Knowledge of Life One
1. MEDITATION
1. MEDITATION
1The normal individual has his attention directed now to physical things, now to his emotions, now to some mental problem. His attention is thrown between the various envelope consciousnesses largely without any plan and continuity. The control of consciousness alters this planlessness, so that attention works methodically and thereby yields quicker results.
2Control of consciousness is done when the self attends to what is happening in the consciousness of its various envelopes and learns to determine the content of its waking consciousness. Then the self refuses to pay attention to disturbing sense perceptions, discards intrusive emotions and thoughts for which it does not have any use.
3This self-determination has been called “will” – a term with many different meanings. A misconception has been brought about by presenting the conflict between different desires as a conflict between imagination and will. It is the strongest desire that comes off victorious, like the action is always determined by the strongest motive. The power to decide what is to be the strongest motive is again called “will”.
4To control thought is to occupy attention with some definite thing, never to let it flitter from one thing to another. One way of counteracting this flittering is to have some problem in the background to which the attention can be directed whenever it does not need to be occupied with the tasks of everyday life. In so doing, everybody has his particular needs, perhaps his particular task of life, which then may best serve as the object of his thoughts.
5The task of life is the meaning of life for this very incarnation. As a rule we can seek for that meaning in our predispositions, interests, circumstances of life and material resources. Every interest develops some quality or ability. Any hobby will do, just if it can make us forget ourselves by keeping our attention occupied with some definite thing – also a lesson in continuous concentration.
6We should, as the ancients put it, let our “consciousness be occupied”.
7The typical mystics (at the higher emotional stage) speak about the “constant prayer” intended to keep their contact with the superconscious (whatever name they give to it). But there is another way in which consciousness can be occupied, so that no distracting “throw-ins” from the lower worlds need disturb the attention. And that is to live in your present work so concentratedly that your attention is always occupied with whatever you have decided yourself. That is the only way to be fully efficient in your daily work. That is, to use the parlance of the mystics, the constant worship. For everything we do also in the physical world is as divine as in higher worlds.
8Control of consciousness is no simple matter. Several incarnations are required to achieve it. But those who feel a need for it thereby show that they have started the training.
1Attention strengthens everything it observes. He who watches his faults strengthens them. Good resolutions formed in the living sense of remorse will not just be impotent but will result in the opposite of what is intended.
2Nothing of what we attend to will ever be lost. It sinks down into the subconscious, below the threshold of consciousness and will live its own life there, benefiting or inhibiting the waking consciousness.
3The subconscious sorts impressions into various subject complexes which are continually vitalized by new impressions. You can destroy nothing of this. But you can refuse to pay attention to emotions or thoughts that belong to certain complexes and thereby you can omit to vitalize them. Eventually they grow so weak as to be unable to send up impulses into the waking consciousness.
4Everything man is irritated by strengthens these complexes. He recalls imagined wrongs and gets annoyed once more. Many people in this manner develop emotional and mental ulcers and, finally, even boils and cancer tumours, etc. in their organisms. Seventy-five per cent of all disease depend on uncontrolled consciousness. Irritations affect nerves, cells (including blood corpuscles), etc.
5People wonder that it is not enough to know a thing, to learn how things are, to be informed as to how they should act, what they should or should not do. That largely depends on uncontrolled thinking.
6They know that they should not think of past mistakes and wrongs. And yet they continually think the same things again, let their imagination dwell on their own mistakes and other people’s violations, etc., are irritated and embittered. All this is uncontrolled thinking. Complexes rise (uncontrolledly) into the waking consciousness and scenes are reflected (uncontrolledly) as before.
7People allow their complexes to decide what they should direct their attention to. The thoughtless react to all impressions and split their attention in countless directions.
8Insufficient control of consciousness causes us to have made faulty observations, assimilated spurious facts, drawn incorrect conclusions. Our memory feeds our waking consciousness with experiences distorted by emotion. When such experiences are remembered, they become the sources of new misconceptions. In this manner many people deceive themselves into believing what they have said.
9Since childhood man has imbibed the suppositions of persons of his own age and older; in school, hypotheses soon abandoned; the conjectures of the press handed out as facts; various writers’ abortive views of existence, etc. All this leads its own ineradicable life in the subconscious, and is taken for genuine reality whenever it is brought back to memory. Without exaggeration it can be stated that over 90 per cent of what man has taken in is more or less fictitious.
10The knowledge of all this should teach us how important it is to control attention and occupy it with essentials.
1The first step towards control of consciousness is concentration. That means that you do not allow consciousness to flitter to and fro but direct it to a definite object, preferably according to a previously formed plan. The object may be of a physical, emotional, or mental nature: for example a picture, a feeling, a quality, a problem. If powers of concentration and reflection are added to this, then you have good prospects of quickly reaching higher levels, of developing mentality. There is much in our time that helps to teach people concentration automatically.
2Prolonged concentration on something particular is called meditation. Anyone who is absorbed in some creative activity “heart and soul”, meditates unwittingly. The businessman who just thinks about business; the artist who just sees forms, colours, and lights; the actor who lives his part; the philosopher who analyses his problems; all of them are good examples of various ways of concentration and meditation.
3Contemplation (absorption) ensues when consciousness is lost in, identifies with the object. Anyone who has not experienced this will not understand it.
4Concentration is another word for attention, meditation for methodical and systematic thinking. The chess-player is a good example of the man practising concentration and meditation.
5All who have gone through secondary education have acquired the ability of concentration and meditation. Concentration is the attention with which you follow the teaching. Meditation is the reflective work by which you carry out various tasks: solve mathematical problems, write compositions, etc. These are two abilities which we have indirectly got from school, two abilities which Indians had to acquire by themselves since they had no school system. This alone shows how little adapted to Western thinking the yoga methods are.
6The condition of thought control and concentration is unconcern, imperviousness to all disturbing vibrations. Concentration (attention) should not involve any kind of tension, for then it is harmful. It is important to ensure that everything is relaxed that does not need to be used for the moment. The nerves must not tremble. Nothing must effect any strain.
7Concentration, quiet, stillness.
1Mankind is still far from understanding that the most important thing the individual commands is his attention. Whatever we attend to enters into our waking consciousness, and from there it reaches down into our subconscious with inevitable effects, quite apart from the fact that whatever we observe is subject to our action which inevitably affects us as a re-action.
2Attention is the focus of the self and implies concentration of consciousness. For the individual to learn to acquire that ability he must see its importance and its function in his consciousness development. He must learn to decide himself what he will see, hear, feel, think. Indian yogis show us that this is possible. Yoga philosophers can help Western psychologists to reach this insight. On the other hand, their methods of meditation are still at the experimental stage, as are those of the occult sects. They are by no means as harmless as the still enormous ignorance of life believes and proclaims.
3The discovery of the self (that centre of consciousness) – which can impersonally observe sense perceptions, emotions, and thoughts as things outside the self – causes the individual to get a new view of life. The self’s wish to dominate these different kinds of consciousness, which it becomes aware of, leads automatically to control of consciousness as a necessary condition for the acquisition of still higher kinds of consciousness. Thereupon Augoeides can make his real contribution by supplying, via the triad mental molecule, causal energies the consciousness content of which the self learns to concretize into mental ideas preparatory to its discovery of causal ideas.
