Section 9

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The consciousness calls up the sacred idea in order to dwell upon it, and suddenly, quite without its consent, the grinning face of the intruding idea, sent up by the mechanical action of the brain, thrusts itself through the doorway of the sanctuary and defiles it. Wise men pay attention to association, and are careful how they speak of the most sacred things, lest some foolish and ignorant person should make a connecting link between the holy and the silly or the coarse, a link which after- wards would be likely to repeat itself in the conscious- ness. Useful is the precept of the great Jewish Teacher : "Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."
Another mark of progress appears when a man be- gins to regulate his conduct by conclusions arrived at within, instead of by impulses received from without. He is then acting from his own store of accumulated experiences, remembering past happenings, comparing results obtained by different lines of action in the past, and deciding by these as to the line of action he will adopt in the present. He is beginning to forecast, to foresee, to judge of the future b}^ the past, to reason ahead by remembering what has alread}^ occurred, and as a man does this there is a distinct growth of him as man. He may still be confined to functioning in his physical brains, he may still be inactive outside them, but he is becoming a developing consciousness which is beginning to behave as an individual, to choose its own road instead of drifting with circumstances, or being forced along a particular line of action by some
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pressure from without. The growth of the man shows itself in this definite way, and he develops more and more of what is called character, more and more of will- power.
Strong-willed and weak-willed persons are distin- guished by their difference in this respect. The weak- willed man is moved from outside, by outer attractions and repulsions, while the strong-willed man is moved from inside, and continually masters circumstances by bringing to bear upon them appropriate forces, guided by his store of accumulated experiences. This store, which the man has in many lives gathered and accumu- lated, becomes more and more available as the physical brains become more trained and refined, and therefore more receptive : the store is in the man, but he can only use so much of it as he can impress on the physical consciousness. The man himself has the memory and does the reasoning; the man himself judges, chooses, decides; but he has to do all this through his physical and etheric brains ; he must work and act by way of the physical body, of the nervous mechanism, and of the etheric organism therewith connected. As the brain becomes more impressible, as he improves its material and brings it more under his control, he is able to use it for better expression of himself.
How, then, shall we, the living men, try to train our vehicles of consciousness, in order that they may serve as better instruments? We are not now studying the physical development of the vehicle, but its training by the consciousness that uses it as an instrument of
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thought. The man decides that in order to make more useful this vehicle of his, to the improvement of which physically he has already directed his attention, he must train it to answer promptly and consecutively to the im- pulses he transmits to it; in order that the brain may respond consecutively, he will himself think consecutive- ly, and so sending to the brain sequential impulses he will accustom it to work sequentially by linked groups of molecules, instead of by haphazard and unrelated vi- brations. The man initiates, the brain only imitates, and unconnected, careless thinking sets up the habit in the brain of forming unconnected vibratory groups. The training has two stages ; the man, determining that he will think consecutively, trains his mental body to link thought to thought and not to alight anywhere in a casual way ; and then, by thinking thus, he trains the brain which vibrates in answer to his thought. In this way the physical organisms — the nervous and the etheric systems — get into the habit of working in a systematic way, and when their owner wants them they respond promptly and in an orderly fashion, when he requires them they are ready to his hand, between such a trained vehicle of consciousness and one that is untrained, there is the kind of difference that there is between the tools of a careless workman, who leaves them dirty and blunt, un- fit for use, and those of the man who makes his tools ready, sharpens them and cleans them, so that when they are wanted they are ready to his hand and he can at once use them for the work demanding his attention.
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Thus should the physical vehicle be ready always to answer to the call of the mind.
