CHAPTER VI - THE GROWTH OF THOUGHT

OBSERVATION AND ITS VALUE

THE first requisite for competent thinking is attentive and accurate observation. The Self as Knower must observe the Not-Self with attention and with accuracy, if it is to become the Known, and thus merge in the Self. The second requisite is receptivity and tenacity in the mental body, the power of yielding quickly to impressions and of retaining them when made.

In proportion to the attention and accuracy of the Knower's observation, and the receptivity and tenacity of his mental body, will be the rapidity of his evolution, the speed at which his latent potencies become active powers.

If the Knower has not accurately observed the thought-image, or if the mental body, being undeveloped, has been insensitive to all but the stronger vibrations of an external object, and so has been modified into an imperfect reproduction, the material for thought is inadequate and misleading The broad outline is at first all that is obtained, the details being blurred or even omitted. As we evolve our faculties, and as we build finer stuff into the mental body, we find that we receive from the same external object much more than we received in our undeveloped days. Thus we find much more in an object than we before found in it.

Let two men stand in a field, in presence of a splendid sunset. Let one of these be an undeveloped agricultural labourer, who has not been in the habit of observing nature save with reference to his crops, who has only looked at the sky to see if it promises rain or sunshine, caring nothing for its aspects save as they bear on his own livelihood and employment. Let the second be an artist, a painter of genius, full of the love of beauty, and trained to see and enjoy every shade and tone of colour. The labourer's physical, astral, and mental bodies are all in presence of that gorgeous sunset, and all the vibrations caused by it are playing upon the vehicles of his consciousness; he sees different colours in the sky, and observes that there is much red, promising a fine day for the morrow, good or bad for his crops, as the case may be. This is all he gets out of it. The painter's physical, astral, and mental bodies are all exposed to exactly the same pulsations as those of the labourer, but how different is the result! The fine material of his bodies reproduces a million vibrations too rapid and subtle to move the coarse material of the other. His image of the sunset is consequently quite different from the image produced in the labourer. The delicate shades of colour, hue melting into hue, translucent blue and rose and palest green lighted with golden gleams and flecked with royal purple—all these are tasted with a lingering joy, an ecstasy of sensuous delight; there are awakened all fine emotions, love and admiration merging into reverence

and joy that such beauty can be; ideas of the most inspiring character arise, as the mental body modifies itself under the vibrations playing on it on the mental plane from the mental aspect of the sunset. The difference of the images is not due to an external cause, but to an internal receptivity. It does not lie in the outside, but in the capacity to respond. It is not in the Not-Self, but in the Self and its sheaths. According to these differences is the result produced; how little flows into the one, how much into the other!

Here we see with startling force the meaning of the evolution of the Knower. A universe of beauty may be around us, its waves playing on us from every side, and yet for us it may be non-existent. Everything that is in the mind of the Logos of our system is playing on us and on our bodies now. Haw much of it we can receive marks the stage of our evolution. What is wanted for growth is not a change without us, but a change within us. Everything is already given us, but we have to develop the capacity to receive.

It will be gathered from what has just been said that one element in clear thinking is accurate observation. We have to begin this work on the physical plane, where our bodies come into contact with the Not-Self. We climb upwards, and all evolution begins on the lower plane and passes on into the higher; on the lower we first touch the external world, and thence the vibrations pass upwards—or inwards—calling out the inner powers.

Accurate observation, then, is a faculty to be definitely cultivated. Most people go through the world with their eyes half closed, and we can each test this for ourselves by questioning ourselves on what we have observed while passing along a street. We can ask: " What have I observed while walking down this street ? " Many persons will have observed next to nothing, no clear images have been formed. Others will have observed a few things; some will have observed many. It is related by Houdin that he trained his child in observing the contents of the shops he passed, walking along the streets of London, until he could give the whole contents of a shop-front which he had passed by without stopping, having thrown over it a mere glance. The normal child and the savage are observant, and according to the extent of their capacity for observation is the measure of their intelligence. The habit of clear, quick observation lies in the average man at the root of clear thinking. Those who think most confusedly are generally those who observe least accurately; except where intelligence is highly developed and is turned inwards habitually, and the bodies have not been trained in the way spoken of below.

But the answer to the above question may be: " I was thinking of something else, and therefore did not observe." And the answer is a good one, if the answerer was thinking of something more important than the training of the mental body and of the power of attention by careful observation. Such a one may have done well in his lack of observation; but if the answerer has only been dreaming, drifting about aimlessly, then he has wasted his time much more than if he had turned his energy outwards.

