Success will depend on assiduity

The first thing to do is to break the circuit between bile and brain by resolutely turning one’s thoughts away from the vexatious subject.  This does not means finding convincing arguments, but simply breaking off the contact by, for example, forcing oneself to careful observation of some object or another.  When the train of thought has thus been redirected, a few moments of mediation will prevent the reaction of the bile from continuing.

            This small act of control has the highest importance, for it ensures that when the anarchistic Automaton attacks the conscious self, victory shall go to the latter.

The first stage in taking control of the Automaton is to stop the tyranny of habit and the waste of vital force.  Vital force is precious and should not be expended thoughtlessly.  One can economize it by avoiding futile talk and argument, useless preoccupations, and unnecessary violent movements.  Actions should be carefully watched to prevent their becoming automatic, and one should have the courage to alter one’s way of doing them temporarily and from time to time.  The limbs should be trained to independent movement, so they can perform different actions simultaneously.

Our physical organs (and this cannot be too often repeated) are animal forces, which will quite naturally obey a man who is prepared to command them.  They are there to serve him, not to enslave him.  But the ego is so lazy that it makes him quite glad to abdicate this power in return for the secret satisfaction of pitying his own sufferings, or attracting attention to his pathetic case.  Most of our pathological conditions are aggravated by this unconfessed indulgence.  The same applies to our personal dramas and daily worries; we should have the courage to admit that they feed largely on the pity of others, and on our own.  In most cases, what would be left of them if we passed them over in total silence?

Other animals give us a lesson in self-control:  the cat, for instance, whose wisdom is a model because it combines the most intent passion with the calmest indifference.  Motionless it plans its leap, and performs it exactly; the strength of its muscles is matched by its relaxation in repose; in sleep it has the abandon of an infant, yet its instinct is ever alert; it can fall without danger because it does not resist; hunting and fighting are games of pure pleasure for it, it hunts with rancor and plays without an object; it is ever ready to attack without animosity, and to defend itself without apprehension; being indifferent to victory, it cannot feel defeat.

            Serenity comes from independence.

            This independence, to be created in oneself, is not indifference, but neutrality with regard to the impressions received from without – whether pretty or ugly, good or bad, happy or sad, pleasant or unpleasant.  It is one thing to observe these qualities and quite another to let them affect our moods.

The obstacles to the growth of intuitive knowledge are:

            •   Eagerness for results
            •   Use of the imagination, whether intellectually or emotionally
            •   Intrusion of irrelevant thoughts during meditation
            •   Ingratitude and skepticism when intuitive perceptions cannot yet be understood intellectually
            •   Self-complacency and unwillingness to confess mistakes

If you want to know why and how reincarnation happens, let us make an experiment.  Lie down, and see that the body, and above all the nerves, are completely relaxed.  Then repeat, slowly and with attention, these words, trying as you do so to convince yourself that they are entirely true;  “I abandon here and now all worry, all preoccupations, all personal will . . . I wash away all grief and regret, all spite and vengeance....I give up all personal love, all plans, all longings, and all hopes for earthly things.”

            If you really try to be sincere in making these assertions, I defy you to speak the words without misgivings.  Certain flame-hot fibers will revolt in you, will refuse such a surrender and contradict any such undertaking.  Those are the threads that will drag you back to earth.  Inevitably!

            Spiritual states have nothing in common with your memories, or with the imaginings and intellectual interests of your earthly being; but those memories impress their emotional attraction upon your Ego-consciousness, and this prevents its liberation and causes you to return to earthly existence, by attraction, by the yearning for completeness.  This is one of the most important aspects of the law of karma.

The light that the sun casts on the planets is the same for all, but each planet reflects it according to its own color, and the radiation that it returns is determined by its constitution.  In this inevitable diversity of color there is no treachery or false transmission, but it does explain why no teacher, however great, can all himself the sole possessor of the Truth.  He can only teach according to the type and “color” of his own soul, and to his capacity for faithful representation.  Beyond this limit he would be exceeding or misdirecting his mission, and adding a heavy responsibility to his burden of karma.

What matters is not to apply a definition but to observe the characteristic signs of a disposition allotted by destiny or achieved by effort.  Among such symptoms are the tendency to sympathize with the sufferings of others, not in a sense of pity, but by opening the heart so that its radiation, without selection or discrimination, acts by itself as a balm of impersonal healing.  Other signs are material and spiritual generosity, as opposed to avarice and envy; the feeling of awareness of solidarity; an effective sense of responsibility; and the acceptance of all that makes for simplicity of thought and feeling, looking at all times for the essential point and rejecting perfunctory opinions and fashionable prejudices.

Our aim is to realize the suprahuman state by awakening and uniting the Permanent Witness with that of the highest Self.

            ...To pursue this path without being deflected, the first requirement is the gradual destruction of automatic behavior, by learning to recognize the drama which is fought out in a human being, to know the combatants and their weapons.

            This drama is the duel between the two wills, the Personal Will and the Will to the Light.

            Many human beings know nothing of this drama: those whose brain-consciousness makes so much noise that the two witnesses cannot be heard.  In these, who are legion, the Automatic Self reigns uncontrolled, having nothing to restrain it but an atavistic moral sense and the conventional religious or social rules of its education.  Moral problems, for such people, can only be a choice between obeying their established moral code and breaking it at the bidding of self-interest or instinct.