When ma has passed through mahat, ma will still be ma; but ma will be united with mahat, and be a mahat-ma.
—The Zodiac.
THE
WORD
Vol. 11 | SEPTEMBER 1910 | No. 6 |
Copyright 1910 by H. W. PERCIVAL |
ADEPTS, MASTERS AND MAHATMAS
(Concluded)
WITH the subject of cleanliness, one learns about the subject of food. One who would enter the school of the masters must learn what are his needs of food, and what the kind and quantity which should be taken. The kind of food which he needs, to begin with, will depend upon his digestive and assimilative powers. Some get only a little nurture from much food. A few are able to get much nurture from little food. A man need not bother whether uncracked wheat, flaked rice, meat, fish or nuts, is the proper food for him. Honesty will tell him what he needs to eat. The kind of food needed for one self appointed in the school of the masters is of words and thoughts.
Words and thoughts are too simple for most people, but they will do for the disciple. They are what he needs. Words and thoughts are the food which one can make use of in the beginning and words and thoughts will be used ages hence, when he is more than human. At present, words are of little value and are only empty sounds, and thoughts can find no lodgment, and pass undigested through the mind. As one studies words and learns their meaning, they are to him as food. As he is able to see new things and old things in the words, he takes new mental life. He begins to think, and delights in thought as his food. He has new uses for his mental digestive tract.
At present, the minds of men are unable to digest words and assimilate thoughts. But to do this is incumbent on one who would be a disciple. Words and thoughts are his diet. If one cannot create them himself he must use such as he has. The mind takes, circulates, digests and assimilates its food by reading, listening, speaking, and thinking. Most people would object to take drugs and poisonous and indigestible stuff as food with their soups, salads and meats, lest that might cause injury and require the doctor; but they will read with avidity the latest yellow novel and family paper, with its rapes, murders, crookedness, corruption and abject worship of wealth and fashion’s latest excrescence. They will listen to slander and slander others, enjoying gossip over the tea or card table, at the opera or after church, and they will spend odd moments in planning social conquests, or think out new business ventures just inside the limits of law; this through the greater portion of the day, and at night their dreams are of what they have heard and thought and done. Many good things are done and there have been many kind thoughts and pleasant words. But the mind does not thrive on too mixed a diet. As a man’s body is made up of the food he eats, so a man’s mind is made up of the words and the thoughts which he thinks. One who would be a disciple of the masters needs simple food of plain words and wholesome thoughts.
Words are the creators of the world, and thoughts are the moving spirits in them. All physical things are seen to be words, and thoughts are alive in them. When one has learned somewhat of the subjects of cleanliness and food, when he is able to distinguish somewhat of the difference between his personality and the being who inhabits it, his body will have a new meaning for him.
Men are already in a measure conscious of the power of thought and they are using it, though rashly. Having found the giant power, they delight in seeing it do things, not questioning the right. It may cost much pain and sorrow before it is realized that thought can work harm as well as good, and more harm than good will be done by using thought as a moving power unless the processes of thought are known, the laws governing them obeyed, and those using that power are willing to keep a clean heart and tell no lie.
Thought is the power which causes man to live from life to life. Thought is the cause of what man is now. Thought is the power which creates his conditions and environment. Thought provides him with work and money and food. Thought is the real builder of houses, ships, governments, civilizations, and the world itself, and thought lives in all these. Thought is not seen by the eyes of man. Man looks through his eyes at the things which thought has built; he may see thought living in the things which it has built. Thought is a constant worker. Thought is working even through the mind that cannot see the thought in the things which it has built. As man sees thought in things, thought becomes ever more present and real. Those who cannot see the thought in things must serve their apprenticeship until they can, then they will become workers and later masters of thought instead of being driven blindly by it. Man is the slave of thought, even while he thinks himself its master. Huge structures appear at the command of his thought, rivers are changed and hills removed at his thought, governments are created and destroyed by his thought, and he thinks he is the master of thought. He disappears; and he comes again. Again he creates, and again disappears; and as often as he comes he will be crushed, until he learns to know thought and to live in the thought instead of its expression.