1What the individual apprehends of the consciousness of his envelopes is what he has been able to activate himself and, of this, what he subsequently attends to. The higher the level, the more extensive and intensive is the attention; the lower the level, the more restricted, the weaker and less complete it is.
2The envelopes of the individual are penetrated in every instant by innumerable vibrations from without, which he will take for his own thoughts. If the self dwells in lower molecular kinds, it will apprehend just these lower kinds. Many people who have actually reached higher kinds, are often surprised that they can think such low things at all, and feel they are much worse than they are. The daily meditation, which supplies them with their “motto for the day” and which is always present as an object of meditation, keeps them from that passivity which makes for inlets from those lower regions which the individual moves in when being among people and doing his daily tasks.
3The subconscious is a source of energy that continually feeds the waking consciousness with new impulses. Being ignorant of this power factor in their psyche, people through their waking consciousness supply their subconscious with all manner of illusions and fictions, which subsequently they are automatically led by, not suspecting where the driving forces come from.
4An irritation, a feeling perhaps vanishes quickly from the waking consciousness. But it lives on in the subconscious, and the vibrations produced in the emotional envelope can be traced up to 48 hours afterwards. Therefore, the emotional envelopes of most people can be likened to boiling cauldrons. These vibrations affect the nerves and the entire organism. Another great disadvantage is that the thoughts that are to pass through this emotional envelope seldom reach their goal undistorted, but are always to some extent deformed.
5Through meditation the thing analysed is impressed on the unconscious in quite another way than by the fleeting attention we usually bestow on our daily experiences. The more it is inculcated on the subconscious, the stronger its spontaneous expression in the waking consciousness. The more it is woven into association complexes, the harder to eradicate it will be when later we discover the illusoriness and fictitiousness of the impressed. Being latent it makes itself felt also in subsequent incarnations. This problem is something for the psychoanalysts of the future to study. Then they will also discover the risks involved in engraving the fictions of ignorance (ruling views, idiologies, etc.) into the subconscious. Particularly harmful are the meditations and techniques of meditation taught by sundry charlatans in the occult sects. I can just warn against such “simple and universal technique for deep transcendental meditation” as is being advertised more and more. No responsible teacher having a knowledge of reality would teach such things.
1Impulses do not just come from the subconscious, however. They are also transferred telepathically to the waking consciousness from the emotional world, which we live in through our emotional envelopes and which makes up such an important part of our so called psyche, that Goethe simply could say that “feeling is all” (“Gefuhl ist alles”).
2In so far as any trace of this phenomenon has been apprehended in the consciousness of the inorganic etheric envelope (in the solar plexus centre), it has been given that clumsy and helpless name, “telepathy”.
3On some rare occasions an impulse also comes through the superconscious. But since men reject such impulses as being “too unrealistic”, it is no use for Augoeides trying to “inspire”. Besides, what is he supposed to do with this individual, who in fact spontaneously acts against everything he sees to be the one right thing?
4Where the normal individual (the majority) is concerned, consciousness in the emotional envelope seldom reaches beyond the four lower emotional (48:4-7) spheres, the collective consciousness of which he does not even suspect. His emotional envelope consciousness leads it own life and takes part in the common feeling life. The corresponding is true of the normal individual’s mental envelope consciousness, which seldom reaches beyond that of the two lowest molecular kinds (47:6,7).
5Every emotion and thought formed by consciousness in the emotional and mental envelopes assumes material forms that are thrown out of the envelopes and float about in the surrounding world until they are perhaps absorbed by other people’s envelopes. In this way we constantly exchange emotional and mental molecules in our envelopes with other people. Mankind is a common material unit also in this respect. Of course we do not absorb any thought-forms whatever that just float about. There must exist some close relation between the envelope vibrations and thought-form vibrations.
6In crowds (standing or sitting) people’s auras (emotional and mental envelopes) interpenetrate and vibrations are transferred directly from other people’s envelopes. Those we receive without contact are quite enough. Man is a wholeness of vibrations.
7A man at a higher stage, who in addition moves within the higher emotional and mental layers of consciousness, can by his vibrations reach all in our globe who have their receiving apparatuses (the respective centres) tuned in to that particular wave-length. Mass psychoses, for instance, depend on these telepathic phenomena, in which emotional vibrations in particular are violently received.
8Fortunately, the transmitting stations of most people are of small capacity, so that their vibrations seldom reach beyond their immediate surroundings.
9Scientific experiments in telepathy fail because the deliberate method used is still wrong. Spontaneity will find the right method immediately.
10We are affected by our environment more than most people suspect. They speak about the “psychological atmosphere” in a certain milieu or surrounding individuals. Especially emotional vibrations live on so that they can be easily and continually apprehended by psychometry. Emerson stated no paradox by his, “Your silence answers very loud”.
11Thus without the individual knowing it this occurs in these two envelopes of his, which automatically receive the vibrations in the pertaining spheres. Whenever the individual feels or thinks (directs his attention to the emotional or mental), he is unwittingly affected by the content of the envelope consciousnesses, unless the vibrations he produces himself are stronger than those existing in the envelopes.
12We are responsible for what we think and feel, for the vibrations which we throw out into the emotional and mental worlds and which telepathically affect others without our or their understanding where the thoughts come from.
1Ignorance has quite disparate and thus vague notions of what meditation is. The word “meditation” has come to be used in an all too restricted sense, as if it denoted some particular kind of mystic concentration. There are many kinds of meditation (the power of “collecting one’s thoughts”), however. These include planning, consistent follow-up of chosen goals, many kinds of authorship, etc.
2Meditation is reflective analysis of a certain content of thought: the facts, factors, elements of thought we need in order to investigate, clarify, acquire insight and understanding. It is a stage in a continuous process of concentration that goes on until the idea sought has been obtained. The choice of object indicates the person’s interests and level of development.
3Meditation is quite simply methodical and systematic reflection. The mental work by which the individual acquires his own conception of various things can be included here. Without meditation we learn little or nothing. Through meditation we assimilate what life can teach us and we gather into our consciousness materials to be worked up later in the mental world.
4The first step of meditation, concentration, is “the fixing of attention”, like when you follow the movement of the second-hand on the clock face. It is important that the entire process occurs without tension (without effects on nerves, respiration, circulation).
5The entire process (concentration–meditation–contemplation–illumination) can most simply be described as an attempt to solve a given problem, in which “the equation is simplified” and eventually all unessential elements are discarded, until “the idea” (the intuition) provides the solution.
6Of course anyone who has a knowledge of the various mental molecular consciousnesses and their nature, of the various envelope centres to be utilized in each particular case, also learns how to master the process of thought in the most simple manner.
7The essential is that the mental activity is self-initiated. In order to avoid occupying their attention with individual work, people resort to all manner of distractions, reading of the simplest kind, for instance. The contents of a bookcase is very informative. (The bookcase of an esoterician contains only such books as he will never finish, can reread however many times. The other books he has given away or “lent”, as it is called.) It is by thinking ourselves that we learn to think. Most people let others think for them, and then they just have to follow suit. Many people find it valuable to keep a diary. If it contains thoughts and reflections on personal experiences they have had during the day, it can serve as a guide for their meditations.
