London Lectures of 1907 | Page 3

mind cannot any longer be regarded as the results of
vibrations in the physical brain, that at least we must go beyond these
limitations when dealing with the results of the study of consciousness,
as it is now studied amongst scientific men. They will no longer, then,
regard thought as the product of matter. They certainly will not be
prepared to go as far as I now propose to go, and say that the thinking
organism is the production of thought--the very antithesis, you will
agree, of the other position, but which is vital to the understanding of
the unfolding of the powers of consciousness through matter. It is
recognised in ordinary biology that the function appears before the
organ. There I am on safe scientific ground. It is recognised that the
exercise of the function gradually builds up the organ. All the
researches into the simpler forms of organisms go to prove that. It is
also recognised that when the exercise of the function has built the
organ in a very simple form, the exercise of the function continually
improves the organ which originally it builded. So far we are hand in
hand with ordinary science. I think I shall not go too far in saying that a
large number of the more scientific psychologists of to-day will at least
agree that the brain as you find it in the adult man is very largely the
result of the exercise of thinking through the earlier years of life. I do
not think they would go so far as to say that thinking has literally
produced it. They would, however, judging by very many things that
have been said, be willing to admit that by hard thinking we can
improve our apparatus of thought. That is one reason for thinking
hard--in order to think better. And the harder you think, the more will
your thinking instrument improve.

In my next step, however, I cannot by any stretching of ordinary
science persuade it to accompany me, or give me a foundation; for the
point is that your consciousness, working on the next plane above the
one on which the organ of consciousness is being built, is the shaper of
that mechanism. To put it concretely: your physical brain is built up
from the astral plane, and it is your consciousness working in matter
finer than the physical which builds up the brain in the forming child
within the limits laid down by karma. Now, that is a general law for
healthy evolution. You will see the importance of this law a little
further on. Every body which we possess--physical, astral, mental,
buddhic--is always built up by consciousness working in the plane next
above it; the next plane, or world, is a world very much more "next"
than you are next each other sitting here--not far away beyond the stars,
removed by great spaces. It is interpenetrating you in every portion of
your being. It is only "next" in the sense that the solids, liquids, and
gases of your bodies are next each other in the body--not far away, but
here. So that the working is of the closest and most intimate kind. Some
of you who are students of Theosophical literature will remember that
H.P.B. has spoken of all of us as working in the astral consciousness.
You will see that you are not working with a physical consciousness in
the literal sense of the term, if you think for a moment. How much do
you know of the consciousness working in the various cells and tissues
of your physical body? Practically nothing, except when you are ill.
Only when the body is disorganised do you become conscious of that
working. Normally, the motion of your blood, the building up by
assimilation of your muscles and nerves, the life of your cells, the
protective action of some of the living cells in your body--the
"devourers," as they are called--go on without your knowledge, without
your thought, without your giving one moment's conscious attention to
them. In the Perfect Man, the consciousness of all this is ever present,
but in us, imperfect, it is not; we are not yet sufficiently vitalised and
unfolded to carry on the whole of our consciousness, with full
awareness of all its activities. We are only able to manage a very small
part of it, and so have let go the consciousness that keeps at work the
physical body, to concentrate ourselves in a higher world, and utilise
the nervous mechanism as the apparatus of our thinking. That law
obtains, then, all through. If you want to organise and build up your

astral body, you can only do it from the mental plane. You must raise
your thought to a higher power by concentration, by regular meditation,
by deliberately