Control of Consciousness
(The Way of Man, 3.16) Control of Consciousness
(3.16.1) Attention indicates the concentration of consciousness. Attention can be called the visual point of the self. The consciousness content of our envelopes of incarnation is determined by how we use our attention. Control of consciousness is control of attention and the most important factor of evolution.
(3.16.2) The self’s consciousness, the monad consciousness (attention) must be occupied. If it is not occupied with something essential, something that promotes consciousness development, then it must be something different, less useful, often useless, quite often harmful. Hobbies, amusements, etc., thus are only substitutes. The individual’s level of development appears in his choice of objects of his attention. There are physical, emotional, and mental interests. Anyone who has acquired control of thought decides himself what he will think of. Others are dominated by their illusions and fictions.
(3.16.3) It is important that man learns to tell the difference between himself (the monad in the triad) and his envelopes. Life-ignorant man identifies his monad consciousness with the consciousness content of his envelopes and thereby becomes the slave of these envelopes. The content of the envelopes are the tendencies we acquired in past incarnations as well as the perverse conceptions we have picked up from our environment in this incarnation. This content can at any moment be vitalized either by the monad itself or by vibrations from without. Therefore it is a good rule, whenever you become the victim of your consciousness content, to say: “My envelopes want this. I do not want it.” Thereby you liberate yourself from your dependence on the envelope consciousnesses. The self can make itself free, if it really wants to.
(3.16.4) If you really want to develop it is important always to be conscious of what you are doing, what you are thinking, feeling, saying, etc., to observe from which envelopes and which worlds those energies are coming which you use when acting. In so doing you will find it easier to control those energies and possibly use others as well.
(3.16.5) Observing perceptions in your different envelopes need not at all imply that you are occupied with your own self, which you are recommended to forget. You can study your perceptions as an impersonal observer when it is clear to you that you are not your envelopes. It is the envelopes that perceive, that feel, that will, not the self, unless the self identifies with these consciousness expressions, believing them to be the self, and allows them to hold sway.
(3.16.6) Where there is consciousness there is also energy. Meditation, which is concentrated consciousness, implies concentrated energy. Meditation that has a higher kind of consciousness as its object activates this, and that higher kind of energy, which is linked to consciousness, re-acts unfailingly on the individual meditating. If mental or causal consciousness is concerned, then second selves are able to observe these material currents and see by which aggregate envelope centres they are absorbed and distributed and which organs in the organism they influence. Ignorant man deals with forces, having no idea whatever of the effects they produce.
(3.16.7) You can meditate in many different ways. The only truly efficient methods are still esoteric. Mankind is not ripe enough for them. Many people practise meditation so intensively that they supply their envelopes with energies that they cannot use rightly and which because of that have a destructive effect.
(3.16.8) Subjects of meditation: happiness, joy, good qualities (especially those lacking or in need of strengthening); responsibility, sacrifice, friendship, idealism, qualities that exist in people, despite appearances, and need to be strengthened by telepathy.
(3.16.9) Meditation is quiet, calm reflection. You can, for instance, choose a good quality and daily contemplate its importance to your own life until it has entered into your subconscious in a complex that manifests itself spontaneously in waking consciousness. A good quality that most people need to acquire is to be glad in order to spread gladness about you wherever you are. Another necessary quality is gratitude. There is so much we should be grateful for: sense, reason, knowledge, etc., that we have come to understand the importance of being helpful, etc. You can offer yourself as a server of your Augoeides so that he may give you an opportunity of helping someone whom you are able to help in the right way.
(3.16.10) Every expression of consciousness is at the same time an output of energy that often enough affects all man’s envelopes and, last, the organism. Each individual output may be unnoticeable in its effect, but added together they become noticeable. If people knew this they would observe their thoughts more. The general nervousness, irritation, tension is an outcome of the pertaining bad conditions and, in its turn, becomes a cause of all manner of organic ill-health. Many people have a bad habit of being irritated at other people’s stupid things long afterward, and this does not add to their well-being. Most people are discontented however well they live; there is always something that falls short of their expectations. In so doing they demonstrate that they lack several of the qualities that are necessary to the art of living. It is to our own detriment that we cannot take life as it is. That is a lesson we must learn if we want to reach any further. Having learnt it we make life easier to live for ourselves and others. Nothing but truisms that nobody cares about. Obviously there is much to do before we have learnt how to learn from experience; the experience of mankind during untold years and our own tens of thousands of incarnations.