The Disciple -
the Real Man - Must Act as Such
Robert Crosbie
“Concentration upon
the Self is true concentration.”
“…There is no possibility of obtaining
real concentration until the possessor of
the mind can place it where he will, when he
will, and for as long a time as he pleases.”
(R. C.)
Concentration,
or the use of the attention in the direction of anything that we wish to do,
consistently and persistently, has long been recognized as the most effective
means of arriving at the full expression of our powers and energies.
The ancients called the power to focus the
attention upon a subject or object for as long a time as is required, to the
exclusion of every other thought and feeling, “one-pointedness”.
Concentration is difficult to obtain among us as a
people, because the key-note of our civilization is, in fact, distraction
rather than concentration. Constantly and in every direction we are having
presented to our minds objects and subjects - one thing after another to take
our attention and then to pull it off from what we are putting it on. So, our
minds have acquired the tendency to jump from one thing to another; to fly to a
pleasant idea or to an unpleasant idea, to remain passive. Remaining passive is
normally sleep; abnormally, its tendency is towards insanity. That we have
become habituated to these distractions and are not able to place our minds on
any given thing for any length of time may be easily proved by anyone. If he
will sit down and try to think of one single thing, one single object or
subject, for only five minutes, he will find even in a very few seconds,
perhaps, that he has wandered miles away mentally from the thing he intended to
place his mind upon.
We have first to understand what man is, his real
nature, what the cause of his present condition, before we can arrive at any
pure and true concentration, before we can use the higher mind and the powers
that flow from it. For the powers that we use in the body are transmitted
powers, drawn, indeed, from our inner spiritual nature, but so disturbed
and limited that they are not powerful. We need to know about our minds, and we
need to control our minds - that is, the lower mind, occupied with personal and
physical things, known in Theosophical phraseology, as Lower Manas. It is this “organ,”
the thinking principle, which the ancients said is the great producer of
illusion - the great distracter of concentration. For there is no possibility
of obtaining real concentration until the possessor of the mind can place it
where he will, when he will, and for as long a time as he pleases.
It is written in “The Voice of the Silence”:
“Mind is the great slayer of the Real. Let the
disciple slay the Slayer.”
The disciple, who is the Real Man - the spiritual
man - has to act as such. He has to stop the switchings and fittings of his
thinking principle and become calm in that knowledge to which the consideration
of his own true nature brings him. The object of all advancement is the
realization of the true nature of each one and an employment of the powers
which belong to it. What hinders is the thinking principle. WE are the
thinkers, but we are not what we think. If we think wrongly, then all the
results of our thoughts and actions must lead to a wrong conclusion, or to a
partial one, at best; but if we realize that we are the thinker, and the
creator - the evolver of all the conditions through which we have been, in
which we now are, and in which we shall find ourselves in the future - then we
have reached the point of view of the Real man, and it is only to the Real man
that the power of concentration belongs.
Again, in order to obtain concentration, we need an
understanding of the classification of the principles of man. We all have the
same principles, the same kinds of substances within us, the same spirit within
us. We all contain every element that exists anywhere or in any being. So, too,
each one has all the powers that exist anywhere, in himself, though latent. We
are all of the same Source, all parts of one great Whole, all sparks and rays
from the Infinite Spirit, or the Absolute Principle. The second principle is
Buddhi, or the acquired wisdom of past lives, as well as this one. It is the
cream of all our past experiences. The next principle is Manas, the Higher
mind, the real power to think, the creator - not concerned with this physical phase
of existence, but with the spirit and the acquired wisdom. These three
principles together make the Real Man - Atma-Buddhi-Manas - and these three
each one of us is in his inner nature.
Our Lower Manas is the transitory aspect of the
Higher mind; that is, the portion of our attention, our thoughts and feelings
addressed to life in a body. But if our thinking faculty is concerned only with
the personal self - only with the body - the powers which reside in the Triad,
the Real man, and the acquired wisdom of the past, cannot force themselves
through that cloud of illusion. Lower Manas is the principle of balance. It is
the place from which the man in a body either goes up towards his higher nature
or down towards his earthly nature, made up of the desires pertaining to
sensuous existence. Life about us is throwing its impressions and energies upon
us all the time. We are constantly subject to them and connected with them by
our ideas, our feelings and emotions, so that there is a constant turmoil going
on within that inner mind which makes a barrier to absolute calmness and
concentration.
