Watchful Introspection

Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography is the ponderous title of a good book by the New Thought-pioneer, Henry Wood, in which he begins a chapter (or perhaps it was a chapter in his The New Thought Simplified) with an anecdote about a boy who answered, when admonished not to whistle, 'I ain't whistlin'. It whistles itself.' So it is with the activity of the brain-cells in most of us. 'It thinks itself' is a pretty accurate description of what happens to us all day long.

One evening at dinner with one of our affiliates who has begun these concentration exercises, various points on concentration came up. Among other thoughts, he said, 'The most astonishing thing that I have learned is that we do not think. We are thought. I begin to hold an image, and perhaps two minutes later find myself thinking about the potatoes I had for dinner, and this without any realization of the moment when my attention began to wander.'

To be able to recognize this is encouraging. Many practice a long time without noticing their 'breaks.' Some pupils have assured us that they only made ten or eleven breaks in the course of five minutes. This means simply that they haven't learned how to watch. Ten breaks in five minutes would be an average of one every thirty seconds, and if you can really hold a selected image steady for thirty seconds you do not need this course at all. For the Yogis teach that when the thinking principle can be restrained from taking any but a selected form for twelve seconds, that is Dharana, or concentration. And Dharana prolonged becomes Dhyana, or meditation, which is defined by Patanjali in the third chapter of the Yoga Sutras: 'A prolonged holding of the receiving consciousness in that region is meditation' (that is, in the region selected as a focal point of concentration.)

What really happens to many people who suppose themselves to be concentrating is that they disconnect attention altogether from the associative processes of the mind. This is what is done when we follow any of those directions for 'going into the silence' which bid us make the mind passive, and try to think of nothing. DON'T TRY TO MAKE YOUR MIND A BLANK. To do so is to invite anarchy in the brain-cells. Not only anarchy in your own brain-cells, but susceptibility to every vagrant thought-form that may be in your neighborhood. Remember that your personality exists on more planes than one, and that within and above the physical (in the sense that the finer rates of vibration are higher, just as the more rapidly vibrating notes of the musical scale are 'higher') there are forms of Life which seek externalization through physical vehicles. Some of these forms are beneficent, some are hostile, some are best described as 'sprites.' If you relinquish command of your brain-cells by becoming passive and making your mind a blank, you give up all power of selection. Remarkable phenomena may result from this kind of 'development,' but you never can tell what will happen, nor can you ever be sure that the same 'forces' will come twice in succession. You will be played upon, but you yourself will not gain the least bit of added control over your brain-activities, or over the finer forces of your being.

That some people who make themselves passive perform works of healing, speak in strange tongues, describe distant scenes, get apparently authentic messages from the departed, and deliver wonderful inspirational addresses is true. But these people are puppets of forces they do not understand, and they do not ripen with the passage of time. Their spiritual stature is not increased, their own latent forces are not unfolded, their store of wisdom is not tapped. Such people have performed a great service to the world, for they have forced upon a materialistic age the realization that besides the forces perceived by the senses there are other subtler modes of the One Life in which we all share. We believe that in the long run they will be compensated for this work, because it is a tremendous sacrifice. For theirs is not the way of mastery, and in taking it they impose upon themselves the necessity of a greater number of incarnations, in order to restore the balance which is disturbed by passive surrender to the elemental vibrations of the etheric and astral planes. We look upon them as self-immolated victims, but we would not have you among their number.

For the time has passed when the world needs to be convinced at such tremendous cost. And there is great need for skilled workers in another field. The Great Work now demands adepts in the conscious direction of these forces to which the passive must needs blindly surrender. The call has gone forth from Those Beyond for those trained by patient practice in the command of these groups of living beings which our physiologists call "brain-centers" and "sympathetic ganglia." Such command is not to be achieved by the person who practices making his mind a blank, who endeavors to think about nothing.

Concentration is not this. It is, says Patanjali, the restraint of the thinking principle from taking various forms. Psychologists would call it the restraint of the tendency of the mind to make associations of ideas. Not one person in ten thousand has sufficient command of this associative activity even to direct it in a predetermined course. Not one in fifty thousand is able to check it altogether. hat one in fifty thousand who can really stop the association of ideas has not gained his power by becoming passive. On the contrary, his adeptship (for such a man is deserving the title of adept) is the fruit of long and patient, and watchful training.

