Forums for Pre-Trainees
Series of four talks by MBM
beginning February 18, 1937
Subjects touched on in first Forum: tutoring and training, personality as shell; laws of evolution of soul; man, mind, spirit; philosophical homesickness; three kinds of knowledge; myths, balance; ways of getting experience.
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There are two ways of looking at the courses (study): (1) as interesting study; (2) as a preparation for training. The four in man — earth, water, fire, air. You should not have a resistance to any of them. Study helps in removing the problems, whether you are planning training or not, but if you are, they fall into a peculiar place. The important link to training is tutoring.
Re tutoring. No intellectual training or gaining of knowledge is useful, seen philosophically. The only purpose of anything is to put it into application. Therefore the strong right leg in reference to this process of learning and doing. And in the tutoring, where you have direct relationship with someone whose interest is your development is an experience that is useful and beneficent, and a bit of a revelation. Move toward training. Training is the big thing. Pre-training gets some of the difficulties out of the way. You haven’t begun until you are working in the training department (of the School.)
To help you get clear on training, I had everyone in the training department give their idea of what it meant, – what it was like.
Purpose of the School: Our interest in the School is purposively in the higher development of man. In a way that links him to the Cosmos, not in a way that makes him more comfortable in earth.
Difference between this work and the usual mystical and semi-mystical. Nearly all of them are concerned about the welfare of man here and now — either to prevent war, to develop his higher stature, to bring about welfare here. With this work that is an incident — a valuable incident but not the most important. The most important is to give you such a perspective and sense of relationship to Cosmic processes that you are part and parcel, not only intellectually but beginning to sense it in a cosmic process. So that your welfare here, our work, is to put you in possession of the knowledge, and beginning of the training of the faculties, that will enable you to link yourself more and more consciously and purposively with eternal processes, which are of larger value in the continuation of life than they are in the immediate. It improves you, – maybe not your circumstances. Shifts your sense of values.
Our perspective is so that our nose is no longer out of joint with circumstances. And we see this particular life as a chapter in a large book — the book of life.
What are you living for? Everyone is a soul in some stage of development. With that, you must take your stand against all orthodox philosophy until you have tested it. It can’t be tested intellectually. Its finest test is through the work with a tutor.
Steps in training. The first big step is to come out of your shell. Called the personality. Just as actual on its own plane as your physical body on the physical plane. It is literally a shell, and that has to be broken out of. You don’t know who you are or what you are until that is overcome. The first big task to be accomplished. And there are techniques for that.
The urge to grow. Down in our hearts we want to be, to grow. There is something in us that demands that. When frustrated, we have either ego or inferiority. The only way to overcome ego and inferiority is not to tell you about it but enable you to develop your own being. You are just then very busy in growing.
Habits Some mechanisms of the personality that should be broken up. Habits. Psychological reactions to people. Language. Prejudices. Inhibitions. Inertia. Typical characteristics, not localized. Everyone’s inertia acts differently; everyone’s fears and taboos. Actual forms, that are .known philosophically as a shell, psychologically, as a personality. In a shell it cannot move freely. Get out of your “house”, and if it is useful to get back in, go ahead, but don’t be held by your personality. One of the first things we have to learn.
Work on personality leads to much on the plus side: release of hidden energies. Liberation of the positive powers in you. Unhappily, in a large number of cases our positive qualities are held down by that shell. Another important reason for breaking up the shell.
Laws governing evolution of the soul. Our next principle of living will speak of patterns and laws in the process (?) of life. Life as we know it is not the way it really is. Method in the soul’s evolution. And the soul is what you are, though you are manifesting in a body. Your soul is cramped through manifestation in a body, which, in turn, has a personality. So you can see how cramped the soul is.
There are laws that govern that evolution of the soul, because the whole pattern of life is outlined, in a general sense. Like the scheme for building a house. First it is general, but as soon as you begin to work upon it it becomes specific.