The result of such continued working on the phy- sical body will be by no means exhausted in the im- proved capacity of the brain. For every impulse sent to the physical body has had to pass through the astral vehicle, and has produced an effect upon it also. For, as we have seen, astral matter is far more responsive to thought-vibrations than is physical, and the effect on the astral body of the course of action we have been considering is proportionally great. Under it the astral body assumes a definite outline, a well-organized con- dition, such as has already been described. When a man has learned to dominate the brain, when he has learned concentration, when he is able to think as he likes and when he likes, a corresponding development takes place in what — if he be physically conscious of it — he will regard as his dream life. His dreams will become vivid, well-sustained, rational, even instructive. The man is beginning to function in the second of his vehicles of consciousness, the astral body, is entering the second great region or plane of consciousness, and is acting there in the astral vehicle apart from the physi- cal. Let us for a moment consider the difference be- tween two men both "wide awake," i.e. functioning in the physical vehicle, one of whom is only using his astral body unconsciously as a bridge between the mind and the brain, and the other of whom is using it consciously as a vehicle. The first sees in the ordinary and very limited way, his astral body not yet being an effective
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vehicle of consciousness ; the second uses the astral vision, and is no longer limited by physical matter; he sees through all physical bodies, he sees behind as well as in front, walls and other "opaque" substances are to him transparent as glass; he sees astral forms and colors also, auras, elementals, and so on. If he goes to a con- cert, he sees glorious symphonies of colors as the music swells; to a lecture, he sees the speaker's thoughts in color and form, and so gains a much more complete rep- resentation of his thoughts than is possible to one who hears only the spoken words. For the thoughts that issue in symbols as words go out also as colored and musical forms, and clothed in astral matter impress themselves on the astral body. Where the consciousness is fully awake in that body, it receives and registers the whole of these additional impressions, and many persons will find, if they closely examine themselves, that they do catch from a speaker a good deal more than the mere words convey, even though they may not have been aware of it at the time when they were listening. Many will find in their memory more than the speaker uttered ; sometimes a kind of suggestion continuing the thought, as though something rose up round the words and made them mean more than they meant to the ear. This ex- perience shows that the astral vehicle is developing, and as the man pays attention to his thinking and uncon- sciously uses the astral body, it grows and becomes more and more organized.
The ''unconsciousness" of people during sleep is due either to the undevelopment of the astral body, or
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to the absence of connecting conscious links between it and the physical brain. A man uses his astral body during his waking consciousness, sending mind currents through the astral to the physical brain; but when the physical brain is not in active use — the brain through which the man is in the habit of receiving impressions from without — he is like David in the armor which he had not proved; he is not so receptive to impressions coming to him only through the astral body, to the in- dependent use of which he is not yet accustomed. Fur- ther, he may learn to use it independently on the astral plane, and yet not know that he has been using it when he returns to the physical — another stage in the slow progress of the man — and he thus begins to employ it in its own world, before he can make connections be- tween that world and the world below. Lastly, he makes those connections, and then he passes in full conscious- ness from the use of one vehicle to the use of the other, and is free of the astral world. He has definitely en- larged the area of his waking consciousness to include the astral plane, and while in the physical body his astral senses are entirely at his service ; he may be said to be living at one and the same time in the two worlds, there being no break, no gulf between them, and he walks the physical world as a man born blind, whose eyes have been opened.
In the next stage of his evolution, the man begins to work consciously on the third, or mental plane ; he has long been working on this plane, sending down from it all the thoughts that take such active form in the
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astral world and find expression in the physical world through the brain. As he becomes conscious in the mind body, in his mental vehicle, he finds that when he is thinking he is creating forms; he becomes conscious of the creative act, though he has long been exercising the power unconsciously. The reader may remember that in one of the letters quoted in the Occult World, a Master speaks of every one as making thought-forms, but draws the distinction between the ordinary man and the Adept, that the ordinary man produces them uncon- sciously, while the Adept produces them consciously. (The word Adept is here used in a very wide sense to include Initiates of various grades far below that of a '^ Master.") At this stage of a man's development, his powers of usefulness very largely increase, for when he can consciously create and direct a thought-form — an artificial elemental, as it is often called — he can use it to do work in places to which, at the moment, it may not be convenient for him to travel in his mind body. Thus he can work at a distance as well as at hand, and in- crease his usefulness; he controls these thought-forms from a distance, watching and guiding them as they work and making them the agents of his will. As the mind body develops, and the man lives and works in it consciously, he knows all the wider and greater life he lives on the mental plane ; while he remains in the physi- cal body and is conscious through that of his physical surroundings, he is yet wide awake and active in the higher world, and he does not need to put the physical body to sleep in order to enjoy the use of the higher
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faculties. He habitually employs the mental sense, re- ceiving by it impressions of every kind from the men- tal plane, so that all the mental workings of others are sensed by him as he senses their bodily movements.
