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SLEEP




A SOURCE
OF HARMONY





EDMOND BORDEAUX SZEKELY



ESSENE SCHOOL OF LIFE

1. We believe that, in the present state of society, it is possible for every
one, by judicious use of the best available methods of hygiene and individual
improvement, to achieve considerable betterment of the quality of his life.
2. We believe that it is the worth of individuals which makes the worth
of societies and which conditions the effectiveness of public institutions.
3. We believe, consequently, that every man owes a bounden duty to
himself, to the community and to the future of Humanity to make his own
improvement the essential task of his life.
4. We believe that this work of improvement has the sure effect of
introducing into the life of the individual a quota of happiness proportional to
the value of his efforts.
5. We believe that it is the study of the laws in Nature and in faithful
adherence to what they prescribe, that man finds the surest guides in his effort to
improve himself.
6. We believe that human thought and will have considerable power and
that they should be used conscientiously in the service of good, that is to say, in
the service of the force that leads Nature towards ever higher forms of
manifestation.
7. We believe in the irresistibility of progress and in the certain triumph
of beauty over ugliness, of truth over error, of good over egotism and hatred.
8. We believe that expansive love, fraternity and co-operation are the
only effective means of collective progress, and that nothing true, beautiful or
good can be built upon hatred, the spirit of party, cliques, rivalry, revenge and
oppression.
9. We believe that there cannot fail to be universal sympathy for every
sincere effort to do good, even when it seems to be in opposition, as the
ways of realizing a better future are as numerous as are human temperaments.
10. We firmly believe that we shall overcome evil, not by attacking it,
but by maintaining and strengthening the good.

Evil exists not;
Only the past.
The past is past.
The present is a moment.
The FUTURE is all!

ESSENE SCHOOL OF LIFE

DEDICATED TO THE ESSENE RENAISSANCE
OF HEALTH, HAPPINESS,
ABUNDANCE AND WISDOM
UPHOLDS THE ESSENE IDEALS OF
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD
THE MOTHERHOOD OF NATURE
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN
AN INDEPENDENTNON SECTARIANNON POLITICAL NON
PROFIT EDUCATIONAL.
WORLD ORGANIZATION
SPECIALIZED IN ALLSIDED EDUCATION FOR
LIFE LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT
OF HAPPINESS

The First Essene Organization in Europe and America
Founded in Nice, France, 1928.
Transferred to Elsinore, California1935.

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT:
Edmond Bordeaux Szekely

MAIL ADDRESS
Tecate, California, U.S.A.

OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Esperanto

BRANCHES AND REPRESENTATIVES
Australia, Canada, England, France, Ireland, Mexico,
New Zealand, Oceania, Palestine, South Africa,
United States, West Africa, West Indies.

SERVICES FOR STUDENTS AND MEMBERS
International Quarterly of the Essene and
Cosmovitalist World Movements
PeriodicalsYearbooksBooks
Weekly and Monthly Lessons
Courses for University Entrance
Credits Recognized by Several Universities
Certificates and Diplomas
Individual Guidance and Supervision for Students
Special Co-operative Services for Members

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
send 25c for our 48 page Digest and Guide-book, 8 x 7", profusely illustrated
with 50 pictures, containing concise condensations of all above books with
detailed introductions to the Essene Teaching and Cosmotherapy. Address THE
ESSENE SCHOOL OF LIFE, TECATE, CALIFORNIA.

First Edition 1939
Second Edition 1941
Third Edition 1942
Fourth Edition 1945

Copyright 1945 by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely.
Printed in United States of AmericaAll Rights reserved.



