yourselves by understanding the powers of thought and turning them to
the object you desire to obtain. There are many ways in which this may
be done, and many rules you may learn for your guidance. Those rules
may be summed up under two heads: clear and strenuous thinking,
discipline for the bodies that you are trying to evolve; and also, I
should add, for the body below them in evolution. Those are the two
great laws for the safe evolution of these so-called psychic powers,
what I call the powers of the consciousness on the astral and mental
planes. There must be a discipline for the bodies, for you have to
choose the material which will serve you best in the work you are
doing out of the innumerable combinations of matter with which Nature
presents you. You must choose the combinations that will serve your
purpose, which you can utilise in the building of the organs of sense
on plane after plane. Just as really as the man who is a drunkard will
injure his nervous system by his excesses, and by supplying coarse and
over-active compounds will injure the physical body, so making it a
less useful instrument for the man--as any excess, not only
drunkenness, but gluttony, profligacy, and so on--as these injure the
physical body as an instrument of consciousness, and to have full and
perfect consciousness here we must train, discipline, build up our
body with knowledge and with self-control, so also is that true on the
higher planes. A regimen is necessary when you are dealing with the
organisation of the subtler matter of the astral and mental worlds,
for you cannot build up your physical body out of the coarser
combinations of matter on the physical, and have finer combinations on
the astral and mental. The bodies have to match each other. They have
to correspond with each other; and as you find all sorts of
combinations related the one to the other on every plane, you must
choose your combinations on the physical if you desire to choose them
also on the astral and mental. You cannot make your physical body
coarse, and organise the astral and mental bodies for the finer
purposes of the man; and you must settle that in your minds if you
wish to try to develop these higher powers of consciousness. Not only
because if you gather together the coarser materials of the astral
world, you will find yourself hampered by them in the higher
expression of consciousness, but also because the presence of these
combinations in you exposes you to a number of dangers on the astral
plane. The purer the elements of your astral body, the safer you are
in your earlier wanderings on that plane. It is important to mention
this, because in some of the schools of thought which are trying only
to develop astral powers, you will find that they deliberately use
other methods in order to make their astral body active. Many schools
of the "left hand path" in India will use spirits, wines, meats of all
sorts, in order to bring about a certain astral condition, and they
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