2.01. We have chosen, “God is Love.” as our meditation's central idea, and as meditation is a mental process in which we disclose progressively the meaning of our central thought, we must proceed by defining our use of the words we use to express this idea.

2.02. By the word, ‘God’ we mean the All-wise Supreme Power everywhere present in the universe, which has filled the world with the innumerable forms of existent things, minerals, plants, animals, men and whatever other kinds of being may exist beyond man's present knowledge. This defining of the words we use is an important part of our meditational process.

2.03. By, ‘Love’ we mean the mysterious Will hidden inside all things, which brings them into being and sustains them and moves them forwards in their evolutionary process, which develops them from their most simple to their most complex form.

2.04. Ordinarily we tend to think the word, ‘Love’ refers only to ‘living’ beings. We think naturally of the love of parents for their children, the love of husband and wife, of friend for friend. We are prepared to extend our use of the word into the animal world wherever adult animals care for their young. But we tend not to apply the word to the relations which exist between plants whose seeds may need to be fertilised by other plants of the same species. Yet plant ‘love’ is as real to the plant as animal love to the animals or human love to ourselves. Few of us think that ‘love’ may operate in the mineral world, amongst the molecules and atoms of so-called non-living matter. But chemical affinities exist and are an essential expression of the mysterious force which brings into relation the very elements of which are composed the seeds and bodies of plants and animals, and the feelings, emotions and thoughts of human beings. If chemical affinities did not exist, plants and animals and human beings could never have come into existence. We human beings have tended too long to think only in our own terms and see meaning and higher functions only in ourselves. Our meditation is leading us towards another viewpoint, and it is the disclosure of another viewpoint that is its purpose.

2.05. Love is a force which operates everywhere in the universe, not only in human relationships and within animal instincts but in the plant world and deep down in the centre of the world of matter, where superficial thought has declared only blind mechanical forces to be operative. In the depths of the atoms of the material world love is at work in the binding forces which hold together the sub-atomic particles, the protons, neutrons and electrons and any other particles which may yet be discovered to constitute the building bricks of our world.

2.06. We continue our meditation and observe that Love as we experience it in ourselves is always accompanied by a certain kind of feeling, which we may describe as, “Full of goodwill,” “Warmhearted,” or “Affectionate.” Each of us in a loving mood can feel this feeling for ourself. When we see other persons behaving in certain ways, their faces bearing certain expressions, their voices toned in certain ways, we tend to feel that they are feeling as we feel when we behave in such ways, bear such expressions, speak with such tones. We tend to say that certain people are loving and kind because they are behaving, looking and sounding like we do when we are feeling loving and kind because they are behaving, looking and sounding like we do when we are feeling loving and kind.

2.07. But if other beings have action patterns very different from our own, if they do not look much like we do, if they do not make similar sounds to the ones we make, then we tend to think that they do not feel as we do. This is why we tend to be doubtful about whether animals feel for each other, and why most of us tend to believe that plants do not feel at all (although the very latest electrical instruments designed to test them demonstrate that they have high sensitivity). And nearly every human being we meet tends to think that the material things of the world at the mineral level are totally insensitive and dead.

2.08. Actually we have no grounds for such assumptions. The animals are not proved lacking in feelings simply because their observed behaviour differs from our own. Plants are not proved insensitive merely because they do not make audible sounds that human beings can interpret as language. The mineral world is not proved totally insensitive and dead simply because its activities are hidden in the depths of its molecules and atoms.

2.09. Everywhere a force operates to bring together the sub-atomic particles, the protons, neutrons, electrons and so on, to make the atoms and molecules of the mineral world. These in turn supply the building blocks for the plants which make possible the animal and human worlds. We have no evidence that this force is essentially different in these apparently different worlds. Rather we see evidence that this cohesive, this coordinating force, this organising energy, is everywhere the same. Only human conceit hopes it otherwise. And if at the human level we can call this organising, harmonising force ‘Love’, then we have no logical ground to refuse the use of this word at other levels.

2.10. Thus it is quite legitimate for us to talk of animal love as well as human love, of plant love as well as that of the animal, and finally of mineral love, which we usually call ‘chemical affinity’, ‘valency’ and so on. Down in the depths of the atom is also at work the mysterious\force which holds together and harmonises the activities of the different kinds of sub-atomic particles.

2.11. All these various ‘loves’ are particular and different aspects of the one Supreme Love to which we refer when we say, “God is Love.”

2.12. Our meditation continues. We are thinking about ‘Love’, analysing the ways it manifests in the world, the ways it brings things into relation and harmonises their activities.

2.13. When we feel Love inside ourselves, we feel a certain sense of well-being and warmth. We feel that we want to do good to the one we love. And by “good” we mean increase life's possibilities and capacities. The mother who loves her child desires only its welfare, desires only that it shall grow in health and strength and beauty, that it shall become able to live in kindness and happiness with its fellows.

2.14. In meditation it is often helpful to think a little of the opposite of our chosen subject, for opposite ideas often make clearer each other's nature. We are meditating on “God is Love”. Let us think of its opposite, “God is Hate”, and see what would result if this idea were true.