MEMBERSHIP

Membership shall be open to all persons, of any race, creed, or nation
who believe in the Essene ideals of the Fatherhood of God, the Motherhood of
Nature and the Brotherhood of Man, based on creative altruism and scientific
knowledge of the Natural and Cosmic Laws.
The School shall always be free to maintain Essene principles by giving
its services without charge to any person, member or non-member, wherever it
considers such action desirable.
The membership fee shall be one dollar ($1.00) per month, payable in
advance, quarterly ($3.00), semi-annually ($5.50) or annually ($10.00).
The membership fee has been computed from experience, based upon the
net administrative cost per member (stenography, printing, stationery, postage,
etc.). In accordance with Essene principles no other charge is made.

ADVANTAGES OF MEMBERSHIP
Quarterly members receive our International Quarterly "Health, Life and
Wisdom" for a whole year, membership card, 10% discount on all our
publications, and five semi-monthly lessons.
Semi-annual members receive all the above, and in addition, five more
semi-monthly lessons (a total of ten lessons during the six months), as well as
systematic help and guidance in their studies by the staff of the Essene School
of Life.
Annual members receive all the above, and in addition, ten more semi-
monthly lessons (a total of twenty lessons during the twelve months), as well as
the personal assistance of Professor Edmond Bordeaux Szekely in their
individual Life-problems.


LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS BY EDMOND BORDEAUX SZEKELY

Health, Life & Wisdom, International Quarterly
subscription for two years $1.00

COSMOTHERAPY, COSMOVITALISM
Guide to Health, Happiness & Abundance .25
Health, Youth, Longevity .50
Cosmotherapy, the Medicine of the Future 5.00
Scientific Vegetarianism .90
The Cure of Constipation 1.75
One Health Day a Week .75
The Therapeutics of Fasting .75
The Diet Chart of Cosmotherapy .50

BIOCHEMISTRY, DIETETICS
Introduction to Minerals, Vitamins, Herbs .25
Mineral Therapy of Biological Functions 2.75
Vitamin Therapy of Biological Functions 2.00
Natural Herb Therapeutics 2.00
The Biochemical Diet Book 2.75

MODERN MAN'S PHILOSOPHY
Modern Man's PhilosophyVol. I & II 2.75
Origin of ChristianityVol. I & II 2.75
Sexual Harmony and the New Eugenics 2.00
The Dialectical Method of Thinking 1.00
Books, Our Eternal Companions .75
Natural Economics & Sociology .50
One WorldOne Language .90
Esperanto, World Language .50

ESSENE SCIENCE OF LIFE
The Essene Gospel of John $1.00
The Natural and Cosmic Laws 3.75
Essene Communions with the Angels 4.75
Essene Renaissance 3.50
The Sevenfold Peace 2.50
The Ancient Essenes .50

GREAT TEACHINGS OF HUMANITY
The Living Jesus .50
The Teaching of Buddha .50
Zoroaster, The Master of Life .50
Quetzalcoatl, the Soul of Mexico 7.50
The Essenes, by Josephus .50
The Future of Humanity .50
The Meaning of Christmas .50
Yoga in the Twentieth Century .50
Will-Power, the Creator of Happiness .50
Sleep, A Source of Harmony .50
. Beethoven, Prometheus of the Modern World .50
Guide to Scientific Thinking .50
Creative Simplicity .50

NOT FOR SALERESERVED FOR MEMBERS
Edmond Bordeaux Szekely's Personal Semi-Monthly Letters
The Art and Method of Study10 lessons
General and Applied Dietetics50 lessons
The Biochemical Health Garden10 lessons
Semi-Monthly Lessons on Vital Subjects