When we first begin we do not notice the breaks, because we do not really see what goes on in the mental field at all. We really have some moments of oblivion, and do not notice when the image chosen slips out of range, nor when it comes back. The result is that we think we have been attending to it much longer than we really have. Be on your guard against this. Almost everybody experiences it when such practice as this is first begun.

In the preceding lesson we said we should have something to say about introspection. All that you have just read is by way of preparation. For the essence of introspection is watchfulness, and this intense, alert observation of what is happening in your mental field is just the opposite from the passivity of the person who is trying "to think of nothing."

Introspection, called Pratyahara in the Yoga Sutras begins as mere attentive observation of the current of images flowing through the mental field. Before beginning this practice you should understand that there is a sense in which the production of these images may be thought of as being almost automatic. If you keep this in mind you will escape the horror which assails some people the moment they find out what is really going on just below the surface of consciousness.

To understand what is happening you must remember that the subconsciousness contains a great deal of experience that you have absorbed without knowing anything whatever about it. The most respectable spinster in New York, for instance, undoubtedly has tucked away in her memory a complete vocabulary of slang, profanity and obscenity. For we are all exposed daily to the language of the gutters, and although we refuse to attend to the filth which assails our ears, we hear it just the same, and our brain-cells record everything. In like manner there are stored away in our brains hundreds of phrases in foreign tongues, thousands of facts and names and faces, thousands of impressions of scenes of which we have no conscious recollection. And from this tremendous mass of images -- some beautiful, some horrible -- the process of association brings up all sorts of things. And not only does it bring up the duplicates of long-forgotten and partly never-realized experience, but it brings up, too, fantastic combinations of these elements -- strange beasts like the Snark, the Jabberwock and the Mock Turtle in the Alice stories.

You must not hold yourself responsible for this. Some people have been driven almost to desperation when they found their minds echoing with phrases like those we see chalked up on blank walls everywhere. They have come to us, convinced that they were either going insane, or that they must be terribly depraved. Nothing of the sort. It is all perfectly natural, and all the working of a law that you can utilize to produce marvelous results, once you learn to command it.

Begin, then, by watching the mental images as they rise. They will be as varied as a crowd of people passing in the street. As you sit by your mental window you will see all sorts and conditions of thoughts go past. Some will be clean and beautiful. Some will be dirty, and unspeakably ugly. Let them pass. Be careful not to detain any of them at this point in your practice. There will be a temptation to do so, when some lovely image comes along. Resist it for the present. Just watch, until you learn the first lesson from introspection which is: unless controlled, the process of association is purely automatic, and is not in any sense to be regarded as a self-conscious function.

If we could go no farther than this, however, our case would be hopeless indeed. The second exercise in Pratyahara gives us encouragement. Simply by intending that the flow of the images past your mental observation-post shall be slower, you will find that it really does slacken in speed. Do not make the mistake of trying to check the images one by one by holding onto any of them. Simply will the procession to move more slowly, and you will find that it does. "Will," perhaps, is not quite the right word. Probably "expect" is better. Calmly expect the slackening of the speed of association, and wait patiently but confidently. What you expect will happen, and then you will have learned your second lesson: the speed of association can be modified by expectant attention.

Perfection in slowing down the associations will not come all at once. This is what Vivekananda has to tell us on this subject:

"How hard it is to control the mind. Well has it been compared to the maddened monkey. There was a monkey, restless by his own nature, as all monkeys are. As if that were not enough someone made him drink freely of wine, so that he became still more restless. Then a scorpion stung him. When a man is stung by a scorpion he jumps about for a whole day, so the poor monkey found his condition worse than ever. To complete this misery a demon entered into him. What language can describe the uncontrollable restlessness of that monkey? The human mind is like that monkey; incessantly active by its own nature, then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy of others whose desires meet with fulfillment, and last of all the demon of pride takes possession of the mind, making it think itself of all importance. How hard to control such a mind."

"The first lesson, then, is to sit for some time and let the mind run on. The mind is bubbling up all the time. It is like that monkey jumping about. Let the monkey jump as much as he can; you simply wait and watch. Knowledge is power says the proverb, and that is true. Until you know what the mind is doing you cannot control it. Give it the full length of the reins; many most hideous thoughts may come into it; you will be astonished that it was possible for you to think such thoughts. But you will find that each day the mind's vagaries are becoming less and less violent, that each day it is becoming calmer. In the first few months you will find that the mind will have a thousand thoughts, later you will find that it is toned down to perhaps seven hundred, and after a few more months it will have fewer and fewer, until at last it will be under perfect control, but we must patiently practice every day. As soon as the steam is turned on the engine must run, and as soon as things are before us we must perceive; so a man, to prove that he is not a machine, must demonstrate that he is under the control of nothing. This controlling of the mind, and not allowing it to join itself to the centres, is Pratyahara. How is this practiced? It is a long work, not to be done in a day. Only after a patient, continuous struggle for years can we succeed.'

