EFFECTS OF REMOVAL OF PHYSICAL ORGAN 189the case of an organ like the spleen where the etheric
counterpart has an important function as gateway for
the solar energy, naturally no such disintegration will
take place.
It should also be remembered that wherever
disease manifests in the physical vehicle that part of
the vital body has first become thin, attenuated, and
diseased, and it was its failure to supply the necessary
vital energy that caused the manifestation of physical
symptoms of ill health. Conversely, when health
returns, the vital body is the first to pick up, and this
convalescence is then manifested in the dense body.
Therefore, if the physical spleen is diseased, it is a
foregone conclusion that the etheric counterpart is also
in subnormal health, and the wisdom of removing the
organ is doubtful. However, if it is done, the body will
seek to accommodate itself to the new condition and
the etheric counterpart of the spleen will continue to
function as before.
Another interesting angle to this question is
revealed in the after-death state. When a person who is
injured passes into the invisible realm, he thinks with
the same mind, pictures himself there as he was in the
world. Consequently a scar on the forehead or the loss
of an arm or limb is reproduced by his thought in the
matter of the Desire World and he appears there
disfigured as he was here. In the World War this was
very noticeable, for all the soldiers who passed out
with wounds which they could see and which they
knew how to determine the effect of, reproduced these
wounds in their desire bodies. They felt pain similar to
what they would have felt if they had still been in the
physical body, because they fancied that there must be