London Lectures of 1907 | Page 4

working on the consciousness, before you can raise it to
that power from which it shall be able to organise your astral body, as it
has already organised your physical body. That is the reason why
meditation is necessary in all these things; because without the creative
power of thought we cannot organise the body in the world which is
nearest to the physical.
Now, supposing that we recognise that our consciousness working in
the physical brain, the instrument over which we have complete control,
is continually at work contacting the outer world, using the brain as an
instrument on which it can play, and continually bringing down from
higher worlds impressions which it transmits more or less perfectly to
the physical plane, we need not dwell upon our ordinary thinking. Let
us take thinking a little more unusual, where the finer part of the brain,
its etheric matter, is being more largely vitalised, more definitely used.
The powers of the imagination--the creative power--the artistic powers,
all creative in their nature, these utilise most the ethers of the brain, and,
by working in those, bring into activity the lower and coarser matter of
the dense brain. Now, the thought passes from the consciousness
through vehicle after vehicle to find its clear expression here. But do
you not have many mental impressions that are not clear, not well
defined, and yet which impress you deeply, and of which you feel sure?
They are of many kinds, and reach you in many ways. What is
important to you is simply this for the moment: that being surrounded
by the astral and mental worlds, contacts from these are continually
touching you, continually causing changes in your consciousness. If
your astral body were thoroughly organised like your physical, the
impressions made would be clear and sharp like the physical. If your
mental body were well organised, the impressions of that plane, the
heavenly plane, would be clear and sharp like the physical. But as the
astral and mental bodies at this stage of evolution are not well
organised, the impressions received by them, causing changes in the
consciousness, are vague and indeterminate, and it is these which are
generally called "psychic." And when you have a Psychical Research
Society, it is not dealing with the ordinary processes of thought, but

with those which are not ordinary; and all those things to which it gives
many strange names are all workings of the consciousness, in sheaths
or bodies of which it has not yet gained the mastery, which it has not
yet definitely organised for its purposes. Slowly and gradually they
become organised, and strenuous thinking is the method for the astral
body, and the working of the pure reason is the method for the mental
body. Let us consider with regard to this, whether there is any other
way of bringing the astral body and mental body into activity. For you
may have noticed that I used the word "normal" evolution, orderly
evolution on the lines of natural evolution, always from above. But you
may stimulate it from below. It is possible to stimulate the astral body,
at least, from the physical plane, but you do it at the cost of higher
evolution a little later on, and the reason you can do it is simple enough.
In the astral body are all the centres of your senses. You know how
after death a man's desires are the same as they were during his
physical life. You know how in dreams your desires resemble desires
that you may have in your waking consciousness. The centre of all your
psychic powers, of your conscious powers, the centres of these are in
the astral, and if (especially with your senses, each of which has its own
centre in the astral body) you overstrain the physical senses down here,
you will get an action on the astral plane, but an unhealthy, because
disorderly one, one not going along the line of evolution but trying to
create from below instead of from above. None the less, you may have
some results, and in the two famous Indian systems for developing the
powers of the consciousness, and for unfolding the consciousness itself,
you have this recognised, and you read of Râja Yoga and of Hatha
Yoga, of the Kingly Yoga and of the Yoga of Effort. The Yoga of
Effort is Hatha Yoga, and is practised by physical means and followed
by physical effects. The eye is stimulated in certain ways, and the effect
of straining the physical eye is to bring about a certain limited kind of
clairvoyance. You can gain it in that way by gazing into crystals, and
so on. They do stimulate the centre of physical sight, but not the astral;
and that is why they