It takes years, that is, to gain perfect mastery; but long before perfection comes we may experience the benefits of introspection. The beginner at music has to play little pieces to parlor audiences before he makes his appearance on the concert stage. Does he refuse to practice because he cannot be a Rubinstein the first year? This thirst for immediate results -- any thirst for results, indeed, -- has a touch of indecency about it. It drives people who like to call themselves 'occult students' from teacher to teacher, sets them to playing Indian in one 'Order' after another, and provides an endless supply of gulls for the exploiters of 'easy methods.' Can you give me a better reason for practicing concentration than the one advanced by Vivekananda?: 'A man, to prove that he is not a machine, must demonstrate that he is under the control of nothing.'

Assertion is not demonstration. Affirmations are not demonstrations. Going about saying, 'I believe every human being has free-will' won't help you a bit to demonstrate that you aren't just a puppet on the strings of the currents of thought and emotion which impinge upon your brain-cells from all points of the compass. Practice is the only thing that will enable you to demonstrate that while your whole personality -- your body, your emotions, your mind or consciousness in all of its three planes -- is incontestably a machine, YOU. The Self behind it all, the MAN behind the personality, the GOD behind the human mask, are really a center of Free Will, controlling the whole of this complex vehicle of your self-expression.

We echo my friend and teacher (though I knew him not in the flesh), that great Seer, Jacob Boehme: 'It is not I who write these things. This that you see is but a simple-minded and foolish old man. These things are of the love of God.' It is not Paul Case telling you to practice. It is not Paul Case sounding the call to make yourself fit for service. It is the God in you, speaking to you from this page, announcing to you the miracle of His mastery of your life, laying before you the perfect beauty of His law of mastery. Will you answer that one with a whine about practical benefits, or are you ripe enough to give the only answer that is an honest one, the answer of hard work?

Three paths lie before you now on the Way of Return, and as best we can we shall try to let the light that has come down to us from those who have gone before illuminate them, so that you may the better understand the real purport of your practice for this lesson.

All of them are paths of projection. On the Tree of Life they are the 26th, the 25th and the 24th, the paths of OIN, SAMEKH and NUN.

The first is the path of the Dweller on the Threshold, and this is that Terror which we have tried to mitigate a little for you by telling you beforehand of the horrors you will encounter when you begin the practice of introspection. It is the path of THE DEVIL in the Tarot, and what says the Scripture? 'Resist the devil, and he will flee.' And how shall we resist him? Not as so many have tried to do, only to find themselves in worse bondage than ever. Not by repression, not by shuddering aversion which imputes to the phantom a power he does not possess, not by looking some other way, and pretending that he is not there. None of these is the prophylactic method. None of these is the way of the priests of old Egypt, who washed their hearts with laughter.

That is what is behind Vivekananda's comparison of the mind to the antics of a monkey. We all laugh at monkeys. So should we laugh at the devil. And the devil is only a personification of the unrestrained activity of the subconscious power of the association. It is a personification developed in the animistic ages when there was no science of psychology, and when men misunderstood the voices and the visions which come sometimes so sharp and definite that they seem like objective realities. All the demons that tempt us are nothing but the results of unrestrained associations rising from the subconsciousness. We must learn to laugh at them, as we would laugh at a monkey.

Approach your introspection exercises, therefore, prepared to be amused, not frightened, at the monsters that will appear before your astonished gaze. Remember that all this is merely the automatism of an uncurbed mind. Observe it with cool, impassive interest, and you cannot fail to be amused.

Just take a look at the picture of the DEVIL in the Tarot. Isn't he laughable? The essence of mirth, we are told, is incongruity, and this whole picture is a mass of incongruous details. It is as ridiculous as the theological idea that a God of love could permit the existence of a devil, as mirth-provoking to anybody with a sense of humor as the notion of hell.

