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A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga620
under the head of “subconscious mind,” “subjective mind,” etc., ignoring
the fact that this class of mental phenomena embraced not only the highest
but the lowest forms of mentation. In their newly found “mind” (which they
called “subjective” or “sub-conscious”), they placed the lowest traits and
animal passions; insane impulses; delusions; bigotry; animal-like intelligence,
etc., etc., as well as the inspiration of the poet and musician, and the high
spiritual longings and feelings that one recognizes as having come from the
higher regions of the soul.
This mistake was a natural one, and at first reading the. Western world
was taken by storm, and accepted the new ideas and theories as Truth.
But when reflection came, and analysis was applied there arose a feeling
of disappointment and dissatisfaction, and people began to feel that
there was something lacking. They intuitively recognized that their higher
inspirations and intuitions came from a different part of the mind than the
lower emotions, passions, and other sub-conscious feelings and instincts.
A glance at the Oriental philosophies will give one the key to the problem
at once. The Oriental teachers have always held that the conscious mentation
was but a small fraction of the entire volume of thought, but they have always
taught that just as there was a field of mentation below consciousness, so was
there a field of mentation above consciousness as much higher than Intellect
as the other was lower than it. The mere mention of this fact will prove a
revelation to those who have not heard it before, and who have become
entangled with the several “dual-mind” theories of the recent Western
writers. The more one has read on this subject the more he will appreciate
the superiority of the Oriental theory over that of the Western writers. It
is like the chemical which at once clears the clouded liquid in the test-tube.
In our next lesson we shall go into this subject of the above-conscious
planes, and the below-conscious planes, bringing out the distinction clearly,
and adding to what we have said on the subject in previous books.
And all this is leading us toward the point where we may give you
instruction regarding the training and cultivation—the retraining and