SLEEP, A SOURCE OF HARMONY

FROM a physiological point of view sleep is a process of
elimination. During sleep breathing is much deeper than in the
daytime. There is consequently a more intensive elimination of
poisons and waste matter through the lungs. The toxins derived
from eating unwholesome foods and toxins that are the product of
fatigue are to a large extent disposed of during the hours of sleep.
The length of the night's sleep must depend on the
individual concerned, on his age, condition and many other
factors. The larger the accumulation of toxins in the organism,
the longer the sleep required. And the greater the fatigue of the
organism, the longer the sleep necessary to re-establish
equilibrium. More sleep is also required when wrong foods are
taken, as these produce fermentation in the organs of digestion.
But sometimes unwholesome food can have an opposite result; it
can lead to insomnia. For the fermentation of food has a
stimulating effect upon the nerves.
We can lay down the general rule that the length of sleep
required is directly proportional to the quantity of toxins present
in the organism, and inversely proportional to the organism's
degree of detoxication. An intoxicated organism needs from nine
to ten hours of sleep, while a healthy one will only require to
sleep for five or six hours in similar circumstances.
Sleep effects a reparation of the organism. Food makes up
for loss of quantity, while sleep makes up for loss of quality. It
repairs the nerves. Both kinds of reparation are indispensable, but
sleep is even more essential than food. It is physiologically
possible to go without food for days, weeks or even, in certain
cases, months. Sleep, on the other hand, can only be dispensed
with for some days. Sleep supplies something even more
important than the elements furnished by food.
In the waking state there is a difference between all plants,
animals and men, and also between all individuals. But sleep is
universal; it abolishes all differences. Sleep is the same in plants,
animals and men; in rich and poor, in wise and foolish, in poet
and peasant.
The differences between individuals consist of the
differences in the activity of their respective cerebro-spinal
systems. It is the cerebro-spinal system which regulates
individuality and personality. During sleep this activity stops and
the differences between individuals are consequently removed.
The organo-vegetative system presides over the organism while
sleep is in progress. It is this which is responsible for all
unconscious activities of the organism, while the cerebro-spinal
system directs all our conscious activities. The organo-vegetative
system governs the beating of the heart and the various processes
of metabolism, while the cerebro-spinal system controls attention,
intelligence, association of ideas, memory, etc. The former
system is the executive organ of all the natural laws and forces in
every organism, while the latter is the director of the individual's
actions. When a man is awake, he makes many deviations from
the natural laws, but when he is asleep he obeys them wholly.
The results of these deviations (fatigue, weakness and the toxins
of disease) are repaired by sleep at night when harmony with the
laws of Nature is restored. It is, therefore, impossible to live
without sleep. Prolonged fasting, on the other hand, is perfectly
possible, and often beneficial. Such is the explanation of sleep
from a physiological standpoint, as given by Zoroaster in the
Avesta between seven and eight thousand years ago.
Contemporary official science does not, however, look at sleep in
this fashion.
While a poisoned organism cannot dispense with sleep for
long, a completely healthy and clean one can manage without it
for many days. Conversely, a very overintoxicated organism may
sleep for weeks or months on end. There are many examples to
be found of these phenomena in antiquity, in the Middle Ages
and at the present day. Reports are occasionally given in the
newspapers of persons whom doctors are unable to wake up.
In the Avesta Zoroaster also tells us the significance of sleep
for a detoxicated and pure organism. Where there are no toxins
present, there can naturally be no elimination of them. Sleep,
then, has quite another significance. Instead of repairing the
organism, it improves its vitality. While the right food effects a
quantitative improvement of it, sleep leads to an improvement in
quality. It is a rule that in a!l the vital functions qualitative
changes arc more important than quantitative.
During sleep there is an absence of pain. It is for this reason
that artificial sleep is created for performing surgical operations.
It has been shown experimentally that the organism when asleep
can resist poison and that death from poison while sleep actually
lasts is impossible. It only occurs on waking. This great power of
sleep was observed by various peoples of antiquity.
It is not uncommon to find our problems solved during
sleep. The diaries of scientists and writers often relate that they
always invented or composed at night or in the morning after
sleep. So sleep is a source of knowledge in addition to the
usual ones. It brings the organism into contact with quite different
forces to those which influence it during the day. In the daytime it
is in contact with harder, inferior forces; it is in contact with finer
and higher forces during sleep.
During the day the solar rays are predominant and are the
strongest as the daylight half of the globe is turned towards the
sun. The sun's rays are strong and stimulate corporeal, physical
activity in the organism. At night, on the other hand, the
influence of the sun's rays is weak, and the cosmic radiations, of
which the source is more distant than the sun and which are of
superior quality, become predominant. These cosmic radiations
come from a direction opposite to that where the sun now is and