2.15. If we feel hate for anything, we do not wish it to grow in health and strength and beauty and happiness; we wish it to be destroyed, to lose whatever strength and beauty it has, we desire it to suffer, to be annihilated, removed from existence. Whenever hatred appears in any being, their destructive feelings are aroused. From this we can see that if the Supreme 2.16. Power of the Universe were a hating power, the world could never have come into being. A hating power would be destructive, and, “A house divided against itself shall not stand.” If the house of the Supreme Power, the Great Universe, were divided against itself it could not endure. If the supreme power were from eternity a hating power, the universe could never have come into existence at all.

2.17. Whatever divisions exist in the world, whatever wars are waged by being against being, by man against man, these divisions, these wars are of infinitely less significance in the Great Scheme of things than the unstoppable movement towards integration and harmony that is empowered by t h e Infinite Being we call our God.

2.18. Our meditation goes further. No intelligent person can worship as God any being who is not all-powerful, for a less than all-powerful being could not establish unshakeably his will, could not guarantee final victory over any forces of destruction which might arise within the universe he might create. But in the presence of an all-powerful God, how could forces of destruction come into action?

2.19. They could appear only on one condition, the condition of relative freedom, freedom, that is, within a certain limited area.

2.20. But why should the Supreme Power, the Great God, allow such areas of freedom, and to what kind of beings? Our meditation leads us yet further. The second chapter of Genesis tells us that God formed Man and breathed into him, “The breath of life.” Here is the statement that man received from his Creator, the Great Lord of the Universe, the, “Breath of life.” that ‘breath’ which we call the, “Spirit of God,” in man, that Spirit which gives to man the degree of freedom that he has.

2.21. We must observe that the Supreme Power logically would not give away to its creatures Its Supremacy, for the creatures are, by definition of their createdness, limited in their capacity to assimilate power. Infinite power released into them would destroy their finite forms and thus make them non-existent.

2.22. Then why did God, the Supreme All-Wise Power give relative freedom to man? Our meditation leads us to the answer: Because if man did not have some degree of freedom, if he could not in some way make a relatively free response to his Creator's commandments of Love, he would' be a mere puppet, a wooden doll on strings, unable to enter into relation with God's Will for him. And such a puppet would be of no use to its Creator, could have no intelligent purposeful relation with Him. The All-Wise Creator, infinitely intelligent, would not create as its highest work a being with no capacity for intelligent co-operation with Him.

2.23. It is one thing for a child to play with a doll. It may help the child to develop its imagination and its physical skills. But the All-Wise, All-Powerful Creator does not need to improve His imagination, nor to increase His skills. Rather He wills to develop the imagination and skills and capacity for love of His creatures. For only then will they be able lovingly to co-operate with Him in His great plan to establish the New Earth which is to arise from the old world as Mankind begins really to understand the meaning of the freedom God has given them.

2.24. Our meditation has brought us to the point where we can see a whole picture of the meaning of the words, “God is Love.” God, the Supreme, Infinite, All-Wise Power, Who has created the Universe, Who has harmonised its elements, Who has given life to His creatures, Who has breathed into man the Spirit of Freedom so that man can receive sensitively and intelligently His gifts, this God calls upon us to accept willingly the abundance of the outpouring of His Spirit upon us. Here, with this whole picture we reach the point where our meditation passes into Contemplation, in which our mind passes from a process of reasoning into a condition of perfect stillness in which the meaning of our whole meditation can permeate into the depths of our soul, can sink down like a seed into the receiving earth, to bring forth in its own true time its fruit of harmony and love.

2.25. Next month we will examine more fully the nature of contemplation.

3.01. Contemplation which follows meditation, differs from it in one absolutely essential way, Meditation is a process in which reason is used, a process in which one idea follows another in a certain order in time. Our consciousness each moment of time holds an idea and examines its characteristics and tries to relate it to another idea, During meditation our mind is comparing ideas, that is, putting ideas together in pairs in order to note their similarities and differences. By this means the ideas may be grouped together into some meaningful pattern. It is precisely the discovery of a meaningful pattern that is the object of meditation. Once such a pattern has been discovered the meditational process has fulfilled its purpose and we can pass on to the next stage, that of contemplation.

3.02. Contemplation, unlike meditation, does not follow a sequence of ideas through time. It contemplates patterns. Let us give a very simple illustration of this. If we take a board of the kind on which we play chess or draughts, we find that it has a certain number of squares, alternately black and white. We can verify the number of squares by simply counting them one after the other. We can also note that the squares number eight along each side, and by appeal to our multiplication table we can say therefore that the board has eight times eight, that is, sixty four squares. We can then say that the board has a pattern, that it is a square subdivided into sixty four equal squares alternately black and white. Once we have attained this view of the board as a pattern, the process of meditation is finished and we can pass on to the stage of contemplation.

