The Negatives examines the nature and roots of evil in both the individual and the world. Tracing the activity of sinister forces in previous and possible future world war, it emphasizes the urgency with which the current world-situation demands clear recognition of--and intelligent individual response to--the intensification of these destructive forces both within and around us. The section suggests a number of constructive alternatives, both at the individual and at the social level, to our present course.
Some readers may wonder at the juxtaposition of these two categories--Healing of the Self and The Negatives--in a single volume (in the printed edition). They are certainly an odd pair if one approaches them from a materialistic viewpoint. From the perspective of Mentalism, however, both address the powerful influence of thought (technically including attitudes and emotions) upon our lives. In Healing of the Self, P.B. points out that the reciprocal influence of body and psyche suggests a common ground--Mind. Were it not for this mental nature of both psyche and body, many illnesses and their causes would remain mysteries. This section focuses as well on how conscious thought-processes may positively (or negatively) modify bodily health--within certain limits that it also clarifies. Similarly, in The Negatives, P.B. addresses the power of negative thought to produce adverse effects--not only upon ourselves but also upon our fellow human beings and our environment. In both sections we see also the power of human thought to attract from beyond its own normal range the influences--either for healing or for evil--of forces greater than that of our own personal selves. These two sections, then, are both pointed applications of the principles of Mentalism, which P.B. introduced in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and considers further in category twenty-one of the current Notebooks.
Readers who have come this far into The Notebooks will have noticed direct relationships among some of the twenty-eight "categories" in P.B.'s overall outline. (This outline appears as the table of contents for Perspectives and is printed at the end of each subsequent cloth and paperback volume. In the CD ROM edition, it appears in the introduction to Perspectives.) Categories ten and eleven stand in direct relationship to certain other categories. Healing of the Self (category ten) relates directly not only to The Negatives (category eleven) but also to Relax and Retreat (category three) and The Body (category five). The Negatives relates directly to Emotions and Ethics (category six), The Ego (category eight), and Human Experience. To discover P.B.'s full thought on issues common to these distinct sections, it is worthwhile to study them in relation to one another.
Editorial conventions here are the same as stated in introductions to Perspectives and The Quest. Likewise, (P) at the end of a para indicates that it also appears in Perspectives, the introductory volume to this series.