1The prime function of meditation is to teach us the right use of our attention in physical as well as emotional and mental respects.
2The direct function of ordinary meditation is to make the brain receptive to mental molecules and to transfer the knowledge of the mental envelope to the brain, for the mental consciousness contains much more than our modern psychologists know. Esoteric meditation also has other functions of which more will be said further on.
3The ancients regarded meditation as a method of achieving contact with higher kinds of consciousness. The mystics tried to get into contact with god (actually a contact between 48:2 and 46:7). The mentalist tried to establish contact between the mental and the causal.
4The prime purpose of meditation is to develop necessary qualities: by daily attention to those you wish to acquire, usually opposites of undesirable qualities still existing. Right meditation forms an emotional-mental complex with stored-up energy, which will automatically heighten the vibrations to the highest attainable spheres and will act as a regulator of thinking and feeling during a certain time, as a rule for 24 hours at the most. That is the reason why daily meditation is necessary if the individual will see any results.
5It is not enough to desire good qualities. You must inculcate them, meditate on them every day and preferably at the same time every day. Daily repetition in the waking consciousness provides the subconscious with such reality ideas as eventually form complexes in the subconscious that enhance the quality of our lives. These are complexes which express in such qualities that the individual spontaneously takes the right attitude in all circumstances: thinks right, feels right, acts right.
6In meditation you assimilate a certain view or clear away fictions. By thinking you also acquire new feelings.
7By meditation the esoteric student assimilates the esoteric mental system and the feelings of the attractive tendency, which bring about a reappraisal of values and an ideal attitude to life.
8By meditation man solves his problems, his latent problems, his future problems. Through meditation we supply the subconscious with the material we need to solve the problems. Through meditation we incorporate with our consciousness the experiences we have had. By thinking (being active in our mental envelope) we prepare the solution of problems, which otherwise would not be solved or the solutions of which would take years to reach down into the brain.
9By meditation man activates his higher kinds of passive consciousness of both emotional and mental kinds. By meditation he gets perspectives on existence, things rarely seen even in “professors” as yet.
10The purpose of meditation is to activate the superconscious. This vitalizes the centres above the diaphragm, which process in its turn brings about an activation of the passive consciousness in higher kinds of matter. The superconscious is activated through correct ideas, causal ideas, Platonic ideas, reality ideas, a correct world view and life view. Still more effective, however, is the activation of the emotional attractive consciousness, since this leads to action, to living the life. And it is by experimenting that man sees the problems, finds the solution and thereby experiences the “revelation”. Mistakes are of great importance, being inevitable and therefore necessary. We learn by making mistakes. The researcher in his laboratory has countless failed experiments behind him. He learns that “this is not the way to do it”, and by elimination he finally arrives at the right method.
11The energies of which the individuals in the higher divine kingdoms avail themselves come from still higher kingdoms and pour down through these individuals into lower kingdoms to those who are receptive to these kinds of energies. It is all a matter of receptivity. Energies pour down and are always available. It depends on the individuals in lower kingdoms whether they are able to receive, and that is an ability which they must acquire themselves. Man does not need to “beg”. Everything he can ever use is within his reach, if he owns the power to receive. If he lacks it he cannot. Meditation serves to direct attention to reception and emission, so that this automatic attitude becomes alive. It is in meditation that consciousness seeks a connection to ever new points of contact. Meditation is the systematic method of acquiring ever greater receptive ability and to develop thereby.
12Meditation, if done correctly, should bring about three results. It should entail the dissipation of illusion by the correct apprehension of the idea. It should bring about a better understanding of our relations to other people. It should lead to action.
1Most people see in meditation just an expression of consciousness, not suspecting the fact that it is at the same time a production of energy. This energy is weak in lower molecular kinds. But in mental matter the effect of dynamis increases and affects also lower envelopes with inevitable effects.
2“Prayer” is an expression of emotional consciousness and, like all other kinds of consciousness expression, it is at the same time an expression of energy with an inevitable effect. Meditation deals with energies and aims at realization.
3The esoterician understands the meaning of the expression, “energy follows thought” (the consciousness expression). That energy vitalizes centres and thereby the consciousness content, which also makes increasingly one-pointed concentration possible and thus the very process without any strain whatever.
4The more intensely (with concentrated attention) meditation is done, the greater is the energy stored up.
5Vibrations coming from without are received by the individual’s envelopes and attract his attention. These can be vibrations in any of his molecular kinds already activated. The attention is drawn now upwards, now downwards, so that the emotional and mental “quality” is constantly changing and the level of consciousness is rising or falling. As a rule, an extra effort is required to keep attention fixed at the highest level, so that only those who have especially cultivated the faculty of concentration are able to do so. Add to this the fact that the brain records impressions differently when the man feels fit or tired. This, too, conduces to making the individual appear a complicated being to other people and more or less “incomprehensible”. Moralists and other psychological idiots are at once ready to criticize and condemn.
6The higher the sphere reached through meditation, the fainter are the coarser vibrations and the stronger are the finer (“nobler, more rational”) ones, the less affected are they by the strong mass vibrations which are always low, the easier is it to keep consciousness on a higher level the next few hours.
1Without meditation consciousness develops so slowly that hardly any change is noticeable, and there will be no purposiveness in this matter. Meditation rouses mental activity and determines its automatic direction. Then man becomes what he thinks. By his mental activity man sets forces in motion that affect the circumstances of his life, though mankind is of course still very far from this insight. Without understanding how, man can benefit or harm himself, “walk ways prepared”, just by thinking.
2Without meditation, which at the same time is mental gymnastics, there will be no plasticity of thought, but you will go on moving in the same mental tracks, until you have lost the ability to think anything new. A useful exercise when transiting to a new life period (at 28, 35, 42, etc. years) is to examine the results you have achieved, how your views (on reality or on life) have changed. That also gives an opportunity to subject the bases on which you have built your ideas to a new scrutiny.
3Prayer is emotional meditation, in contradistinction to the meditation of mental consciousness. Both kinds of consciousness need to be activated: emotional attraction and mental analytic, relativizing, and synthesizing thought.
4Relativizing thought develops the sense of proportions (“humour”), a faculty deplorably absent in most people, which fact depends on their using the lowest kind of mentality, which makes everything absolute. It is true that concepts are absolute as concepts (“this is this”), but a concept gains a relative significance in conjunction with others. The fact that this has not been understood a long time ago shows the infantility of the education in logic. They still move in old tracks instead of teaching people how to think. You must have learnt that long before you can think right, which you do by putting facts in their right contexts. In many instances, however, it is still impossible to find the right contexts, since the system is lacking, and you cannot go from universals to particulars without a system. They have not yet grasped how necessary systems are. But then people live in a mental chaos.
5The great majority at the stage of barbarism use the lowest kind of mental consciousness, inference thinking (47:7). This is the simplest kind of inference from ground to consequence. Generally, this mental activity must be forced on people from without through patient education and propaganda. The mental activity of philosophers and scientists belongs to principle thinking (47:6) and has already reached a high degree of activity, which seldom is at rest but is working incessantly with its content of conceptions in constantly new “categories”, temporary syntheses. Of course mental activity increases even more at the stage of humanity where perspective (47:5) and system (47:4) thinking is added.