The brain of man is the womb in which he conceives and bears his thoughts. To know thought and the nature of thought, one must take a subject of thought and think about it and love it and be true to it, and work for it in the legitimate way which the subject itself will make known to him. But he must be true. If he allows his brain to entertain subjects of thought unfavorable to the one of his choice, he will be the lover of many and will cease to be the real lover of the one. His progeny will be his ruin. He will die, for thought will not have admitted him into its secret. He will not have learned the true power and purpose of thought.
One who will think only when and as long as he pleases to think, or one who thinks because it is his business to think, does not in reality think, that is, he does not go through the process of forming a thought as it should be formed, and he will not learn.
A thought goes through the process of conception, gestation and birth. And when one conceives and carries a thought through gestation and brings it to birth, then he will know of the power of thought, and that a thought is a being. To give birth to a thought, one must take a subject of thought and must ponder over it and be true to it, until his heart and his brain give warmth to it and arouse it. This may take many days or many years. When his subject responds to his brooding mind, his brain is quickened and he conceives the subject. This conception is as illumination. The subject is known to him, so it seems. But he does not yet know. He has only a germ of knowledge, the quickened germ of a thought. If he does not nurture it the germ will die; and as he fails to nurture germ after germ he will at last be unable to conceive a thought; his brain will become barren, sterile. He must go through the period of gestation of the thought and bring it to the birth. Many men conceive and give birth to thoughts. But few men will bear them well and bring them well formed to the birth, and fewer still are able or will follow the process of the development of thought patiently, consciously and intelligently to its birth. When they are able to do so, they can sense their immortality.
Those who are unable to conceive a thought and follow it through all its changes and periods of development and watch its birth and growth and power, should not weaken their minds and keep them immature by useless regrets and idle wishes. There is a ready means by which they may become mature for thought.
The means by which one may make himself mature and fit for thought is, first, to procure and apply the cleansing simple to the heart, and at the same time to study words. Words mean little to ordinary man. They mean much to those who know the power of thought. A word is an embodied thought. It is a thought expressed. If one will take a word and fondle it and look into it, the word which he takes will speak to him. It will show him its form and how it was made, and that word which before was to him an empty sound will impart to him its meaning as his reward for calling it to life and giving it companionship. One word after the other he may learn. Lexicons will give him a passing acquaintance with words. Writers who can make them will put him on more familiar footing. But he himself must choose them as his guests and companions. They will become known to him as he finds delight in their company. By such means a man will become fit and ready to conceive and bear a thought.
There are many subjects of thought which should come into the world, but men are not yet able to give them birth. Many are conceived but few are properly born. Men’s minds are unwilling fathers and their brains and hearts are untrue mothers. When one’s brain conceives, he is elated and the gestation begins. But mostly the thought is still-born or abortive because the mind and the brain are untrue. The thought which was conceived and which was to have come into the world and been expressed in proper form, suffers death often because the one who was carrying it has turned it to his selfish ends. Feeling the power, he has prostituted it to his own designs and turned the power to work out his ends. So that those who might have brought into the world thoughts which would have been great and good, have refused them birth and brought forth monstrosities in their place which do not fail to overtake and crush them. These monstrous things find fruitful soil in other selfish minds and do great harm in the world.
Most people who think that they are thinking do not think at all. They cannot or do not give birth to thoughts. Their brains are only the fields where are prepared still-born thoughts and abortive thoughts or through which pass the thoughts of other men. Not many men in the world are really thinkers. The thinkers supply the thoughts which are worked over and built up in the fields of other minds. The things that men mistake and which they think they think, are not legitimate thoughts; that is, they are not conceived and given birth by them. Much of the confusion will cease as people think less about many things and try to think more about fewer things.