The pattern of life, involving all humans, the pattern of the races, regardless of time, is a reality. Therefore it is natural and normal that those who become awake to the meaning of life begin to search out those patterns and follow them. In making a radio set there are certain rules to be observed. He who achieves the fundamentals in those rules most successfully is the one who achieves the best result; and is capable of repeating that result. In the same way, laws that govern the evolution of our being, – not different in each being, though in the development of that radio set there are slight variations. We won’t all be alike, or turned out uniformly. There is room for infinite variation within the completion of a larger pattern.
Why we are living. How many of you think you know why you are living? There is certain experience that is necessary for us to gather here, to evolve. You can’t evolve beyond a certain stage until you are conscious. You are blocked. Just as a child goes up to a certain stage, more or less sharply defined, and then becomes conscious, and begins to take hold of himself. The development of the mind makes possible experience that is not possible otherwise…. The five wise and the five foolish virgins. The “foolish virgins” let the senses run riot, instead of using the senses and profiting by them. The ones who are garnering their experience by not running riot are the ones who go on with the bridegroom, – spirit. Have you a spirit? Spirit, you and everyone else possesses as a seed – a potent seed. The economy must develop first before you can reach that as a goal. As a fruit tree must go through a variety of stages before you can get the fruit, yet the potential is there all the time. The apple, pear and peach are there potentially but you can’t reach them, because the intermediate stages are not accomplished. The allegory of the five senses illustrates how our senses can be contributive or can be frustrating.
You all have a spirit then. Is it logical to grow to the stage where you can have pears and apples on your tree? The fruit of man is known as “Son of Man” – man, meaning mind. And the Son of Man is spirit.
Philosophy What is philosophy? Contains the wisdom teachings. What is wisdom? True knowledge of cosmic laws, spiritual processes.
Different types of knowledge. (1) earthly knowledge: of the sciences, inquiry, research. That is knowledge from below. It is known by observation, experiment. Lump that as man’s knowledge — the knowledge that man has acquired for himself.
(2) A sacred, or secret, knowledge that only great Knowers know. Why is it sacred, or secret, – hidden? It is apprehended by faculties which the ordinary person has not developed. Spiritual things are only apprehended spiritually; by spiritual sense organs. If you haven’t developed those you can’t know them. Most people are deaf and dumb and blind regarding the Larger. So how can they know it? (That knowledge) can’t be gotten except by development. It is not psychic knowledge. It is not even mental knowledge. It is only apprehended through the mind that has become spiritual.
(3) These are the two poles. Available only to the super-man. In between, there is another kind of knowledge. Mythos is the middle knowledge. Myth means speech. Mythos is divided into three parts. Deals with three different types of subjects (re) cosmogonies, involution and evolution. Cosmogonies are stories of Creation. Involution, the descent of mankind; and evolution is his development. Evolution is also called redemption, ascension, salvation,Nirvana.
Mythos These three are the gist of all the races. And the myths of any race are its religion. Christianity is a mythos. It (myth) does not mean fictitious, any more than the religion of the Greeks, Babylonians, Egyptians, and others. Through the mythos of any race you can learn something of the secret teaching. You can go as far as you can go. Folklore is one of the lowest forms of mythos. Because it is the garbled version. The Teachers are in between the sacred lore and the crowd.
The belief that physical knowledge is the only knowledge available. There are three great classifications of knowledge. With the mythos three types: cosmogonies, involution and evolution, or ascent stories.
Ascent: What part of these three are you engaged in? In the ascent. If it is true that you are a spirit and, at a lower (state) soul, and at a still lower stage a human being, and still lower a personality, then you can see that the ascent is, in a sense, leaving those limitations behind. That is the philosophical reason for leaving the personality.
Because it is about the lowest form that the soul can wear in earth. It is limited by that, so it is getting only a little of the experience of coming down, instead of a great deal of it. That is why, in training, we propose to discard the limitations, and get our direction in making the ascent.
Glimpses Every one of us has had glimpses of realization that we are greater than we appear. Sometimes, when doors opened and we saw,- we hardly knew what, – and yet it was as veridical as anything we see in the material world.
