Notes - 4
Measurements in years is a planetary scale created by the motion of the
earth and does not refer to the inner time of man.
Each man has his own individual time, irrespective of the calendar and
the clock, derived from the uncoiling of the mainspring of his own
individual life. It is the hour told by this time which indicates his
position, his outlook, his fate.
Cells within the human body have varying lifetimes.
The blood is fluid life, an unstable, formless medium, exactly fitted
to receive the faintest emotional vibration, holding all experience in
suspension in it and traversing the entire body. It communicates
corresponding emotions to every cell.
The white corpuscles of the blood are perfectly endowed with the power
and the duty of eliminating poisons.
The heart will be found to be not only the engine which circulates the
life fluids, but also the generator of a certain type of intelligent
essence which is the positive factor in the life of the cell.
There is a difference between the gray and white matter of the brain.
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A real distinction must be made by the student between the centres and
the rest of the body. The centres are allied to consciousness and are
composed of self-conscious units.
There must be some means of exchange or communication between the
spiritual Self and the physical self. In other words, there must be some
places or points within the human body where the spiritual Self can
transmit its power, authority and central control into the grosser
elements of nerve energy, blood and vitality of the human mechanism.
Life forms are an expression of consciousness; it became necessary that
some control of conscious activity be found, so centres of control
developed.
The gland system is the seat of impulses and urges in man.
The endocrine secretes into the blood stream its particular hormone in
a rhythmic flow and at any moment of time makes a man what he then is --
thoughtful, sympathetic, passionate, active, and so on. At the same time,
he himself affects the composition by his interest and attention to this
or that manifestation in him, he accumulates and restrains his natural
tendencies.
The endocrines are the directors in the corporation of organs, tissues
and consciousness of the being called man.
Glands are the faithful dogs, and no matter how they are abused they
will strive to save the system from serious harm.
The single cell was immortal and had the power to renew itself
perpetually, but when the cells began to try to work together they lost
the power of everlasting life and had to resort to reproduction and
general creative power. To produce this centre the sex glands (gonads)
were formed.
These glands must work in harmony and balance, and to do so they needed
methods of intercommunication. The parasympathetic system was created for
nerve action. Its vibrations are so subtle that the senses do not even
detect them.
The sympathetic nervous system is an apparatus of sensation and is
related to the emotional or astral body.
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Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the
physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician
and drink the remedy in silence.
What can correspond to crime in the human body? The wrong functioning
or rebellion of various parts of the organism, and these wrong
functionings in turn are started by the retention of inert matter in the
body.
Every impression that runs through the senses runs out into muscles,
glands and viscera, and builds up or tears down vital processes through
the invisible paths of escape -- the nerve currents -- and which remain
more or less permanent features of its structure, modifying its actions
through all future times.
Destructive thoughts will manufacture diseased conditions. Disease is
not the punishment of broken laws, it is the evidence of it.
Diseases have their roots primarily in maladjustment and misdirected
forces in the vegetable kingdom.
The mental attitude is the thing that needs healing, the body has no
alternative for by its nature and law it is forced to respond. By taking
mental remedies, the roots of tumours and cancerous diseases are loosened
and the acids of rheumatism are dissolved.
Sickness and discord have been accepted as a legitimate part of life,
and unattached to hidden causes.
Get away from the idea that the body is a fixed and unchangeable thing.
It is an ever-changing kaleidoscopic register of thought.
When I repress my emotions, my stomach keeps score.
Overfeeding or wrong feeding will produce a self-poisoning within the
digestive track.
In the average home of today, the meal time is the clearing-house time
for all the troubles of the family.
The ulcers of the stomach will yield more quickly to the change in/to
divine vibrations than to any other method of treatment.
Modern medicine often by-passes and undermines the intelligence of
organs.
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Man is a citizen of the three worlds.
\ The entire man is in his being -- the three worlds.
Man is the breath of God working through a marvelous contrivance called
the human body.
All grades of matter meet in man and all states of consciousness are
possible in him. The human family is responsive to all energies.
When we speak of man, we really speak about his degree of consciousness
(or awareness), however rudimentary, for the rest is not human but
chemical, biological and animal.
What distinguishes men in their degree of consciousness is what
distinguishes suns in their degree of radiance. Light and consciousness
obey exactly the same laws and wax and wane in exactly the same way. We
may even say that they are the same phenomenon seen on different scales.
Man is an unfinished house; there is work to be done.
Man is created a self-developing organism. He is incomplete by creation
(as distinct from animals), as the Universe is also, but can complete
himself by constantly working against the circumstances of life.
The principle of successive existence in different states of matter, we
must accept as a completely mechanical feature of the Universe. In it
there is nothing desirable or undesirable, nothing depending in the least
degree on individual merit or defect.
