Contents:

• Lesson 1   Absorption and Preparation
• Lesson 2   Ideation and Memory
• Lesson 3   Emotive Feeling
• Lesson 4   Nervous energy-self will
• Lesson 5   Energy secreting and binding
• Lesson 6   Ideation and comparison
• Lesson 7   Pure Feeling
• Lesson 8   Will-nervous energy
• Lesson 9   Circulating energy
• Lesson 10  Ideation-Perception
• Lesson 11  Feeling-Devotion
• Lesson 12  Will-aiming

Absorption and Preparation

Cardinal Earth Sign.

Meditate upon the physical body as a stable reference point.
Choose a room where you will not be disturbed.
Sit so that you are comfortable, either on a chair, a not too hard cushion or a tightly folded blanket.

If seated upon the cushion or blanket, then draw the heels towards the buttocks. Feel the spine growing upwards from the sacrum. Keeping the neck straight gently nod, turn and finally balance the head making sure the muscles of the neck are not too rigid nor the chin sticking out too far or too tightly pulled in.

Feel the shoulders broad, arms relaxed and supported on the thighs or in the lap. Keeping the eyes closed or half closed feel the spine growing up through the dome of the skull towards the back of the head.

Feel well balanced.

Consciously still the physical body inside and out. Equilibrate the breathing. Observe carefully all that goes on. As each sensation appears in consciousness say in words to yourself just what is being experienced at that moment.

As the body familiarises itself with the posture and the watching technique so you will find yourself becoming more sensitive to its inner physical movements, the beating of the heart, the changing rate of breath, small irritations that will try to distract you from your watching exercise.

Continue with the watching exercise; if you have to move or scratch, do so, but say in words to yourself what you are doing, e.g. "There is irritation", then perhaps later "there is scratching" as you find the irritation becoming unbearable. So long as you remain aware of each changing mode in consciousness it does not matter whether you move a little or not.

Having achieved some degree of success in the watching of the physical body then move on to the next stage. Retaining the body stillness, bring the attention to a point just below the nostrils and attend consciously to the breathing. This "smooth" breath is so gentle that were a tiny feather placed below the nostrils it would not be seen to move. Make yourself aware of each breath as it arises. Counting the 'in' and 'out' breath as one count up to seven and then start again. As the rhythm becomes established you will feel yourself becoming "one" with the breath. Feelings and emotions will come under control and you will be ready to simply watch any ideas that cross the mind.

Do not interfere - just watch. Ideas will come and go. Very soon you will become aware that you are not the ideas that you are watching. They are just "ripples" in the mind. Do not judge them, do not become particularly interested in them - just watch. Eventually they will die down.

By practising the stilling and watching exercise we begin to see that wherever tension or irritation arises in the body, or ideas run around in the mind, by the simple act of gently focusing our attention on that centre and doing nothing but watching, change starts to occur.

It is as though our attending consciousness were a catalyst.

By preparing ourselves in this manner we are better able to take the next steps in our meditation.

Ideation and Memory.

Fixed Air Sign.

We may consider a human being as a zone of force, which although apparently circumscribed, is in no way separate from its environment and the forces which have brought it into being and continue to maintain it in being. This being can think, feel and act - it may also at its innermost centre of being, be aware, and watch without identification, all the other processes.

This innermost centre of being is that to which we refer when we use the word Self - spelling it with a capital 'S' to distinguish it from the same word spelt with a small 's' and referring, as we shall see later, to the egoic self, or empirical ego.

Veiling this Innermost Self or Immanent Spirit of the human being is first the lower empirical mind with its five senses which sees merely particular things quite separate from their world context; then the Understanding or Higher Intellectual Determinative faculty (Logos or Buddhi) which confers order upon the separate particularising of the lower mind and to which man rarely aspires without very hard work or grace: and thirdly, the point where these two meet called the Egoic Complex or lesser self.

We must make ourselves quite clear between this distinction between the egoic or lesser self and our real Self, the Watcher.

Let us consider this distinction.

If we examine ourselves through the egoic centre we will find that it is really no more than a group of ideas that we have of ourselves, directly connected with our own name. This group is continually intercepting all the stimuli that comes to it and seeing if they fit its own private egoic purpose. Every time the mind reacts to a stimuli, the egoic centre says something about it, such as, "I like it", or "I don't like it", or "it's rubbish", or "That's good", or "That's bad".