Philosophy So our love towards finding out about this second group of knowledge — our love for that — is philosophy. It is a searching for this law of descent and ascent, primarily, which enables man to find his way out of this humdrum routine: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” “What shall it profit a man of the labor he has done. . .?” You can’t take a thing with you. There are subtleties that are permanent, and evasive to the material life. Then comes wonder. We reach in eagerness — not necessarily with love. That comes later. That is philosophy.
At the School it is our concern to interest all who come seeking for that wisdom-lore. No use in it till you apply it; To see how it enters in your own life is better. To stretch horizons is good.
Note how you are looking at this pre-training — which of the two ways.
(Here MBM made a reference to the three divisions of all knowledge.)
Religions are myths. Religious teachings in these days are far from useful. Yet all religions are of mythos, each in its own way…. Then, finally, that the search for how to ascend is what is meant by philosophy. Not anybody’s ideas about a thing.
Wisdom Wisdom is derived from above, not from below. It has nothing to do with man’s experiences. Man experiences in wisdom, but all his experience never creates one fragment of wisdom. (Here a comparison of philosophy and philosophies.)
Chapter VII in Proverbs: What does it mean?
Not all develop a personality. Those who are evolved do not. Don’t do what they are told to do. You are older than this life, but what do you know about it?
Balance You can’t move toward the Larger without balance. Gautama. Man a mystic and of practical sense. That enables you to go better.
Re this work: You are one-pointed in your objective, but you will do many things to contribute to that. If you have a balance in your account you can draw on it. If you do not know anything about it, you haven’t it. If you were a beggar you would not have the capacity to know. I mean, if you are still a very primitive type you won’t have with that, except as under rare circumstances, – you won’t have evolved far enough to know.
Planting of seeds Are the seeds planted purposefully? The usual stories are highly disguised. When you come to rebirth there are many, many factors, very complex. Analogy of the seed.
Re getting experience There are ways of getting experience that are extraordinary, extravagant. There are others that economic. When you are waking it is sheer logic to find ways to accelerate it. Once you glimpse the Larger it is rational to hurry to get there, as much as it is to any good on this plane. As when tired, to get into bed. Philosophic homesickness.
Descent Is there a struggle of descent? Yes, but different from the ascent. The “fall”; like undertaking something. Has its disadvantages.
Forum for Pre-trainees
With MBM
Second of series of four — April 1, 1937
Training Takes virtually no more time than now. Pre-training requires that you get a new view of the same old things. And because of that your relationship to them is different. You get into that different angle because you, through your minds, or the instruction you are receiving, or the experience you are having, have enlarged your perspective of life. The three score and ten, a chapter. It puts you into a different relationship. It takes time and effort to bring yourself literally into a different relationship. Forums are for the sake of seeing the larger objectives that pre-training implies.
Tutoring Whether in the pre-training stage or later. Has two important aspects. One, that you are close, and in the relation, with someone who is able to help you with personal problems, or later, individual problems. Able to give you in intimate situations, that pertain to this life and to your conscious thought. The other (2) is that you gradually open up the hidden areas of your own being. And what is so important is that we must, as we begin to face life more seriously, recognize that we have been living on the surface of things and that sooner or later that which is now closed to us of our own being will be revealed. That is why we begin to work with dreams. Show you how your subconscious minds work.
As you begin to learn that, you are widening your horizon. (Here MBM referred to the chart of the egg representing the conscious and the subconscious areas, with their divisions and levels, from personality down to seed of spirit.) The rest of the potency of your faculties (beyond and below the conscious waking state) and the hidden roots in which they have their being is below the threshold (of consciousness). You come to know your organism when you come to look underneath. And that is the intrinsic and always. . . . That the foundation of all training is to know yourself. From the conscious it is only skin deep. You can come to know how these faculties act beneath the surface. You can’t do that alone. You need someone else to help you — certainly in the first stages, and your blind spots are cognized. There are definite laws that govern that relationship. Some of it, in regard to human personality, Dr. Jung worked out in regard to psychological types. Opposites.