Although all organic life has to make mechanical efforts, there is only
one small part of it that can make conscious efforts -- and that part is
man.
The goal for the atom (its evolution) is self-consciousness, as
exemplified in the human kingdom.
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In the heart of matter, giving it form and power, is something not
material.
In the Universe of phenomena, there is no spirit unconditioned by
matter, no smallest particle of matter uninformed by spirit.
No so-called matter exists anywhere in the Universe. All forms are
built up of infinitesimal lives.
All forms in nature are made up of myriads of tiny lives holding a
certain measure of awareness.
Matter becomes rare or dense according to the thoughts of a
consciousness active therein.
The Universe is in fact but a huge aggregate of states of
consciousness.
We live unconsciously in this mighty consciousness in which everything
is eternally present.
The Universe, with all its phenomena, is nothing more than an incessant
and immediate succession of states of properties.
The essential matter descends in a series of separate notes of various
densities.
All gradations that appear are not gradations of vital principle, but
only of its manifestations.
\ I am not visible because I am enveloped in the illusion of phenomena.
Yet all is equally divine in time and space and in relation to the
point in the evolution of the whole.
The Universe is all one -- nothing can be changed without changing the
whole.
Duality and dualism must not be confused. The universe implies
conciliated duality, but this is not dualism.
If we stop regarding creation as a whole, but regard it as some things
created, our minds perceive the Universe as a space-time where things
appear and disappear, integrate and disintegrate.
----
There exists in the Sun, in the planets, in man and in the atom a
central point, a nucleus, and this reaches the bounds of its sphere of
influence.
In the Sun, right at the heart is a sea of fire. This central point
radiates its warmth to all parts of the solar system.
My centre is universal, my periphery is personal.
...Finding the centre within the form, that which we call the Soul.
We cannot imagine a formed and fully functioning physical body without
the intervention of Soul.
\ A candidate must possess a mature Soul.
There is a greater mystery than this, viz. ourselves being the Reality,
we seek to gain Reality. We think that there is some thing hiding the
Reality and that must be destroyed before Reality is gained. It is
ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past
efforts.
Liberation is nothing new that is acquired.
Those who do not perceive the truth think in terms of samsara and
nirvana.
To desire great nirvana is the karma of birth and death.
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Creation means the appearance in active manifestation of some form of
energy. Solids refer not solely to the lowest objective manifestation, for
a solid form may be ethereal.
The atom has been recognized as an energy unit, but as yet the energy
that sweeps atoms into aggregates which we call organisms and forms has
not been isolated.
Life is not a function of the form, the form is a product of life.
All life is vibration, and the result of vibration is form, dense or
subtle, and even subtler as ascension takes place.
All forms are but experiments.
Every externalized idea is therefore possessed of form, animated by
desire and created by the power of the mind.
Man will attract by his pranic energy, coloured by desire, high or low,
and animated by the potency of his thoughts just as much of the responsive
matter in space as is needed to give body to his form.
All the bodies, whether human or logoic, are the product of desire
originating from the planes of abstract mind.
When shielded by his own maya, Brahman is called Purusha.
He will need to understand that this form which he has created will
persist as long as the dynamic power of his thoughts holds it together.
There is no permanence whatever in the sheaths (matter); they are built
into temporary forms and dissolved when the thinker has exhausted their
possibilities.
A form is used consciously for some specific ends and is then vacated.
Matter persists, though the form no longer persists.
----
A man is a psychic entity; a life through vibratory influence has built
a form, coloured it with its own psychic qualities, and thus presented an
appearance to the environing world which will persist for as long a time
as he lives in form.
Man is regarded essentially as an etheric (astral) being and his dense
physical body is esoterically regarded as below the threshold (a shadow)
and is not considered as principal.
\ People have for long regarded the form as being the dense physical
body, whereas to the occultist the physical body is not a form. The true
form is the body of vitality (astral).
The etheric (astral) body is composed of force currents and in it are
vital centres linked by lines of force and with the nervous system of the
physical man. The etheric body of man is vitalized and controlled by
thought (impulses) and can be brought into full functioning activity.
This is done by right thinking and not by breathing exercises
(pranayamas).
The etheric (astral) or vital body is the force and permeates every
point of the dense vehicle. According to the force emanating, so will be
the physical body. On proper breathing (pranayama) depends the physical
body.
Both the astral and mental bodies are material and just as material in
their own way as is the dense physical body.
The three bodies are not regarded as principal and so, in a cosmic
sense, the three sub-planes are regarded as non-existing and illusory.
The building of a shell leads to separativeness and necessitates the
eventual overcoming of the habit of shell-building and a shattering and
consuming of the shells already built.
During the life period of the Universe, matter is ever in a condition
of incessant internal motion. The sub-stages and the sub-planes of matter
are interpenetrated. Finer worlds interpenetrate the coarser.