6Anyone who wishes to acquire causal consciousness, however, must learn to dominate his mental activity, because its restlessness makes it impossible for the causal ideas to be apprehended. The intuition, which is the ability to discover the ideas, strikes like lightning when the individual calmly contemplates his system and becomes receptive. His mental activity, which till then has been active, instead becomes passive in a state of expectant tension.
7If you have not reached the highest mental activity (47:4), then you can when meditating impress all the factors you command in the problem you are trying to solve. This done you can relax and proceed to other tasks. Some fine day you will get the solution “for nothing”.
8In some people, their mental ideas come spontaneously without any connection with meditation and perhaps long afterwards.
1Prayer is emotional, meditation is mental. Regrettably, the theologians have misinterpreted “prayer” like everything else.
2Ignorance confuses meditation with prayer. To pray, in the accepted sense, is to beg, to attempt to influence and change the attitude of the powers of law. Meditation, on the other hand, is the attempt of the individual to change himself by vitalizing complexes, solving his own problems, etc.
3The powers of destiny discharge their duties according to their own insight and not after man’s idiotic expectations.
4If the prayers of life ignorance and shortsightedness were to be granted, then there would soon be chaos.
5We get everything we need. Life sees to it that we shall have all the experiences that are necessary to our development, including our understanding of the Law.
6To “pray to god” for something is serious business. Men are always given what they desire. The time and circumstances for it, however, are never as they have conceived, unless it concerns “the welfare of all”. From the study of any series of incarnations it is often clear that many people wish that they had never wished, for their wish is often granted when they wish it least of all. If, contrary to expectation, “god” would grant egoistic wishes, then this is done in order to teach the individual a lesson, the importance of which he will see some time. Men learn slowly; how slowly appears in the number of their incarnations. Innumerable experiences of the same kinds during millions of years are necessary. Hence the saying, “the mills of god grind slowly”. When the subconscious triad memory and the superconscious causal memory begin to co-operate, then his instinct of life becomes a real factor of ever greater significance, and man ever more a product of cause and effect, ever more determined by law.
7It would do people no harm if they used their common sense once in a while. As for “praying to god”, for instance, they could ponder on what they have done to deserve the right to have their prayers granted. How do they use everything they have already got from life?
8Considering people’s perverted claims to gratitude for services they have done, we should best turn it the other way round; so that they have rather paid off a debt to that individual or to the collective. Also this view can be twisted, however, which is clear from the fact that many egoists thereby think they are relieved of the duty of paying any debts. This shows that everything can be satanized.
9Prayer, as the desire to be given by grace whatever you have not got the right to, has no effect. If prayer is granted in such cases, it shows that a good sowing has borne fruit. You do not get “power from above” in order to act against the Law. Truly said “the wandering priest”, David Petander, (who died in 1914) as to the foreign missions: “The missionaries are not at a higher level than the missionizing congregations, and that form of Christianity is not worthwhile to convert anyone to.” And truly said a causal self that Christianity as it expresses itself in the congregations is a form of “black magic”. Most of it is against the Law, does not accord with the Law or truth (the knowledge of reality).
1To pray, in the true sense, is not to propitiate a cosmic being but, in some small measure, to contribute to affecting others by telepathy as well as to drawing down essential molecules from the essential world (46) in order to “ennoble” mankind. Like all meditation it contributes, of course, to influencing our own complexes in our subconscious and to counteracting the division and distraction of attention.
2“Constant prayer” is the mystic’s way of practising control of thought and of counteracting a split consciousness.
3Prayer is a connection with higher worlds and is never wasted. On the contrary, it is the best state and a fine concentration. Anyone whose life is constant prayer has selected the best part. Then the prayer is the underlying connection that is restored whenever consciousness need not be occupied with any of the necessary tasks or problems of life.
4We do not need to pray for ourselves. But by praying for other people we supply them with power, light, love.
5Like any consciousness expression “prayer” always has its effect. The idea of “prayer”, however, is that the individual shows his willingness to use the “granting of his prayer” rightly. “Everything must be paid for.” That is a law of the economy of life. Higher beings are no servants, do nothing for nothing. What they give must be of avail for consciousness development, for others and not just for physical satisfaction. In that case everybody gets what he has got a right to. Prayer in the accepted sense is an expression of egoism, demonstrates ignorance of the laws of life and of the perfect organization of higher kingdoms, which sees to it that everything happens that is to happen. That men then abuse everything is their bad sowing, which makes for a bad reaping.
6Prayer rightly understood is “emotional meditation” in contrast to mental. It is intended to convey essential (46) energy via the emotional (48) envelope to mankind. That was the mission of the true mystics, has been done instinctively and (without esoteric knowledge) unwittingly. The disciple is taught how to use both emotional and mental “meditation”, for both convey causal and essential energies from the second triad in dynamic co-operation.
7“The power of prayer” is the power of our own thought, will. When the vibrations of our will harmonize with those of existence, then the effect of will is irresistible. It is no “granting of prayer”. The grain of truth in the idea of “the power of prayer” is that the very attitude which the individual takes in praying often entails a harmony of vibrations.
1In all relations there is a giving and a taking. Esoteric prayer presupposes an insight into the law of debits and credits (whatever you pray for is entered on the debit side), that debts contracted are to be settled per contra, that the prayer is according to the Law (the laws of unity, development, etc.). This presupposes a knowledge of the Law and the ability to live it on your own level.
2How should we pray then? I choose the way of the interpreter and therefore I pray for light. I choose the way of loving guidance and therefore I pray for elevating power. In praying you clarify to yourself what you want and prepare to receive, attend to what you are given and how it is given to you. Are you then fit to receive it? Pious hopes are not enough. You must also have the prerequisites. Otherwise you must first acquire the abilities. In that respect our blindness to ourselves is great. We believe we are fit for something we have not any chance to do. We think we are unfit for things we could do. If we are egoists, egocentrics, then the risk is great, ever greater, for misjudgement. We despise what we can do. And vanity holds out prospects of future selfish satisfaction. Perhaps we feel a true need for some quality that can take several incarnations to acquire.
3The development from the individual to the universal is reflected in the prayer of the ancients to Augoeides: “Lead me from the unreal to the real, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality. By “death” they meant incarnation and by “immortality”, the freedom from the necessity of incarnation. The prayer expressed the first self’s wish to become a second self. Individuality is the first self and universality is the second self.
4This was a collective prayer for mankind, because the initiates of the highest degree had already entered into the consciousness of unity. “Prayer” was vibrations that were thrown out into the emotional world in order to awaken those who could be reached by them. Prayer became a thought-form in the mental world for seekers who were able to contact it in their superconscious. Thereby prayer could help Augoeides in his endeavour. Prayer was the endeavour of the “enlightened” to contact Augoeides. “Constant prayer” was the mystics’ method of practising control of consciousness.
5When the science of invocation and evocation, which still awaits its elucidation, is generally understood, it will supersede that praying for help which is generally directed to the godhead. When mankind, or a significant portion of it, can reach such an intensity in emotional and mental respect that these energies become stronger than the energies of the common bad reaping, then according to the Law a request for intervention of higher kingdoms must lead to results. But this is possible only if mankind does everything in its power to do. According to the law of compensation all gifts received command a corresponding price. Selfishness cannot achieve the necessary conditions. The godhead does not demand anything for itself but requires that mankind be more humane and settle up internally so that right human relations arise. This facilitates the work of higher kingdoms for human consciousness development.
