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THE POWER OF KARMA
Pythagorean sect of Jews called Essenes, and also in Egypt by Therapeuta or Healers, to which sect Jesus Himself unquestionably belonged. Through the sympathetic or psychometric sense, which may be defined as the susceptibility to being affected by the states of others, and which detects with unerring accuracy the mental condition of the patient, which is the spiritual cause of his disease, we take it on ourselves, at least so far as to have a clear conception of it. This wonderful "soul-measuring" power is represented by the golden reed in the hand of the apocalyptic angel, by which he took the measure of man, i.e., detected the quality of a person. By it we take up into ourselves the condition of the patient, not to permanently carry it, but temporarily take it up intellectually and in idea, in order to loosen its hold upon him and to remove it from him. It is as if we should find a man by the wayside prostrate on the ground, with a rock which has fallen upon him holding him down. We lift the rock from him, not in order to carry it ourselves, but only to remove it from him. So it is said of Jesus that He fulfilled the saying of the Book of the prophet Isaiah, "Himself took up (or assumed to Himself) our infirmities, and bore away (or removed) our diseases." (Mat. viii, 17). We turn toward the patient the psychometric or "soul-measuring" sense, or the receptive side of human nature, which may become acutely developed in us, in order to receive into our minds the idea, the mental image, the living psychic germ of the disease. This