Remember, too, that this is the path of the Renewing Intelligence, of which it is written: 'Thereby God -- blessed be He! -- reneweth all which is capable of renovation in the creation of the world.' In Lesson 2 of this Section. I have written at length about THE DEVIL, and now let me add something to confirm what I said about the number of the path (26) and the number of the card (XV) showing that this is really a picture of the Life-Power.

The name of the path is the clue. 'Renewing' in Hebrew is spelt מחודש, and its numeration is 358, the numeration alike to נחש, the tempter, and of משיח, the Redeemer. Truly our Elder Brethren in the Secret Wisdom have blazed here a trail so plain that he who runs may read! And consider one by one the Tarot Keys corresponding to the letters of מחודש.

First comes the HANGED MAN (מ), the symbol of the path which, on the Way of Return has its beginning in HOD and leads upward to GEBURAH. 'I look forward with confidence to the perfect realization of the Eternal Splendor of the Limitless Light,' we say, and so saying, take a position which is exactly the inversion of that held by the masses of humanity, who look forward with fear and terror to all sorts of evils which they imagine to be hid by the veil of the Future. Because we look forward with such confidence, we expect a day when not only we ourselves shall be at one with the perfect Law of the cosmic life. We anticipate a time when our full surrender to that Law will change it from PACHAD, the inspirer of fear, to GEBURAH the source of our strength, and DIN, the clear-eyed recognition of the undeviating Justice of the perfect law. This is not the outlook of the world, and he in whom it has become vital and compelling lives as Boehme advises us to live: 'In all things walk thou contrary to the world.' He who so walks does nothing of himself, is in all things as one suspended from the Tree of Life, seeing always that not his personality, but the One Life, is the performer of all action, the speaker of all words, the thinker of all thoughts. Thus, in the midst of action he does nothing, in the midst of speech he is silent, and in the midst of the thinking of which his brain is the vehicle he remains unmoved. Such is the beginning of the renewal of the mind.

The next Key is the CHARIOT, and this Key represents the perfection of what the Hindus call Kriya Yoga, 'working towards Yoga.' Vivekananda gives an almost perfect description of this Key in his commentary on the first sutra in the second chapter of Patanjali's book:

'The organs are the horses, the mind is the reins, the intellect is the charioteer, and this body is the chariot. The master of the household, the King, the Self of man is sitting in this chariot.' In the Tarot the King and the Charioteer are one, and that one is the Warrior, the Conqueror of Whom it is written: 'Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest, be not thou the warrior.' He is the Nike, too, of the Apocalypse, concerning whom it is written, 'To him that overcometh I will give a crown of life.' When the personality has become as the HANGED MAN, then is it transformed into the CHARIOT of the Divine Self, and all that makes up the personality becomes a vehicle for the ONE. This is the second step of renewal.

The third Key is the HIEROPHANT (1). When the personality has become the vehicle of the One Life, then the VOICE of that Life speaks in the silence which follows the hurly-burly of our identification with personality, and the revelation of the mysteries begins. Then is the inner ear opened, and we hear the secret word which unites us to the ONE. The beginning of this way is in the mental attitude expressed by our fourth affirmation, which corresponds to Chesed, for the path of the HIEROPHANT leads up from Chesed to Chokmah. When we say 'From the exhaustless riches of its limitless substance I draw all things needful, both spiritual and material,' we are turning to the only source of instruction open to any man. The illusion of separateness makes us look to books and teachers for light, but they set nothing before us but symbols, and unless the Interpreter within the Temple expounds the meaning of those symbols we learn nothing from what we read or hear. And until we silence the clamor of personality we cannot hear His voice, for it is a voice that must be listened for, even as Elijah found it, a still, small voice. And the listening is the third stage of our renewal.

The fourth KEY is the EMPRESS (2). And this is the Key of the path which leads us back from Understanding to Wisdom. And the Understanding is knowledge of the limitations imposed upon all things and creatures in the Without by the working of the perfect Law. It is understanding of the great truth that even as fences keep cattle from straying out of fields where they may feed, and losing themselves in desert places, so do the obstacles which seem to hedge us about prevent us from leaving the field marked out for each of us to cultivate. For the Sephirah of Understanding is the sphere of Saturn, and the last Key of the Tarot shows us that Saturn, Lord of Limitation, is really the world-consciousness which gives meaning and definition to the dance of life. It is the law that Life, to express itself, must take on form, and when form is understood it is seen to be our opportunity. So from Understanding springs the path of LOVE, and that Love, remember, is what the alchemists called Venus, or Copper, the metal whose name in Hebrew is also the name of the serpent of temptation, N Ch Sh. Love, sprung from Understanding, the perfect Love which casts out fear, the unfailing Love whose sphere on the Tree of Life is VICTORY, is the fourth stage of our renewal.