It is one thing to be told, and another to find it out for yourself. Gives you a dynamic with which you can work. That is, you can begin to run yourself as you do your home and business.
(Another chart of the egg design, showing the iceberg motif, that is the relatively small area of the conscious waking state, with the line surrounding it of the persona.)
Masks are not wrong, but are only a makeshift. In training, we begin to work a little further on.
Collective unconscious and seed of spirit. The collective unconscious has to do with the primitive, which you share with everything else that comes into life. Under pressure, humans regress to lusts and rage and passion. There is that strata in life — it is there below these other layers. And from the depths comes the threads of the life force which feed the three main trends in you. (Here the diagram showed the colors of red, brown, green, blue, mixed up, in the upper or more accessible layers of sub-conscious life below the threshold of waking consciousness.) Gradually the color changes and shifts to something of a wholly different world, the gold or yellow, at the bottom of the egg design. And indication that at the root of life is the seed of spirit. But the seed of spirit is buried under the debris of lives, not merely a life. Just as the treasures of a mine are. For this is comparable to a mine. If we would have access to it we must go through the other (the colors as described above.)
It is one thing to speak of the spiritual life, and quite another to be in rapport with it. No intellectual processes will give you that or illumination.
Training is the moving toward direct experience.
The good accumulated in previous lives (is indicated) by the blue on the chart. This is a lighter blue than that of practical mind and is approaching the yellow or gold. But we have not any access to it. We look toward it through a thousand veils darkly.
A commingling unto life. The commingling is unto life. Making harmonious, so that this is a central principle, radiating everywhere. (This, meaning the movement toward spirit.) So that you might say your being is always in the sunlight. The clouds are not there. You can’t remove the clouds by just saying so. There is a pseudo sun and the real sun. (The pseudo sun is the psychic surround.)
End of pre-training. Pre-training ceases when you are no longer dominated by your personality. When the work works and certain changes come about in you. Then you experientially know certain things are true. Before that you are in the position of taking someone else’s word for it. That is alright in the beginning but it will not do for a later stage. That is why it is so important to break up the personality. (MBM sometimes referred to this “breaking up” as becoming crackled ware with space for other potentials to come through.
Requires a technique. That is why teachers are necessary. When you investigate whether these things are true, and open yourself up to the first stages. As long as you think this is the end, or all it is necessary to know, you are surrounded by a wall.
Collective unconscious. (In answer to a question.) In the collective unconscious you will find not only what Jung calls the demonic forces, which are stronger than any individual man. Like the drive of sex. You cannot come to rights with it by fighting it. You can repress and distort, but that is not the way to fight it because it is stronger than you. There are also the three dragons (greed, pride, lust). They are the demonic forces. That is in the collective unconscious. In the ether are registered the imprints that belong to the colorful activities of humanity. That is why the mythos of the races is somehow registered in the collective unconscious. It is in the ethers. The collective unconscious is an etheric reality. Your brain is a physical reality.
Rapport with another world. There are whole worlds to discover, to liberate. You have been identifying yourself with the personality. Is it not possible to conceive that you might also be rapport with another world, not just the world with which the personality is identified? But in this world you have gradually to grow up, and orient yourself to it.
Mental growth. Body and psyche grow naturally, but the mental, which is the bridge between this and the next dimension (not psychic) grows by effort. That “far off, divine event” of which the poet speaks. Toward this all creation moves. But it is a very slow drive. You are not driven on, usually, except by pain. The forces of life drive you to the gold. The object of it is to complete it. Pain makes you ask, why, why, why? Physical and psychic food is there. Under the natural law, but not so with the others.
Intelligent effort. Back to the central idea that in order to develop intelligently we have to use intelligent effort. And intelligent effort on the self in relation to the larger world, is training. In relation to this world it has to do with social customs. But when it is related to a vaster picture, of which this life is only a chapter, then it implies training. And training that includes the invisible part of you. If you are moving to the Larger, you can’t move with the shell of you. So, in order to go forward, you must go forward with all your being.
