Notes - 5

The process of becoming, which leads to Being, is a cosmic event.

 

   There is no cheap and easy way to liberate an immortal soul from the

human jungle and lift it into finer ethers.

   Moral and spiritual rectitude is won only after hard struggles.

Remnants of the ape and the tiger still crouch beneath the surface. They

should be brought before the conscious mind and re-educated.

   Years of training are required to relieve mental and moral blindness,

before spiritual blindness can be removed.

 

   If I examine my past life honestly, I see enacted there my tendency

towards repetition.

   Repetition is due to lack of understanding. To repeat perfection

entails a kind of waste not provided for by cosmic law. Imperfection

repeats.

   Only the deep realization of all the horror and futility of an eternal

repetition of ordinary life can generate in man sufficient emotional force

to undertake the tremendous task of penetrating consciously into that

unknown and unimaginable dimension which lies beyond.

 

   Enter into yourself -- you need no longer be in search for something

without.

 

   To enter the silence signifies the silencing of all unreality, of

doubt, fear, false beliefs, worry, complaining, grief, of everything that

is merely of the outer personality, and remaining fixed in the vivifying

fires of inpouring, restoring life.

   To enter the silence means to turn the mind inward, focusing the mind

upon a God-word (mantra), meditating upon it and in it until the spirit of

that word flashes into reality and the mental field is alive with it.

   To achieve the silence requires lucid work of the highest activity,

demanding time, practice and study.

 

   The silence is a tempting word to the lazy mind, thinking to enter a

do-nothing state without method or efforts and to remain there inert and

passive receiving deific gifts. Knowledge has never been vouchsafed to

anyone who is inert and ignorant.

 

   Spiritual consciousness is a matter of growth. It is not attained

haphazardly any more than mathematics is learnt by guessing at it.

   Perfection is a continuous process and calls for perpetual fires

burning on the altar of the heart, consuming the dross of unworthy aims

and self-delusions.

   Hasten slowly and ye shall arrive soon.

 

   Make a forced beginning in spiritual living. Forget the past

achievements. Breadth of vision, inclusiveness of understanding, a widened

horizon are the preliminary essentials.

 

   Build on resolve, and not upon regret the structure of thy future; do

not grope among the shadows of old sin, but let thine own soul's light

shine on the path of hope and dissipate the darkness.

   Waste no tears upon the blotted record of lost years, but turn the leaf

and smile to see the fair white pages that remain to thee.

 

   Lose sight of your own affairs, your petty sorrows, worries and

suspicions, in the urgency of the task to be done and the spread of the

cult of unity of all souls, of life and of harmlessness.

   ...A capacity to overlook the non-essentials and to emphasize the

essential. A submergence of personal ambition, a study of preservation of

the inner contact.

 

   Learn to know yourself, to change, to rebuild the form aspect. It is

the achievement of that spiritual orientation held steadily, no matter

what the outer disturbance in the physical plane life may be. It is to

submerge and to lose sight of the personal lower self. It will occupy all

of a man's attention and time, even his entire thought life.

 

   Accumulate all possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right

activities. Put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new

way; make arrangements incompatible with the old. Reverse every adverse

thought. Character is the moral deposit of a million struggles.

 

   Kill out ambition. Work as those do who are ambitious.

   Kill out desire of life. Respect life as those do who desire it.

   Kill out desire of comfort. Be happy as those are who live for

happiness.

 

   Kill out all sense of separateness, yet stand alone and isolated.

   Kill out desire for sensation, yet learn from it and observe it.

   Kill out the hunger for growth, yet grow as the flower grows,

unconsciously but eagerly anxious to open its soul to the air.

 

   First we must abstain from action which increases separateness.

Secondly we must tranquilize our senses. Thirdly we must harmonize the

opposing forces in ourselves.

 

   To feel ourselves different from others is a great heresy, for

separateness when the whole is evolving towards unity is opposition to the

law.

   The people most separated from God are the ascetics with their

asceticism, the devotees by their devotion and the knowers by their

knowledge.