Everything in the solar system is in a state of flux, as is everything
in the universe, and the vital energy (prana) circulates throughout the
entire system.
An endless circulation of prana goes on that has not a conceivable
beginning nor a possible end.
Akash, fohat, or divine energy is also known on different planes as
aether, air, fire, water, electricity -- prana.
Matter and aether are synonymous terms, and this aether is found in
some form or other on all planes and is but a gradation of cosmic matter;
when undifferentiated it is called mula-prakiti, primordial matter, and,
when differentiated, just matter.
The mysterious life-force, the ten organs of perception and action, and
the five domains of sensations are the constituents of changing matter.
\ The rare and the subtle matter exists in space in forms uncognizable by
us, outside the limits of the \Universe. This matter is in a peculiar
state, the ocean of virgin matter -- mula-prakriti.
\ The more refined and rarefied a form, the better a receiver of prana
will it be.
The word spirit is applied to that undefinable, elusive, essential
impulse which is the cause and is that rhythmic inflow of vital energy.
What this something is who can say, though we call this unknown,
unknowable something by various names.
Spirit and matter arise together -- it is not that spirit exists and
then miraculously produces matter to limit and bind itself, but spirit and
matter arise in the eternal simultaneously as a mode of its being, a form
of self-expression of all.
There are no two separate somethings, but only two drawn apart but
inseparate aspects. The gulf appears when we think of spirit as wholly
immaterial and a body as wholly material.
The inseparable half of Purusha (consciousness) is prakriti (matter).
The gunas (qualities) have nothing to do with Purusha.
Consciousness and matter effect each other because they are two
constituents of one whole: both appearing as they draw apart, both
disappearing as they unite; and a relation exists between them.
The three aspects of divinity, the central energy or spirit, the
coordinating force or Soul (Self), and that which these two use and unify,
are in reality one vital principle manifesting in diversity.
One life manifesting through matter produces a third factor which is
consciousness. It is a relation between spirit and matter and is the soul
of all things. It penetrates all substance.
So it will be found that in the world such organisms as the kingdoms of
nature have their separate life and functions, yet are so correlated by a
vast intricate sensory system which is called the soul of all things and
is the underlying consciousness.
Sattvic manas is in a state of mano-nirodh. Sattvic manas is very near
Purusha. The impression that they are one and the same is the conjunction
that is wrong. This is ignorance.
Mano-nirodh -- the restraint of all the internal and external,
subjective and objective wandering of the mind, till it ceases to be what
it appears to be and attains to its true being.
How long is the process of restraint to be carried? The shastras say,
so long only should it be restrained till it attains dissolution in the
heart.
The cause of bondage is not prakriti, but prakriti evolved into manas.
Mind could be vast, all-pervading; but when bound to a body it is
bondage.
Consciousness dealing with a definite time, however long or short, with
a definite space, however vast or restricted, is individual, that of a
concrete being, however gross or subtle, a lord of many universes or any
part of the universe, a solar logos or a man.
Consciousness is one, and apparently separate consciousnesses are truly
one.
Consciousness ceases when the sense of limitation ceases.
Manas and buddhi are two powers of that Light (two states of higher
mind); the former is the power to see things as separate, the latter the
power to see things as a unity, all beings related to all.
Consciousness is free and unlimited, and can function in form and out
of form. Manas is consciousness in motion.
Consciousness is not an organic conception and has nothing to do with
the psychological conception of energy.
Consciousness changes and each change appears in the matter
surrounding as a change in vibration.
----
Memory can only refer to those denser worlds in which perception
travels through time slowly enough to yield a sense of past, present and
future.
Our chief illusion about memory is that it decays with time. It decays
from lack of nourishment. Memory is generated by consciousness/awareness,
it must be nourished by consciousness/awareness.
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Every celestial influence or stimulation which is brought to bear upon
man is thus his opportunity and his danger.
Electronic radiations from heavenly bodies produce molecular changes in
the Earth's atmosphere, while such molecular changes in the atmosphere in
turn produce changes in the organic bodies dwelling thereon.
Light is matter in electronic form or state and is gradually transmuted
back to molecular state on planets and further to cellular state. All life
on Earth is a condensation of electronic and solar radiation through the
ages.
From the galactic center emerge cosmic rays. They are distinct from and
of higher frequency than any known to originate in the Sun.
Each physical structure has a fundamental note or vibration.
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Develop intentional suffering through doing small things you do not
like to do voluntarily.
In the first place, voluntary suffering is only conceivable for him who
has long ago freed himself from involuntary suffering, i.e. from fear,
worry, slavery to others' opinion, and so on.
Between the great things that we cannot do and the small things we will
not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.
Temptation is a state in which a struggle is taking place within you as
to what will take control.