The fifth and last Key is JUDGMENT (ש), and this is the Key of that transmuting Fire which is identical with the Life-Breath assigned to the path of Aleph. For Sh=300, and 300=RVCh ALHIM, Ruach Elohim, the Life-Breath of the gods (who so long imagine themselves to be but mortal men), and that same RVCh is the keen, sharp air of superconsciousness which takes us up the path of Aleph back to the Crown. Yet the pat of Aleph and the path of Shin are really one, and this is why our Brother, Eliphas Levi, sworn to conceal the mystery of the Tarot, did nevertheless reveal it by attributing the FOOL to the path of Shin. For the FOOL and JUDGMENT are two aspects on one thing, even as the AIR which is assigned to Kether as its sphere of action and the Mercury which is assigned to Hod are also one. In JUDGMENT we see the regenerated soul ascending as a little child, and the sphere into which he ascends is that of which we say "I look forward to the perfect realization of the Eternal Splendor of the Limitless Light." The Child and the Fool are One, and the regenerating fire of the Path of Shin is the Life-Breath of the path of Aleph. For the Child is the Christ, and the Fool is the Christ as well, the Messiah, the anointed one, even as Waite says, "a prince of another world."

And in the Fire of the letter Shin the DEVIL is cast, becoming one with that fire, and ceasing forevermore to scare the Child with his gargoyle visage. For the Devil is God misunderstood, and when misunderstanding ceases the Devil ceases too, and we see that the grinning monster of the 26th Path, the terrible Dweller on the Threshold, is only the purifying fire of the Great Divine Life-Breath.

So, this grinning ape that we watch, this bubbling witches' caldron of subconscious cerebration that we must learn to laugh at, is really the power that shall finally set us free. For it is the very same power of association that gets us into trouble now, which will enable us to find the way to union with the Self. That is why I have given you a whole year's work at learning the wonderful language in which the sages have set down the directions for the wayfarer on the path of Return. All this Qabalah and all this symbolism in the Tarot give the necessary materials for subconscious association to work upon. But you will not be able to use these materials, as I have used them in these last few pages, until you have had some practice in the stilling of the mind. For until you can stop activity you cannot master it, and to stop this dancing monkey there is just one way, the one outlined early in this lesson.

The 25th path corresponds to the Key of TEMPERANCE. It is the path of testing, the path of trial, wherein one fails who has not done the work of the 25th path. For this is the path of Samekh, remember, and its essential meaning is shown in the significance of that letter's name -- a prop, a support. The tests that come to us in the path are such as we may not meet unless we are truly resting our lives upon the firm foundation of Eternal Being. And so this path leads upward from YESOD to Tiphareth, and its color shows us that it is essentially the same as the path which leads upward from Tiphareth to Kether. For both paths are blue, and thus both correspond to the Moon.

This correspondence escapes those who cannot correlate symbols. Why is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, assigned to a path that shows its essential nature is that of the Moon? We hear this question often. But consider. One aspect of the sign Sagittarius we have learned to identify with Iris, the goddess of the rainbow. Yet Iris, like all feminine deities is but one phase of the great

Mother-principle, the Moon. Nor must we forget that one aspect of the Moon-goddess is Diana, the huntress, whose silver bow is the crescent-moon. Both Iris and Diana, then, are goddesses of the BOW, and the bow which speeds the arrow of concentrated Astral Light is actually the driving-power of the subconsciousness, symbolized by the Moon. More than this, that driving power comes from the very roots of physical existence, is the power which is expressed in those primal instincts of subconsciousness, the instinct of self-perpetuation and its fruit, the instinct of self-reproduction. So long as our lives do not rest upon the foundation of Eternal Being, so long as we have not passed the Dweller on the Threshold, so long as we have not cast the delusion of the Devil into the liberating Fire, we cannot meet the tests of the 25th path, for those are tests of our skill in tempering and modifying the power by which man seemingly multiplies the power of the Astral Light in reproduction. I repeat, we cannot meet these tests so long as we are deluded by separateness, for every test is a test of USE, and right use is impossible unless we know beforehand that not the personality, but the SELF is the User, and know, too, that nowhere in the universe is there any Adversary or any Genius of Limitation that can bring harm from right use, that is, use free from personal limitations, free from the lie of possessiveness, free from all the chains that bind us down to earth. These are two-edged words that we write. This teaching is a sword. Beware lest you grasp it by the blade instead of the handle. Here is no proclamation of sottish license, no intimation that the way of life is the way of lust. Read, and then read again, until the clean, pure inner meaning flashes on your mind.