3.03. In contemplation we do not allow the mind to continue its process of examining the parts of the thing or idea we are holding in our mind. We hold the pattern that our meditative stage has disclosed to us, simply as a whole. We, as it were, look at the whole chess-hoard as a unit pattern in a certain way. We no longer count its subdivisions. We do not put into words any of the thoughts we had about it during the meditative stage. The reason for not putting our thoughts into words is because if we do this we at once break the unity of the pattern we have attained. Contemplation is essentially silent; to attain it we must make still every mental process. Then there, in the silence of contemplation, the pattern discovered by the meditative process will be able to have its own effect on our mind.

3.04. Let us have a look at another pattern, much more complex than that of a chess board, but nevertheless subjectable to the same meditative process, And let us observe that the pattern in this case is there .before we begin to examine it. When we observe the planet on which we live, our earth, we find that it contains many different' kinds of things, the relationships of which make up a pattern. For instance, we see that on earth there are minerals, vegetables, animals, human beings, etc. We see that these different kinds of things are related together in a certain pattern. The mineral materials form a basis on which the vegetables grow, and over 'which the animals move, and on which' human beings work, build and change things.

3.05. Without going any further we could make a picture of the relationships that exist between these four kinds of things. We could do a drawing showing the earth (the mineral material) with vegetation growing on it, and animals moving about over it, and human beings working, building, and changing things, We could then place this' picture before our eyes and contemplate it, without further analysis of its parts.

3.06. If we hold in our mind such a fourfold picture of the earth on which we live, without using words to analyse, or describe or count its parts, we find that after a certain length of time a certain kind of feeling arises in our consciousness. With this feeling comes an awareness of the meaning of the relationships that exist between the four kinds of things there are on earth. And the feeling that arises as we contemplate this fourfold picture is one of the presence of relationships between all things on earth.

3.07. If there had been no earth to stand as basis for the vegetable realm, there could have been no provision of food for the animals and for man. If there had been no animals for man to domesticate then much of the heavy work that man has directed on earth could not have been performed. If there had been no human beings, then the earth would have had none of the great changes brought to it which we have seen over the few thousand years of recorded history.

3.08. This feeling that all things on earth are related together in certain special ways arises from the contemplation of our four-fold picture. But we deliberately simplified our picture of the situation in order to give ourselves an easy-to-understand idea of the effect of contemplation.

3.09. We must remember that in contemplation, we do not think in any way about the object which we are holding in our mind. We have done all the relevant thinking during our meditation stage. Now, in contemplation we simply hold in our consciousness the whole pattern which our meditation discovered. It is this silent non-thinking looking at this whole pattern which is the stage of contemplation, and which has the special effect on our consciousness which the meditation process, because of its examination of parts of the pattern, cannot have. Wholeness of awareness appears only in contemplation, and not meditation.

3.10. Let us now develop our four-fold picture of things on earth. To do this we will return for a few moments to the meditational process. When' we said that the vegetation on earth provides food for the animals and for ourselves, we did not say where the vegetation gains its energy. In order to answer this we have to leave the earth and consider the special function of the sun for the vegetable life on earth. Without energy from the sun the vegetables on earth could not use the minerals on the earth and in its atmosphere. If plants are totally starved of sunlight they cannot grow, cannot serve as food for animals and ourselves. Thus we have to' enlarge our picture to include the sun. If we meditate further we will find that our picture must include the whole solar system for .it is only because of the very special balance of all the forces in the solar system that our earth has on it the conditions for the kinds of life that we know.

3.11. But our solar system itself is but one among countless others and orbits round another centre an incredible distance away from us, and just as our earth could not have the special conditions of life we find upon it if it did not occupy its own orbit, so our solar system could not provide our earth with the possibility of this orbital position without itself occupying its own special orbit in the unimaginably vaster system of the whole universe of stars This makes the picture of the universe in which we have our being very large indeed and the pattern of it as a whole is that to which our meditational procedure has led us. It is a system of wheels within wheels, from the smallest wheel of a single planet orbiting around our sun, through increasingly larger orbits like that of our solar system round its own tremendously greater star centre, to the greatest of all orbits that bounds the outermost limits of reality, inconceivable to the human mind.

3.12. The kind of pattern or picture at which we have arrived is reminiscent of certain parts of the vision of Ezekiel the prophet, in which he describes wheels within wheels and says that the spirit of the living creature was within the wheels. But let us for our present purpose make a simpler picture than that of Ezekiel. Let us visualise a circle for each orbit of a planet in our solar system, and on each of these circles a tiny circle to represent its orbiting planet. Then let us visualise a larger circle along which the sun itself orbits, the centre of this larger circle being immeasurably far away in the vast concourse of the stars.

3.13. Then let us remind ourselves that the whole vast system is somehow mysteriously one, that all its planetary and starry bodies and forces are somehow bound together in one great harmonious concourse. Then the moment that we remind ourselves of the unity of this vast system, we are led at once to see that the cause of this unity must itself also be unific, that it must be one.

3.14. The idea of a cause is the idea of a power which can produce an effect. If the effect of a cause is unity, then the cause itself must be one. Thus we are presented with a supreme power which is one in itself.