   The relationship between all souls and the oversoul constitutes the

basis of brotherhood.

 

   A man must know and understand what he does and why. He must sacrifice

self-deception, prejudice and inconsistency.

   There can be no divided existence of being one thing and having its

opposite.

   Nothing short of daily spiritual immersion in the chemical waters of

reality will dissolve discordant films and open the way to pure knowing.

   The peace that passeth understanding is a peace that is brought about

by the conquest of the self from its perpetual discords.

 

   ...Reorient desire, redirect desire; a constant process of

reorientation of the entire desire nature, so that it eventually becomes a

habitual state of mind.

   Distinguish the real from the unreal, control the body emotions. Make

use of the mind, use thought properly, not only for the use of separative

desire. Vivify emotions, (\verify motives,) cast out fear, hate and greed.

 

   Desire only that which is within you.

   Desire only that which is beyond you.

   Desire only that which is unattainable.

 

   Clear out of your heart any bitter, destructive, unkind, uncharitable

feelings. You cannot build a new house with rubbish from the old one.

   If you give up nothing, He will give you nothing.

   When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what

it has found.

 

   Spiritual progress is only possible with the aid of the very things

which are the cause of man's fall.

   The vices of man become steps in the ladder, one by one, as they are

surmounted.

 

   Speak no word which can hurt, harm or wound. Waste no time in

self-pity, self-justification; and know that the law has placed him where

he best can serve, that difficulties are ever a man's own making and the

result of his own mental attitude.

 

   Aspirants fail to make good where they are because they find some

reason which makes them think they should be elsewhere. Men run away,

almost without realizing it, from difficulty, from inharmonious

conditions, from places which involve problems, and which are staged to

draw out the best that is in a man, provided he stays in them.

 

   When we maintain our first principle, Divine Guidance, secondary

matters clear up one by one.

   Physical resources are paltry compared with the spiritual.

   The attainment of right vibrations will work automatically in the

production of right conditions.

 

   A certain structure of right living, of thinking, of conduct has to be

attained.

   Right standards and moral qualities transfigure the gray recording mass

into an intricate system of highly developed electric cells, with

corresponding effect in the heart centre and the communications throughout

consciousness.

   ...The science of physical breath is the least important aspect. No

breathing exercises can be safely used where there is no attempt to

improve rhythm upon the life of everyday. The two activities should go

hand in hand.

   It should be realized that good character, higher ethics, sound

morality and spiritual aspiration are basic and unalterable requirements,

yet more is needed if the right to enter the master's domain is to be

granted.

 

   Seek out the way. Seek the way by retreating within. Seek the way by

advancing boldly without.

   Seek it by testing all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to

understand the growth and meaning of individuality, and the beauty and

obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by

side with you, and form the race to which you belong.

 

   Seek to equip your instrument, learn to function in quietness, fulfill

your obligations, do your duty, develop restraint of speech, develop calm

poise that comes from unselfish life motives.

   ...The outer duties (dharma) carried out with precision, whilst the

inner adjustments proceed in the silence of the heart.

 

   Man has lost connection with his Divine Consciousness. He must reopen

the channel through his mental field.

   The soul-consciousness aspect, which makes a human being a rational

thinking entity, is anchored in the brain.

   In the average man, the brain is the only part in which consciousness

has definitely become self-conscious -- in all the rest of him

consciousness is still groping about.

 

   The commanding ego is the self-conscious mind, standing midway between

its higher and lower levels, having the power to open or close the

interior lines of communication.

   Nothing is achieved until the mind is captured.

   All systems, all methods are of value only as they serve one great

purpose -- the capture of automatic, random, unproductive thought.

Different methods appeal to different temperaments. Thus it is left to

each to make choice of effectual means to achieve this.

   The one aim to be achieved in all this is the perfect purity and

steadiness of mind.

 

   When the individual awakens to the truth of his spiritual nature and

consciously enters upon definite means to clean up his subconscious

mind, he will stand guard at the door or conscious thought.