This interpretation of everything by the Ego is our biggest enemy, for it is purely mechanical and will misrepresent everything that goes on in the mind.

Now the real Self or immanent free will centre of our being is quite untouched by anything that goes on around it. It is an Observer, a Watching consciousness,, it is not, nor is it in any way influenced by, that which it is watching. This real Self, the Observer is not the observed.

This idea is tremendously important and should be carefully meditated upon.

Our meditation exercise for this Aquarian period is really an extension of our last month's 'watching' exercise. Whereas, last month we simply watched the ideas in the mind, this month, we shall also consider something of the rationale of the exercise.
The exercise in Indian or Chinese Yoga is called "Watching the Monkey jump".
The word 'mon', 'man' in Sanskrit means 'to count'. 'Monkey', then, means 'the key to the man' or, the 'counter's key' - because, if we can begin to understand the mind (or counting device) then we can begin to control it.
But, as we have already seen, if we try to control it too soon it will be the egoic complex which is doing the controlling and not the real Self.
Let us then bring the body to the point of stillness and simply Watch.
Notice the real you, the Observer, is the subject who sees; what you see the observed, is the object, thought, feeling or impulse.
The Observer is the awareness, the consciousness, the sentience, the real SELF.
No one has at any time seen as an object the consciousness which sees the object.
Consciousness (the Self) as such never appears to itself as an object.
The empirical ego may appear as an object but not the real Self.
So again we will sit and watch what appears in consciousness. We must watch our ideas, our feelings (of like and dislike) and our inclinations or impulses to action.
We must watch carefully that the Consciousness (our real Self) does not fall into identification with what it is watching.

After a period of this exercise we will begin to realise that we are not the things we are watching; not our thoughts, not our feelings, not our actions.

And if we are not our thoughts, feelings or actions then there is no real reason why we should be perturbed by them.

We are beginning to see in what freedom consists.

Emotive Feeling.

Mutable Water Sign.

As we practice the Watching exercise we start to become aware of the meaning of the words, "I My Self".
This Self, a free-will consciousness, is the ground of all there is. And although it is the ground and the possibility and the actuality of all being, yet it is itself, transcendent of being. (By the word 'being' we really mean anything which is limited or circumscribed).
That power which brings forms and objects into being yet is itself transcendent of that being, we call the Absolute.
Consciousness then, is that aspect of the Absolute in which objects appear. That aspect of Power which brings things into being we call Will.
Will is that aspect of the Absolute which initiates change within consciousness or its objects.
Consciousness and Will are not factually separate entities. They are two aspects or properties of the Absolute.
Consciousness then, is not a body but a knower of the body.
If consciousness (the real Self) identifies with a material body it goes under the laws governing material bodies. If it identifies with emotional states it goes under the law determining emotional states. If it identifies with the serial ideational processes of the mind, it goes under the formal and logical laws governing these processes.
Only consciousness (the Self identified with its Self, in the act called reflexive Self consciousness) is FREE from the law of mechanical action-reaction processes governing all finites.
In the theological sense 'man (the finite serial counter) has returned to his Father - or free, generative field of Absolute Consciousness'.
Pisces is a feeling bias with a particular emphasis upon emotion and emotional-charge - the means whereby consciousness (the Self) can become attached and FALL into identification with the objective world, thus loosing whatever element of freedom it might have gained.
We must watch carefully for emotional charges, which are binding feelings or tendencies to attachment.
We have now seen that Consciousness (the real Self, 'I' or 'Eye') is not an object, nor a formed thing (as is the empirical ego); it is that in which objects, things, forms and ideas appear.

We know this to be so because we are immediately aware of our consciousness as soon as we turn to it. We say 'immediately' aware, because our awareness of our awareness is not mediated by anything other than itself.

When we are aware of some object through one or more of our senses our awareness is mediated through the sense organ. When we are aware of our awareness, this awareness is not mediated; we therefore say it is immediate.

We have also seen that consciousness (the Self) can FALL into identification with the forms and experiences of the object world.

This identification arises from EMOTIONALLY charged experience.

