Say, Brother Jasper, are you tired? I am. Not tired of fate or of the
great "Leaders of the World," but with all these people who gape and
gape and are (excuse me) so Americanly "independent," as if men were
ever independent of each other.
You ask about the "moment of choice." It is made up of all moments.
It is not in space or time, but is the aggregation of those moments
flying by us each instant. It is referred to in _Esoteric Buddhism_
as a period not yet arrived for the race, when it will as a whole be
compelled to make choice for good or evil. But any single individual
can bring on the period for himself. When it will or has come, the
uninstructed cannot tell. For the student of occultism it may come in
the next instant, or it may come one hundred lives after. But it cannot
come this instant unless all the previous lives have led up to it. Yet
as regards the student, even if it be presented to him and he refuse,
he will be brought to the choice in future existences, with the whole
body of his race. Race influences are insidious and powerful. For
instance, my race has its peculiarities deeply seated and inherited
from an extraordinary past. I must be under their influence in this
body as a necessary part of my experience. In another life I might
have been a prosaic Hottentot, or an Englishman, and in a succeeding
one I might be under the influence of other race peculiarities. Those
influences are, then, guiding me every moment, and each thought I have
adds to them now, for either my own future use or for some other person
who will come under the power of part of the force generated now by me.
As to the sub-conscious mind. It is difficult to explain. I find
constantly that I have ideas that internally I thoroughly understand,
and yet can find no language for them. Call it sub-conscious if you
like. It is there and can be affected; indeed, it is affected every
moment. It is a nearness to the universal mind. So if I desire to
influence--say your mind--I do not formulate your sub-conscious plane,
but firmly and kindly think of you and think of the subject I wish you
to think of. This must reach you. If I am selfish, then it has more
difficulty to get there; but if it be brotherly, then it gets there
more easily, being in harmony with the universal mind and the Law. The
Psychical Society speaks of it, and says that the influence "emerges
into the lower mind" by one or more of the channels. But they do not
know what those "channels" are, or even if they do exist. In fact, the
whole subject of mind is only faintly understood in the West. They say
"mind," meaning the vast range and departments of that which they call
mind, whereas there must be a need for the names of those departments.
When the true ideas are grasped, the names will follow. Meanwhile we
must be satisfied with "mind" as including the whole thing. But it does
not. Certainly it is not ordinary mental motion--ratiocination--to
grasp in an instant a whole subject, premises and conclusions, without
stopping to reason. It cannot be called a _picture_, for with some
it comes as an idea, and not as a picture. Memory. What is that? Is
it brain-impression; or similarity of vibration, recognized upon
being repeated and then producing a picture? If so, then the power to
recognize the vibration as the same as before is separate from the
matter which vibrates. And if the power inhere in the brain cells,
how is it possible, when we know they are constantly being changed?
Yet memory is perfect, no matter what happens. That it is above brain
is clear, because a man may be killed by having his brain blown to
atoms, and yet his "shell" can give all the incidents of his life, and
they are not taken from the brain, for that is dead. Where, then, is
the sub-conscious mind? And where are the channels, and how are they
connected? I think through the heart, and that the heart is the key to
it all, and that the brain is only the servant of the heart,[A] for
remember that there is in it the "small dwarf who sits at the centre."
Think it out on that line now for yourself--or any other line that you
may choose, but _think_.
As ever,
Z.
[Footnote A: Not the physical heart, but the real centre of life in
man.--J. N.]