One’s body should not be despised, nor should it be revered. It must be cared for, respected and valued. Man’s body is to be the field of his battles and conquests, the hall of his initiatory preparations, the chamber of his death, and the womb of his birth into each of the worlds. The physical body is each and all of these.
The greatest and noblest, the most secret and sacred function which the human body can perform is to give birth. There are many kinds of birth which it is possible for the human body to give. In its present state it is able to give physical birth only, and is not always fit for that work. The physical body may also give birth to an adept body, and through the physical body may also be born the master body and the mahatma body.
The physical body is developed and elaborated in the pelvic region and born from the place of sex. An adept body is developed in the abdominal region and passes through the abdominal wall. A master body is carried in the heart and ascends through the breath. The mahatma body is carried in the head and is born through the roof of the skull. The physical body is born into the physical world. The adept body is born into the astral world. The master body is born into the mental world. The mahatma body is born into the spiritual world.
People of good sense who have seriously questioned the probability whether there are such beings as adepts, masters or mahatmas, but who now believe that necessity demands them and that they are probable, will indignantly object when being told that adepts are born through the abdominal wall, masters are born from the heart and that the mahatma is born through the skull. If there are adepts, masters and mahatmas they must get into existence in some way, but in a grand, glorious and superior way, and one becoming to beings of their power and splendor. But to think of their being born through the body of a friend or one’s own body, the thought is shocking to one’s intelligence and the statement seems unbelievable.
Those to whom this seems shocking cannot be blamed. It is strange. Yet physical birth is as strange as other births. But if they will go back in memory to the years of early childhood, perhaps they will recall that they then experienced a shock quite as severe. Their minds were little concerned with views of themselves and of the world around them. They knew that they were living and that they came from somewhere and were content in the thought until some other child explained, and then they were taunted or dared to ask mother. Those days have passed; we live in others now. Yet, though older, we are children still. We live; we expect death; we look forward to immortality. Like children, we suppose it will be in some miraculous way, but concern our minds little about it. People are willing to be immortal. The mind leaps at the thought. The churches of the world are monuments to the heart’s desire for immortality. As when children, our modesty, good sense and learning feel shocked at hearing of births of immortal bodies. But the thought becomes easier as we grow older.
The disciple of the masters regards his body differently than when he was a child of the world. As he cleans his heart with honesty, and will not lie, his heart becomes a womb, and in purity of thought he conceives in his heart a thought; he conceives the master thought; that is the immaculate conception. At an immaculate conception the heart becomes a womb and has the functions of a womb. At such times the organs of the body bear a different relation to each other than at a physical conception. There is an analogous process in all manners of birth.
Physical bodies have seldom been conceived in purity. They have usually been—because conceived in unrighteousness—born in pain and fear, afflicted by disease and succumbed to death. Were physical bodies to be conceived in purity, carried through the period of gestation to birth in purity, and were then intelligently bred, there would live in them men of such physical might and power that death would find it hard to overtake them.
For physical bodies to be conceived in purity, both the man and woman must pass through a period of mental probation and bodily preparation before conception should be allowed. When the physical body is used for legitimatized or other prostitution, it is unfit to usher worthy human bodies into the world. For some time yet bodies will come into the world as they now do. Virtuous minds seek worthy bodies in which to incarnate. But all human bodies fashioned are for minds awaiting their readiness to enter. Different and worthy physical bodies must be ready and await the superior minds of the new race to come.
After physical conception and before the foetus has taken new life, it finds its nurture within its chorion. After it has found life and until birth, its food is supplied by the mother. Through her blood the foetus is fed from the heart of its mother.
At an immaculate conception there is a change in the relation of the organs. At the immaculate conception, when the heart has become the womb for the preparation of the master body, the head becomes the heart which feeds it. The master thought conceived in the heart is sufficient to itself until the growing body takes new life. Then the head, as the heart, must furnish the food which will bring the new body to birth. There is a circulation of thought between the heart and head as there is between the foetus and the heart of its mother. The foetus is a physical body and nourished by blood. The master body is a body of thought and must be nourished by thought. Thought is its food and the food by which the master body is fed must be pure.
