Notes - 7

Another basis of discouragement is the over-development of the concrete

mind.

   Intellectual understanding will not exalt the mind. Nothing less than

sublime, longing, yearning love will. When this love drenches the Soul

(Self) there is no more need for coaxing by means of symbols.

   Yoga believes not in mental understanding but in total understanding.

   There are those who have knowledge but not understanding -- that which

is grasped by the rational mind, that which can be seen with the mind's

eye and that which only the higher and abstract mind can formulate and

know.

   The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he

cannot give you his understanding.

 

   When mind becomes unduly developed and ceases to unite the higher and

lower mind, it forms a sphere of its own. This is the greatest disaster

that can overtake humanity.

 

   Accumulation of experience is not digestion of experience; accumulation

of knowledge will not bring about development of being. For these happen

unconsciously and involuntarily. An unconscious and involuntary process

cannot possibly bring about consciousness and will.

 

   Yet for a long time it is the pull of sensation and its reflex in

consciousness -- desire -- which produces rebirth; \sensations being a

quality in matter or substance.

 

   If fatigue is present and the physical body is in need of rest, then

likewise the inner working fails to be recorded.

   If emotional and mental chaos exists, then again the currents are

deflected and the brain makes no record of that which may be inwardly

seen or heard.

   An outburst of anger that would scarcely be noticed in the dense air

below will give rise in that rarefied atmosphere to an explosion which

will shake him to the very depths of his being and undo in a few moments

the painful efforts of months and even of years.

 

   Lack of faith, calmness of application and presence of emotional unrest

will hinder. Physical injudiciousness may make the physical body

non-receptive, worry or care may cause the astral to vibrate to an

impossible rhythm, pride may make the mental vehicle useless. Endeavour to

arrive an absolute purity of motive. Balance and poise must be restored.

   A sick physical body, an astral prone to moods, emotions and psychic

delusions, and a mental body uncontrolled or ill-equipped are all

dangerous to the student unless straightened out and perfected.

   Learn, therefore, how to keep quiet or usefulness will be hampered by

astral fretfulness. Work, toil, strive, aspire and hold the inner calm. It

is an inner poise that holds to the vision, yet does the outer work on the

physical plane, which is in no way deviated by the inner receptiveness.

   As action and reaction are equal and opposite a high spiritual state

long continued will be followed by fatigue. Balance must be maintained.

----

   Pay no consideration to the prudential considerations of worldly

science and sagacity if the aspirant has need to cultivate a capacity to

walk alone.

   Cultivate courage. The aspirant will need it to run counter

consistently to the world's opinion. He has to learn to do as he sees and

knows fit, irrespective of the opinion of the world's greatest and most

quoted. He must depend on himself and upon the conclusions he himself has

come to in his moments of spiritual communion and illumination.

 

   Learn the meaning of persistence; the strength is beyond all other

things the power to endure, to hold out, to stand steady and to go forward

undeterred.

 

   The number of impediments is legion. Hindrances and obstacles abound.

Singleness of purpose may occasionally be realized in high moments, but it

does not abide with us. Always persist! Failure never prevents success.

Difficulties develop the strength of the Soul. The secret of success is

ever to stand steady and to be impersonal.

 

   The path is therefore a path on which steady expansion of consciousness

is undergone.

   The path is rough and the true occultist walks it alone.

   The capacity to stand alone: be prepared then for loneliness, for

dangers of a dim and obscure nature, and expect to see your life spent for

no reward.

 

   When, therefore, a man raises his vibrations and builds anew from the

beginning and alters consequently his key, it results in dissonance in his

surroundings and subsequent discord.

   A life of truly occult meditation must inevitably produce other

happenings.

 

   Under certain (circumstances) conditions, there is an influx of a

higher order of consciousness; something from above takes hold of the

lower part of itself, often utterly recreating the outer man.

 

   When the process of purification has become a life-long habit will he

be observed by higher sources.

   When man has reached a certain development and can be of service to the

world, cases occur when he is overshadowed by a adept and, in a moment

of great crisis, even by a great one.

----

   Only after long and repeated failures is a man ready for this

culminating work of Divine Union. While suffering is not the purpose of

spiritual activity, purification is, and no one passes through purifying

fires without suffering.

 

   Divinity is anchored in the heart.

   The manifest black fire of the one Reality which burns in the heart of

the Sun and in the heart of man.

   Silence in the heart unifies the whole being.

 

   The work of the aspirant is better development of Soul (Self) contact

and Soul manifestation.

 

   Scientific yoga is to join or yoke (1) the individual's awareness of

the body, mind, senses and free will of the physical, astral and mental

bodies and their respective thinking instruments, viz. brain, manas and

buddhi, to (2) pure Cosmic Consciousness, the Divine Fragment within

these outer coverings.

   Between these two is an almost unbridgeable gulf. How shall we bridge

this gulf? With what material: the energy of the essence of consciousness

of first grade. With what means: spiritual will, directing this energy

under its guidance. Once (1) and (2) are brought in contact, or rather (1)

is yoked to (2), life and purpose become meaningful.

 

   Talk as much philosophy as you please, worship as many gods as you

like, observe all ceremonies, sing devoted songs and praises of any number

of deities -- liberation never comes, even at the end of a hundred kalpas,

without realization of the oneness of Self.

