London Lectures of 1907 | Page 6

schools of the "left hand path" in India will use
spirits, wines, meats of all sorts, in order to bring about a certain astral
condition, and they succeed, because by these means they attract to
themselves, and for a time govern, the elemental powers of those lower
planes--the elementals of the lower astral worlds. So that you may find
that an Indian, who knows a little of this and wants to use it for his own
purposes, will deliberately use these things which are attractive to the
elementals of those lower worlds, and gather them around him and use
them. But he does it knowing what he does, and aiming at that which
he desires to conquer. But amongst those who practise black magic of
the higher kinds--of the mental kinds--you have an asceticism as stern
and rigid as has ever been used by those who are trying to develop their
higher bodies for nobler ends. It is a mistake to think that the brothers
of the dark side are, as a rule, licentious and indifferent to what you call
morality. On the contrary, they are exceedingly strict. Their faults are

the faults of the mind, not the faults of the lower desires, of the organs
of the different bodies which may gratify them. Their faults are the
more dangerous faults of mental powers misused for personal ends. But
they realise very well that if they want the mental powers and the
higher ranges of those powers, they must be as rigid in the discipline of
the lower bodies as any pupil of the White Lodge could be. Take it,
then, that to develop in this way, a regimen for the bodies, as well as
the strict working and training of the mind, is absolutely necessary. But
with these the result is sure. You cannot set a time for the result, for it
depends where the worker is beginning in his present life. In all these
matters Nature's laws will not permit of what is called miraculous
growth, and if you find persons developing psychic powers very
rapidly, when perhaps they have been meditating only a few months, it
is because in a previous life they have cultivated these powers and are
taking up their lessons again in a more advanced class of evolution, and
not in the infant class, as many do in the present life. So that there are
differences. Some now beginning are not likely to succeed in their
present incarnation; but if that discourages them, one can only say: "If
you do not do it now, you will have to begin again next life, and so on
and on and on. For Nature's laws cannot be violated, and Nature knows
no favoritism and no partiality. Some time or other you have to begin,
and the sooner you begin the sooner will you succeed."
Now the whole of this, you will remark, is the training, the organising
of bodies. And psychism implies that. You must train, purify, organise,
in order that the powers of the consciousness may show forth. You will
see very fully now why at the beginning I urged you to realise that the
whole of these manifestations are similar in kind, so that when you find
someone saying to you: "Oh! So-and-so is a psychic," as though that
were to condemn the person; "Such-and-such a person is a mere
clairvoyant," and so on, as though the fact of possessing clairvoyance
were a disadvantage rather than an advantage; then the proper answer is:
"Are you prepared to go the whole way with that?" Many Indians do so
(it is the point to which I said I would return); they say that the siddhis,
the powers of consciousness manifested on the lower planes, are
hindrances to the spiritual life. And so they are in a sense. The spiritual
life goes inwards: all psychic powers go outwards. It is the same Self in

either case--the Self turning inwards on Itself, or the Self going
outwards to the world of objects. But it does not make one scrap of
difference whether it goes out to physical, astral, or mental objects: it is
all the objective consciousness, and therefore the very reverse of the
spiritual. But the Indian does not shrink from that as ordinarily the man
in the West does. He is perfectly honest. He says: "Yes, the powers of
the intellect applied to the objects of the world are a hindrance in the
spiritual life. We do not want them, do not care to think about it. We
give up all the objects of the physical plane when seeking the Self."
And if you are prepared to say that, then by all means turn aside from
psychism, but do not at one and the same time encourage intellectuality
on