My Library

which would mar the beauty, perfection, and minute accuracy of the instrument. All passion must be foregone, for passion is a storm or feeling, which would destroy the subtle delicacy of perception so essential for research. Food must be pure, light, vital, and free from the stain of blood and cruelty; drink free from the fumes of alcohol; in pleasure he must always seek the highest form of recreation. The finest music, the greatest beauty, and the purest form of intellect and wit must be deliberately selected, avoiding all that might sully, even for a moment, the bodies which are the temples into which divine knowledge is to be invoked. “He must meditate daily, seeking to pierce the many veils which hang before the holy of holies, in which divine knowledge is enshrined, with concentrated mind he must think his way through the unreality and illusion of the lower worlds, past the phenomena and forms which hitherto have served him for the real, into the primeval Source of all existence Which is behind. Every object which has life may serve as starting-point; he may take the tree, the branch, the stem, the leaf, insect, animal, bird, or man, and seek to unify the life within himself with the life inspiring them. “Gradually he will learn to use the various level of his consciousness freely and at will; to concentrate awareness in the planes of feeling or of thought exclusively, to focus his intellectual powers in the vehicle appropriate to the knowledge which he seeks. When this technique has been acquired, he will begin to draw aside the veil of the temple and approach the altar of knowledge and of truth. That veil symbolizes the region of the world of thought, which lies between the higher and the lower mind, the mortal and immortal man. The altar is his great Augoiedes, his shining and eternal Self, where truth and knowledge ever reign. Seated in calm and undisturbed peace, with life and bodies purified, with soul at rest, let him collect the force of every faculty of body and of mind and draw them up into himself and point them like an arrow through the centre of his head, upwards into the formless worlds, concentrating every power of his being into The Will To Know “As practice brings success, he will form his lower vehicles into a chalice, which he will offer upon the altar of his higher self, that it may be filled with the wine of wisdom and of truth. As the precious fluid flows into the cup his mind will be illumined and his soul refreshed. A new life will descend and vivify his every thought and word and deed. His brain will be quickened, its dual glands of wisdom and of knowledge will be awakened, and, acting in unison, will provide