A man deeply engaged in thought will be unobservant of passing objects, turned inwards and not outwards, and will not attend to what is going on before him. It may not be worth his while, in this life, to train his bodies to make quasi-independent observations, for the highly developed and the partially developed need different training.

But how many of the unobservant people are really "deeply engaged in thought"? In most people's minds all that is going on is an idle looking at any thought-image that happens to present itself, a turning over of the contents of the mind in an aimless fashion, as an idle woman turns over the contents of her wardrobes or her jewel-box. This is not thinking, for thinking means, as we have seen, the establishing of relations, the adding of something not previously present. In thinking, the attention of the Knower is deliberately directed to the thought-images, and he exerts himself actively upon them.

The development, then, of the habit of observation is part of the training of the mind, and those who practise it will find that the mind becomes clearer, increases in power, and becomes more easily manageable, so that they can direct it on any given object much better than they had been able previously to do. Now, this power of •observation, once definitely established, works automatically, the mental and other bodies registering images which are available if wanted later, without calling at the time on the attention of their owner. It is, then, no longer necessary that the attention of the person should be directed to objects presented to the sense-organs in order that an impression of those objects may be made and preserved. A very trivial but significant case of this kind happened in my own experience. While I was travelling in America, a question arose one day about the number on the engine of a train by which we had been travelling. The number was instantly presented to me by my mind, but this was not, in any sense, a case of clairvoyance. For clairvoyant perception it would have been necessary to have hunted up the train and looked for the number. Without any conscious action on my part, the sense-organs, senses, and mind had observed and registered the number as the train came into the station, and when the number was wanted the mental image of the incoming train, with the number on the front of the engine, at once came up. This faculty, once established, is a useful one, for it means that when things that have been passing around you have not attracted your attention at the time, you can

nonetheless recall them by looking at the record which the mental, astral, and physical bodies have made of them on their own account.

This automatic activity of the mental body, outside the conscious activity of the Jiva, goes on, however, more extensively in all of us than might be supposed; for it has been found that when a person is hypnotised he will report a number of small events which had passed him by without arousing his attention. These impressions reach the mental body through the brain, and are impressed on the latter as well as on the former. Many impressions thus reach the mental body that are not sufficiently deep to enter into consciousness—not because consciousness cannot cognise them, but because it is not normally awake enough to notice any but the deeper impressions. In the hypnotic trance, in delirium, in physical dreams, when the Jiva is away, the brain yields up these impressions, which are usually overpowered by the far stronger impressions received by and made by the Jiva himself; but if the mind is trained to observe and record, then the Jiva can recover from it, at will, the impressions thus made.

Thus, if two people walked down a street, one trained in observation and the other not, both would receive a number of impressions, and neither might be conscious of the receipt of these at the time; but afterwards, the trained observer would be able to recover these impressions, while the other would not. As this power lies at the root of clear thinking, those who desire to culture and control thought-power will do well to cultivate the habit of observation, and to sacrifice the mere pleasure of drifting idly along whithersoever the stream of fancy may carry them.

THE EVOLUTION OF MENTAL FACULTIES

As images accumulate, the work of the Knower becomes more complicated, and his activity upon them draws out one power after another, inherent in his divine nature. He no longer accepts the external world only in its simple relation to himself, as containing objects that are causes of pleasure or pain to himself; but he arranges side by side the images representing them, studies them in their various aspects, shifts them about, and reconsiders them. He begins also to arrange his own observations. He observes, when one image brings up another, the order of their succession. When a second has followed a first many times, he begins to look for the second when the first appears, and thus links the two together. This is his first attempt at reasoning, and here again we have the calling out of an inherent faculty. He argues that because A and B have always appeared successively, therefore when A appears B will appear. This forecast being continually verified, he comes to link them together as " cause " and " effect", and many of his early errors are due to a too hasty establishment of this relation. Further, setting images side by side, he observes their unlikenesses and likenesses, and develops a power of comparison. He chooses one or another as pleasure-giving, and moves the body in search of them in the external world, developing judgment by these selections and their consequences. He evolves a sense of proportion in relation to the likenesses and unlikenesses, and groups objects together by their prominent likenesses, separating them from others by their prominent unlikenesses; here also he makes many errors, corrected by later observations, being easily misled at first by surface similarities.

Thus observation, discrimination, reason, comparison, judgment, are evolved one after another, and these faculties grow with exercise, and thus the aspect of the Self as Knower is developed by the activity of thoughts, by the action and re-action continually repeated between the Self and the Not-Self .