When the man has reached this stage of develop- ment— a relatively high one, compared with the average, though low when compared with that to which he as- pires— he functions then consciously in his third vehicle, or mind body, traces out all he does in it, and experiences its powers and its limitations. Of necessity, also, he learns to distinguish between this vehicle he uses and himself ; then he feels the illusory character of the per- sonal ' ' I, " the " I " of the mind body and not of the man, and he consciously identifies himself with the individu- ality that resides in that higher body, the causal, which dwells on the loftier mental planes, those of the arupa world. He finds that he, the man, can withdraw himself from the mind body, can leave it behind, and rising higher yet remain himself; then he knows the many lives are in verity but one life, and that he, the living man, remains himself through all.
And now as to the links — the links between these dif- ferent bodies. They exist at first without coming into the consciousness of the man. They are there, otherwise he could not pass from the plane of the mind to that of the body, but he is not conscious of their existence, and they are not actively vivified. They are almost like what are called in the physical body rudimentary organs. Every student of biology knows that rudimentary or- gans are of two kinds ; one kind affords the traces of the
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stages through which the body has passed in evolution, while the other gives hints of the lines of future growth. These organs exist but they do not function; their ac- tivity in the physical body is either of the past or of the future, dead or unborn. The links which I venture by analogy to call rudimentary organs of the second kind, connect the dense and etheric bodies with the astral, the astral with the mind body, the mind body with the caus- al. They exist, but they have to be brought into activ- ity; that is, they have to be developed, and like their physical types, they can only be developed by use. The life current flows through them, the mind current flows through them, and thus they are kept alive and nourish- ed ; but they are only gradually brought into functioning activity as the man fixes his attention on them and brings his will to bear on their development. The action of the will begins to vivify these rudimentary links, and step by step, very slowly perhaps, they begin to function ; the man begins to use them for the passage of his con- sciousness from vehicle to vehicle.
In the physical body there are nervous centers, little groups of nervous cells, and both impacts from without and impulses from the brain pass through these centers. If one of these is out of order then at once disturbances arise and pliysical consciousness is disturbed. There are analogous centers in the astral body, but in the unde- veloped man they are rudimentary and do not function. These are links between the physical and the astral bodies, between the astral and the mind bodies, and as evolution proceeds they are vivified by the will, setting
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free and guiding the ' ' serpent-fire, ' ' called Kundalini in Indian books. The preparatory stage for the direct action that liberates Kundalini is the training and purifying of the vehicles, for if this be not thoroughly accomplish- ed the fire is a destructive instead of a vivifying energy. That is. why I have laid so much stress on purification and urge it as a necessary preliminary for all true Yoga, When a man has rendered himself fit to safely re- ceive assistance in the vivifying of these links, such as- sistance comes to him as a matter of course from those who are ever seeking opportunities to aid the earnest and unselfish aspirant. Then, one day, the man finds himself slipping out of the physical body while he is wide awake, and without any break in consciousness he discovers himself to be free. When this has occurred a few times the passage from vehicle to vehicle becomes familiar and easy. When the astral body leaves the phy- sical in sleep there is a brief period of unconsciousness, and even when the man is functioning actively on the astral plane, he fails to bridge over that unconsciousness on his return. Unconscious as he leaves the body, he will probably be unconscious as he re-enters it; there may be full and vivid consciousness on the astral plane, and yet a complete blank may be all that represents it in the physical brain. But when the man leaves the body in waking consciousness, having developed the links be- tween the vehicles into functional activity, he has bridg- ed the gulf ; for him it is a gulf no longer, and his con- sciousness passes swiftly from one plane to the other, and he knows himself as the same man on both.
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The more the physical brain is trained to answer to the vibrations from the mind body, the more is the bridging of the gulf between day and night facilitated. The brain becomes more and more the obedient in- strument of the man, carrying on its activities under the impulses from his will, and like a well-broken horse answering to the lightest touch of hand or knee. The astral world lies open to the man who has thus unified the two lower vehicles of consciousness, and it belongs to him with all its possibilities, with all its wider powers, its greater opportunities of doing service and of render- ing help. Then comes the joy of carrying aid to suf- ferers who are unconscious of the agent though they feel the relief, of pouring balm into wounds that then seem to heal of themselves, of lifting burdens that be- come miraculously light to the aching shoulders on which they pressed so heavily.