to your body’s "whispers" before they turn to life-threatening "screams" that can be prevented with proper self-care, and you’ll learn how to trust your inner guidance when making decisions about your health and your life. By the time you finish Mind Over Medicine, you’ll have made your own Diagnosis, written your own Prescription, and created a clear action plan designed to help you make your body ripe for miracles.
Part 1. Mahatmas and Chelas, by H.P. Blavatsky. Part 2. How a Chela found his Guru, by S. Ramaswamier. Part 3. The Sages of Himavat, by D.K. Mavalankar. Part 4. The Himalayan Brothers, do they exist? by M.M. Chatterji. Part 5. Interview with a Mahatma, by R.K. Brahmachari. Part 6. H.P. Blavatsky on the experiences of A.F. Tindall.
1. The first is like the nightingale’s sweet voice chanting a song of parting to its mate. 2. The second comes as the sound of a silver cymbal of the Dhyanis, awakening the twinkling stars. Our body is an Aeolian harp chorded with two sets of strings: one made of pure silver, the other of catgut. 3. The next is as the plaint melodious of the ocean-sprite imprisoned in its shell. It is the Voice of Divine Wisdom and last word of the Secret Doctrine. 4. And this is followed by the chant of Vina, attuning fellow disciples to the harmonies of Wisdom. Even the memory of the sleeper is like the seven-stringed Aeolian harp, his mind sweeping over the chords. 5. The fifth like sound of bamboo-flute shrills in thine ear, bestowing knowledge of the awful mysteries and priceless secrets of initiation. 6. It changes next into a trumpet-blast, beckoning the Dragon of Esoteric Wisdom to come out of Darkness. 7. The last vibrates like the dull rumbling of a thunder-cloud. When the six are slain and at the Master’s feet are laid, then is the pupil merged into the One, becomes that One, and lives therein. The seventh swallows all the other sounds: they die, and then are heard no more. The two Opposing Forces are finally harmonised. The freed Spirit rises to its former glory. The Great Serpent uncoils. Only Sat remains. The Higher Self is swallowed up by the Great Serpent; the lower, disappears forever.
In order to reach the wider public, theosophical literature should be couched in simple, unpretentious language, that anyone can understand. If you thirst after spiritual truths, you should first learn how to read between the lines. More! Your should not believe what your read or heard, regardless of the authority of your teachers, but to believe only when the writing or saying is corroborated by your own reason and consciousness. Thenceforth, act accordingly and abundantly. The true disciple is humble and self-effacing, unnoticed by the man in the street. What may seem to others as mere ethics, to the true disciple such precepts of duty are instructions for boundless devotion to humanity at large and all creatures, whether great and small. Seek Darkness with the lamp of Faith. Faith is an aspiration and a desire. Hope and Charity are her sisters. True Faith can only blossom from the realisation that All is One. Let us then approach the Majesty of Truth for her own sake, and not to confirm our preconceptions and speculations of what Truth might be. Stand ready to abandon all you have learned with the head, so that you can tell apart the real from the false, the everlasting from the everfleeting. Head-learning is false learning, and as perishable as the body. Soul-Wisdom alone is true knowledge, immortal and eternal. As the disciple continues deciphering the arcane doctrine, at every new period of his inner life a new self rises within him. He is now increasingly permeated with Divine Intelligence, and immersed in Spiritual Light that radiates from his own Logos. When the last sheath of the heart bursts open there is a silence, the silence of the mystic death; and from that death springs up the first tender growth of Life triumphant in Spirit. The Brotherhood of Man has been forged in the fires of unspeakable anguish, and riveted by a dauntless purpose called forth by its mighty fiat.
As the sun we see is not the true sun, so too the light of intellect is not the real sun of our moral being. Only by untiring devotion to the welfare of humanity, and unutterable aspiration to the Divine Self within, we can move closer to the true sun who is the source and object of our being, and the Light of Truth for All.
When we need help, we count on doctors to put us back together. But what happens when doctors fall apart? Funny, fresh, and deeply affecting, We Are All Perfectly Fine is the story of a married mother of three on the brink of personal and professional collapse who attends rehab with a twist: a meditation retreat for burned-out doctors. Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals and scheduled bonding sessions. But as the group struggles through awkward first encounters and guided meditations, something remarkable happens: world-class surgeons, psychiatrists, pediatricians and general practitioners open up and share stories about their secret guilt and grief, as well as their deep-seated fear of falling short of the expectations that define them. Jillian realizes that her struggle with burnout is not so much personal as it is the result of a larger system failure, and that compartmentalizing your most difficult emotions—a coping strategy that is drilled into doctors—is not useful unless you face these emotions too. Jillian Horton throws open a window onto the flawed system that shapes medical professionals, revealing the rarely acknowledged stresses that lead doctors to depression and suicide, and emphasizing the crucial role of compassion not only in treating others, but also in taking care of ourselves.
True prayer is unselfish love of humanity. It is an act of will and a command but, unless enacted, prayer is pathetic. Prayers should be for blessings on all that lives. We shall be able to pray to Him properly, only when we approach by ourselves alone to the Alone. Our prayers and supplications are vain, unless to potential words we add potent acts. And thus make the aura which surrounds each one of us so pure and divine that the God within us may act outwardly, or in other words, become as it were an extraneous potency. To produce beneficial effects, the prayer must be uttered by “one who knows how to make himself heard in silence,” when it is no longer a “prayer” but a command. A clear conscience and a firm desire of benefiting humanity afford the best protection from air elementals, which throng public places. Loud prayers are disastrous. Woe to the unholy man who invokes the Sacred Trinity for personal advancement or pronounces It after the commission of some far-reaching sin. The Devotional Prayers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Alexander Pope.
People will never conspire except against real Power. In their blind ignorance, the Mysteries and the Unknown have been, and ever will be, objects of Terror for them. Would-be aspirants must not lure themselves with the idea of any possibility of their becoming practical Occultists by mere book-knowledge. Study and you will believe. Be prepared to devote your whole life. Be prepared for martyrdom. Give up personal pride and all selfish purposes, and be ready for everlasting encounters with friends and foes. Beware of Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra (the more dangerous for being composed of mediocrities) is not an enemy to be scorned by any would-be Occultist, courageous as he may be. Barrier upon barrier, obstacles in every form and shape will present themselves to the student.