3.15. Whatever its apparently diverse effects, the fact that all these effects are held together in one great harmonious system shows that behind and sustaining all is one great power. In Christian thought this one great power is called God The Father, for ‘Father’ means generative power.

3.16. Now, a power which operates to bring into existence many kinds of beings, and relates them together in one great harmonious pattern is operating in the way that we know Love works. For love also works to bring into existence many kinds of beings and to bring them into harmonious relationships. In fact, when we think about works of Love we always think of activities that help to increase the number of ways in which things can become more functional, and this necessarily means also more inter-functional. Thus the one great Power to which our meditation has led us is essentially a loving power. We have been led back to the great idea, “God is Love.”

3.17. And now we can make a picture of the whole pattern as we did earlier with our circles but bring it in its simplest possible form, that of a cross in a circle. When we make such a pic¬ture we create for ourselves a powerful aid to contemplation, for by our meditational process we have charged it with significance, and by its simplicity the mind can rest upon it without falling back into the analytical stage of meditation.

3.18. Let us then, in our contemplation, place in our consciousness this picture of the cross in the circle. It is the Great Symbol of Christianity, the sign of Universal Love, for the circle itself symbolises all circles, all orbits of all planets and stars, and the cross symbolises in its vertical line the all-penetrating power of God's Love, and in its horizontal line the receptive substance of the Universe, and of our own souls.

3.19. In wordless silence let us gaze upon this Great Symbol, and let it work its spiritual work within us.

3.20. Next month we shall see what effects we are to expect from our contemplation of the Great Symbol.

4.01. The Great Symbol, the cross in the circle, apparently so simple, yet contains an infinity of significances, some of which we shall now examine in relation to the effects of contemplation upon our being.

4.02. We have seen that the state of contemplation is entered when the process of meditation has completed itself. We must have clarified in our thinking process the relations of all the parts of the subject-matter of our meditation, so that when the parts and their inter-relations are held in the stilled consciousness of the contemplative state, they themselves will impress upon this stilled consciousness their real nature and power-relationships.

4.03. In contemplation the meditational mental process ceases its march from one idea to another. The mental process stands still. It has said whatever it has been able to discover of the nature of the separate parts of the chosen subject-matter. Now it ceases its march through time, and at this moment contemplation is entered.

4.04. Let us examine this relationship of meditation and contemplation, using the Great Symbol, the Cross in the Circle, as a, basis for our examination.

4.05. When we look at the circle, we can do so in two ways, one meditative, the other contemplative. The meditative way of looking at it is to fix our gaze upon a small section of the circle, which we might call a point, and then transfer our gaze to the next point, then to the next point, and so on round the circle, till we reach our starting point. Going round the circle in this way, from point to point, we call the serial way of looking at it, because we take itasifitwere madeupofa series of points.

4.06. But the contemplative way of looking at it is not to enumerate the number of-points on which we have focused our gaze, but to hold it in our consciousness as a whole, not made of parts, an unbroken whole which gives us a quite different feeling from the feeling we experience when we go round the same circle looking at it as if it were made of separate points, each one touching the next. This difference of feeling between the two ways, the way of serial meditative thinking, and the way of contemplative holding of the whole, is very important, for meditation enumerates and describes parts of things and their inter-relations insofar as these can be separated from each other, and contemplation holds in an unbroken wholeness the chosen subject-matter so that it confers upon our consciousness a correspondent feeling of wholeness. Wholeness taken to pieces in the process of meditation is restored in contemplation.

4.07. The wholeness which we hold in the contemplative state brings the many parts of our meditation into a corresponding wholeness, and this wholeness, held in our consciousness for a sufficient period of time, permeates our consciousness and brings it also into a state of wholeness. Contemplation bathes our mind and soul in wholeness, a wholeness which transmutes itself into inner peace and harmony of being. This harmony of being is the greatest healing power in the universe. Contemplation does something for us in its wholeness which meditation cannot do.

4.08. Let us now look at the vertical line in our Great Symbol. This line symbolises the all-penetrating power of God's love, coming down from eternity into time, from the invisible infinite power of eternal love, to a visible finite expression of this love in some particular act.

4.09. When we meditate on this vertical line we start from the top and consider that it begins at a point, which we call the start of the descent or the point of the initiation of the process which will lead to the final incarnation of God's love in a particular act. We pass down the line, point by point, till we reach the lowest point, where it touches the circle. If we imagine the line to project downwards beyond the circle, it is equivalent of imagining that God's love, having expressed itself in a particular act, in a certain situation, now passes onwards into its own infinity again.

4.10. If we now contemplate this line, that is, hold it in our consciousness in its wholeness, we will feel the great truth that God's love is always whole, that its point of initiation of its entry from eternity into time and its whole movement of descent into particular expression, and its return to its own infinity is always throughout itself an unbroken whole.

4.11. Contemplating this line within the circle we can feel the great truth that we, within our circle of manifestation and existence, are never at any time or place separate from God's love. Here we feel the eternal loving presence of the Infinite God who is the source and manifesting power of our being.