1Through its many messengers the planetary hierarchy has tried to make it clear that man becomes such as the thoughts he is thinking. Many esoteric sayings inculcate the importance of thinking right. “Man becomes what he thinks.” “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” “Thoughts are things.” “Energy follows thought.” “Everything depends on our thoughts.” “All consciousness expressions have effects”. All too few people seem to have understood this. Dynamic imagination bridges the gap between the lower and the higher. The instinct for this often exists in children but is destroyed by educators with their pedagogic wisdom.
2Indeed we do not need to affect the godhead with our so called prayers. At least esotericians should be able to see that. We help the planetary hierarchy by our thoughts; we help by sending out vibrations in the mental world in order to teach people to think. This is the help needed. But so undiscerning are even those who study esoterics that they do not comprehend the power of thought, the importance of thinking, of filling the mental world with rational vibrations. Most people may feel powerless when it comes to achieving something in the physical world. Then they should make it clear to themselves that they help by thinking, thinking clearly and keenly, thinking over and over again. This was the original meaning of “unceasing prayer”, unceasing meditation. By thinking we work new mental molecules into our own and other people’s brains, molecules that make it ever easier to think rationally. We strengthen insight and understanding in our subconscious, which will be to our credit in new incarnations; to say nothing of the good sowing we sow by our mental activity.
3Man does not need to pray for his first self. His second self (Augoeides) takes care of it. He does not need to pray for his second self. It takes care of itself. He does need to help his fellow human beings to overcome their first selves with their ignorance, illusions, and fictions and to dispel darkness by thinking clearly. This is an important mission for anyone who is able to think and meditate. Clear thoughts tidy up in the mental world and are transferred to those who can receive them. The ignorant may pray. It helps them to relieve themselves of worry and fear and has a good psychological effect in that respect. Those who take resort to prayer do not need to consult psychoanalysts.
1What subjects of meditation an individual chooses depends partly on his knowledge of reality and of the meaning of life, partly on his level of development.
2Useful subjects of meditation are to learn to distinguish between the different kinds of consciousness, learn to be independent of, indifferent to the physical, emotional, and mental; divinely indifferent to whatever happens to oneself. Complexes lose their power to affect or alarm, fear (that serious vice) disappears. You become frank, glad and free, and thereby receptive to the vibrations of unity that redeem everything.
3Always useful exercises include: to tell main issues from side issues, essentials from non-essentials, what you know from what you do not know, necessary things from unnecessary, harmless things from harmful ones, imperishable things from perishable.
4We all have our personal problems: the self’s relations to its envelopes and the individuals’ relations to each other and to the surrounding world. This is our training ground and the field of experiments for our consciousness, being determined by our horoscope in so far as they are related to our good or bad sowing in previous incarnations, our application of the laws of life.
5As long as mankind is at the lower emotional stage, where repulsion (hatred) rules, mental analysis just serves to divide and separate instead of discovering the unifying common traits, to observe faults and failings instead of the good qualities that always exist, to notice the worst sides instead of the best. Mankind is too primitive to understand that in so doing it acts against its own evolution.
6A suitable subject of meditation is to make clear to yourself that you are not your envelopes, not your organism, not your feelings, not your thoughts; but that it is your self which observes these phenomena.
7You can meditate on the difference between the self in the triad envelope, the causal envelope with its intuition, causal idea content, its three centres (for intelligence, unity, and will), and Augoeides (who, if permitted by man, intervenes in “emergencies” and “fights” for his protege).
8You can take any unsolved esoteric problem whatsoever and analyse the facts that have any connection with it, until some day you get the solution from the superconscious “for nothing”.
9It is a good exercise for the self (the attention) to study the contents of its envelopes, the thoughts in the mental envelope, the feelings in the emotional envelope. Thereby the self liberates itself from identification with these phenomena, learns to view them as tools, learns to see that what they think and wish is expressive of the general ignorance and lack of discernment, because nothing else is possible for the monad in the first triad. As a first self the individual is cut off from 46 ever higher worlds, not being able to understand these, understand the meaning of life, reach higher worlds and kingdoms, unless he receives help from somebody in the fifth kingdom who will show him how he can become a causal self in this aeon. He needs to be taught how to get into contact with his Augoeides, and the latter must meet halfway from the second to the first triad. All this the planetary hierarchy have taught us and without them we would not know anything, would not possibly know anything about existence save the two lowest atomic worlds. Not even yogis know any more worlds but just indulge in fancies of “nirvana” (the mental world actually, for they know nothing about the causal world).
10Those who have recently begun studying esoterics (it is actually some sort of initiation, an entry into the world of reality) are usually eager to learn all new facts, as if this would mean progress. The teachers, however, consider that it is more important to meditate daily on the knowledge already acquired, so that the things learnt are automatized and find spontaneous expression. Otherwise they easily become latent and fail to have any effect in daily life. This has also been the great shortcoming of the occult sects. Their members have been liberated from some of their fictions and are content with that. They do not suspect that knowledge entails responsibility for its use.
11Your daily renewed resolution to live “as if” you had realized the stage of culture (attraction), the stage of humanity (universal brotherhood), the stage of ideality (in contact with Augoeides) brings about an immense stimulation for your mental consciousness, and the effect of this is inevitable.
12The esoterician works up the experiences of the day but never looks back. When you look back details drop out, making your review a reconstruction, which fact is exemplified by autobiographies that are not based on carefully kept diaries. Besides, hardly anybody keeps so detailed diaries that gaps must not be filled out by the usually tricky memory. Thus you learn nothing real from reviews, and that is the reason why esotericians “never look back”. Since they are people of thought, they are sufficiently occupied with mental activity in the present.
13Many people’s meditations contain the expressions: “I am the soul” (the goal of the human kingdom), or “I am spirit” (the goal of the fifth kingdom), or “I am god” (the goal of the first divine kingdom). This means that the individual wishes to put himself into the state he thinks a being has at that stage or in that kingdom. This could of course be more exactly stated: “I strive for the causal stage”, or “I am centred in the causal envelope and wish to be conscious in it”.
1The art of living includes the ability of balance, calm, unconcern. This presupposes control of emotionality with its impulses and demands, understanding of its illusoriness with the charming and enticing power of the mirage, of which the fatal power of beauty (often empty forms) is sufficient proof.
2The art of living includes the ability to forget oneself and one’s comical insignificance, not to be occupied with thoughts of oneself, but to keep consciousness busy with other things. Men should actually have left behind everything that can be learnt from emotional consciousness and be able to live exclusively in the mental, in physical respect to work up physical problems mentally. Instead, their waking consciousness is largely filled with emotionality. They dress their emotional wounds as persistently as their physical ailments instead of forgetting them. They have not recognized the wisdom of the old major’s saying: “How I feel? I don’t give a damn!”