Meditation. In the past there have been some techniques. One way of getting to this other part of you was through meditation. Meditation is a digging down from the conscious, three-dimensional awareness, with a purpose. Let me show you what this means. Unless that technique is carefully administered, and practiced under different circumstances than we can possibly develop in the western world, the technique of meditation is only imposing the conscious upon the subconscious. You don’t get far in superimposing the conscious upon the subconscious. It (the conscious) is acting like a czar. In training, you have got to work from below up as well as from the top down.
If not in training, you can profit to a degree with mental training, disciplines, etc. But to carry that too far without opening up the doors, and letting the inside come out, is terrible. You must draw the other energies into their expressions.
You don’t complete your work in pre-tutoring with a definite number of sessions. That depends on you. It all depends on how long it takes to dig down below your personality levels.
When you have been working for sometime, and have gotten a pipeline with the below, your work with the exercises comes into a different category. All along goes the steady work of coming to know more of wisdom lore, of the teachings, which then act like a mental map. And the more you know the better. Because it is never well to lean upon one tradition. Anymore than it is to lean upon your personality. Any great tradition becomes richer the more you know of other traditions. It does not take away, it adds. But so amazingly, that you don’t understand, until you have gone through the learning and understanding of many traditions. Then the riches of the first one with which you may have been identified become evident. A diamond could not shine if it had only one or two facets. When we move below we are no longer identified with a certain tradition. The processes, or steps to be accomplished, are universally the same. You can’t have truth with one tradition.
(Here MBM made reference to what was used as a self-observation chart by the trainees, to indicate to themselves the progress or sensing, feeling, thinking, their dominance at different times, their levels of dimness or clarity, etc. The charts were kept on a weekly and monthly basis.) These charts help to make you a little more conscious as to how to get after your personality.
Ego feeling. Why we are egoistic. Because this is the drive, and the hunger, to be perfect. And is so strong. And when the personality does not understand it, it identified itself with the personality. But it is really derived from the great drive (the life force and its urge to grow.) You are all souls in evolution. The thing we have presently to learn is to accept where we are. Then we are never cross-eyed at our neighbors because we are so busy about ourselves.
Experiences in the seance room. The object is only to give you some evidence that life on other planes is a reality, that it interlinks with this plane, and that it functions. The whole implication of what is begun, or suggested, in the seance room, is so vast that it is not possible to deal with it except through years and years of patient and open-minded investigation. Therefore, according as you have had experience in the seance room, ponder on it as some degree of evidence of the actuality of life in other planes of being. Like or dislike has nothing to do with it. Fear is not a reaction. It either is a fact or it is not a fact.
Bring your experience with it to that state. Until you have accepted it as you would the telephone or the electric light. A basic fact. Whether you want to investigate farther is not necessary, but it is useful to give those interested an opportunity when available, an opportunity to find out that it is true that life is continuous.
Mystical experience. A brief word about mystical experience. I am not going into the intricacies of mystical experience. That, too, is a profound world. If any of you have had what you may call mystical experience — a great emotional reaction to impressions of larger worlds, or larger consciousness, in the sense of wonder, reverence, and awe, that is the kind of thing I am referring to now. Drop in my letter-box on the wall a little slip saying you have had or have not had it.
Mystical experience runs a great gamut. Mystical experience is something that dislodges the personality. That is one reason why it is useful. If you are just moved, if you don’t live differently, you haven’t had mystical experience. Mystical experience means an activity outside of you upon you.
Forum for pre-Trainees
third of four
MBM April 22, 1937
Training. Pre-training supposed to get you to the point where you can carry on in spite of difficulties. Part of training is exercise re: our own pet sin. Not just to let ourselves go according to the circumstances of life. To break up our habit paths and limitations. Always that effort to overcome limitations. Why should we be content with limitations in ourselves?