Wherever the experience of an object, situation or event gives rise to emotion, whether pleasure or pain, and the Observer allows himself to focus on this emotion, a tendency arises to react to the object by moving towards or away from it and to record it as a reference for future orientation, thus binding himself to the law governing that thing.

If we do not break object-identification (i.e. identification with any finite content of consciousness whatever) we tend to respond mechanically to situations in a manner determined by the emotionally charged records of our previous experiences, even when they have perhaps merely one element in common with the present extant situation.

In short we come under the dominion of habit and inclination.

Inclination-determined actions are actions determined by emotionally-charged experience records

If actions of this order were the only kind possible for man we would have to abandon as meaningless the use of all terms referring to the concept of free-will.

Meditate upon emotionally-charged experience records.

Nervous energy - self will.

Free Fire Sign.

During this period our meditation is on the free-will.

A FREE act, an act of free-will, is an act not determined or conditioned by any emotionally-charged experience records whatever.

A FREE act is an act springing immediately from consciousness (the Self) not object identified.

A free-willed act is an act absolutely unconditioned. It is an act initiated by pure consciousness itself; by the pure awareness of consciousness of its own creativity.

ALL ORIGINAL ACTS SPRING FROM THIS SOURCE.

To break object-identification we must do four things:

1. We must see the object identified state is a false one. One which falsely represents consciousness, the subject, as identical with its content, the object.
2. We must make clear to ourselves that by allowing ourselves to act by inclination we reduce our action level to that of Pavlov's dogs.
3. We must see that such actions are incompatible with freedom and human dignity.
4. Finally, we must withdraw our will from the experience records and from the pleasure-pain aspects of the content of consciousness, and turn it back upon itself.

This withdrawal of the will from the objects of consciousness and the centring of consciousness in itself - the turning back to its Self - from the object of consciousness and will, is the act of reflexive Self-Consciousness.

So important is this for human evolution and the attainment of freedom and the power to produce an adequate response in every conceivable situation, that, if its full impact were grasped, the whole effort of humanity would be directed towards its attainment.

The reflexive Self-conscious man sees the world wholly without falling into identification with any particular part of it. He is not identified with it, not inclined towards it, not enslaved by it. But he can relate to it in perfect freedom.

To gain this reflexive Self-consciousness a certain exercise must be practised, in principle continuously, in early practise probably intermittently.
The exercise itself is simple. But that is not to say that it is for man in his usual orientation, easy.
The battle to overcome the inertia of man's established direction, his generally ego-centred attitude, will not be easily fought. Neither should it be. The prize is too high to be gained easily.
Here is the exercise:

When we are looking at something, or considering an idea or experience, a feeling or emotion, or performing any action, we must say to ourselves -
"It is the Self which is consciousness itself, which is looking at this thing (or considering this idea, etc.)
This Self I am.
I return to the Self".

On saying "It is the Self which is consciousness itself", we must make ourselves aware that the Self IS consciousness itself, awareness, sentience. When saying "looking at this thing", we must make ourselves aware of a directional flow of attention from the consciousness to the thing .
On saying "This Self I am. I return to the Self", we must focus ourselves again in the consciousness and again become aware of a directional flow of attention, but now from the thing back to the consciousness-Self.

To practise reflexive Self-consciousness is to change the whole quality of one's perception and conception of the world. We cannot get lost in the things and and events of the world or in ideas or emotional states if we are reflexively Self-conscious. And when we are not lost we have found ourselves and the Self of all selves.

The SELF of all selves is the Godhead of the theologians, the light and life of all selves, the Saviour of the world from the world. It is the Parabrahman of the Hindus, the Absolute of the Philosophers, the centre of every enlightened being, and the axial necessity of freedom.

Energy secreting and binding.

Fixed Earth Sign.

That our bodies are made of energy is so important for our view of the world, that we cannot remind ourselves of it too often.

If the universe is a great stream of energy, if matter is only a form of energy, which is now proved scientifically and beyond doubt, then all the things that we DO are all forms of energy, behaviour patterns of power.

Our physical body (Earth) is a complex form of energy: our feeling (Water) is a kind of energy experience: our thinking (Air) is an energy process which is linked with our Understanding or Higher Intelligence as an inter-relating energy pattern: our will (Fire) is energy itself acting as the cause of the appearance of new energy directions or the reinforcing and restatement of old ones.