4.12. Now we will meditate on the horizontal line, beginning from one end and moving point by point to the other end, thinking as we move along that each point represents a particular place in which there is a particle of matter, receiving some influence from the power above. Each particle may represent a material body, from the simplest part of an atom up to a complex body such as the ones in which we live our lives. \

4.13. Having finished our meditation we then pass into the state of contemplation in which we see the line not, as made of separate points or atomic particles or bodies, but as an unbroken whole representing the infinite receptivity of universal substance of which all our bodies are but modifications.

4.14. In this whole line, as we contemplate its wholeness, we can feel that whatever separativity we have believed ourselves to possess is but an appearance. We can feel the essential unity of all beings, the oneness of all receptive substance. We can feel that we are all recipients of the Love of God, poured down the vertical line of His initiating power.

4.15. Now we can contemplate the whole Great Symbol, the cross in the circle. We can feel its two arms, the vertical and the horizontal, reaching beyond the limits of the circle into the Infinity of the divine power which precipitated these two arms and the circle. We can feel the safe-guarding power of the Great Circle of the Universe which holds the orbits of all stars, suns and planets, and all living beings everywhere.

4.16. Within this all-containing circle we can feel the interaction of the vertical giving power of God's love and the receiving substance of the world of time and matter. We can feel the entrance of this power into our own substance; feel its vitalising, dynamising effect in the depths of our soul.

4.17. And we can feel at the Centre of the Circle, where the vertical and horizontal lines intersect, the presence of Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice made possible the permeation of all substance with the love of God.

4.18. Here in the centre of the circle, firmly fixed by the crossing of the Infinite power of God's love and the receptive substance of the universe, stands forever the Real Being of all beings, the Being whose presence manifested itself for the first time in human history in Bethlehem, and who since that occasion has penetrated ever more deeply into the souls of men.

4.19. The Great Symbol, held in the stilled soul, in silent contemplation, tells our hearts and minds that we are all children of the one Infinite power, the All-Father of the innumerable creatures of universal manifestation, tells us that Infinite love permeates our substance, that we are not cut off from each other, that we are all held in the Great All-containing circle of God's intention.

4.20. Having meditated the parts and part-relationships of the Great Symbol, we are to hold the whole results of our meditation in our consciousness, stilling our minds and souls so that the Great Symbol may in silence do its own mysterious work upon our being.

4.21. For we have to be led by the Great Symbol into its own wholeness, so that this wholeness may penetrate into the depths of our souls. And the Great Symbol can do this of itself, from its own power, for this symbol is not an invention of mere man. It is the invention of the Supreme Creative power itself. It is the invention of God whereby He helps man to come to an understanding of the universe and of himself within it, held within the all-containing circle of God's plan for His universe and for mankind.

4.22. This is one of the most surprising things for the beginner in meditation, that the Great Symbol, source of all other symbols, has such power in itself from God's intent, that it can, in the souls which in silence contemplate it, produce the, “Peace that passes all understanding,” the peace that laves the wounded soul in God's love and restores it to harmony of being.

4.23. Let us go through our preparatory meditation on the parts of the Great Symbol; then let us pass into the state of contemplation, where in the stilled, silent soul, the mind at rest, the power of God’s love will work its strange magic.

4.24. Only in the mind that has given up its series of separate ideas, its derail thinking, and in the soul wrapped in silent contemplation, can God’s power of love work its healing work unhindered. The busy mind of the man’s striving to solve his material problems by material means and by logic cannot attain this contemplative state. For his very business, like that of the young man who has great possessions, gets in the way of his own intentions and impedes his mental processes, misdirecting them into time and matter away from eternity and spirit where stands the eternal Truth which is the solution of all problems.

4.25. Hold the Great Symbol in your mind in stillness, in the silence of your faithful soul, and let it work its mysterious work of divine love.

4.26. Next month we will examine other symbols of our Christian Yoga.

5.01. Having practiced the meditation on the Cross and the circle, and contemplated it in its wholeness, we will have gained some idea of the benefits we can derive from such practices, and will feel like applying the procedure to other symbols.

5.02. One of the next most important symbols is the triangle, very much used in meditating upon the Holy Trinity in Christianity as it was used in ancient India, and is still used.

5.03. To aid our thought on the Holy Trinity we first draw a triangle and then write the name of a different member of the Trinity along each side. Thus along one side we write, ‘God the Father’, along another side we write, ‘God the Son’, and along the third side we write, ‘God the Holy Spirit’. A Hindu would write ‘Shiva’ for ‘God the Father’, ‘Vishnu’ for ‘God the Son’, and ‘Brahma’ for ‘God the Holy Spirit’.