An exercise: How do we look to the member of the group whom we know least well, or with whom we have less rapport? What is some flaw in your social or group behavior? Where does that resistance come in? It is good to see ourselves as others see us.
Touching Others More Deeply It is not enough just to be friendly. We touch people on the surface instead of in the deeps. Then the roots are shallow, and when a storm comes they cannot stand up. Sooner or later you experience that lack. You have got to touch deeply with people. How can you when you are more or less coming or going? It is somewhat of an art to touch on things deeply when you haven’t much opportunity of time. With a look of the eye you can convey profundities. We always gain for what we give. The strength that comes back to us from having thrown out the lifelines. Sending down the roots. If you don’t send down your roots, when the wind comes and the storm, over you go. And you must send them down in ways that are according to the laws and principles.
Value of Group. In work like this you are fortunate to have a group. You know your weaknesses and the other persons weaknesses but no malice. We recognize our limitations and come out over them. Where could you have more favorable soil to try out? Friendliness and good will.
You can’t talk freely (I can’t talk freely) unless I have a good cause. Otherwise a sense of intrusion. Every soul intrinsically has the same value. . . . That happy kind of activity in which you reach into the group and become part and parcel of it, is good for you. Then, if you are put down, you can stand it. Otherwise you can’t. No more feeling of apology.
If the drive from the subconscious gives us too much drive…. Keep on doing it but become more conscious. That will gradually take down the surplus. No battle is won by a single gesture, but a long campaign. Don’t rush, but the quicker you work into that position of balance the better.
(Answer to question) Don’t take any trouble at all with people I don’t like, says the questioner. Withdrawal from some and moving toward others. What should be done? (Ans.) It is legitimate in the larger picture that we draw from those we don’t like and move toward others we do, but we must be careful whether that liking is on the basis only of personality or soul revelation?
Re: loosening personality holds. And there is another challenge: complete elimination of the personality, so that we don’t act from that. This is how we should work out, but that we have good will toward all, and ease and friendliness in functioning toward all, if that is called on, though it may be strong if necessary, but that we do not find ourselves alien to anyone. From that point of view it is wholly wrong. On the other hand, there is a value in moving with those who are like minded. Because there we have much to discuss. Working on those problems. The one thing we have the right to expect from anyone in this group is responsiveness to any overtures made by anyone else.
Re: type. Everyone of you is a type, and because of that a personality. What is the besetting sin of your type? Even in pre-training we want to break up that personality as soon as possible. You can’t grow unless you take away your inhibitions. The parable of the wine and the bottles. You can’t put new wine in old bottles. The idea behind that allegory is that new wine needs a new shape in which to function. Not only the old goat skin. You can’t grow except you break up your habit paths. Therefore since your growth is dependent on the breaking up of your habit paths, let us make a specific job of each one of you taking the pet sin of your type and getting busy on it. Take something specific and work on it. And remember that you can’t grow if you don’t break something of the old forms. That is necessary. That is why the breaking down comes before the building.
It is a false confession if that which was confessed is not ameliorated.
Goal. There is only one goal that has the possibility of reconciling all the discrepancies in the household, for we are many selves. And that is the distant goal of the completed evolution. That alone has in it the magic to absorb all the lesser desires. That alone can’t have anything upset it.
Object of. Interesting problems in reference to meditation. What is the object of meditation? To train the imagination to true seeing – seeing Realities. Those Realities are so different from our physical realities that we have to go through many different stages to get to them. For instance, you will never come, in the ultimate, to a table. Sometime find out what tableness is. One of the steps you will go through is the abstract. There you will have discarded literal things. Your object of meditation is to make you rapport with the noumenal world while you are in the flesh. The different ways are the struggling up the mountain to get there.
