Five Great Healers Speak Here

Author(s): Nancy, Esmond Gardner
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

Page 58

HARRY EDWARDS
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deteriorating very fast, with debauchery, slavery, wars, and discontent.
The gift of healing can be developed by people who possess virtues of generosity, sympathy, compassion, and a desire to render service to the community in a spiritual sense-people who possess these characteristics and who then inwardly feel they have an insistent desire to be able to take away pain and unhappiness. Then they may well possess the latent powers of spirit healing, which only need a period of time to develop attunement and to give the gift an opportunity for expression. This desire to heal must come from the heart; an academic desire is useless. The gift of healing must fulfill in the person a desire to render service to God and to man.
The type of person who will never become a spiritual healer is one who is self-centered, mean, who will not render a service unless he receives some return for that service, someone who does not support good causes, one who is indifferent to suffering, and who possesses no love for the animal kingdom. What qualities are needed to become a channel for healing?
This question has been largely dealt with in the previous answer. People can be divided into categories. There are the very materially minded individuals whose sense of values is bound up in material gain. They regard rendering service for love as weakness. Then there is the great mass of people who are generally apathetic and indifferent about concerns outside their own personal welfare, so long as they can live without being hindered or bothered by outside matters. Those who are content with their lot are negative to the spiritual healing directive. There is the third group I have referred to in the previous answer, who, in a social sense, are the pioneers of new humanitarian movements. One usually finds the consciousness of that which is “right" and that which is