5.04. Now these words refer to certain powers in the Universe and also to their equivalents in man. Thus by ‘God the Father’ we refer to the Great Power in the universe which, although invisible to us, initiates the first motions of creation which are essential to the coming to be of the universe as a whole. This power we can call the Will of God. Its presence in man we call the Will, meaning that power in man by which he initiates his actions, the creativity in man as starter of the whole process of his own actions. Thus what we call the first person of the Trinity represents the Will, in God and in man, the power by which the process of creation is first initiated. Whenever we deliberately do something for the first time, this action is a product of the Will. Will is the power in God and man which acts not from previously established habit patterns but from the power we call ‘initiative’.

5.05. The second side of our triangle represents ‘God the Son’, and by this we refer to the loving-Wisdom or “Wisdom-Love” of God. It is most interesting to see that in our symbology the idea of Wisdom is intimately linked with the idea of Love, for if we wish to be really wise we will love all the things we wish to know. Lets us think very carefully about this. That is, let us meditate upon it.

5.06. If we love something we naturally desire to know all about it, just as if we were indifferent to something we cannot be bothered to learn anything about it, and if we hate something we wish to cast it away from us, or to destroy it.

5.07. Thus if we wish to be wise we must love the things we wish to be wise about. If a man desires to be wise in relation to motor cars, he must love motor cars. If he wishes to be wise in matters relating to gardening, he must love gardening.

5.08 If a woman desires to be wise in the bringing up of her children, she must love her children. So in every case where wisdom is desired there is the necessity for love also. This is why the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, taught His new rule of life, saying, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”

5.09. Jesus Christ on earth, the second person of the Holy Trinity, as He embodied Himself, is thus the incarnation of the Wisdom-love of God. He teaches that we can be fully wise only if we fully love all the creatures that God has created, all the Universal Being which God the Father's Will has brought into existence. To become wise we must love. To love is to be wise, for the key to Wisdom is the Love of Wisdom.

5.10. There is a difference between ‘Wisdom’ and ‘Knowledge’. Wisdom is Wholeness of Being as discovered by love. Knowledge is the consciousness of parts of being as discovered by the activity of the sense-organs in man and their equivalent powers in the third person of the Holy Trinity.

5.11. Thus the third side of our triangle, representing the ‘Holy Spirit of God’, stands for the mental processes in man, whereby he gains knowledge of the particular things he encounters in the world, and also for the activities of the power of the Holy Spirit, whereby this third person of the Holy Trinity examines and interprets all the different things in the created world which have been brought by its activity into clarity of expression.

5.12. When we meditate on the nature of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity and of their equivalent in man we find a most interesting relation.

5.13. In ourselves, as human beings, we find powers of Will, Feeling and Activity. By Will we mean that power by which we are able to initiate new activities, or to overthrow old patterns of behaviour. Will is the power by which we can start new kinds of activity,' and by which we can break the inertias of old habits, It also enables us to hold to a course of action, freely decided upon, against all opposition from established behaviour patterns or from other wills.' It is to the power of Free Will that most great men of history owed their greatness. Without Will-power, greatness would not ever have existed, just as without the all-powerful Will of God the Father the universe itself would never have come into being.

5.14. But we do not only have Will in our armory for life's battles, we also have Feeling. Also we have not only a head but a heart. We not only know things without mental processes, we also feel their value to us. It is in our hearts, not our heads, that we evaluate our ideas and acts of will.

5.15. In our feelings we like or dislike the things we know or do, and it is this fact of liking and disliking that lies at the basis of all our value judgments. We call a thing ‘valuable’ if we like it, and ‘not valuable’ if we do not like it. If we thoroughly dislike something, we hate it and declare it an enemy of all that we consider to be valuable. So much for the moment, of feeling as we find it in ourselves. In the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, in God the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, feeling takes a universal form, infinitely transcending in its sensitivity all that we as earth-bound human beings have been used to in experiencing it.

5.16. In Jesus Christ, symbolised by the second side of our triangle, we see feeling so refined, so sensitised, that it is aware of the most subtle interrelations of all the beings in the universe. From this so sensitised feeling Jesus could say of little children and of humanity in general, “In as much as you do this to even the least of these, you do it to Me.” He was of such sensitised feeling that he could actually feel in his own being the suffering of all creatures in the world. A sensitive mother or father whose favourite child falls and hurts himself (or herself) feels spontaneously the pain of the child. This experience shows that by a state of identification with a loved one, we can actually experience their feelings of joy or sorrow just as if they were our very own. True, we can do this usually only with persons we particularly love. But Jesus could do this with every creature in the world. In His super-sensitive feeling-nature he suffered with every suffering creature, as He joyed with every joyful creature, and still does.

5.17. The Love in Jesus Christ created His Wisdom as His Wisdom gave form to His Love. Where we love we become wise, and where we are wise we are enabled to give appropriate form to our love. Thus all our best relationships, which we create with each other, spring out of our wisdom-love or love-wisdom.

5.18. But we do not only Will and Love; we also put into active expression the form of our loved intentions, empowered by our will. Active-expression in us begins in the activities of our thought-processes, as in the Holy Spirit it begins in the thought-activities of God. When God wills, His will at once creates that which He wills. When He loves He nourishes and nourishes by His feeling-power that which His will has brought into being. When He thinks, His thought-activity actively relates all the things that God's will has created and His love nourished and sustained.