   Watchfulness must be constantly exercised. Eternal vigilance is the

price of liberty.

 

   Only in the recalling of the projected life, in the withdrawal of our

centre to a more inward level of our being is there mastery, freedom,

peace.

 

   Indolence, ignorance and self-love; aggressiveness, haste,

self-importance; demanding rewards, exercising authority, condemnation,

self-pity, self-righteousness -- these hold man in mental slavery.

   The barriers that cloud spiritual perception are false human tendencies

covering the Soul with seven layers which must be burned away by the

divine fire within. These are self-righteousness, avarice, lust, anger,

gluttony, envy and inertia. By the simple method of preference of ideas,

thought nourishment is denied them.

 

   At the back of the mind are thought habits a little overactive, as

self-pity, over-sensitiveness. Every thought enters into the creative

process of life, and when little whirlpools of adverse thoughts are

created, they strike us as accidents: loss of valuables, fits of temper.

   Every adverse thing that happens is a voiceless warning.

   No general denial will answer, because there are in the mind certain

discordant ideas and conditions, each requiring specific arguments in

order to break down and stop its actions. The mental field has got to be

brought under sight now exactly as physical action has been disciplined.

 

   Thought should not be allowed to subside into automatic, uncontrolled,

sub-conscious undercurrents.

   Karmas have their roots in distractions and become powerless for

fruition when the distractions have been systematically reduced and

brought to an end.

   Intelligence should rule desires and reason should triumph over

impulses.

   A mind governed by reason is greater than a mind governed by emotions,

yet it is far from being a perfect mind. It has no other avenues through

which to obtain information but through the senses.

 

   Concentration involves steady vision, one-pointedly directed towards a

specific object.

   Concentration is not a mere word; it is a state of mind. Fear is not a

a thing in itself; it is developed by ideas of worry and impatience.

   Concentrate with the mind and release the body.

   Strive constantly to think inward towards the centre of being.

 

   Regard the body as a mirror capable of reflecting states of mind, and

by holding certain ideas in the mind to the exclusion of everything

else, man is transformed into a corresponding state.

   One idea held in the focus of consciousness sharpens the mind to a

point and the mental image is impressed throughout the consciousness.

 

   Within the inner sanctuary, is still a supernal silence. Every thought

must be brought captive to ideas of perfect states held by mental and

spiritual affiliations, never by force nor by external will power, but by

attention to the undivided presence of an idea.

   In the careful discipline of the mind and the manipulation of thought

matter and the transmutation of the emotions comes the working out on the

physical plane.

   Act constantly in full faith that your thought form is working out.

 

   Rhythm or vibration is the common denominator of ideas.

   An idea received into the brain dynamo by means of the senses is

reduced there to its common denominator, wave impulse, and conveyed to

the communicating centres in the human organism in the universal code,

vibrations, enunciating itself in exact correspondence to the idea.

   Every idea completes its circuit in the body; peculiar modes of

excitement in the brain leave a sort of tenderness or exalted sensitivity

behind them which may take long periods to die away, and as long as it

lasts these tracks are liable to have their activities awakened.

 

   A man is a machinery of thought; he should know its laws and how to

govern it, because his well-being is involved in every impulse that passes

through him.

   Fire, electricity, atomic power, mental energy -- all are given to man

under the same conditions, viz., that he act to know their laws and bring

them under his control.

   Thus prayer is another process of engaging miracle-moving energy.

 

   Once the mind is set straight as to what is to be accomplished, moving

forward with persistent efforts towards a given end, the force that

supports it to completion across the void is faith.

   Faith is not an intellectual belief in something or someone, but a

state of consciousness. Faith is giving substance to a thing unseen.

 

   Those that ask shall have. But though the ordinary man asks

perpetually, his voice is not heard. For he asks with his mind only, and

the voice of the mind is only heard on that plane on which the mind acts.

----

   One of the primary conditions is solitude. In solitude the faculties

and graces of the higher self can take root and blossom in the

personality. In solitude the inner sound is heard.