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A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga506
to this great matter, that it may interpose less resistance to the truths that
are waiting to be projected from the Spiritual Mind, which knows the Truth.
Mental Drill.
Place yourself in a calm, restful condition, that you may be able to meditate
upon the matters that we shall place before you for consideration. Allow
the matters presented to meet with a hospitable reception from you, and
hold a mental attitude of willingness to receive what may be waiting for you
in the higher regions of your mind.
We wish to call your attention to several mental impressions or conditions,
one after another, in order that you may realize that they are merely
something incident to you, and not you yourself—that you may set them
aside and consider them, just as you might anything that you have been
using. You cannot set the “I” aside and so consider it, but the various forms
of the “not I” may be so set aside and considered.
In the First Lesson you gained the perception of the “I” as independent
from the body, the latter merely being an instrument for use. You have now
arrived at the stage when the “I” appears to you to be a mental creature—a
bundle of thoughts, feelings, moods, etc. But you must go farther. You must
be able to distinguish the “I” from these mental conditions, which are as
much tools as is the body and its parts.
Let us begin by considering the thoughts more closely connected with
the body, and then work up to the higher mental states.
The sensations of the body, such as hunger; thirst; pain; pleasurable
sensations; physical desires, etc., etc., are not apt to be mistaken for essential
qualities of the “I” by many of the Candidates, for they have passed beyond
this stage, and have learned to set aside these sensations, to a greater or
lesser extent, by an effort of the Will, and are no longer slaves to them.
Not that they do not experience these sensations, but they have grown
to regard them as incidents of the physical life—good in their place—but
useful to the advanced man only when he has mastered them to the extent