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The Lord does not accept responsibility for any man's merit or demerit.
Men are deluded because in them wisdom (of the Divine Fragment) is
submerged in ignorance (of body and mind).
The Lord of this Universe has not ordained activity or any incentive
thereto, or any relation between an act and its consequences. All this is
the work of Nature.
I am the same to all beings; I favour none and I hate none, but those
who follow my laws devotedly, they live in Me and I in them.
The duty that of itself falls to one's lot should not be abandoned,
though it may not be pleasant.
If this is my day of harvest, in what fields have I sowed the seeds and
in what unremembered seasons.
`Master who did sin, he or his forbear, for he was born blind?'
`Neither hath this man sinned nor his forbear, but that the law of God
should be made manifest in him,' said Lord Jesus Christ.
It is necessary to consider what is right action, what is wrong action
and what is inaction; for mysterious is the law of action.
Commit a wrong unto others, and therefore unto yourself, and for that
wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of
the blessed.
Nothing that is law is not reason.
There is no such thing as luck. Everything is a result of some cause.
Destiny never intended man to be a helpless victim of circumstances or
the self-hypnotised tool of an affirmed but undeveloped divinity. Man is
intended to be the intelligent arbiter of his own destiny and a conscious
exponent of his own innate divinity, of the God within.
----
The word `spiritual' has a wider significance: an inclusive endeavour
towards human betterment, uplift, understanding, tolerance, religious
inclusiveness and all trends of thought which concern the esoteric
development of the human being.
Let us use the word spiritual to signify the world of light and beauty,
of order and of purpose.
The spiritual life is not bought by giving of alms but by giving of
self to God.
Spiritual poverty is selfless use of everything one has. I speak not of
the absence of things, for absence is not detachment.
True non-attachment does not consist in separating one's self from
one's possessions, but in possessing as if one did not possess.
The objects of sense turn away from him who is abstemious. Even the
relish for them is lost in him who has seen the Truth.
The self-controlled soul who moves among sense objects, free from
either attachment or revulsion, he wins eternal peace.
The happiness of solitude is not found in retreats. It may be had even
in busy streets.
Non-attachment is indeed the preliminary of real intuitional knowledge.
The inner severance from the affliction of misery is spirituality. It
should be practised with a heart that refuses to be depressed.
This (the non-attached) man is known by some signs. He never complains,
never makes excuses, when accused he leaves facts to vindicate him, there
is nothing he wants on Earth or in Heaven but what God wills. He is joy
itself, he is knowledge without study, richness without money, joyful
company without companions.
He works in the world of men, he loves, comforts and serves; he pays no
attention to his personality, likes, dislikes and attachments. He stands
as a rock of strength and a strong hand in the dark to all whom he
contacts.
\ You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you
give of yourself that you truly give.
Can earthly things seem important to him who is acquainted with the
whole of eternity and the magnitude of the Universe?
Set thy sin beneath thy feet, and thy virtue beneath thy sin.
To vaunt oneslf is to fail of self-respect.
Give up all externalities and show -- even show of piety.
We are to practise virtue, not possess it.
Conceal your good deeds as you conceal your evil deeds.
Learn to know all, but keep yourself unknown.
Use your light, but dim your brightness.
Spiritual progress is not hampered by material things, but we should
not be dominated or enslaved by them. Do your duty in all things and have
proper perspective.
Both wealth and poverty are divine gifts; wealth is corrupted by
forgetfulness, poverty by covetousness.
If there is one law which determines one's duty done before God, it is
the law of self-support. Where is the dignity of man in an outstretched
hand?
While man lives in a physical body, he is held accountable for an
existence of usefulness.
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Where there are boundaries of any kind, where a field of influence is
circumscribed and where the radius of contact is limited, there you have
a prison.
Some lives are prisoners and know it; others are prisoners and know
this not. The clue to suffering lies right here in the realm of the mind.
Where there is a realization of worlds to conquer, truths to be learnt,
there you will have a festering sense of limitation.
With the problem of limitation is closely linked that of liberation.
Into the prison house of form enter all that live; some enter consciously
and this we call manifestation, and some enter unconsciously and we call
this birth.
The principle of limitation controls the scope of an incarnation, sets
its measure and rhythm.
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Easy is the descent into the world of death. But to retrace one's
steps, that is the task, that is the labour. Such death and rebirth is the
law of the cosmos.
Human life is the opportunity for conscious readjustment to a higher
order of consciousness, and yet without losing the best that human life
has to offer of work, love, family, and national, civic and social
relationships.
...That service in the world is as imperative as prayer, and that a
balanced life requires spiritual resource for mental achievement.
Realize that the whole purpose of creation was to produce a body
capable of responding to higher and higher degrees of consciousness, the
germ of which was breathed into human form.