After the student has sincerely worked at his Yoga practice, he is aware that there are great souls working for humanity, for he becomes conscious of their vibration. For instance, I know of two students who suddenly and simultaneously exclaimed, “A great soul has just arrived at the Ritz.” A student can be conscious of the general location of a great soul in his own country, or place of residence, and that he is watching him.
The student often longs to sit at the feet of these great ones and in the early days of his seeking he has often been helped by them, although they never revealed their higher individuality. When he begins his meditations, he seeks to pick up their vibrations and, if he is worthy, he receives communications from these great souls by a system of wireless.
After reading philosophical and theosophical literature regarding these advanced men and women, the student is apt to be shocked at first meeting with them, to find that they are most human and childlike. Sometimes he does not at once realize the summits they have reached, for these men of the Western world live and dress very simply, although they may be connoisseurs of the best of the world’s art.
I remember having lunch with one of them. We had soup, but when the second course of fish was to be brought, he turned to the waiter and said, “Give me a double portion of fish, and afterwards some fruit, that is all that I shall require.” I looked at him, and he answered my mental question, “I find it better never to mix my meats, and to eat a little less than my normal appetite desires.”
He told me of an adventure in his youth with a man in Buenos Aires. Sitting in his office, he could look across the street into the park opposite, and one day he saw a man seated on a bench who interested him. The next morning he walked through the park, and seeing the man in the same place reading, he sat down beside him and spoke to him. The man’s clothes were clean, but very much worn, and my friend said to him, “Excuse my inquisitiveness, but may I ask what you are reading?” “Certainly,” the seemingly poor man replied, and he handed over a small book, on the title page of which there was an inscription in the author’s handwriting, showing that it was a presentation copy. The author was Maurice Maeterlinck, and he had written, “To my dear friend X——, in appreciation, Maurice Maeterlinck.”
My friend, who was a clairvoyant, said to him, “You have a rupture.” “Yes,” the man replied. My friend took out his card and wrote on it the address of a surgeon, and a short note asking the surgeon to fit this friend of his for a truss. Two or three days afterwards he met the man seated in the same place and he asked if he would accept a small gift of money, as he seemed undoubtedly very poor. He was thanked but was told that he had no need for money. The following day he again saw out of his window the man sitting in the same place, but then he found a telegram which demanded his presence on one of his ranches one hundred seventy miles away. He accomplished the journey partly by motor and partly by boat. When he arrived at his ranch, there, seated on the top step of his porch, was the man he had seen seated in the park that morning! He told me that it was practically impossible for any normal man to have gotten there quicker than he had.
The master who met him on his own porch is one of these great souls who are working for the enlightenment of the younger minds and their security in South America, and this great teacher has been an overshadowing protection to the great soul whose vibration we can pick up easily.
One of the thirty-two great souls working in humanity carries on the humble trade of a water carrier in Egypt. I have met Yogis who told me that they were masters, and others who said that they were mahatmas, and one even here in London, claimed to be the avatar of this age and said that he was the “master of the masters,” but I am afraid that I had not the grace to enable me to perceive in these men the humanity and compassion that I have met in the unknown workers for the world. There are some Eastern Yogis in the West who are sincere and are quietly doing a great work, and they have our reverence and love. It is difficult to mix the East and the West through misunderstanding of customs and teaching, but we hope that in the future the West will have the grace of heart to listen and try to understand the instruction which the East has for the West. Likewise, we hope that those in the East may realize that the West also has something to teach it.
This is why travel is so important for the Western man, and why he should live amongst other peoples, races, and sects, in order that there may be mutual understanding for the common good.
Man should also seek to unify himself with the consciousness of nature, in order to familiarize himself with its different vibrations and densities. He should “listen in” for moments of instruction, for then he begins to realize the immensity of the universe in which he is living, and seeing the falsity around him, sooner or later seeks the path of wisdom. Man will never be happy until he seeks the sovereign good and, if once for a moment he stands in the Presence, then nothing else matters in this world but the attainment of Truth.
The control of any power in nature can be accomplished only when man gains a working knowledge of the control of the powers and forces which he has within himself. People are sometimes introduced to well-known personalities through reading their plays and books. They also project their minds towards people whose pictures they see, and whose characters they esteem and admire. Our thoughts towards such are tinged with the ideals which we form in our minds about them, and we project to them our finer qualities. This ennobles them and gives them strength, courage, and power.
When many minds are concentrated upon even an insensitive man, such as a public speaker, he will feel the pressure and it will enable him to give out a finer expression of his nature.
There are, however, other personalities who have not created favorable impressions upon our minds and, in our ignorance, our unguarded thoughts sometimes place into their atmosphere qualities and powers which reflect our feelings. We must remember that many people who are really great souls have fallen into ignorance (evil) through the practice of black magic. These people are “halfway houses,” or contacting points with the dark realms of the so-called evil beneath our feet, and those who surrender their souls into these regions are able to pass the powers of darkness into humanity, and contact people with the elemental and demoniac entities of nature and man.
Should you meet these bringers of misfortune to others, be non-resistant, and seek and speak of the good that you can perceive in them. This is a process of being negative to the attachment with which they seek to contact you. The world in general would laugh if we spoke of the great power which some of these black magicians possess, but the power of life and death is one of them.
The white magician works under the law of attraction, that which gives freedom to every living being. He makes no demands, for a demand brings forth opposition and limits freedom of expression. Love is something to be given freely, with no demands. When we give to another person, the giving brings about a karmic link with that person. In some countries Yogis will not receive or handle gifts of money from people, for they say freedom is limited and power of discretion is lacking when they receive money. Yet so potent is this second power in this world that few Yogis after all can resist its temptations.
People do not realize that the black magician, similar to the white magician, has at his beck and call myriads of forces, both elemental and elementary. There are spirits who, unknown to mortal man, follow the direction of his thought like locusts, to project into his atmosphere the so-called evil, and the so-called good.
We have seen the word “initiation” in books on mysticism and quietism. Initiation is the conscious attainment of illumination, of knowledge, and of power. It is an expansion of consciousness on the mental plane. It is a step on the rungs of the ladder to knowing oneself. The initiated student is like a man controlling an automobile; he can aid and assist his fellow beings, or he can ruthlessly destroy them. Thus initiation is the attainment of conscious power, whether good or evil.
Many of the younger magicians, in their circles, try to experiment, play tricks upon, and annoy people whom they hear well-spoken about. The Yogi often watches the effects of their experiments, and sees the astral entities which their minds and imaginations have created and sent out towards somebody. They do not realize that what they evoke and send out towards a person returns to them, just as a dog returns to his master. As these creations are conceived by the will and imagination of the operator, so they return to him and, if he is not careful, they will distort his imagination. Our asylums have many inmates with distorted imaginations, and the unbalanced imaginations of humanity unite and form a composite whole which, if contacted, may bring illusion to and transform a passive or a weak mind. Even doctors and attendants in asylums often tell you, “I just have to get out of here, or I shall go ‘batty’.”
Man should take great care always that he has a normal and healthy liver, for this is the seat in the body of man’s imagination. The “livery” man is never normal, nor his atmosphere healthy for others.