3By their rather complicated method the stoics developed a complex of invulnerability, a complex of unconcern and indifference that made them impervious to other people’s frictions, irritations, etc. It made any fear of the blows of fate or other people’s plots impossible. Anyone who wishes to acquire such a complex must devote some time to it daily, until the complex has grown so strong that it functions automatically at the slightest provocation. Then it can be allowed to go into latency. It remains there, however, and can be actualized easily enough, if you think you need it. The method of acquiring the complex is individual and is actually the sole difficulty. Resolutions and efforts of will must be avoided. Absolute certainty that you will succeed is a great asset. Semi-conscious auto-suggestion is helpful where most people are concerned. As for the rest, it is a matter of daily exercise and persistence. When your being is spontaneously filled with the sense of absolute unconcern even at the most unexpected “thunderclaps”, then you are “through”. Some people depict in imagination the most painful, overwhelming situations and then experience their unconcern.
4Suffering exists only in the three lowest physical and emotional regions (49:5-7, 48:5-7). Knowing this you can draw a number of conclusions yourself. The craze for possessions (everything physically unnecessary) does not lead to happiness for man. Identification with that which belongs to the lower emotionality is the great error of mankind. The will to unity shows the path to the common consciousness of higher kingdoms.
5Just as there is infinitely much that we do not need for our physical well-being, so there is infinitely much that we do not need in order to be well oriented in the matter of world view and life view, in our own and other people’s emotional and mental life in the society we are living in. In our ignorance we burden ourselves with such knowledge as is easily accessible in various encyclopaedias. Solid works of that kind need not (as people think) be up to date. You will find most things also in works that are a hundred years old.
6Like everything else the phrase, “to live in the present” (not in memories of the past or in the future), has been misunderstood. It does not mean that you should rush about hunting all the opportunities of the instant. That is not to live in the present, but rather to get excited at future expectations.
1Qualities are acquired by daily meditation and practice. That methodical meditation, which engenders abilities (liberates spokes in centres), will remain esoteric, until the individual has been accepted as a disciple of a member of the planetary hierarchy.
2A good psychological rule is to consider yourself to possess qualities you wish to acquire. They exist in the subconscious, are actualized by being attended to, and are activated by your trust in them. Most people’s qualities develop through compulsive circumstances. There exists another method than the usually painful method of life itself, and that is to pay constant attention to qualities. Thereby they become complexes in the subconscious.
3All too many subconscious complexes are harmful either in negative or in positive respect. They can be neutralized by the forming of complexes opposite to them. This is the object of the meditation practised by Indian yogis. Therefore you need not go to India, however, or read long treatises. Complexes are formed by the attention. In times of bad suggestions the negative or harmful complexes are strengthened. Any qualities whatever can be acquired and their percentage can be increased by their being attended to at fixed intervals, preferably every day.
4Qualities important for the esoterician are: purposefulness, sense of proportions, synthesization entailing wider perspectives, inclusivity as counteracting exclusivity, a mind open to everything, understanding counteracting a critical attitude, ability of solitude which is connected with the ability to live for your mission. You quite simply do not have any time to waste on unessentials. The ability to use your time is part of the art of concentration.
5Meditation on a quality you wish to acquire has (if pursued in the right manner) nothing of auto-suggestion in it. You cannot force yourself, resolve to be another person than the one you are. The only success to be had in this respect is appearance and hypocrisy.
6You pay no attention whatever to the fact that you “wish to be such a person”. For example, you can endow your ideal with the quality. Then you put your hero in various situations where he will be given opportunities to demonstrate that very quality, while you let yourself be filled with admiration for the quality.
7You wish to acquire kindness. Then you study “kindness in all its forms – the compliance or shyness of the weak, the courteous obligingness of the man of the world, the sublime humanity of the saint, which is a mixture of tolerance, patience, and compassion”.
1It is not enough to have acquired the knowledge of life. The knowledge must be alive in our waking consciousness, otherwise it will not determine our thought and action.
2Insight and understanding are latent when they have been acquired once, though therefore they are by no means always actual or easily accessible. They need to be continually reactualized in order to constantly assert themselves. It is a mistake to suppose that it is enough to know in order to realize. Daily meditation is necessary if we are to reorganize our entire way of life and become independent of the consciousness and energy content of our envelopes. That is especially true if we live in an environment which is ignorant of the Law and which disorients us by its vibrations of ignorance, and vibrations which automatically affect us by the power of habit.
3It is by daily meditation that we liberate ourselves from too debasing influence by the emotional and mental vibrations of public opinion, which reach our corresponding envelopes.
4It should be obvious that man does not change unless he works purposively for his change. And this systematic work presupposes daily meditation. Without methodical work on our experiences, we learn very little and very slowly throughout our incarnations. Analysis of the experiences of others (which many people find interesting) is of very little use, since only the self concerned has access to all the necessary material. Regret and remorse, etc., which theologians prescribe, are on the contrary psychologically as perverse as only theologians can invent. Energy follows thought and strengthens thought. By regretting your errors you afford them the attention necessary in order to strengthen them and make them ineradicable.
5By daily meditating on those ideals, which the individual wants to make decisive power factors in his life view and his active life, he acquires “qualities” and does so to ever increasing percentages. The power of ideas is lost without daily meditation on them. The so called resolutions that most people are content with remain ineffective if they are not made the objects of meditation.
6The self identifies with its envelopes, believing itself to be these. But since the self in fact is not its envelopes, there arise antagonisms sooner or later between the self and its envelopes, antagonisms between the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the causal. You can add to this the antagonism between individuals. The self certainly leads a split life. It is the task of the self in the human kingdom to overcome these antagonisms. This is done most easily through the insight that the self is not its envelopes and that antagonism to the surrounding world depends on differences in levels of development, and is unavoidable until we have entered into unity.
7When the first self has become a second self, it recognizes its mistakes committed as a first self. It is by daily meditation on the problems of self-realization that life is made immensely easier to live. We get a daily reminder of how erroneous the ruling life view is and that we participate in illusoriness, automatically share in it, until we have liberated ourselves from it through meditation. This requires daily exercise, else we relapse into the old ways of looking at things. The individual is able to remake himself into the “ideal” he has set up as reasonable. But it is only done through daily meditation. It can be brief. But it must be done daily.
8What you feel and think, that you become. If these expressions of consciousness belong to lower levels, then we are attracted down to them and remain in them. If we wish to reach higher levels, then we have to think the thoughts that belong to the higher.
9As most people live their day, they fill their consciousness with the diverse tasks of physical life so that just little time remains for some quiet meditation. It is a good habit to begin your day with a maxim or suchlike, impressing it on your memory so that it will be a direction that endures all day long. This need not take more than a few minutes.
10It is very beneficent to both “mind and body” that we experience the great stillness at least for some minute every day.
1In mysticism it can be seen that most of our thinking contains an element of desire, even if unintentional, and this has been called “the constant prayer”. Critics of mysticism have considered that constant prayer would be inconsistent with the esoterician’s intense attention to the present. The disciple is taught, however, that the self’s attention can be directed to all the various kinds of consciousness in its envelopes simultaneously. This is a difficult art and of course impracticable for those who have not even achieved a general control of consciousness.
2Through “the constant prayer” the mystic is living in, an elemental is formed by these devotional energies, and there arises a reciprocal relation which the mystic takes for “a relation to god”.
