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The Eighth Lesson: The Highlands and Lowlands of Mind.619
daily experience, and is common to all, though more noticeable with strong
personalities.”
Now we have given much time and space to the expressions of opinion
of various Western writers regarding this subject of there being a plane or
planes of the mind outside of the field of consciousness. We have given
space to this valuable testimony, not alone because of its intrinsic value and
merit, but because we wished to impress upon the minds of our students
that these out-of-conscious planes of mind are now being recognized by the
best authorities in the Western world, although it has been only a few years
back when the idea was laughed at as ridiculous, and as a mere “dream of
the Oriental teachers.” Each writer quoted has brought out some interesting
and valuable point of the subject, and the student will find that his own
experiences corroborate the points cited by the several writers. In this way
we think the matter will be made plainer, and will become fixed in the mind
of those who are studying this course of lessons.
But we must caution our students from hastily adopting the several
theories of Western writers, advanced during the past few years, regarding
these out-of-conscious states. The trouble has been that the Western
writers dazzled by the view of the subconscious planes of mentation that
suddenly burst upon the Western thought, hastily adopted certain theories,
which they felt would account for all the phenomena known as “psychic,”
and which they thought would fully account for all the problems of the
subject. These writers while doing a most valuable work, which has helped
thousands to form new ideas regarding the nature and workings of the mind,
nevertheless did not sufficiently explore the nature of the problem before
them. A little study of the Oriental philosophies might have saved them and
their readers much confusion.
For instance, the majority of these writers hastily assumed that because
there was an out-of-conscious plane of mentation, therefore all the workings
of the mind might be grouped under the head of “conscious” and “subconscious,”
and that all the out-of-conscious phenomena might be grouped