ALL AS ENERGY ARE INTERCHANGEABLE.

Thus body (Earth) can give rise to feelings (Water); feeling can interact with body and the thinking (Air) process; thinking can be related to the understanding (higher intellect); the will (Fire) can interact with all levels of our being so that we may change our energy processes on all levels, affect our health, and create our destiny.

With our will and higher intellect and understanding we can fight against wrong thinking processes, against slavery to feelings of pleasure and pain, against the unwillingness and inertness and habit bondage of our body.

Meditate in this period upon all these things. Consider the gross physical body as inertic energy resisting, and by its resistance strengthening the will and sharpening the awareness. For without resistance, without opposition, nothing could grow or develop. Only by resisting itself did original power bring itself into being.

Remove everything to push against in the world and all life as we know it embodied in form, would collapse back into the primordial slime, which slime itself would ultimately slip back into initial chaos.

Ideation and Comparison.

Mutable Air Sign.

In Gemini we return to THINKING.
To think is to examine in our mind the shape of things, the materials they are made of, their characteristics, ways of action and the relations of all these.
When we think, we are examining things in our mind.
The words 'think' and 'thing' are closely related. When we get an image of a thing in our mind we have to think about it. This 'think' we call an 'idea'.
An idea is a mental image of a thing. Idea means 'shape' or 'form'.
Children and primitive people tend to think in images and to play with these images in their imagination.
Imagination is that mental activity in which we manipulate images. We can play with the images in our mind. Sometimes the ideas we play with give us pleasure, other times pain.
This is part of the way we have of controlling and influencing ourselves, by imagining unpleasant things that might happen to us if we allow ourselves to do certain things.
As we become older we tend to substitute words for mental images. We save time and energy by using the name of something instead of making a complete mental image. To use the name of a friend in conversation is obviously more convenient than describing a fully detailed mental image. So also with the things that we use in our daily lives.
Relations between things are rather more difficult to describe than things themselves. Relations between persons are more difficult to describe, whilst relations between relations are even more difficult to describe.
The most difficult to describe are the relations between the relations between persons.
To see how a glass is related to the drink it holds is fairly easy, and how a cup is related to a saucer, but if we take a more abstract relation, say that between conservatism and socialism or either of these and liberalism, it is less easy to say precisely what we mean by it.

It is alright to economise on our time and energy by using words instead of images but only if our words correspond with facts of reality. Often THEY DO NOT.
If they did, then innumerable misunderstandings that are in the world of human relations would not exist, and would not cause us so much distress.
To think clearly we must first see clearly.
We must perceive the things of the world as they really are; in their shapes, their materials, their properties, their qualities and ways of acting; and the relations between all these things.
We must use our sense organs, our sight, our hearing, our smelling, tasting and touching. See how things inter-act; how one effects another.
When we are thinking we are manipulating things in the mind. If we manipulate ideas correctly, i.e. in ways corresponding to the true nature of things and persons and relations, then, we have a good chance of being able to relate in a good way to the real things, persons and relations which our ideas represent.
But if we mishandle our ideas of things, persons and relations as they exist in our mind, then there is a high probability we will also mishandle that which they represent.

We need to make ourselves very clear about this fact.

Clear thinking then, is essential for happy efficient living. Thinking about persons is very different to thinking about things. Thinking about the relations between persons requires a high degree of sensitivity.
As the basis of all our thinking is in the experiences we undergo in life, if our experiences differ, which they must do, then the content of our thinking must differ also.
Because of these facts we shall have to learn to make allowances for each other's different responses or we shall not be able to maintain harmonious relations with each other.

Meditate upon these truths; make the dictionary your most important hook; study the rules of logic. Always look for definition. There can be no clarity unless the definitions are clear.

Cardinal Water Sign.