3At the stage of humanity, after the individual has not just acquired the knowledge of reality and life but has also strived to reactualize and reactivate the emotional attraction of the stage of the saint, the object of his meditation will no longer be an elemental but the contact with his Augoeides. The “constant prayer” is superseded by a continuous “soul contact”, which is resumed whenever attention must not be occupied with other tasks in the worlds of man. Of course this requires the ability of mental control, necessary to shut out the innumerable vibrations from the external world which otherwise pour through the envelopes and against which the “normal individual” is more or less defenceless or constantly has to replace by his own emotions or thoughts.
4Our daily life is given firmness when, thanks to this daily meditation, we are able to “keep our minds constantly in the light” (as the mystics express it) or keep the contact with our Augoeides open. It is the living awareness of our enduring community with “god” or the cosmic total consciousness, which all the geniuses of life, whatever religion they have belonged to, have found to be the most efficient way of paying attention to the problems of daily life and of solving them. It is as though we put our qualities and abilities to the disposal of our Augoeides, in our certainty, gained through experience, that he will find the most ingeniously simple and direct way for us to speak and to act. In a superconscious process the self in its triad envelope identifies with Augoeides in the causal envelope and is imperceptibly drawn into the intelligence and unity centres of the greater envelope, these centres being eventually vitalized so that the self becomes subjectively conscious in them.
5If the individual is not so far developed that this process can actually take place, then he will reach that stage in the quickest possible way by living “as if” it were actual. “As if” is “the trick” of the art of living. The constant thought entails actualization. In any case the outer effect is the best possible.
6In this connection it should be remembered that thoughts are realities, that thoughts are the strongest powers that are at man’s disposal. It cannot be too strongly inculcated that thought is the least understood and most abused instrument that mankind has. The content of his thought indicates the man’s stage of development.
7A “perfect life” (the ideal) we shall realize when all our thoughts are in conformity with the laws of life. Another most important truth of life is that “if we want everybody to love us, then we must first love everybody”. Such is the “law”. Then it depends on our level how well we succeed.
1There are many kinds of meditation. Most of them do not deserve to be so called. Meditation is self-initiated consciousness activity and its action belongs under the law of activation. In the occult sects they write much about meditation. It should be observed that meditation has effects and that erroneous meditation can have serious effects, anyhow can do harm in some manner. Meditation that confers power will remain esoteric, until the individual has reached so far that he cannot abuse power. And that is a wise law, for otherwise mankind would annihilate itself.
2There are great risks to meditation. By meditation you strengthen your capacity of vibration. Those who are at the stage of hatred, however, strengthen their vibrations of hatred, and this increases their bad sowing.
3Meditation must be practised with judgement and understanding. Five minutes will suffice for beginners, and half an hour for those who have been trained for many years. It must be clearly recognized that meditation involves handling molecules and energies, not just consciousness.
4Meditation vitalizes those etheric centres which are already active. They can easily be overstimulated, and then symptoms of disease may appear in the organs corresponding to these centres. The risk is particularly great if any of these organs is not entirely healthy. Moreover, the entire nervous system is subjected to an immense strain. But also quite healthy people grow nervous, lose their balance, find it impossible to control themselves and sometimes suffer from insomnia. Many people by injudicious zeal destroy their brain cells, tumours of the brain or “lunacy” being the results.
5Hatha yoga philosophers have begun missionizing more and more in the West, spreading their spurious teachings in ever wider circles, especially confusing people with their risky breathing exercises. Esoterics teaches that the centres of the etheric envelope are vitalized in the one correct way through meditation and mentally directed mental energies. Any other vitalization implies roundabout ways and entails rebuilding of the etheric envelope in many subsequent incarnations.
6Meditation strengthens existing tendencies and qualities, in which non-desirable ones are vitalized too. Since non-desirable qualities generally appear in the relations to other people, the enhanced friction in life increases irritation in a continuous interaction.
7Abusing meditation you can strengthen the fictions and illusions of your ignorance, make them hard to eradicate, if not ineradicable for incarnations to come.
8Meditation that centres on one’s own fancies has a tendency to strengthen fictionalism and illusionism. It enhances self-delusion and egotism. Meditation is for those who have ceased to be the centres of their circles, who forget themselves for others, for their missions in life.
9It is not wrong to speculate. On the contrary we should speculate, because it is the only way in which ignorance can reflect. However, we should always make it clear to ourselves that it is “empty speculation” and not assume that it accords with reality. The very error of speculation is to mistake vagaries for reality ideas. Imaginative play is not exact thought. Above all we should not make such pure inventions the objects of meditation, because thereby they take shape in our subconscious and will henceforth mislead us. By being meditated on and constantly repeated they eventually turn into “fixed ideas”. These mad ideas have the effect that everybody, even the most intellectual, in some respect does not seem “quite right in the head”. Meditation should be practised only after you have been convinced that the “idea” is correct, that the problem is a problem of reality. Above all you should see to it that your thoughts do not keep revolving until you live in chaos. Then the best remedy is some sort of physical work, walks or other useful exercise.
10There are risks to meditation in case you do not understand how you should purposefully utilize the material energies you receive. Meditation is harmful if its motive is not the desire to serve. Energy follows thought and can stimulate evil as well as good. Since meditation is largely a mental process, the motive is of even greater importance. If the motive is not right, the negative qualities are strengthened and the individual falls ever deeper into illusoriness and fictionalism.
11The planetary hierarchy warns against meditation with wrong motives: the desire to gain powers, become great and important. If egoism is strengthened, if personal power and glory are strived after, then the individual who has just a slight knowledge of the laws of life can figure out the inevitable consequences of this in future incarnations.
1There are many kinds of meditation. Most of them do not deserve to be so called. Many occult sects teach special methods of meditation, which sometimes are positively harmful. The esoterician is warned against them, since none of the existing sects possess the necessary knowledge. The esoterician is recommended to postpone such efforts until he is accepted a disciple of the planetary hierarchy and then receives from his teacher the meditation that will suit him best and will quickly yield results. The teacher then engages to supervise the process and takes responsibility for the consequences. “Energy follows thought”, and the ignorant are unable to use these energies rightly. The planetary hierarchy has not as yet sanctioned any general form of meditation for exoteric use.
2Esoterically, concentration belongs to the stage of the aspirant, meditation to the stage of discipleship, and contemplation to the causal stage. In right meditation the mental molecules in the brain are at work, in right contemplation the causal molecules. In right contemplation the self is in contact with causal consciousness. It is contemplation that confers illumination: the discovery of causal ideas, reality ideas, Platonic ideas.
3There are special meditation exercises for the acquisition of consciousness in the second triad mental atom (47:1) and the lowest kind of unity consciousness (46:7) in the attached essential atom (46:1), and these exercises are communicated to the aspirant when he has become an accepted disciple. Such exercises are always individual and must be adapted to individual character, level of development, and envelope departments (“rays”).
