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Diseases of Worry and Irritation

The third category of complaints which arise in the emotional or Astral body is synthesised esoterically under the term: diseases of irritation. These are the insidious poisons which lurk behind the phenomena of disease.

It might be said that all diseases can be covered by two definitions, from the standpoint of occultism:

1. Diseases which are the result of auto-intoxication. These are the most general.

2. Diseases which are the result of irritation. These are very common amongst disciples.

I want briefly to touch upon the most common of all causes of trouble: Worry and Irritation. They are more prevalent at this time than ever before, and for the following reasons:

• The world situation is such, the problems and uncertainty are such, that scarcely a person in the world at this time is exempt. Everyone is more or less involved in the planetary situation.

• The intercommunication between people has increased so much, and men live so much in massed groups—large or small—that it is inevitable that they produce an effect upon each other as never before. "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" is a statement of truth, ancient but new in application and today realized for the first time.

• The increased sensitivity of the human mechanism is also such that men "tune in" on each other's emotional conditions and mental attitudes in a new and more potent manner. To their own engrossing concerns and worries are added those of their fellowmen with whom they may be en rapport.

• Telepathically, and also with a developed sense of prevision, men are today adding the difficulties that belong to someone else, or to some other group of thinkers and of people, to the difficulties that may be. It is not sure that they will be.

These problems will demonstrate to you how intensely difficult it is for men to face up to life. It will be obvious that the problems of worry and irritation are many and must be considered. Why are these difficulties of the Astral body so "perilous" and so serious? Worry and Irritation are dangerous because:

• They lower the vitality of the man to such a point that he becomes susceptible to disease. The scourge of influenza has its roots in fear and worry, and once the world settles down to freedom from the present "fearful" condition, we shall see the disease die out.

• They are so highly infectious from the Astral point of view that they lower in a peculiar manner the Astral atmosphere, and thus make it hard for people—in the Astral sense—to breathe freely.

• Because the Astral conditions of fear, worry and irritation are so widespread today that they might be regarded as epidemic, in a planetary sense.

• Because irritation (I speak not here of worry) is inflammatory in its effects—and inflammation is hard to bear—and leads to much difficulty. It is interesting to note that certain forms of eye trouble are caused by this.

• Because worry and irritation prevent true vision. They shut out the view. The man who is the victim of these conditions sees nothing but the cause of his complaints and is so submerged through self-pity, self-consideration, or in a focussed negative condition, that his vision is narrowed and his group hindered. Remember that there is group selfishness as well as individual selfishness.

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