In this book we have considered the two systems of psychology, the Eastern and the Western. Taken together we have a complete picture of man as a living soul, functioning through a certain mechanism. Part of this, the etheric body with its centers, is subtle, unseen and beyond the reach of our five senses, and another part is in the dense physical realm, namely the endocrine glands and the nervous system, which control the rest of the dense physical manifestation. These two parts, we believe, form one whole.

The soul is always the great reality, the expression of the one life, which is made up of the etheric and dense bodies. It is the soul force playing upon and functioning through the etheric body which evolves the specialized centers in that body, and which in turn acts upon the dense physical.

Work directly upon the glands and the nerve centers through the use of medicines and by other means is essentially repair work, and is limited to the highest state of those particular glands and nerve centers originally created by the particular man in question. The same is equally, and if anything, more emphatically true of the centers in the etheric body which can be affected by certain Oriental practices of breathing, mantras and posture. Such practices are most dangerous, often, indeed, leading to insanity. Eventually, it is to be hoped, we shall have sufficient knowledge and experience to work with intelligence directly upon the centers and thus be able to control more effectively the neuroses and glands of the physical body.

Three theories apparently emerge as the result of our investigation, and form a triple hypothesis to account for man as an organism, demonstrating life, self-consciousness and intelligent purpose.

It might be argued that we have only succeeded in pushing the whole matter back into the realms of the unseen and the unprovable. But is this really so? Have not many factors now accepted as realities emerged from the speculations and vague hypotheses of the past ages? Has not what was regarded as unprovable in the past been proved and demonstrated in the present age? Might it not be possible to apply a technique and employ a method which may in time suffice, through the mass of direct available evidence, to give us a clearer perception of the factors which are at present so obscure to us?

Is there a third way by means of which we can avoid the purely physical approach and also the danger of awakening the centers prematurely? May it not be possible to arrive at a solution and a method which will give the soul the full use of its instrument, and produce that perfect interplay between soul and body which a right activity of the centers is claimed to bring about?

There is a way whereby man can ascertain that he is really a soul, and therefore is able to control his instrument of expression, the threefold lower nature, the sumtotal of psychical and mental states. Through this method it is possible to bring about a union of the wisdom of the East and the knowledge of the West, so that the best aspects of each system can be available to mankind as a whole.

In considering the possibility of man discovering his soul, there must be, to start with, a willingness to accept an hypothesis, for hypotheses have always been the starting point for knowledge. We assume then, as a working hypothesis that man is a soul and possesses a body, and that there is a unifying medium linking these two in the form of an energy body. [132]

Those who have sought to ascertain the fact of the existence of the soul and of its vitalizing apparatus hitherto can be divided into two groups. There are the mystics who have employed aspiration and emotion, plus physical means, and there are those who are more purely mental in caliber, and who have utilized the intellect and the mind, in order to arrive at spiritual knowledge. This long line of knowers of God have used different terminologies, but it is immaterial for our purpose whether they call the soul the self, the Beloved, the One, or God, or Christ. The mystic flagellated and misused his body through fasting and over-discipline. He thus reduced the claims of the fleshly appetites. To this he added an intense devotion for the Beloved and a longing for the Vision. At the close of years of strenuous exercise he found that which he sought, and was united with that Beloved.

The second group employed the reason and practiced mind control, plus stern emotional and physical control. Through the one-pointedness of their search they, too, found reality and came into a wide consciousness of the eternal plan, arriving at union with the Universal Soul.