This concentrated mind, inducing INTUITION found itself functioning, a little, within the realm of causation, a little aware how the laws of the self-rule of the Power-universe operate.
THE ELEMENARY DISCOVERY
The rhythm of breath attuning the organism it aerates to the rhythm of the concrete world, the mystic noticed its interference with the concentration of the mind upon the abstract; each inbreath drawing the mind anew back to its concrete associations. His mind wandered — —
He determined to let his breathing drop out of the way of his attention—and succeeding, that rhythm modified; his breath subsided — —
– — – He felt his body sustained no longer by air but by something comparable to the ether, which, interpenetrating its atomic structure, liberated his organism from biological law hitherto insurmountable.
This lightening of the body, this etheric transmutation of the mind’s instrument, liberated that latent faculty of the mind for reception of a transcendent form of radio transmission.
He found his perception, usually narrowed down to focus on the concrete world as intellect, when released from this focus, to amplify its contacts as it FLOWED BACK ALONG THE CURRENT OF ITS CONVEYANCE from the All-Conscious, whose medium may be likened to INTELLIGENTIAL ETHER.
At this stage of increasing potency his mind became reinforced as spirit; its ultimate dimension attainable being soul, indestructible component of the Absolute.
Subject to his new potency in spirit he found the etheric transposal set him free from the pull of gravity; permitted accelerated locomotion without muscular effort. He gained control of his own electric system, experimented with its use, the electronic transfer of his person through space, the projection of his mental perceptivity to a distance, etc.:
Released from the vibrational circumscription of the concrete whose laws are subordinate to the dominant law3 of the Power-Universe, he came to understand that law by which the functioning of our usual universe may be modified,
(1) The structure of matter rearranged
(2) The materialising function of power
(3) The nature of the elements overruled by Power
(4) Electric life reconducted within the body4
The control of these psychic exercises operated from a cerebral centrum, named and located by the ancients.
Its contraction emitted a fine line of prolonged sensitivity into distance — — its dilation incepted communication from the infinite knower. The supreme director from whom, the psychic scientist conceived, through increasing exercise of the spirit, full revelation of, and the cooperation with the unseen universe should eventually be transmitted to him.
Herein originated the PRACTICE of religion. EXERCISE OF THE SPIRIT incurring actual psychic gymnastics.
Exercise of the spirit induced ENLIGHTENMENT ILLUMINATION ECSTASY
The experience of illumination was incommunicable; could only, in description be hinted at. LIGHT was not primarily a synonym for wisdom. It indicated the perception of that other light, overtenuous for reception by the organ eye. Authenticated in the past through the research of the man-is-the-measure-of-the-Universe scientist in his self-circumscribed laboratory, this light, a lucence transpiercing the light of the world, is handed down to us in the symbol halo; now passed off as primitive decoration, while modern science makes use of the infra-red — — — — allusion to God as “the father of lights” is not merely sublime poetry.
Above all in illumination the mystic abstractly perceived our impossible to blossom forth as the POSSIBLE.
CONTEMPLATION drew him far beyond his ego-electric exercises. In ECSTASY he at last tuned in on
THE CREATIONAL OVERTURE —
– — on beauty before its semblance descends
– — on music before it in utterance descends
– — on the source of presensate ecstasy whereof, to earth life, Eros alone brings some intimation.
However evasive of description their illumined experience, it imposed upon all illuminati an obligation: to impart to others the formula for its inducement.
An impartation involving the esoteric import of the CIRCLE.
Deific electricity coursing through a circle of mentalities, all concentrated on a like aspiration, increased the spiritual power.5
THE ELEVATIONAL MAGNET
Illumination effected our elevation of the spirit to that other magnet opposite to the Earth’s attraction: a gravitation upward — — a sublime buoyancy.
The eastern attitude of prayer, the joined palms, the soles of the feet pressed flatly together, precluding the ego-electricity from running off into the ground as in our bi-ped activity, constrained it, through circling and recircling, to vivifying accumulation sufficient for cooperating with the electric inspiration of Deity. The fingers tapered to point upward serving as antennae.
Study of the esoteric is not needful to prove the effectiveness of this gravity upward. Haphazardly we connect with it, when, for no apparent cause, at certain times we find ourselves suddenly light as air skimming the pavement, where oppositely at some recent hour, our leaden legs seemingly bored into the earth a tonnage of onerous animation, under a like leaden lunge of the brain to the tug of the terrestrial center.
To the mystic our human world of phenomena as we experience it at present compares to a sculpture-picture, a radio-television broadcast in three dimensions, issuant from the Deific designer; while to the non-mystic this projected image of the actor assumes his entire identity, dynamism, origin and permanence whereas
MAN IS A COVERED-ENTRANCE TO INFINITY
Contemporary man presumes his life to begin, come to an end, with his body. His intelligence to be manufactured by the brain; he being unaware of the currents in cosmic power conveying to man his apparent esse; unaware of the brain being merely an instrument of reception and transmission.
Seemingly this psychic system of scientific investigation, tending toward total depreciation of the tangible universe, being too acutely specialised for working out the dual abstract-concrete imperative of our intended evolution,6 short-circuited — –
A strange inertia settled upon the Orient. Exercisers of Spirit sat, incessantly asleep, in public places, their finger-nails growing through the palms of their hands.
To the earliest disciples, the mystic system proved often communicable. But all systems of spiritual exercise come to a crisis incurring decrease of comprehension. The snap-back of human consciousness from the take-off of inspiration: the stretch of consciousness into the imperceptible universe still depending, to some degree, on the contemporary stage of evolution in the concrete world.
Later students misinterpreted the scientific-mystic teaching as an exhortation to make the mind a blank; to immobilise the flesh.
Books of mystic instruction, written in code, conveyed nothing of their real significance to the uninitiated. Held by the purist to be supremely authentic, one, apparently an account of many battles, precisely and reiteratively enumerating the hordes of warriors engaged, had the trick of turning into a mathematical treatise on the control and alternation of rates of vibration involved in various psychic operations. At which point in perusal the student’s cranium seemed to open up, very like a certain Picasso cubist head, for abstract instruction to pour into it. Not oral. Communicated thought. Not the student’s thought.