are not counteracted at night by its rays. Their source is very
distant even in the ultra-galactic systems of universal space.
These higher cosmic radiations influence the higher activities of
the organismactivities that are finer and more imponderable
than those of the daytime. It is thus that sleep comes to represent
another source of knowledge.
The more detoxicated an organism is, the more capable is it
of establishing contact with the higher radiations during the night.
"When an organism is poisoned, all its forces are paralysed by the
elimination which must take place during sleep. In a healthy
organism, however, all its forces are liberated and it is capable of
effeccting contact with and receiving the higher radiations.
Antiquity provides us with numerous examples of superior
revelations. The explanation of these phenomena must be sought
in the laws of the Universe and of Nature. All the great teachers
and thinkers of antiquity led very sober lives, lives of great
simplicity and harmony. In consequence, they were extremely
healthy and free from toxins. It was not mere chance that they,
and not other people, received these higher revelations. The
knowledge they received was natural; there was nothing mystic
about it. Simply their organisms had developed certain capacities
lacked by those of others.
Sleep, then, represents a higher source of knowledge for the
detoxicated, while for the intoxicated it is merely a means of
detoxication. For a majority it represents a process of
physiological reparation, while for a small aristocracy of will and
intelligence sleep represents the psychological perfection of the
individual. For the intoxicated, sleep is at best only a fragmentary
source of knowledge, which will always remain incomplete and
one-sided. And a one-sided improvement always leads to
disequilibrium. There is a close affinity between genius and
madness. Onesided geniuses are mad as well as geniuses, while
every-sided geniuses are supermen. According to Lombroso,
eighty or ninety per cent of geniuses are one-sided and mad,
while only ten per cent can be called complete. The majority had
sick unbalanced organisms; only a small minority had complete,
equilibrated organisms. Zoroaster, the author of the Avesta, was a
complete genius, Omar Khayyam was incomplete. Plato and
Pythagoras were complete; Plotinus and Philo incomplete.
It is impossible to lay down dogmatically the amount of
sleep required. It depends on the degree of intoxication of each
individual. In order to establish the quantity of sleep necessary,
one must first go through a process of detoxication and see how
much sleep is needed at the end. So much for the physiological
aspects of the question.
On the psychological side we find a certain correlation
between our waking and our sleeping life. When a person is
unable to satisfy his inner needs and tendencies during the day,
the repressed and unsatisfied tendencies remain in the
unconscious and cause dreams at night. According to Freud,
dreams are a satisfaction of sexual tendencies repressed by social
or other external factors. In the conception of Adler, where there
is a sense of inferiority or failure in life, the opposite tendency
will be manifested in dreams. Thus the poor will dream that they
are rich. Naturally the process is not so simple as this in reality.
An entirely healthy person, on the other hand, has no dreams.
(They can be provoked by over-eating.)
Equilibrium consists of harmony between the tendencies of
an individual and his environment. Dreams are always a warning
of an unbalanced organism or consciousness. Sleep without
dreams, on the other hand, becomes an enrichment of the ideas
and consciousness. The practical psychological consideration is
that attention should be paid to one's thoughts, ideas and
sentiments before going to sleep, since the latter's quality and
content is influenced strongly by the thoughts and sentiments
entertained prior to sleeping. If we go to sleep with harmonious
thoughts, our sleep will be a source of energy, harmony and
knowledge. In harmonious thoughts, on the contrary, are sources
of inharmony. Sleep supervening on such thoughts fails to bring
refreshment to the sleeper, who wakes with a feeling of fatigue
and lethargy next morning.
If, before sleeping, the energies are directed towards certain
objectives, the conscious forces aroused will be transformed into
unconscious forces during sleep, with the result that in the course
of the night the objectives will progressively be attained. The
morning will find the goal reached automatically. On the other
hand, if we go to bed with a fear of certain things, the fear will
paralyse our psychological capacities and forces, lowering our
resistance and causing the danger to arrive more quickly. Fear
attracts the danger of which one is afraid. We should bo afraid of
nothing except of being afraid.
The process of eliminating fear consists of two processes.
The first is an intellectual process and consists of a close analysis
of the thing feared. The danger is not a real one; it is only real in
the imagination. In death, for instance, as Thomas d'Aquinas
pointed out, it is the pomp and circumstance of death that terrifies
us rather than death itself. Death is perfectly natural. But we
exaggerate it with ceremonies', with dolorous behavior and with
sorrowful thoughts. Epicurus observed that we have no relation to
death. When we are alive, death is not with us, while when we
are dead, we are no longer alive to be grieved about it.
The second phase in the avoidance of fear is voluntary. It is
not sufficient simply to understand the fear with the intelligence
and realise that it is not too good to have it. The realisation must
also become a strong sentiment within us. It cannot be overcome
intellectually; the force of an awakened sentiment is necessary as
well. The technique for awaking the sentiments is discussed
below. It is part of the education of the will.