5.19. In this thought-activity of the Holy Spirit, the third side of our triangle, all conceivable interrelations of all beings and creatures are pre-conceived or pre-cognised, so that a man who .attains to awareness of the Holy Spirit in Himself is enabled to see into the universal pattern of things and events and tendencies, and from this insight to prophesy future events.

5.20. In ourselves, our ordinary thought activities also aim to conceive the nature of interrelations of things and events so that we can conduct our lives with some degree of intelligent adjustment. If we meditate upon the relationship that exists between our own thought-activities and those of the Holy Spirit we find that the decisive difference between them lies in the fact that our activities tend to be conditioned by particular attachments to particular things which we love, while the activities of the Holy Spirit are not conditioned merely by particular finite attachments to particular things, for the Holy Spirit is a Spirit willing the good of the whole universe. And it is because of this whole willing of the good that the Holy Spirit is whole both in its power and its effect in the Life of the Divine spirit.

5.21. Let us contemplate, that is, hold the whole of the results of our meditation on the Holy Trinity in our mind, calmly in expectant silence.

5.20. Next month we will examine and meditate upon yet another symbol.

6.01. There is a very interesting symbol found in the world's major-religions, the symbol of the ‘six-pointed star’ or ‘double triangle’. It is much used by the Hindus and the Jews, whose ancestors certainly had cultural interrelations during the period of the Babylonian captivity.

6.02. The double triangle takes the symbology of the single triangle which we meditated upon last month and amplifies and enriches its significance in a very rewarding way.

6.03. We used the single triangle to represent the Holy Trinity in its three aspects as Will¬power, Love-Wisdom and Activity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, respectively.

6.04. Now we take a second triangle and use it to represent another trinity, corresponding with the first, but viewed as existing at another level of being, not at the purely spiritual level, where the Holy Trinity has its dwelling or field of operation, but at the level of existence which we call the level of ‘materiality’, the level of the physical world.

6.05. In the double triangle symbol these two ‘worlds’, the world of spirituality and the world of materiality are represented as interlaced. This is quite correct, for in fact there is an absolute interpenetration of all the elements of the two worlds. Everywhere there is ‘Matter’, there is ‘Spirit’, everywhere there is ‘Spirit’ there is ‘Matter’. If we, meditate carefully about this we shall see that it could not be otherwise, for ‘Spirit’ is the Great Activator and Organiser of ‘Matter’, and ‘Matter’ is but an activity pattern of ‘Spirit’. And ‘Spirit’ itself is but the operation of the Will of God the Father ‘filtered’ through the Love-Wisdom of His Son.

6.06. Just as in order to aid our meditation we wrote along the sides of the first triangle the words ‘God the Father’, ‘God the Son’, and ‘God the Holy Spirit’, so along the three sides of the second triangle we will write some words to signify three corresponding ideas or factors in the material world. The first triangle we may call the ‘Spiritual Triangle’ or ‘Spiritual Triad’; the second triangle we may call' the ‘Material Triangle’ or ‘Material Triad’.

6.07. Continuing our meditation, we may say that the Material Triad “reflects” the characteristics or properties of the Spiritual Triad, but in such a way that matter rather than spirit is dominant. The chief characteristic of Spirit is freedom of action, i.e. pure spirit acts from within itself without any limitations imposed upon it from outside itself. Spirit is free, spontaneous, intelligent activity, full of light and love. In contrast with this, the chief characteristic of matter is bound action i.e. action limited or constrained by forces outside itself. Matter is in bondage to external forces. It is dark, unintelligent and inert. it cannot of itself escape from its prison.

6.10. The side of the upper triangle we have named ‘God the Son’ is reflected in the lower triangle as the ‘Law of Love’.

6.11. The side of the triangle named ‘God the Holy Spirit’ is reflected in the lower triangle as ‘ impulse to action’.

6.12. Let us now meditate carefully on the relationships which hold between the two triangles or triads.

6.13. God the Father has a plan for the development of the universe which he has created. A very important part of this Plan is the raising of human awareness to a very high level so that it may became able consciously to reflect upon and to co-operate with the Plan. But for the fulfillment of this purpose man has been endowed with free will, for man is to learn how to co-operate with the divine Plan from within his own centre, consciously and deliberately, not merely as a slave powerless to resist the commands laid upon him.

6.14. But if man is to be brought into free conscious co-operation with God's Plan, he must be taught that Plan. And teaching implies attendance at some sort of school. The school that man has to attend is the School of Life. But often scholars do not wish to attend school, have no desire to learn anything, and think only of amusing themselves in a variety of pleasant activities.

6.15. Thus God had to devise a way of making sure that man would learn the needed lessons. The way He chose was the creation of a material body and then the placing in this body of the spirit or life. These two together constitute man as a living soul. “God created man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him the spirit of life, and man became a living soul.”