Re meditating on book, bookness. From material books up to the “Book of Life.” Perhaps that Book of Life is more a book than any of the books here. And so, as you work, little by little, you will come to the reality behind books. Behind tables. And what you arrive at, while you hold it over the subconscious, will be like nothing that you started with. The object is to lead you away from things to realities. You will never come to the Larger world till you can remove yourself from things. Up to the Idea. That is not like the manifestation. It is so far away you will be almost frightened. What you get is the living essence, glowing and alive. An economic process, moving step by step. Constantly improve your technique.
Mind energy can be directed. Male. . . That is the sacred animal as well as the Christ road.
Ideas from which things come. A rose is an embodiment. Of what? What is rose-ness? That is getting up to the world of Ideas — from which all things come. That is a more wonderful exercise for your minds than any on the violin. Because it will last through eternity. A power that carries you on. Hunches. It is good to have helpful motifs come out of the blue, or the subconscious. But that can be developed more and more, until it is a separate thing, not accidental but reached out for mechanically conditioned by you; so that it is as sure as to get an idea from a letter. To be master of a thing is mastery. This technique is one that makes you increasingly rapport. And it strikes right across the intermediate world of ordinary subconscious droppings, to the realities. And at the same time makes your mind grow by the exercise. But it must be related. If it is not, it must be cut off, no matter how good it is.
Concentration The best way is practice. But it must be more and more intelligent. None of these things are gifts; they are powers won. And to have them is to have them, and belongs to those things that cannot be taken away. They are given us in the seed. You are where you are due to what you have done in the past.
You will gradually sense about things that you have not learned in the flesh. It is energy through the subconscious.
Listening is only helpful if you are doing. Otherwise an illusion.
. . . . . .
Re asking questions. Presenting your problems adds to your stature. Even if is somewhat the same question else asks.
Re books. Books are the thoughts of humanity, recorded for others. Not always for others. Highly condensed . . . . .
FOURTH FORUM, ON TRAINING
MBM May 20, 1937
Including references to Ouspensky’s book, chapter 1: Mystical Experiences; Place of Training in the World Today; Friends; Paying the Price. (New Model of the Universe.)
. . . . . .
Training always precedes efficiency. Training makes for efficiency, as a human being and as an evolving soul.
Training of the human being is most necessary, useful, valuable. Why don’t they all come? For one thing, people don’t know about it. Also, it means changing paths of habit and following not the line of least resistance. People do not know the importance of their own lives. You are coming gradually to the realization that your primary job is the development of yourselves. People don’t come because they have no idea of the meaning or purpose of life, its object; nor of continuity. You are your own keeper. There is no vicarious salvation. Others may help you, show the way. If you like the beauty of their pattern.
Read chapter one of Ouspensky’s New Model. Read and digest that first chapter this summer. Page 14.
Training moves you along the lines of being on the outside of this wall and gradually helping you through. (Ouspensky speaks of a wall between those who are asleep, and those who have begun to advance. Concentric circles.) In order to become efficient in living, just as you must know about the job in which you are to become efficient, so you must know about the map in which you are to become efficient. You push backward and forward. And little by little the wall of the unknown crumbles before you. When you begin training you are at it.
- The work of the individual on himself. What is the work the individual does on himself? There is the general idea and there is tutoring. The individual begins to see how unconscious he has been in the use of his energies. There are degrees upon degrees of consciousness. He sees his own life against a larger perspective, and a pattern. Just as you do it with anything else, see that there is an economic way of doing it, and then follow that economic way. It is best to learn from those who have gone before.
Mystical experience. Revealing the sensitivity of the transcendental in you to the transcendental outside of you. When science of sleeping humans to the higher evolution may be described as “taking the temperature ???? Mystical experience describes your sensitivity to worlds larger than you are. It won’t be (through) your personality but the transcendental man. Not just the physical. Porches.
If you know there is a transcendental man it is important to know how frequently that transcendental self is able to report its impacts to the material self. Your response to mystical experience is your I.Q. of your sensitivities to the larger worlds, to which you are all bound, whether you know it or not. How thin are the veils?
Mystical experience is that which is on the other side of the wall and it may be a well-grown garden but the wall may be too thick. Again there may be relatively no wall; and there may be no garden.