EDMOND BORDEAUX SZEKELY SCIENTIST
AND PHILOSOPHER

A Review by DION BYNGHAM
(Health and Life, July 1936)

If the contents of a book could save our contemporary world,
which is eddying and crashing to ruin, that book, I believe, has been
written. If the contents of a book could redeem us as individuals from a
common destiny of disease and death, that same book has appeared. If
between the covers of a book might be found the sure path to creative
peace, to superb health and beauty, to an optimal abundance of Joy in
Life, let us open and read. For if, while reading, we should perchance
resolve to try and live what "we read, all these seeming miracles might
assuredly happen.
How and where shall one begin? As a reader, certainly, at the
beginning, meditating and mastering every word to the end. But as a
reviewer, the significance of some 800-odd pages to compress within
four or five . . . ! For nothing less than Cosmos, Man and Society is the
theme. And the author, Professor Edmond Szekely, is a philosopher, a
sage and a scientist of immense erudition whoalbeit with
perfect lucidity and simplicityhas well-nigh taken the reins of infinity
within his grasp. Primarily a research-ethnologist, he has been directed
in all his researches by the light of one dominant motive: to discover
and formulate for himself and his fellowmen the laws of an optimal life,
to focus the entire forces of Eternal Life for the ultimate conquest of
death.
As a pre-eminently and practical outcome, Professor Szekely has
arrived at a comprehensive restatement of Natural Therapy which excels
in completeness, applicability and precision anything so far achieved.
And so, as promised in his preface, his book becomes virtually "the
encyclopedia of a new sciencePaneubiotics or Omnilaterial
Aristologywhose purpose is to realize the best and optimal forms of
omnilateral life based on the totality of the natural and cosmic laws and
their manifestations in the individual and society (cosmic, solar,
terrestrial and human radiations)."

