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A Treatise on White Magic - Rule Ten - The Present Age and the Future
The goal of all the work of an aspirant is to understand those aspects of the mind with which he has to learn to work. His work therefore might be summed up as follows: He has to learn to think; to discover that he has an apparatus which is called the mind and to uncover its faculties and powers. These have been well analyzed for us in the first two books of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. He has to learn next to get back of his thought processes and form building propensities and discover the ideas which underlie the divine thought-form, the world process, and so learn to work in collaboration with the plan and subordinate his own thought-form building to these ideas. He has to learn to penetrate into the world of these divine ideas and to study the "pattern of things in the Heavens" as it is called in the Bible. He [366] must begin to work with the blue prints upon which all that is, is modeled and molded. He becomes then a student-symbolist, and from being an idolater he becomes a divine idealist. I use these words in their true sense and connotation. From that developed idealism, he must progress even deeper still, until he enters the realm of pure intuition. He can then tap truth at its source. He enters into the mind of God Himself. He intuits as well as idealizes and is sensitive to divine thoughts. They fertilize his mind. He calls these intuitions later, as he works them out, ideas or ideals, and bases all his work and conduct of affairs upon them. Then follows the work of conscious thought-form building, based upon these divine ideas, emanating as intuitions from the Universal Mind. This goes forward through meditation. Every true student knows that this involves concentration in order to focus or orient the lower mind to the higher. Temporarily the normal thought-form building tendencies are inhibited. Through meditation, which is the mind's power to hold itself in the light, and in that light become aware of the plan, he learns to "bring through" the needed ideas. Through contemplation he finds himself able to enter into that silence which will enable him to tap the divine mind, wrest God's thought out of the divine consciousness and to know. This is the work before each aspirant and hence the necessity of his understanding the nature of his mental problem, the tools with which he must perforce work, and the use he must make of what he learns and gains through right use of the mental apparatus. How is this to be done? How bring through and how build afterwards? [367] No matter how small or unimportant an individual thinker may be, yet in cooperation with his brethren, he wields a mighty force. Only through the steady strong right thinking of the people and the understanding of the correct use of mental energy can progressive evolution go forward along the desired lines. Right thinking depends upon many things, and it might be useful to state some of them very simply: An ability to sense the vision. That involves a capacity in a faint measure to realize the archetype on which the Lodge is endeavoring to fashion the race. It involves cooperation in the work of the Manu, and the development of abstract as well as synthetic thought, the flashing forth of the intuition. The intuition wrests from the high places a touch of the ideal plan as it lies latent in the mind of the Logos. As men develop this capacity, they will touch sources of power that are not on mental levels at all but which constitute those from which the mental plane itself draws sustenance. Then, having sensed the vision and glimpsed a fraction of the beauty (how little men see is astounding!) in your hands lies the opportunity to bring down to the mental plane as much of the plan as you possibly can. Nebulous and faint at first is your grasp after it, yet it will begin to materialize. Seldom at first will you find that you can contact it, for the vision comes through the medium of the causal body and few can hold that high consciousness for a long time. But the struggle to apprehend will lead to results, and little by little the idea will seep through to the concrete levels of the mental plane. Then it becomes a concrete thought, something that can be definitely visualized and appropriated as a basis for thought. This accomplished, what comes next? A period of gestation, a period wherein you build your thought-form of as much of the vision as you can bring through into [368] your consciousness. Slowly must this be done, for a stable vibration and a well built form is desired. Hurried work leads nowhere. As you build there will gradually be sensed a longing, a desire to see this vision brought to earth, and see it becoming known to others among the sons of men. Then you vitalize the thought-form with the power of your will, you seek to make it be; the rhythm becomes heavier and slower, the material built into your form is necessarily coarser, and you find that your thought-form of the vision is clothed in matter of the mental and astral planes. Happy the disciple who can bring the vision nearer still to humanity, and work it into existence on the physical plane. Remember this, that the materialization of any aspect of the vision on the physical plane is never the work of one man. Only when it has been sensed by the many, only when they have worked at its material form can their united efforts draw it into outer manifestation. Thus you see the value of educating public opinion; it brings the many helpers to the aid of the few visionaries. Always the Law holds good; - in descent, differentiation. The two or three sense the plan intuitively; then the rhythm they set up with their thought sweeps the mental plane matter into activity; thinkers seize hold of the idea. This is a hard thing to learn and difficult to do but the reward is great.
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