Pure Feeling

FEELING is the basis of all our knowledge, of ourselves and everything in the universe in which we exist.
The word 'feeling' comes from an old English word meaning 'to touch' or 'to pluck'. Another word used to convey a similar meaning is 'sensation', which comes from the Latin 'sentire', which means 'to feel' and 'to know'.
If we touch a finger with the thumb we can feel it offer resistance - we say we have a feeling of resistance. We may also have a sensation of the texture of the skin, we can feel the finger to be warm or cold. We can look at the finger, see its shape and colour. We can tap it on the table and listen to the noise.
All these things give us some kind of information about the finger. By using it in different ways we gain different sensations or feelings or knowledge.
We not only get all this information, we also experience in our feelings something we call LIKE and DISLIKE, or, PLEASURE and PAIN.
This is one of the most important facts of which we can become conscious.
If we knock our finger hard we can feel pain.
PAIN means something we would rather refuse than accept. If we stroke the painful finger we can reduce pain and feel pleased to do so.
PLEASURE is something we tend to accept rather than refuse.
This simple division of feelings into pleasurable ones and painful ones is of tremendous importance, importance far beyond what is immediately obvious.
The PLEASURES of a situation pull us towards them; the DISPLEASURES and PAINS push us away.
If this were true, then our life would be nothing hut a wandering process between pleasurable and unpleasurable situations, and as all situations are complex and contain both pleasure and unpleasure, we would never be able to attain any ultimate satisfaction.

There would be no free choice: all would depend upon the accidental pleasures and pains that we had suffered.
We human beings react not only to physical situations which are the causes of pleasures and pains that we call physical. We react also to MENTAL situations, i.e. to thoughts and to groups of ideas. We react to inner feelings and reactions: to urges and impulses, all of which affect our thoughts.
Socrates, said that the unexamined life was not worth living.
We react to our inner pleasures and pains in a very complex way. Even in a physical situation which gives us no pain at all, we can feel pain at the mere memory of things that we have done, or, even more surprisingly, at the mere thought of things we have no intention of doing, but which we think we ought not to do, ought not even to think of.
Why is this?
When we have a merely physical pain we can consider its cause to be outside our own essential inner self. If we have a toothache we do not think "I am bad", but "the tooth is bad". But if a mental pain becomes intense we tend to think that there is something wrong with our inner being, our own real self, our soul.
We tend to feel GUILTY, to feel that we have ourselves done something wrong.
What is the origin of this feeling?
Guilt is the feeling we have when we believe that we have done something that has broken our relation with other human beings; with our family or friends or others who might be necessary for our welfare. Guilt is the feeling that we have by our own will placed ourselves in a position where we are no longer acceptable to other people with whom we have to live.
Behind guilt there is a process of feeling and thought having its origin in the communal relationships of human beings over many thousands of years.
Meditate upon the many aspects of FEELING and free-choice.

Fixed Fire Sign.

Will-Nervous Energy

Let us meditate upon the meaning of the word WILL.

By Will we mean that power in us that enables us to choose a course of action, to reinforce our choice, to change our mind, to oppose our natural tendencies, to control our mental and emotional processes, to halt our actions at a given point, to concentrate our energies upon some goal and to keep them concentrated in the face of all opposition till the goal is attained.

Will, then, must be a very mysterious force, for it is able to act upon all our processes, physical, mental and emotional. It is therefore not surprising that some philosophers and psychologists find the WILL a very difficult thing to deal with. Some even deny that man has any free will at all, which is strange, because if there is no such power, then, the psychologist who writes a book to prove there is no free-will, should believe that he is not free to refuse to write it.

If we test ourselves to see if we have any power to choose, or select a course of action, we shall find that for all practical purposes we can do so. For example: if we read this sentence and then ask ourselves if we can choose to read it again, or to refuse to read it again, we can do so for any reason we care to invent.

In either case we will experience a process inside us which we call the process of willing, either to read it again, or to refuse to do so. Either to say 'yes' or to say 'no' to it.

YES or NO. These two short words are the two most important words in our vocabulary. By saying 'yes' or 'no' to whatever we are asked to do, we steer our life's course.

To WILL is to choose to say either 'yes' or 'no' to any situation in which we find ourselves, to any request or demand made to us. To will is to choose to react to some stimulus in some particular way, to say 'yes' to one course of action and 'no' to another.

No one has seen the WILL itself. We see its effects in actions of the body; we feel its effects upon the way it acts upon our emotional nature; we detect its action in the changes of direction in our thoughts, or in the persistence of some chosen central idea.

The Will is an invisible, intangible power which determines our destiny. Will is our power of choice.