COSMIC RADIATIONS
In that word "radiations" is really the core and gist of the matter.
We live as witnesses to the dawn of the radioactive era. It is therefore
essentially in tune with the times that natural therapy itself should be
synthesized around the conception of radiations, cosmic, solar,
terrestrial and human. This, in the first place, is what Professor Szekely
has accomplishednot, however, as a merely metaphysical theorist
discoursing vaguely on "vibrations," but with all the authority of a
realistic research-scientist whose findings have been tested and
confirmed in every detail by his therapeutic practice and experience in
many parts of the world.
It will unquestionably be of supreme interest to the practical
reader, whether lay or professional, to find in this book the whole
rationale of sun, air, water and earth therapies and hygiene, as well as
the properties of properly grown living foods like uncooked fruits and
vegetables, re-interpreted and. applied in a new light as accumulators
and transmitters of cosmic radiations for the healing, health and optimal
vitality of man. The entire technique of hydropathy (baths, packs,
compresses, the internal douche and so forth) is incidentally restated
and brought up to date. This makes a valuable section for all who wish
for a working knowledge of water; treatment, which, in many respects,
was the original basis of nature cure.
Dietetic science is likewise fully re-formulated with special
reference to the organic salts, vitamins and aromatics as basic
constituents and stimulants of the life-processes, as transmitters of vital
vibrations to glands and organs and to all the living cells of the body
and brain. Fifty foods, "accumulators of cosmic energies," are detailed,
together with. specimen daily menus for each season of the year. Of
several particulars that impress me about these menus I must mention
three. First, their extreme simplicity and frugalityyet it is obviously
the frugality of a man who enjoys every mouthful he masticates with
unperverted taste and unspoiled piquancy of appetite. Secondly, the
frequent combination of proteins and vegetables. Thirdly, the stress
laid on aromatics: onions, garlic, chervil. chives, shallot, mint,
parsley, thyme, celery and the rest.
These aromatics are undoubtedly nature's own aperitifs. Through
both taste and smell and by virtue of their volatile essences they
stimulate digestion and vitalise our internal functions and secretions, in
addition to their valuable, antiseptic and blood-cleansing properties.
Professor Szekely, who is everywhere insistent upon the importance of
teen healthy senses, practically identifies such imponderable neural
excitations from our foodtransmitted through sight or through taste
and smell with the vitalising vibrations which are the vitamins
themselves. Many a person, probably, remains obsessed by the
blandishments of cunning cookery and dependent upon the eondimental
savour of flesh foods, solely through ignorance of these superlatively
natural flavourings which would minister to his instinctive craving for
appetising aromas and palatable meals. The raw diet regimen would
never be dull were this understood, and no one can be a true initiate of
Professor Szekely's "natural optimal dietetics" by whom it is not
understood.
To trophotherapy and dietetics is added a section. describing fifty
medicinal plants and herbs with their properties and remedial uses, so
that the gist of botanical therapy is also included. The regenerative role
of fasting fills a fundamental place, as also does deep rhythmic
breathing, since Professor Szekely regards sun-irradiated air as the
medium for direct transmission of solar and cosmic vital forces through
the lungs to the body and mind. From this point of view the yoga
doctrine of pranayama receives corroborative evidence. A practical
chapter on the Art of Breathing, included in the section on "Individual
Harmony," is a revelation in itself. Air, as well as water, must, for
instance, have been recently sun-irradiated to be of any living value at
all. 'Man's roots are his lungs."

CELL-REGENERATION IN SEVEN MONTHS
All of these practical measures and many others are combined in a
complete system of what Professor Szekely calls "omnilateral
cosmotherapy." This term "omnilateral," connoting as it does extension
along, and convergence from, all sides and all fronts as correlated to the
central objective of optimal healing, health and life, is what
distinguishes Professor Szekely's truly "cosmic" conception from all
limited, "unilateral" or one-sided methods hitherto applied. As a
therapeutic system, competently administered and with the faithful
collaboration of the patient, he has proved that it will not only cure
specific and chronic diseases but will actually regenerate the individual
entirely, through intensive cell-renewal, in from three to seven months.
Adopted thereafter as a way of life, anthropocentric "cosmovitalism"
becomes the basis of Paneubiotics, the art and science of optimal vitality
and integral well-being which, Professor Szekely believes, will lead to
maximal longevity and even to the ultimate conquest of physical death.
Having said so much I am barely at the beginning of any adequate
disclosure of the wealth that this book contains, in fact I have left out
the beginning, plunged into the middle, and thereby postponed all
reference to what for me personally, along with the end, form the most
fascinating features. To those who, like myself, arrived at "naturism"
and natural therapy not primarily through concern with illness but as the
practical outcome of a sifting of cultural values and intuitive philosophy
of life, by far the most interesting aspects will relate to how Professor
Szekely reaches his conclusions and the logical consequences to which
he carries them.