Individuality. In each one of you that part of you which is transcendental is as eager as it is in anyone else to live and grow. There is nothing wrong with the nature of the essential life. In its beginning, that is equal. It is your personality that is primarily interested in this side, the outside. If we can shut down the personality, so as to give the other part of you a chance, it will speak. And its speaking will gradually balance up the personality, building the new individuality, and making the man facing the world the incidental, as he is, and the other, the guiding power.
The seed is always there. The garden has to be built. In the seed there is that drive, and that stays there, though it may have to wait stages. It may be in any degrees of development, from little to much.
Mystical Experience is something that belongs to the transcendental man, which moves profoundly, dislodges the earth-bound man, the personality. Unless it deeply moves you it is not a mystical experience. Like a workman shifting a stone. So that the personality is a little dislodged. People often have mystical experience without recognizing it. Then the seed does not fall on good ground. The personality must be broken to make better ground. Its object is to move you. A certain amount of mystical experience should be cultivated. A beneficent way of breaking up the old personality in the right direction.
Tutoring. Why is tutoring so important? It helps the life of the soul. Learning the way. Catharsis. Rapport between the visible man and the invisible. Since training is work on the self, emphasis must be placed on the value of tutoring.
- Relationship of the Individual to the Good. All work together for something none can get by himself. Teamwork. In the advancing steps of training each must be a member of a team. And you must be a good member of the team. A working together. Supporting where there are temporary weaknesses. Sharing, good will, perception. Many people do not understand what group-life is. Analogy of the body — different phases of work that each part has good will to the other parts. Part of the life in higher dimension is dependent on the ability to cooperate, is in their groups. Far more than we know of here.
Therefore there must be responsibility of the individual, integrity in the individual and in the group, and ability to keep the temperature of the group. Look upon yourselves as one body. Do to other members as parts of your body do to the whole.
There cannot be that relationship to the whole world, because it takes consciousness, and awareness and intelligence. Your body functions unconsciously, because it has been set to do so. But everything above the realm of nature has to be intensely aware of all parts of the game.
Therefore there cannot be an organism until people are conscious of it, or until there are sufficient leaders who know that, who can dominate the mass. But the mass does not like to be dominated. Hard to stop it in the middle. We move forward individually, via our practice as individuals, and as members of a group. But for the whole human race, it is a far cry.
Growing in doing. You do grow only in doing. Re leaving the older associates. Asyou see through the older companions, you have a wise forbearance, kindliness. You see those people as souls in evolution, but they are no longer your intimates. You don’t have to sever their connections. You will no longer care about their opinions so much.
(Again re. Ouspensky page 32) Training can be given only to those who seek — who have been seeking with a certain amount of consciousness. This applies to the tutoring when it comes to the more advanced stages. The test is open to the whole human race. Pre-training is the awakening. In the concentric circles. If you smell that there is a responsibility to yourself, that there is a larger life, persist. That is then your first test, as set by Ouspensky.
III. The Place of Training in the World Today. Your feeling regarding world relationships diminishes. You do your work in the world more efficiently. You may be interested, but you are not as attached with it. You don’t identify yourself with it. Your work in the world may increase. The thing to watch is that you don’t let yourself hang on anything — a job, social contacts, success, anything. Even in the world things would tend to change (if that were done.) In this work you accelerate your evolution. Let go. The new contacts become strangely more potent.
You must choose. Eve, the mother of all living. If you are not willing to pay the price you are not worthy of a fraction of what you can get here. The price is partly time, money, and leaving old connections. You are changing coins to silver, and eventually you will change them to gold. You will lose your copper coins. You can’t have your pie and eat it. If the shoe pinches a little, good. If you can stand it, good. If you can’t, you are feeble and you will have to wait until you have a little more vitality. For the big things are not gotten without a price. If you think you can get it without exercising choice, without forebearance …. but that does not mean, at this stage of your training, the foregoing of social contacts or friends. But many won’t be desirable any more.