THE REVERSAL OF POLARITY

by Eugene Del Mar

The transition from disease to health is the result of a reversal of one's thought polarity. Disease is erroneous thought, and its error consists in its material misconceptions due to its basing its beliefs and opinions on physical sensation. It is negative or receptive to material suggestions, and positive or repellant to spiritual impressions. The reversal of polarity places one under spiritual guidance, and results in physical health.

Similarly, one changes his conscious relation to circumstances or environment when he ceases to regard it as aggressive and inimical, and turns toward it the thought of cooperation and friendliness. One's attitude meets with a response of similar character, he creates friendship where enmity would otherwise manifest, and he secures a consciousness of harmony instead of disease.

The world of appearance is to each one exactly what he interprets it to be, and every aspect of it has its positive and negative poles. Harmony may be secured with exterior conditions by the conscious determination of one's polarity ; being negative to the positive poles of appearance and positive to the negative poles.

It is not suggested that this is always desirable, for it may be quite advantageous to bring about a reversal of polarity outside of oneself instead of within, to the mutual benefit of all concerned. The mind that is attuned in the knowledge of Truth will be guided intuitively in this respect, so that one's response will become quite automatic.

It is not in a spirit of weakness that one should accommodate his polarity to that of another or of circumstances or conditions, but rather in the reallsation of his superior strength. It is not that one would disarm another of his means of offence, but that one would take from him all inclination to use his offensive weapons. This attitude carries no outward coercion with it, but it inspires a responsive acquiescence in the invitation conveyed by its silent thought of Love and Faith. This attitude represents an inner reallsation of power to which a purely physical consciousness pays ready homage.

The mental is the pivot for the physical and the spiritual. It is the teeter or see-saw determining how they are balanced against each other. While it separates the physical from the spiritual, it also serves to unite them ; and it is the moderator and transmitter of spiritual power. One of its functions is to transmute spiritual vibrations into terms of voltage that the physical body is capable of receiving without disintegration, for the body is unable to assimilate direct spiritual power and requires the intervention of the mentality as an intermediary.

Life is essentially One, and the three aspects of Soul, mind and body are essentially One. One is harmonious who lives the threefold aspects of his life in mutual agreement ; and this can be only when the Soul dominates the mind which in turn controls the body. The control must be from the higher or more fundamental aspects. The Life of Harmony or Oneness may be depicted as follows : 

Here the current of life flows without interruption or opposition from the spiritual into the mental and thence into the physical, the positive pole of each higher plane contacting the negative pole of the next lower.

When the Soul flung itself into the material realm, it made the physical body the foundation of its evolutionary or manifested life ; governed by sensory suggestions or incitements. At first the reactions to these were almost if not wholly physical, but in time mentality functioned more and more until, with increasing complexity of life forms, that is known as intellect was developed. Over vast periods of time intellect has received practically all of its suggestions, informations, guidance and knowledge from the sensory side of life ; and it has believed in and accepted as facts those experiences only that could be weighed and tested in the laboratory of the senses. 

The higher planes of life were governed by the lower, and the mental life was subordinated to the physical. In general this is the present condition of human life, which may be represented somewhat aptly as follows :

Here the mental receives its impulses to thought and action from sense impressions and suggestions, while it points its positive pole toward the similar pole of the spiritual aspect of life ; refusing to accept spiritual suggestions, and seeking to bring the higher aspect of life to its own lower level. Not only this ; but the mind is both conscious and subconscious, and includes both intellect or reason and emotion or feeling, and the suggestions of the physical affect the feelings before they reach the intellect, so that the guides to intellect are not only sense impressions, but emotions that have been influenced by these, represented as follows :

In his false pride of intellect, man has sought to dominate the spiritual by the mental and has insisted upon a polarity that rejects spiritual guidance and illumination. The result of this false polarity has been the continued acceptance through long ages of assumed facts and ideas that are essentially erroneous, and yet ring true to man's false standpoint. Man's vision being distorted, the crooked seems to be straight and the straight appears to be crooked. He cherishes many misconceptions, and summarily rejects
the higher conceptions of Truth.

The consummation of the spiritual life must be a conscious harmony of all aspects of life, based on the realisation of the Soul as the fundamental inspiration, with mind as its interpreter to the body. This consciousness must include the recognition of the intellect as an essential factor in life, and the knowledge that the body is the ultimate instrument of Spirit, designed and fit to shine resplendent in spiritual glory. The one obstacle to this consummation is the insistent wrongful polarity of intellect in relation to the Soul.

The Soul may invade only such mental premises as are receptive to its influence and character, and it may not intrude on the intellect except as it is invited. But the intellect is unlikely to extend an invitation until it has been so buffeted and battered by unpleasant experiences that it is humiliated and its pride humbled in the recognition of the falsity of its conclusions, because of its dependence on delusive and illusive sense impressions. In meekness and sadness of mind, and with bruised and injured body, one then becomes receptive to the spiritual influences which may enter to comfort and console.

The spiritual life does not deprecate or underrate the intellect ; but cultivates, refines and elevates its character so that it turns its face away resolutely from physical guidance and domination, and opens its countenance to the sunshine of spiritual regard. Then the intellect ceases to build a false and fanciful spiritual world founded on intellectual ideas that are based on its assumed knowledge of physical facts, and in place of misconceptions of separation and exclusiveness adopts ideals that are universal and all-inclusive.

Then the spiritualised intellect interprets seeming separation in terms of Unity, it rests secure on the eminently solid foundation of intangible and invisible Reality instead of the insecure and unstable impressions of the senses. It substitutes knowledge for belief and opinion, and penetrates the disguises of appearance so that they no longer delude and mislead ; it visions the ideal in the actual and the spiritual in the physical, and now unites rather than separates ; it identifies the physical with its spiritual Source and thus closes the gap in the chasm of life ; and it finds its true function in bringing together the trinity of life into One Harmonious Whole.