In every situation in which we make a free choice we use our will to select from presented alternatives some course of thought, feeling or action.

Usually before we choose, we refer to our understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves. We consult, consciously or unconsciously, the memories of all our experiences as we believe them to be relevant to our situation and purpose. These experience-memories result in what we call 'instinctive' choices. "Instincts" are really "reasons-for-acting-in-particular-ways - many of them inherited from our ancestors, a fact most important for the fulfilment of our real life purpose.

Because our ancestors have not always willed the best course for the development of life, and where this will has chosen a wrong course, has begun a march in the wrong direction, we may find that our instinctive reactions to certain situations are not always those most profitable to us.

Because of this fact we therefore need a more reliable basis of choice than that offered to us by our instinctive reactions.

This basis of choice must be absolute in its truth and beyond any possibility of error, a supreme primary eternal fact; yet it must also be able to manifest in a world where untruth and error are frequently seen struggling to rule; in a world where time imposes its character, where fashions strive to dictate what attitudes people shall take to the great questions of life.

What is this absolutely true, unshakeable eternal basis of choice?

Simply, this basis is LOVE. Real Love. Not desire, not wish, not want but WILL - a specially directed WILL - The WILL to WORK FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BEST POTENTIALITIES OF ALL LIVING BEINGS.

Mutable Earth Sign.

Circulating Energy

The Universe into which we are born is a rhythmical universe.
People who live by the sea are very aware of this fact because of the behaviour of the tides, which are mysteriously linked with the position of the moon and the sun.
These are but the outer expressions of a much deeper rhythm which underlies and rules everything in the universe, every star or planet, everything non-living and living. The earth turning on its axis and giving rise to the rhythmical alterations of 'night and day', the moon going through certain phases; the earth going rhythmically around the sun once a year. All are just what they are because the whole universe itself is an energy system governed by a Great Rhythm which is an inherency of Cosmic Power.
This "Great Rhythm is called in Yoga philosophy the "Breath of God".
It is not accidentally that the ancient Sages used the same word "Spirit" to refer to the air, the wind, the breath in human beings and the intelligence in all intelligent beings.
There is a very intimate relation between all these phenomena.
The air we breathe contains oxygen which is essential not only for our physical being processes, but also to our brain function and manifestations of intelligence. Thus when we practice rhythmical breathing we are not merely creating the best conditions for maintaining physical health, but also producing the necessary conditions of intelligent thought.
To breathe truly rhythmically is to breathe intelligently, because rhythmic breathing brings the organism physically and mentally into harmony with the basic rhythm underlying all healthy processes in the universe.
We know that it is not only breathing IN which is important but also breathing OUT properly, for when we breathe out we get rid of certain impurities that would otherwise collect in our body.

Only if we exhale properly can we gain the full benefit of breathing in.

We re-energise our body more efficiently by teaching ourselves to breathe out so that our body is cleansed and thus made more able to use the oxygen we breathe in.

Secondly, if our breathing is made rhythmical, we can influence, as we have seen, not only our body, but our mind, bringing relaxation not only to our muscles but to our feelings.

It is very important for us to realise that what we feel when we feel our own feelings is the state of the life-energy circulating in us, its degree of tension or relaxation in us.
This is most important for the proper conducting of our life-processes.
When we feel our feeling state we are feeling the state of our life-energy.

If we are relaxed our life-energy has the needed degree of freedom for its activities.
If we are too tense our life energy has not the conditions of efficient action and has to work under restraints which impede its work in our body and mind. Rhythmical breathing thus helps to produce the conditions in which our life-energy can most efficiently conduct its health giving activities.

But the healthy rhythm of our breathing is easily disturbed by certain mental processes of worry, anxiety, etc. The relationship between our breathing, our emotional states and our thinking processes is very intimate. We cannot change one of these factors without changing the other two.

If we retard our breathing so that our oxygen intake becomes insufficient to maintain our living processes we increase physical negativity and with this produce some degree of anxiety, and with this, certain types of negative thought. If we indulge in negative thoughts and say "No" to life, we induce negative emotions and depress or impede our physical functions and our breathing processes. Because an understanding of breathing is so very important we will continue this meditation into our next period.

Cardinal Air Sign.