When the heart is sufficiently cleansed it receives a germ fashioned of the quintessence of its life. Then there descends a ray through the breath which fecundates the germ in the heart. The breath which thus comes is the breath of the father, the master, one’s own higher mind, not incarnate. It is a breath which is clothed in the breath of the lungs and comes into the heart and descends and quickens the germ. The master body ascends and is born through the breath.
The body of the mahatma is conceived in the head when the male and the female germs of the same body are there met by a ray from above. When this great conception takes place, the head becomes the womb where it is conceived. As in foetal development the womb becomes the most important organ in the body and the entire body contributes to its building up, so when the heart or head are acting as a womb the entire body is used primarily and principally to contribute to the support of the heart and head.
The heart and head of man are not yet ready to be the centers of operations for the body of a master or a mahatma. They are now centers from which are born words and thoughts. Man’s heart or head are as wombs in which he conceives and gives birth to things of weakness, strength, beauty, power, love, crime, vice and all that is in the world.
The generative organs are the centers of procreation. The head is the creative center of the body. It can be used as such by man, but one who would make of it the womb of creation must respect and honor it as such. At present, men use their brains for purposes of fornication. When put to that use, the head is incapable of giving birth to great or good thoughts.
One who appoints himself as disciple in the school of the masters, and even to any noble purpose of life, may consider his heart or head as the fashioners and birthplaces of his thoughts. One who has pledged himself in thought to the immortal life, one who knows that his heart or head is the holy of holies, can no longer live the life of the sensuous world. If he tries to do both, his heart and head will be as places of fornication or adultery. The avenues leading to the brain are channels along which illicit thoughts enter for intercourse with the mind. These thoughts must be kept out. The way to prevent them is to clean the heart, choose worthy subjects of thought and to speak truthfully.
Adepts, masters and mahatmas may be taken as subjects of thought and they will be of benefit to the thinker and his race. But these subjects will be of benefit to those only who will use their reason and best judgment in the consideration. No statement made concerning this matter should be accepted unless it appeals to the mind and heart as true, or unless it is borne out and substantiated by one’s experience and observation of life, and seems reasonable as in harmony with the future progress, evolution and development of man.
The preceding articles on adepts, masters and mahatmas may be of benefit to the man of good judgment, and they can do him no harm. They may also be of benefit to the rash man if he will heed the advice given and not attempt to do things which he infers from what he reads but which have not been written.
The world has been informed about adepts, masters and mahatmas. They will not press their presence upon men, but will wait until men can live and grow into it. And men will live and grow into it.
Two worlds seek entrance or recognition into the mind of man. Mankind is now deciding which of the worlds it will prefer: the astral world of the senses or the mental world of the mind. Man is unfit to enter either, but he will learn to enter one. He cannot enter both. If he decides for the astral world of the senses and works for that, he will come under the notice of the adepts, and in this life or those to come he will be their disciple. If he decides for the development of his mind he will as truly in time to come be recognized by the masters, and be a disciple in their school. Both must use their minds; but he of the senses will use his mind to get or produce the things of the senses and obtain entrance to the inner sense world, and as he tries to think of it and holds the thought in his mind and will work to gain entrance, the inner sense world, the astral world, will become more and more real to him. It will cease to be a speculation and may be known to him a reality.
He who would know the masters and enter the mental world must devote the power of his thought to the development of his mind, to calling into use the faculties of his mind independently of his senses. He should not ignore the inner sense world, the astral world, but if he senses it he should try to use his faculties until it disappears. In thinking and even by trying to think of the mental world, the mind becomes attuned to it.
Only a slight partition, a veil, divides man’s thought from the mental world, and though it is ever present and his native realm, it seems strange, foreign, unknown, to the exile. Man will remain an exile until he has earned and has paid his ransom.
The End