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From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Ten - The Need for Care in Meditation
It will be apparent, therefore, that the man who is learning to meditate must endeavor to do two things: First: He must learn to "bring through" into his [242] mind and then interpret correctly what he has seen and contacted, and later transmit it correctly and accurately to the attentive and impressionable brain. Thus the man, in physical waking consciousness becomes aware of the things of the Kingdom of God. Second: He must learn the nature of the energies he is contacting, and train himself to utilize them correctly. A practical illustration of this can be given here, and one universally recognized. We are swept by anger or irritation. Instinctively we begin to shout. Why? Emotional energy has us in its grip. By learning to control the energy of the spoken word we begin to master that particular type of emotional energy. In these two ideas of right interpretation and right transmission, and of right use of energy, the whole story of the meditation work is summed up. It becomes apparent also what is the problem confronting the student, and why all wise teachers of the technique of meditation urge upon their pupils the need of care and slow procedure. It is essential that we realize that meditation can be very dangerous work and may land a man in serious difficulty. It can be destructive and disrupting; it can do more harm than good and lead a man towards catastrophe if he enters upon the Way of the Knower without a proper understanding of what he is doing and where it will lead him. At the same time, it can be, indeed, the "work of salvation" and lead a man out of all his difficulties; it can be constructive and liberating, and guide the man by right [243] and sane methods along the way that leads from darkness to light, from death to immortality, and from the unreal to the Real. It might be of value here if we considered these two points a little more closely. We have seen that the deep need of the aspirant is to see that he succeeds in bringing through into a physical brain-consciousness, with accuracy, the phenomena of the spiritual world which he may succeed in contacting. The probability is, however, that it will be a long time before he can penetrate into that world at all. Therefore, he has to learn to discriminate between the fields of awareness which may open up before him as he becomes more sensitive, and know the nature of what he is seeing and hearing. Let us look for a moment at some of the phenomena of the lower mind which students are so constantly misinterpreting. They record, for instance, a rapturous encounter with the Christ or with some Great Soul, who appeared to them when meditating, smiled at them, and told them to "be of good cheer. You are making good progress. You are a chosen worker and to you truth shall be revealed," or something equally fatuous. They thrill to the event; they record it in their diary and they write joyously to me that the occurrence is a most momentous happening in their lives. It may be, if they handle it right, and learn its lesson. What has really happened? Has the student really seen the Christ? Here we remember the truism that "thoughts are things" and that all [244] thoughts take form. Two things have produced the occurrence, if it has really happened and is not the result of a vivid and over-stimulated imagination. The power of the creative imagination is only just beginning to be sensed, and it is quite possible to see just what we desire to see, even if it is not there at all. The desire of the aspirant to make progress, and his strenuous effort, has forced him to become awake or aware upon the psychic plane, the plane of vain imaginings, of desire and its illusory fulfilments. In that realm, he contacts a thought-form of the Christ or of some great and revered Teacher. The world of illusion is full of these thought-forms, constructed by the loving thoughts of men down the ages, and the man, working through his own psychic nature (the line of least resistance for the majority) comes in touch with such a thought-form, mistakes it for the real, and imagines it saying to him all the things he wants said. He wants encouragement; he seeks, like so many, the justification of phenomena for his endeavor; he quiets the brain and gently slips into a psychic and negative condition. Whilst in that condition, his imagination begins to function, and he sees what he wants to see, and he hears the magnificent words of recognition for which he hankers. It does not occur to him that the Guides of the race are too busy with group activities and with the training of the advanced thinkers and leaders of humanity, through whom They can work, to spend any time with the children of the race. The latter may be left, with complete success, to the tuition of [245] less highly evolved beings. Nor does it occur to them that, should they be so advanced and so highly evolved as to have won the privilege of making such a contact, the Master would not waste His time and theirs by patting them on the back and pronouncing high sounding but inane platitudes. He would improve the brief moment by pointing out some weakness to be eliminated, or some constructive work to be undertaken.
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