Ideation-Perception

We will continue our meditation on breathing.
Because of the very intimate relation that exists between breathing, emotional states and thinking processes, it follows that if we induce a change in one of the factors, we induce a change in the other two.

If we are feeling depressed, our mind filled with negative thoughts and we turn our attention to our breathing process and begin to establish a rhythmical in and out breathing we find, that as the rhythm becomes established depressive feeling is alleviated and our thoughts begin to lose their negativity.

If we persist in our rhythmical breathing then all negative emotions and thoughts are driven out of our organism.

It is entirely a matter of the degree of our persistence that determines the amount of effect on our feelings and thoughts we produce.

There is a mathematical relation between our energy input and the changes that are induced in our organism by it. This is the basis of the idea of JUSTICE - the idea that every unit of energy expended must have its proper result.

People who allow themselves to indulge in negative feelings and thoughts, and who allow their breathing to fall into unrhythmical patterns do not understand this principle, and therefore do not gain the benefits which must arise from self-harmonisation and the underlying rhythm of Cosmic Power.

Correct posture is essential for proper breathing. If we slump forward allowing our shoulder blades to fall forward we are not allowing our ribs the full freedom they need for their expansion and contraction.

In the correct position of the spine the shoulder blades tend naturally to take up their right position on the back, and need but a slight movement towards each other to complete the attainment of correct body posture.

If we combine an easily held correct spinal posture with rhythmical breathing we find we feel the real dignity of being human coupling itself with the sense of well-being natural to a living being in harmony with the Cosmic Rhythm of universal life.

Now we are ready to practice a very important Yoga exercise.

First we meditate upon our own organism and the Great Universe in which it lives and moves. Then we focus our attention on the rhythm that runs through all things.

Then we recognise that what rhythm there is in our organism functions in there because of the Great Cosmic Rhythm which moves all things.

Then we say to ourselves mentally, "This rhythm that I feel in my organism is here because of the Great Rhythm of the Breath of God. As I breathe out I return to the Universal Being all that it has given to me. As I breathe in I receive again from the Universal Being that rhythmical power which it is pleased to breathe into me".

Breathing simply in this way, especially attending to exhalations so that waste materials are properly expelled and the organism cleansed to receive the new breath of life, we become aware that we really are participating in the Great Rhythm of Divine Life.

As we become more consciously aware of this deliberate participation in the rhythm of Divine Life , we become progressively more and more positive to life and living as we experience it from day to day. We become aware that the Rhythm of Divine Life is always with us, whether we are conscious of it or not. We shall know that this very rhythm of life is itself evidence of the presence in us of the origin of life, Emmanuel, "God with us", and that to give ourself freely and in full faith into this rhythm is to give ourself into God's Spirit and Activity.

Meditate upon these ideas in Libra and their establishment in action.

Fixed Water Sign.

Feeling - Devotion

Now we are beginning to see how, by directing and DEVOTING our whole feeling towards this work we start to embody the meaning of the ideas within us, thus becoming the very proof of their value.

Let us now consider "Creative Imagination".
Imagination is that faculty or power of our mind which is able to create images; it is of two kinds, 'active', and 'passive'.
Passive Imagination is the kind that produces images in our mind without control, sometimes filling our minds with pleasant memories, sometimes with unpleasant ones.
Active Imagination is our power to control the production of mental images and to combine them and make new patterns with them; to create images we have never seen before in our minds. This creative power is the source of all new inventions, all new values.
Active or Creative Imagination is thus very important and any exercise which helps develop it is of tremendous value for our development towards greater spiritual awareness and power.
We shall begin by using the capital letter " I " as our meditation symbol. First, think of the letter " I ". Keeping the spine straight place this "I" by the active use of the imagination in the place of the spinal column.
Next we remind ourselves that in English this letter means the "Human self".
By this threefold congruence of self, symbol and body posture we experience our being and its energies in a very special way.
Congruence (coming together) of self, symbol and body is very important for effective meditation, and for gaining the utmost value out of religious worship prayer and ritual.

Let us remind ourselves again that all matter in the Universe is a complex pattern of energy and that all forms of energy are in very intimate relation with each other, such that, with the appropriate technique, any form of energy can be changed into any other form.

This means that just as mechanical energy and chemical energy and electrical energy can be changed into each other, so also can energy of the will, of feeling, of emotion and of imagination.