4Esoteric meditation tries to build a connection or a bridge between the first triad mental molecule (47:4) and the second triad mental atom (47:1) via the intelligence centre of the causal envelope. The connection must be built by the disciple himself through his own meditation after receiving directions from his teacher as to the methodical procedure. The method involves the activating the centres of the causal envelope, and is given to the disciple by the esoteric teacher when he is ready for discipleship. Before then he would not be able to use that knowledge rightly. Knowledge that confers power is only for those who live for unity, evolution, and mankind (something quite different from what the theologians call “to serve god”). Those who have got esoteric knowledge should not need to ask, “what am I to do?”. There are tasks without number and everybody should be able to find one that tallies with his ability. Everybody must do this by himself. Nobody else can do it for him.
5When the esoterician can in meditation repeat the “lost word of the master”, this will supersede the so called breathing exercises. These are abortive without directions from a 45-self. If they lead to any result, this will be abortive physically or emotionally, and often in both respects. It evidences lack of judgement to experiment with things one has not understood thoroughly. Once again the rule: proceed from the general to the particular, not the other way round.
6Consciousness development is a gradual process, symbolicly called a wandering from darkness to light. The “light” of every higher world is of such intensity that the next lower world appears as “darkness” in comparison and so by analogy throughout the series of ever higher worlds to the highest one. The process within each world of consciousness appears as a gradually widened perception of its particular reality, incessant discoveries of new facts. This is done through meditation. The pertaining method of meditation (in which particularly the eyebrow centre is stimulated) will remain esoteric a long time yet. It is given out only to disciples who are under supervision by a 45-self. Another condition is that the greater knowledge gained by the disciple is put into life and is used for mankind. Meditation and service must always go together. The method presents three stages called penetration, polarization, and precipitation alongside of a training in telepathy. Penetration means illumination of the “problem”, polarization the insertion of the fact into its right context, and precipitation the practical realization of the insight gained, the condition of further “revelation”.
7This process, like all other processes of consciousness leading to expansion, is made possible through the participation of the individual consciousness in the cosmic common consciousness.
8An example of what kinds of meditation disciples of the planetary hierarchy are recommended to perform is seen in the following assignment, which D.K. gave to a “pupil” who had three envelopes of the first department. It had reference to the motion aspect (the “will”) and the supreme representative of that aspect, the planetary government. He was asked to reflect on “the problem of will in all its relationships” as purpose such as it appears in the planet, such as it works out in man’s life, in the relation between his own will and Augoeides, plan with his life and the relation of this plan to the “divine will”, his causal will to his group will, the relation of this group will to the hierarchy’s will and this will to the government will.
9For the sake of curiosity the symbolic saying, “to will, to know, to dare, to be silent”, can be elucidated with reference to centres: to will = basal centre, to know = eyebrow centre, to dare = navel centre, to be silent = sacral centre. This might be a suitable subject of meditation. Anyone who has solved the problem and can realize the insight gained is at the border of the causal stage.
1Purposes of meditation are to acquire “soul control” (dominance by causal energy), to acquire the ability to serve (presupposes will to unity, experience of life, and wisdom of life), to acquire causal and essential consciousness, to help the planetary hierarchy in its work.
2Esoteric meditation can also put us into contact with our Augoeides, with the planetary hierarchy, with our fellow men, all three at the same time.
3From the esoteric point of view, meditation is primarily necessary to daily inculcate on us the importance of striving after unity, so that we strive to realize the insight saying that we all without exception make up a unity and that without this insight and its realization there can never be any peace on earth. The “will to unity” must be the determining motive of all action, quite independently of the attitudes of other people. By meditating we send that idea of unity out into the mental world and make it easier for ourselves to apply that most basic of all the laws of life: the law of unity.
4In the knowledge orders they were taught that a contact between the self and Augoeides was achieved partly by a reflective attitude, partly by unselfish service, partly by mastering consciousness in the envelopes of incarnation, so that they were made free channels for causal energies pouring down through them.
5By his meditation the esoterician tries to help the planetary government in their work for evolution, mankind, the unity of all life. Every thought is a power that can strengthen the energies that pour down from higher worlds into the lower ones. The many small contributions also have their effects. They unite the contributors with invisible ties. As mass phenomena they make it easier for the participants to strive after unity.
6The meditation exercises are intended to make the esoterician a better tool, his envelopes better tools for the self, and the self a better tool for the energies from the planetary hierarchy. This is the one right motive.
7Meditation does the mental planning, understanding brings it down into the emotional, and love effectuates it in the physical. The true philosophy (of the future) will find the ideas, the true religion (the genuine of the future) will arouse the understanding, and love (unity) will implement the plan spontaneously and automatically.
1The esoterician’s attention is directed to the content of three words: contact, impression, relationship, being important domains of analysis.
2Contact can refer to physical brain contact with the superconscious. The ability to contact one’s fellow men is an ability that must be acquired anew in each incarnation, until it is “inborn”. It strengthens many good qualities (spontaneity, simplicity, power of attraction, etc.). When the individual is generally considered to be “irresistible”, then he has undreamt-of prospects of influencing those he gets in touch with and thereby has possibilities of helping others.
3The contact with the superconscious is achieved through exercise: by continually directing attention to what you know about the causal and essential, with the desire to contact these kinds of consciousness, a line of contact is unconsciously formed to the two corresponding centres of the causal envelope, which from there can supply matter that can be utilized if the individual is willing to use it in the right way.
4The three modes of contact, impression (soul impression), and relationship are intimately connected. Impression is the reaction of consciousness on inner contact and outer relationships. The ability to apprehend impressions correctly is the prerequisite of solving psychological problems. The power to make impression on others, so that they can receive the help one is able to give, is part of the innate equipment of educators and entails a lasting soul relationship.
5The three activities are important for the self’s attitude to the environment also after man has left his two physical envelopes. The majority of mankind, who have never cultivated other interests than physical ones and thus are unfamiliar with superphysical events and problems, on the whole are in a deplorable state of total confusion in the emotional world. They understand nothing of what they see and hear, have no prospects of orientation and do not know what they are supposed to make out of their sojourn in that world. The esoterician, on the other hand, has endless opportunities of psychological study of men’s emotional reactions and of seeing the worthlessness of the illusions and fictions they have brought with them. He can help these ignorant people to get some scanty understanding of life in that otherwise incomprehensible world. The fiction of the spiritists, saying that the “spirits” of the departed are suddenly omniscient, etc. and preach nothing but wisdom (whereas everything they say is in fact nothing but parrotry of what others have believed and said) is their religion and thus incurable. But does it matter? In new incarnations they are given opportunities to learn something more sensible.
1The following is the planetary hierarchy’s (second department) new formula for disciples, but is also intended for all mankind. It is a synthesis of emotional and mental meditation, aimed at uniting the hundreds of thousands of esotericians who every day join with the planetary hierarchy in building up a mighty “thought form” and also “accumulator” of mental, causal, and essential energy for helping mankind. This is the common formula (mantra):
2From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men
Let Light descend on Earth.
3From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men
May Christ return to Earth.
4From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men –
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
5From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
6Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
7It should be added that the reappearance of Christos also implies that of the planetary hierarchy, that also members of the planetary hierarchy are disciples (all of them) of still higher selves all the way up to the highest cosmic world, that the “mind of god” means the collective consciousness of the solar system, the “heart of god” means the planetary hierarchy, the “will of god” means the planetary government, the “centre which we call the race of men” means all men and women of “good will”.
The above text constitutes the essay Meditation by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life One by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.