ATOMS AND STARS
To the whole vast sidereal, astrophysical and astrochemical
purview, the correlative etheric and ultra-etheric, ultra-atomic and intra-
atomic vibratory milieu through which Professor Szekely traces life in
evolution from nebula to man, I can make but a passing and
meaningless reference here. That man is one with the cosmos, a
microcosm within a macrocosm, has been taught by the seers through
immemorial ages and notably by Edward Carpenter and D. H. Lawrence
among poet-philosophers of recent times. It has remained for Professor
Szekely to give scientific formulation to that "eternal ocean of cosmic
radiations" whereby solar systems and atoms are reciprocally related
and the cells of man's body and the thoughts of his brain vibrate in tune
with the farthest stars.
"The most elementary dynamic formations are those of matter
(matter being merely an aggregate of the movement of atoms), while the
highest dynamic formations are those of currents of thought." So the
long history of this vertiginous dynamism of thought itself is reviewed
by Professor Szekely in terse summaries of nearly a hundred
philosophers from Thales down to date. For as part of his omnilateral
system is included "the entirely new and original application for
therapeutic purposes of the masterpieces of universal literature,
philosophy and the arts based on psychotechnical diagnosis of
individual natures." To Professor Szekely's own philosophic formula of
"dialectical correlativism," in which is woven really the whole fabric of
his thesis, I cannot do justice in this outline.

MAN AND TREES
There remains still to be noted the ethnological and ethnographical
backbone of the book. Thisif more than the othershas been
Professor Szekely's especial line of research, in which he has made
some original and significant discoveries. As a pragmatic consequence
he is able to correlate all that is best in the most recent scientific and
cultural developments with a modernistic renaissance of the heliolithic
culture of homo sapiens sylvanus, the original fructivorous man of the
forests and trees. It was from this dominant species, characterised by
maximal longevity and endowed with a cerebral capacity for unlimited
intelligence, that subsequent culture and civilization took its sources.
Identifiable with the Cro-Magnon family, with the pre-diluvian
patriarchs of the Old Testament, and with other legendary figures of the
earliest folklore, this great race received its first severe set-back from
that planetary and climatic disaster recorded as "the Flood." This
destroyed its first optimally favourable natural milieu and caused its
scattered survivors to become more pyrolithic (fire-using and
food-cooking) and omnivorous (flesh-eating) in their habitsand much
shorter-lived. It might almost be said that, dating from that event, a
progressive series of enforced adaptations, complicated by human
follies, has brought us down to "the present pessimal milieu of homo
sapiens faber"the office and factory age of treeless cities and towns
we exist in to-day.
Trees and forests, declares Professor Szekely, "are accumulators
of the cosmic forces and radiations and are the generative source of
cerebral energies." (Italics mine.) Reflecting that it was the forest sages
of India who wrote the profound and unsurpassable Vedas and
Upanishads, one can well believe that this is so. Forests, moreover,
afford the best protection against storms, floods, droughts, extremes of
heat and cold, by acting as natural regulators and distributors of the
moisture and temperature of the air. Modern man, in his commercial,
money-maniac blindness, has devastated and laid waste the green earth.
It is a ruin compared with what it used to be, and man himself''is a
veritable bundle of rags and bones compared with the perfect, statue-
like forms of his paleolithic sylvan ancestors." The more human beings
have destroyed the forests and cut down the giant trees, the more
frequent and terrible have been the calamities, storms, hurricanes and
cyclones that have descended upon them, raging in recent years with
unparalleled violence. It is cause and effect. Yet still must walnut trees
be felled to make rifle butts, and miles of forests be sacrificed to provide
paper for the Daily Mail!
Those of us who have always loved trees will be wholeheartedly
with Professor Szekely in his campaign to combat every plan for
destroying and cutting them down, to promote re-afforestation over the
whole earth and restore "the Holy Alliance between Men and Trees."
Our "mere sentiments" on the matter are, after all, radically justified,
just as they are when along with Professor Szekely we deplore the
"senseless stupid men who relentlessly hunt down little birds, slaying
them without pity and without remorse"with the result that crops are
ravaged by vermin and men themselves are plagued by mosquitos and
flies. (News now comes to hand of a modified death-ray soon to be
commercialised for the destruction of vermin and insects and, doubtless,
of more little birds. The pious hope is expressed that it may never be
amplified and turned, on the human insect himself!)