 

   Let any man strip himself of all pretense and selfishness and

sensuality and sluggishness of soul; lift off thought after thought,

passion after passion till he reaches the inmost depths of all, and it

will be strange if he does not feel the Eternal Presence close upon his

Soul.

 

   Hast never come to thee an hour, a sudden gleam divine, precipitating,

bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth, these eager aims -- books,

politics, arts, amours -- to utter nothingness?

   I believe in thee, my Soul; the other `I am' must not abase itself to

you, and you must not be abased to the other.

 

   Be still! be still! and know that I am God!

   Acquaint thyself with Me and be at peace!

   Yea, I am Spirit; in thy depths I dwell,

   Art conscious of My presence, all is well.

 

   Remote yet near, utterly aged yet alone, He sits within the temple's

inner shrine, with folded hands and countenance divine -- omniscient,

inscrutable, unknown.

 

   In divine union there is no intermediary between Soul and God.

   Time, place and body should be forgotten in spiritual working. The

inward way, which seems at present a Dark, the inner man calleth it ALL;

the outer man calleth it Naught.

   If God is believed to be a Divine Presence, man can enter into that

rhythm and partake of its nature and beneficence.

 

   Having known by means of the union with the inner self, that shining

power, very difficult to see, present in the darkness, dwelling in the

cavern of the heart, abiding in the abyss, primeval, the wise ones abandon

joy and sorrow.

   Let him seek liberation by his highest self and let him never disgrace

his own self, for that self is his only friend, and yet it may be also his

enemy.

 

   When the disciple is ready, the Master appears!

   If you do not meet a transcendental teacher, you will have swallowed

Mahayana medicine in vain.

   As a man reads about doctrines, without receiving `oral instructions'

he will miss the thing really necessary to attainment.

 

   Strengthen your contact with your own Soul.

   Learn to live like a soul and therefore free from identification of the

body nature.

   When a man has begun to live like a soul, his consciousness has shifted

away from the world of illusion.

   The more truly you live as a soul, the more surely you will comprehend

that which may be imparted.

 

   And not until each cell within his body is fully alive and vibrating to

a uniform measure (rhythm) will he be fully grown and perfected.

   But not until the whole personality of man is dissolved and melted, not

until it is held by the Divine Fragment which has created it as a mere

subject of grave experiment and experience, not until the whole nature has

yielded and become subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open.

 

   It was but yesterday I thought myself an insignificant fragment,

quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life. Now I know that I am the

sphere and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.

 

   There are signs appearing at every stage in the Soul's (Self) great

adventure and none of them rest in psychic phenomena nor on the astral

plane nor in trance.

   Signs will be given us day by day of the companionship of God.

 

   Find then and you will perceive that none, not the most wretched of

creatures, but is part of it, however blind he himself be to the fact and

build up for himself phantasmal outer forms of horror. In that sense, all

those beings among whom you struggle on are fragments of the Divine.

 

   To be able to stand is to have confidence, to be able to hear is to

have opened the doors of the Soul, to be able to see is to have obtained

perception, to be able to speak is to have attained the power of helping

others, to have conquered desire is to have learned how to use and control

the self, to have attained to self-knowledge is to have retreated to the

inner fortress from whence the personal man can be reviewed with

impartiality.

 

   ...Whether the Soul will in one life (for some life holds the crucial

stage) be the dominant factor and the personality from henceforth be

obedient to the Soul. The battle is spread over quite a series of lives,

but in some one life it becomes crucial -- a final stand is made. The

lower activity of personal life, no matter how good or how worthy, must

eventually be transcended by the higher love life that seeks the good of

all, not of the unit only.

 

   That will has to be imposed upon the personality until it has become

the automation of the soul. The intuition takes control and energies from

the buddhic plane begin to make the impact upon the form nature and

personality.

   When the Self determines the activities, uninfluenced by the

attractions and repulsions towards surrounding objects, then will is

manifested. When attraction and repulsion determine the activity and the

man is drawn hither and thither by these, then desire is seen.

   Spiritual will is that quota of Universal Will which in any one

individual enables the spiritual man to cooperate in the plan and purpose

of the great life and thus be a partner with God and Nature!

 

   Discipleship is a synthesis of hard work, intellectual unfoldment,

steady aspiration and spiritual orientation; plus harmlessness and the

opened eye which sees into the world of reality.

 

   The path of any disciple runs along the lines of the conclusions his

mind is capable of forming as to the nature of God, soul and the Universe.

   There are no trifles in the life of a disciple; an unspoken word or an

unfulfilled action may prove the factor which is holding him from an

initiation.

 

   ...An acute trained mind, a high rate of vibration and bodies built of

finest matter. The attainment of this will involve discipline, pain,

self-abnegation and abstinence.

   A sensitiveness and a refinement of the vehicles, which may result at

first in much suffering to the initiate, but which produces a capacity to

respond to contacts that far outweight the incidental pain.

 

   ...And though thou fightest, be not thou (the personality, the mind and

body) the warrior. Look for the warrior (the Divine Fragment) and let him

fight in thee. ...But if thou look not for him, if thou pass him by when

the battle rages, then there is no safeguard for thee.