The energy at work in creative imagination can influence our feelings and our emotions, and these can influence the physical processes which take place in our organism. The distribution of our nerve energy and the behaviour of our glandular system are influencable by our Creative Imagination, just as the action of our muscles may be influenced.

Active, Creative Imagination is a very powerful weapon in the battle of life.

When we perform this simple exercise and remind ourselves that this letter " I " and this spine are being held together congruently, in correspondence, by means of the power of the active imagination, which is a power of our self then we are beginning to realise something of our real creativity, we are beginning to understand why we human beings are really a very special kind of creature.

In the animal world we see passive imagination at work in certain kinds of camouflage. We assume these changes not to be the product of deliberate willing, but of spontaneous identification with their surroundings.

When a soldier in the jungle disguises his appearance he does so deliberately. When an actor deliberately changes his appearance and mannerisms we see active imagination at a higher level. The actor plays on his own ideas and emotions by free action of his own creative imagination by his own will. But when the actor leaves the stage he quickly returns to his own character.

But the individual who aims to change his character permanently and deeply, this man wills to change his character absolutely by the use of the highest kind of Active Imagination he can conjure in his being.

This level of ACTIVE IMAGINATION, intense to an extraordinary degree, can produce changes at every level of being.

Mutable Fire Sign.

Will - aiming

Here then, the Will is aiming towards its highest level. Only when operating at its highest level will it find the satisfaction and happiness it has been seeking.

Determined to comprehend the truth about itself, the ultimate reality of being, it directs all its energies (fire) and mental processes (air) towards this end. It feels (water) its own state, its own emotions, likes and dislikes and brings the physical body (earth) into subordination with the truth (Logos, Buddhi, understanding) which it discloses within itself.

This high kind of Active Imagination is the reflection in man of the process by which God creates, not from some original matter which exists independently of his Being but from the power of His Will and Active Imagination.

All matter is energy, and ultimately all energy has its source in the Infinite Power which is the Will Power of God. God is the Supreme Manipulator of the Active Imagination. By participation in this power human beings can join in the Divine Creative Activity, and so can produce within their own beings a new creation - "Behold I make all things new".

This new creation is called the "New Man", the spiritually awakened man, who has realised that his own creative imagination is one with that of the Creator of the Universe, has realised that just as God created the Great Universe within His own Being, by willed action of His Creative Imagination, so the "New Man" can, by the same power, create within himself a little universe embodying the same divine laws and principles and powers.

As we perform our exercise with the letter " I ", as we place it within the spinal column, and remember that we are doing so by the power of our Creative Imagination, willed into action by our own Will, we begin to realise the meaning of God's words to Moses, "I AM THAT I AM".

God is telling Moses that the essential of God is His awareness, that he is an " I " (Eye), an Intelligent Self Observing Power, able by self-manipulation of this power in the act of Creative Imagination to bring into existence a universe filled with myriads of beings whose existence depends upon the continued willed activity of this Creative Imagination.

As we place the letter " I " in the spinal column and realise that we are doing so by a willed act of imagination, we become aware that we have taken a step towards deliberate self-conscious control of the Self and all its powers.

By realising the tremendous significance of this step, we gain the impetus to take our next step, and our next, and next. Finally we come into full realisation of the All-Creative power of the Active Imagination which we have inside our souls as the supreme Gift of God, the Great Creator of the Universe in which we live and move.

Because God has willed to create man as a FREE being, we are able to choose whether we will or will not bring our will into conformity with the Will of God; and because the will of God is Infinitely Powerful, His Will cannot be broken. Whether we like our freedom or not, we are by God's Will, FREE. We cannot escape our freeness. And because of this, we are in a position where we must choose to either act freely, or to place ourselves in bondage to something, to another existent being, or to an idea, or to some feeling or emotion, or to some kind of activity.

Once we have made our choice we have placed ourselves under the Cosmic Law which governs the thing we have chosen.

For all things are under the laws of the operation of their being.

If we choose to act as separate egotistic beings we are under the law of separativity, which is isolation from all other beings.

If we choose identification with the Will of God in Cosmic Unity. then all separation is done away with and our Yoga has reached its goal in the Oneness of the Divine Love.