Then we have the astral body, itself an aspect of
the real inner body which has lasted through the vast period of the past and
must continue through the far distant future. This astral body is the
prototype, or design, around which the physical body is built, and which,
considered from the point of view of the powers, is the real physical body.
Without it the physical body would be nothing but a mass of matter - an
aggregation of smaller lives. It is the astral body which contains the organs,
or centers from which the organs have been evolved in accord with the needs of
the thinker within. The real senses of man are not in the physical but in the
astral body. The astral body lasts a little over one lifetime. It does not die
when the physical body dies, but is used as a body in the immediate after-death
states.
Now as soon as we begin to make the effort to
control the mind, and desire to know and to assume the position of the inner
man, the effort and the assumption bring an accession of power and of
steadiness. We have started something going in the astral body. What were
before merely centers of force around which organs were built now tend to
become separate astral organs. A gradual building of those organs goes on
within us, until in the completion of our effort we have an astral body, with
all the organs of the physical completely synthesized, and we are beyond the
vicissitudes of physical existence; we have the power of the action of the
astral body. The astral body is even more complete and effective on its own
plane that our bodily instrument here on the physical plane, for it has a wider
range of action in its seven super-senses, where physically we have use of only
five senses.
Many hindrances arise, however, as soon as the
effort is begun. Old habits of thought and feeling press us on every hand, because
we have not yet been able to check our responsiveness to them, and so we find
ourselves subject to certain feelings and emotions which tend to destroy that
astral body which is being built. First, and most potent, is anger. Anger has
an explosive effect, and no matter how much we may have progressed in our
growth, the uncontrollable inner shock coming from anger will tear that inner
body to pieces so that the work has to be done all over again. Next to contend
with is vanity - vanity of some kind or another, of some accomplishment, of
ourselves, our family, our nation, or what not. Vanity tends to grow and grow,
until finally we will not listen to anybody and are too vain to learn anything.
So, vanity tends to disintegrate this inner body, although it is less
disruptive than anger. Envy is another hindrance. Fear is another, but fear is
the least of them all because it can be destroyed by knowledge. Fear is always
the child of ignorance. We fear those things we do not know, but when we know,
we do not fear.
We are all a prey to those fears that tend to
disrupt the very instrument by means of which true concentration may be
attained; but it may be attained. The peculiar power and nature of
concentration is that, when complete, the attention can be placed on any
subject or object to the exclusion of every other for any given length of time;
and this thinking principle - this mind of ours which has been flitting about -
can be used to shape itself to the object gazed upon, to the nature of the
subject thought about. While the mind takes the shape of the object, we get
from that shape the form, the characteristics of every kind that flow from it;
and when our inquiry is complete, we are able to know everything that can be
known of the subject or object. Such a height of concentration we can easily
see is not to be attained by intermittent efforts, but by efforts made from “a
firm position assumed” with the end in view. All efforts made from that basis
are bound to be of avail; every effort made from the point of view of the
spiritual man counts, because it makes the body subservient to the thinking
principle.
Other things come about from that true power of
concentration. We begin to open up the channels that reach from our brains to
the astral body, and from the astral body to the inner man. Then, that which is
temporary tends to become a part of that which is eternal. All the planes become
synthesized from above down, and all the vestures of the soul which we have
evolved from the past become in accord with each other. It is just like the
tumblers in a lock: when they work together, the lock works accurately. So we
have to bring all the sheaths of the soul into exact accord, and that we can do
only by taking the position of the spiritual being and acting as such.
The height of concentration is possible to us, but
not on a selfish basis. The concentration of the brain mind stands beside true concentration
as a rush light beside the sun.
True concentration is, first of all, a position
assumed out of regard for the end in view of union with the Higher Self. That
is the highest Yoga. Concentration upon the Self is true concentration. And
concentration must be attained before we can ever reach that stage where
eternal knowledge of every kind is ours to the last degree; before we shall
once more resume and wield those powers which are the heritage of all.
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The above text
is reproduced from the book “The
Friendly Philosopher”, by Robert Crosbie, Theosophy Co., 1945, 415 pp., see
pp. 290-294.
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