WORLD CHAOS AND CALAMITY
Yet it would be futile to denounce the world's evilsalas! as so
many still dowith no clear recognition of their root causes in the
world-wide economic crisis and crashing chaos of which they are all
merely symptoms. It would be equally pointless to evolve grandiose and
Utopian conceptions of "omnilateral aristology," "paneubiotics" and
optimal well-being without facing the fact of a corrupt financial system
that can only spell their frustration. Professor Szekely is undoubtedly a
man of great Vision, but he is much too penetrating and
uncompromising a realistand much too good a natural therapistto
be guilty of either defect. His is no idealistic flight into phantasy. He
sees through to pauses. His analysis of the present world situation is
among the most masterly I have read. Multiplying unemployment,
poverty amidst plenty, the unprecedented crisis of "over-production,"
the impending fearful collapse of finance, the false foundations and
futility of the League of Nations, the pell-mell preparations for war
(which is only held off for the moment by the very complexity of
interlaced imperialist antagonisms), slave-mentality everywhere,
confusion, jobbery, and antagonism among the ruling classes
(themselves but slaves who lord it over slaves), the desperate attempts
through dictatorships to bolster the bourgeoisie, the whole piled up
impossible impasseall this is but "the prelude to the frightful disaster
which is soon going to overwhelm humanity in all its intensity." Only, it
would seem, after terrible catastrophe, can come the "Great
Renaissance," for which, however, in the name of humanity we must
even now prepare.

THE GREAT RENAISSANCE
We must, in the words of Romain Rolland, "unite all the spiritual
forces of Life against the forces of Death." In that spirit, too, we must
utter "an unqualified 'No' to war." We must vow our devotion to "the
Optimal and Omnilateral Restoration of All Things." By extending into
Society and social behaviour the paneubiotic law of the healthy body,
whereby every organ functions for the wellbeing of every other organ as
bound up with its own, we must combine to build the kingdom of active
love upon earth. Professor Szekely's remedy is, again, no regress into
"back to nature" primitivism. For him "naturism" and individualism are
necessarily correlated with all that is truly valuable in community and
technological achievement. He believes in the future, yet his motto is
"always and everywhere, Here and Now."
And so when, in conclusion, Professor Szekely outlines his plan
for the new order of self-supporting, co-operative, paneubiotic garden-
communes (one at least having already been successfully established) it
is an eminently realistic and practical plan, and, as far as I can see,
about the only way out. None the less, on that account, will these
communes be devoted to realisation of optimal individual and social
wellbeing through the practise of active love, the omnilateral pursuit of
knowledge, unison and harmony with the eternal currents of cosmic life.
Professor Szekely has followed his cosmotherapeutie premises to their
logical conclusion, not even faltering before the menace of a world-
disease, imbecility; and impending disaster which may soon reduce all
personal aches and pains to pitiful insignificance. Because of that alone
his book would tower like a giant above all the smug little panderings to
hypochondria which are too often described as "health" literature!
The colossal task of translation has been nobly accomplished by
Mr. L. Purcell Weaver, but for whom, declares the author, this book
would still be lying in manuscript form in French among the records of
his various scientific expeditions. The decorations in black and white by
Arthur Wragg aptly interpret the theme. No more massive, profound or
far-reaching work on Health and Life has ever been published.