Elizabeth Clare Prophet, many people are quite concerned about the matter of healing. What is the ascended master teaching on healing?

The teachings of the ascended masters are for wholeness—the wholeness of the soul, the soul’s integration with the mind, the heart and the body temple. The ascended masters teach that whatever is manifesting in the physical body is an effect of an inner cause and they show their chelas how to go to the cause behind the effect.

In order that we might understand the levels of causation, the masters teach us that the nature of our being is fourfold. They refer to this fourfold being as the great pyramid of the self. Each of the four sides of the pyramid represents one of man’s lower vehicles. These vehicles are the etheric body, the mental body, the emotional body and the physical body. We call these “the four lower bodies.”

The Etheric Body – The Fire Body

The etheric body is the fire body. It is the natural envelope of the soul. It has the highest frequency of the four lower bodies and it corresponds to the fire element. Within this etheric envelope, or sheath, God has placed the blueprint of the soul identity, the blueprint that will manifest as consciousness, as mind, as emotion and as the physical matrix itself.

The etheric body actually has two compartments, the higher etheric body and the lower etheric body.

The lower etheric body is related to the subconscious mind. The higher etheric body is related to the superconscious mind. And between the two there are the recordings in man’s being of his heaven and his earth, so to speak—of the perfection of the soul’s origin in God, his heaven-world, and of what he has made of his soul and his consciousness through his many experiences in his incarnations in time and space.

We deal with the subconscious and unconscious mind as the source of man’s problems and with the superconscious mind as the great cause behind all effect, which becomes the source of healing. That superconscious mind, of course, is the I AM THAT I AM, the blessed I AM Presence. Actually, the higher etheric body is a reflection and the very repository of this I AM Presence, this I AM THAT I AM.

We find that the key to the healing of the total being of man, the key to wholeness, is in this etheric body. The original purpose of the etheric body was to be the vehicle of the memory of God. This memory is the inner blueprint of the soul as it came forth from the living Spirit. As we study the functions of the four lower bodies, we begin to see how they may be correctly used and how mankind have misused these lower vehicles.

What are the correct uses of the other three lower bodies?

The Mental Body

The mental body, the sheath of God’s consciousness, is intended to be used as the vehicle of the mind of God and the mind of the Christ and the Buddha. But instead some have taken that precious energy and stamped upon it our version of mind, which has become the carnal mind, or the intellect, and we have used the mental body to be a receptacle of worldly knowledge instead of the knowledge of both this world and the next.

We therefore have made of the mental body a very limited vehicle, when it could be the instrument of the fullness of the mind of God that was manifest in Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha.

We find that the impressions in the mental body have their effects upon the physical body. Where there are impurities in the etheric body, these are reflected in the mental body. Where there are impurities in the mental body, these are reflected in the feeling body. And where there are impurities in the feeling body, these are reflected in the physical body.

The Feeling Body – The Emotional Body

The purpose of the feeling body (the desire body) is to express the desire of God. God has only one desire and that desire is to be God. God desiring to be God ought to be the experience of our meditation and our communion.

We ought to use the feeling body, the body of “energy-in-motion,” or e-motion, to experience the intense feelings of God as love, as truth, as kindness, as compassion, as purity, and so forth. But instead we have used the emotional body to record the feelings of anger and pride and jealousy and revenge, hatred and intense fear and anxiety, which we find influencing so many of the people today.

The Physical Body – The Temple of the Holy Spirit

Finally, we have the physical vehicle, which was ordained by God to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, the temple of the living God. But we have allowed to come into this temple all manner of perversions of that God—everything from the impurities that we find in our food to the impurity that is reflected from the mental and feeling worlds. And thus the invasion of the body temple has become very great. In the time of Jesus it was seen as demon possession, and the ritual of exorcism, of course, has always been recognized in the Catholic Church.

We find that in order to have healing and wholeness of the four lower bodies, we must set the boundaries of the temple. These four lower bodies, these four sides of our great pyramid of life, are the lines of demarcation that separate us from the mass consciousness. When we have an identity that is clearly defined in God, we can retain the uniqueness of the self in God. When our individuality is not clearly defined, then we tend to float and to drift and to merge with every type of vibration, seen and unseen, and we become nothing more than an amoeba or a jellyfish floating in the sea of the mass consciousness.

When we look for healing, we need to look for wholeness through the integration of the energies of the four lower bodies. That integration takes place through the threefold flame in the heart. The threefold flame of Father, Son and Holy Spirit—of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva—is the point of contact with our own individual cosmic consciousness.

Through meditation and the use of the Science of the Spoken Word in the giving of decrees, we make contact with the central flame that burns on the altar of being, this threefold flame of life. And it is by that flame that we invoke the energies of the Spirit of God to descend into the chalice, the matrix, the crucible of the self, the soul evolving in Matter.

Spiritual Alchemy and the Four Lower Bodies

Saint Germain, our teacher in the Aquarian age, teaches us to become alchemists of the sacred fire. You know, the ancient alchemists saw the fourfold nature of life as fire, air, water and earth. In our knowledge of chemistry and physics today we do not consider these to be the proper designations for Matter. But they refer to more than the molecular structure of the elements; they actually refer to planes and frequencies of consciousness.

For instance, the frequency of the etheric body, the fire body, is at a much greater rate, a more intense rate—it is closer to Spirit —than the denser physical vehicle. In fact, its frequency is so different from the physical vehicle that we do not see the etheric body. We only have a sense of its effects because we have a memory, and in moments of meditation the soul remembers its experiences before this incarnation, even when it was “hid with Christ in God” in the very beginning.

The mental body has a different frequency, which corresponds to air and the airlike quality of the mind. It interpenetrates fire and yet remains distinct in its own alchemy.

The feeling, or desire, body is the water body. We associate water with emotion, “energy-in-motion.” This water is a tremendous power and a movement and its essential characteristic is that it has no shape. In dealing with the quality of water and its frequency, we come to understand how our emotions can so suddenly come upon us and move so easily in and out of perspective.

Finally, the physical body, which corresponds to the alchemist’s earth, is dense, concrete. And it is so concrete that we often mistake the physical body for the actual person, the self. We think that the body is the individual, when actually it is only the house that the soul occupies for a time. And that soul will again occupy other houses, other mansions, until it has fulfilled its course.

What is your advice to someone who is looking for immediate healing?

Healing does not begin with an intense anxiety to rid oneself of physical conditions, but with the desire to attain wholeness in God. This brings about the healing not only of physical disease, but of mental and emotional disturbances as well.

Violet Flame For Healing

In the Aquarian age, healing and wholeness begin with one’s God Self and the invocation of the violet flame. The violet flame is the baptism of the Holy Ghost; it is the law of forgiveness.

When the violet flame is invoked it begins, like a cosmic eraser, to consume the cause, the effect, the record and the memory of all imperfections in the subconscious and in the four lower bodies that are bringing distress into manifestation.