To quicken the evolution of these faculties, we must deliberately and consciously exercise them, using the circumstances of daily life as opportunities for developing them. Just as we saw that the power of observation might be trained in every day life, so can we accustom ourselves to see the points of likeness and unlikeness in the objects round us, we can draw conclusions and test them by events, we can compare, and judge, and all this consciously and of set purpose. Thought-power grows rapidly under this deliberate exercise, and becomes a thing that is consciously wielded, felt as a definite possession.

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND

To train the mind in any one direction is to train it altogether to some extent, for any definite kind of training organises the mind-stuff of which the mental body is composed, and also calls out some of the powers of the Knower. The increased capacity can be directed to any end, and is available for all purposes. A trained mind can be applied to a new subject, and will grapple with it and master it in a way impossible to the untrained, and this is the use of education.

But it should always be remembered that the training of the mind does not consist in cramming it with facts, but in drawing out its powers. The mind does not grow by being gorged with other people's thoughts, but by exercising its own faculties. It is said of the great Teachers who stand at the head of human evolution that They know everything which exists within the solar system. This does not mean that every fact therein is always within Their consciousness, but that They have so developed the aspect of knowledge in Themselves that whenever They turn Their attention in any direction, They know the object to which it is turned. This is a much greater thing than the storage in the mind of any number of facts, as it is a greater thing to see any object on which the eye is turned than to be blind and to know it only by the description given of it by others. The evolution of the mind is measured not by the images it contains, but by the development of the nature which is knowledge, the power to reproduce within itself anything that is presented to it. This will be as useful in any other universe as in this, and once gained is ours to use wherever we may be.

ASSOCIATION WITH SUPERIORS

Now, this work of training the mind may be very much helped forward by coming into touch with those who are more highly evolved than ourselves. A thinker who is stronger than we are can materially aid us, for he sends out vibrations of a higher order than we are able to create. A piece of iron lying on the ground cannot start heat-vibrations on its own account; but if it happens to be placed near a fire, it can answer to the heat-vibrations of the fire, and thus became hot. When we come near a strong thinker, his vibrations play on our mental bodies and set up in them corresponding vibrations, so that we vibrate sympathetically with him. For the time being we feel that our mental power is increased and that we are able to grasp conceptions that normally elude us. But when we are again alone, we find that -these very conceptions have become blurred and confused.

People will listen to a lecture, and follow it intelligently, for the time being understanding the teaching it conveys. They go away satisfied, feeling that they have made a substantial gain in knowledge. On the following day, wishing to share with a friend what had been gained, they find to their mortification that they cannot reproduce the conceptions which seemed to be so clear and luminous. Often they will exclaim impatiently: " I am sure I know it; it is there, if I could only get hold of it." This feeling arises from the memory of the vibrations which both mental body and Jiva have experienced; there is the consciousness of having realised the conceptions, the memory of the forms taken, and the feeling that, having produced them, reproduction should be easy. But on the previous day it was the masterful vibrations of the stronger thinker that shaped the forms taken by the mental body; they were moulded from without, not from within. The sense of inability experienced on the attempt to reproduce them means that this shaping must be done for them a few times, before they will have sufficient strength to reproduce those forms by self-initiated vibrations. The Knower must have vibrated in these higher ways several times, ere he can reproduce the vibrations at will. By virtue of his own inherent nature he can evolve the power within himself to reproduce them, when he has been made to answer several times by impact from without. The power in both Knowers is the same, but one has evolved it, while in the other it is latent. It is brought out of latency by the contact with a similar power already in activity, and thus the stronger quickens the evolution of the weaker.

Herein lies one of the values of associating with persons more advanced than ourselves. We profit by their contact, and grow under their stimulating influence. A true Teacher will thus aid his disciples far more by keeping them near him than by any spoken words.

For this influence direct personal contact affords the most effective channel. But failing this, or in association with it, much may also be gained from books, if the books be wisely chosen. In reading the work of a really great writer, we should try for the time to put ourselves into a negative or receptive condition, so as to receive as many of his thought-vibrations as possible. When we have read the words, we should dwell on them, ponder over them, try to sense the thought they partially express, draw out of them all their hidden relationships. Our attention must be concentrated, so as to pierce the mind of the writer through the veil of his words. Such reading serves as an education, and helps forward our mental evolution. Less strenuous reading may serve as a pleasant pastime, may store our minds with valuable facts, and so subserve our usefulness. But such reading as is described means a stimulus to our evolution, and should not be neglected by those who seek to grow in order to serve.