The last of the three paths that lead to Tiphareth is the path of Death, the path of the letter Nun. Observe that the name of that path is דמיני = 120 = סמכ, so that here is a Qabalistic hint that the path of Samekh and the path of Nun are essentially the same. This number 120 is said in the Bible to be the number of the years of man, a symbolic way of saying that 120 signifies the full perfection of human life. And 120 is also the product of the multiplication of the numbers from 1 to 5 (1x2x3x4x5), which implies the perfect synthesis of all sensory activities in the sixth sense, superconsciousness. Again, the extension of the number XV, which is that of the Tarot Key corresponding to the 26th path, is also 120, so that this path, too, corresponds in a way to the same ideas. Finally, since, as we have just seen, 120 is the number which represents the extension of 15, it is also the secret number of the 15th path on the Tree of Life, and this 15th path is that of the letter Heh, the path of VISION, the path of the Emperor, who is the symbol of that Creator concerning whom it is written in the Sepher Yetzirah that he who understands the mystery of the Ten Sephiroth restores Him to His throne.

All this probably seems very involved. Let us boil it down. All these cross-correspondences point to different aspects of one thing, and that thing is the attainment of superconsciousness. That attainment is the result of introspection, which casts out the devil. It is not perfected until we have passed the tests of the 25th path. Its result is the banishing also of the delusion that we are mortals, and with the banishing of this delusion comes right understanding of the mystery of death. He who has entered even for a moment into superconsciousness, he who has synthesized sensation into that Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, sees that as the skeleton is the basis of all the movements of the body, so is what we call 'death' the very framework of the continual mutations of existence. He who sees this has attained to the full measure of a man. With Paul he says, 'I die daily,' and with him exults, 'O, Death, where is thy sting?' For when we have restored the Creator to his throne, when the VISION that leads upward from the contemplation of the Beauty of the Divine Order to grasp of the Wisdom behind that Order (the Path of Heh leading up from Tiphareth to Chokmah) has been granted to us, then we know ourselves for what we really are, not mortals condemned to death at some unknown date in the future, but immortals existing for a little while in this world of name and form, and existing by means of a never-ending death. Death then becomes familiar, and ceases to inspire fear, because it is seen to be the process whereby the One Life provides itself with a never-ending series of vestments of Name and Form.

The goal of these three paths is one, the Sephirah Tiphareth, called BN, Ben, the Son. For in the mystical inner Grade to which this Sephirah corresponds, we come to know our unity with the Solar Logos, to experience His consciousness of the Beauty of the Cosmos. And because that Son is indeed "one with the Father," that is, "One with AB," which is the Qabalistic name of the Sephirah of Wisdom, entrance into this Grade of the Inner School, although it bears only Adeptus Minor, or Lesser Adept, for its title, gives us the means of union with each of the Three Supernals. For from Tiphareth three paths lead upward -- one to Binah, one to Chokmah, and one to Kether, and from Tiphareth alone may we cross the Abyss that separates the Supernals from Chesed. Here is the solution of a difficulty which has puzzled more than one student of the Tree of Life, and which has led at least one earnest seeker for light far from the Ancient Way marked out by the Builders who have passed on before us.

I make no doubt that a great deal in this lesson will seem vague and mystical to you when first you read it; but there is nothing that can be changed. Here if you can grasp what lies behind the words, is a clear statement of the Great Secret of the Way of the Return.

The name of the Grade, as said, is Adeptus Minor, or Lesser Adept. The key to its whole significance is the word תפארת, which we commend you to ponder upon, with the help of the Tarot. The Divine Name is יהוה אלוה ודעת, and may be translated, "Everlasting Existence (IHVH), Power (ALVH) and Insight (VDOTh). The pronunciation and the tonal sequence are:

Note the close correspondence of this Hebrew name to the Sat-Chit-Ananda, "Existence-Knowledge-Bliss, of the Hindu Yogis, who use this term to describe the experience of union with the Solar Logos.

The paths corresponding to this lesson are:

Use the same general method in your daily exercises, but remember that each of these is a path of projection upward to Tiphareth.