6.16. This is a very interesting fact. God breathed into the material body He had made for man the Spirit of Life, by which man is a being of free-will. But the material body into which this free Spirit of Life was breathed is an unfree, inert mass, making free action difficult. Thus God, in creating man, did two exactly opposite things for him. He gave him a material body, heavy, inert, and difficult to control; and He gave him a free spirit so that he could choose whether or not he would try to control this body in accordance with God’s Plan.

6.17. When it is necessary to do two opposite things in order to produce a given desired result we call this necessity a ‘dialectical’ one. Meditation upon ‘dialectical necessity’ is very rewarding, and we shall in later meditations carefully examine its characteristics. Meanwhile we will content ourselves with examining some of its implications, for mankind on earth.

6.18. As we know ourselves, we human beings find ourselves with two quite opposite tendencies, one, which seems to be centred in our physical body, is the tendency to do as little as possible, to expend as little energy as possible, to be ‘lazy’ and ‘inert’. The other is the tendency to ‘busy’ ourselves in various ways, to do as much as we can to change our situation, to ‘improve’ our environment, to expend as much energy as we can in as many ways as we can. The first of these tendencies is from the properties of our material, physical body. The second is from the Spirit of Life which God breathed into mankind.

6.19. This tells us why St. Paul felt that there was a ‘war’ between the Spirit and the body. But it is not a meaningless ‘war’. It is a war in which man’s soul is brought into a state of individual self-awareness, for only in the presence of a resistance can a free-will discover the degree of its own freedom. The material, physical body, with its inertias and tendencies always to fall into inactivity, provides a perfect system of resistances by means of which a man can test how far he has yet attained to freedom.

6.20. Our meditation thus tells us that the free spirit within our bound body is in us so that it may become conscious of itself and its own direction in the presence of the resistances provided by our body.

6.21. If we had not a material, physical body, with its weight of inertias and established habits, we would be quite unable to test the degree of freedom which we have attained, or failed to attain. And only when we have attained individual conscious freedom will we be able to co-operate meaningfully in God’s Plan.

6.22. The inertia of matter, which holds our physical body in bondage, is as much God’s will for us as the free spirit which He also gave us. Two apparently opposite gifts are both from the same source.

6.23. We will now look at the side of the upper triangle marked ‘God the Son’ and its reflection in the lower triangle, which we have called the ‘Law of Love’. It is from this second person of the Holy Trinity that there radiates downwards into the material world all the rules of true relationship, all ethics, all true morality, all compassion and sympathy.

6.24. The ‘Law of Love’ says that ultimately only those thoughts and feelings and actions which spring from love, or universal compassion, will succeed, that only such can bring man into conscious free co-operation with God’s plan for the universe. All the ethical and moral behaviour systems fabricated by man in society will fail to bear true fruit unless they truly reflect the Supreme Love and Compassion which Christ showed to mankind when He trod His way determinedly to the Cross.

6.25. We can now examine the relationship between the third side of the spiritual triangle, marked ‘God the Holy Spirit’ and its reflection in the material triangle, marked, ‘Impulse to Action’. This relationship is a very subtle one and requires very careful meditation, because we often use the expression ‘impulsive action’ to signify what is in fact but a reaction to some external stimulus. But the ‘Impulse to Action’ which springs from the Holy Spirit is exactly the contrary of impulse reactivity to any external stimulus. The spiritual “Impulse to Action” springs from the Will of God the Father and the Love-Wisdom of God the Son, in perfect accord, determined to bring mankind finally to the point of supreme insight where a free choice to participate in the all-embracing, universally compassionate plan of God will be seen to be exactly what it is -the only truly intelligent and loving course to be taken by any sensitively developed, mature human being.

6.26. Next month we will examine certain physical aids to meditation, involving correct posture and rhythmical breathing, and the relation of these to certain universal factors.

7.01. Ordinarily, when we think of our breathing process, we think of it as a means of getting the air, or oxygen, our body needs in order to remain alive. We think of our breathing as a naturally self-regulating process which requires no attention from our conscious mind. But there are other ways of thinking about breathing, some of which are very important for the practice of our Christian Yoga, as they are for other Yoga systems.

7.02. Firstly, we need to know that it is not only breathing in that is important, for when we breath 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 ourself to breathe out so that our body is cleansed and thus made more able to use the oxygen we breathe in. Few people realise the importance of full out-breathing.

7.03. Secondly, if our breathing is made rhythmical, we can influence 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 in us, its degree of tension or relaxation, which 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.

7.04. 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 helps us to produce the conditions in which our life-energy can most efficiently conduct its health-giving activities.

7.05. We breathe about eighteen times a minute, that is about three and one third seconds per breath. There is a relation between the number of breaths we take per day in health and the length of the day. Every time we breathe out we expel a certain amount of carbon dioxide and some other waste products and create the conditions for the better use of the oxygen we breathe in.

7.06. But if we breathe rhythmically we re-assure our body and mind that we are creating the conditions of physical health and peace of mind. Rhythm links our processes of body and mind with the greater life of the universe in which we live. This is very important for all yoga practice. The universe into which we are born is a rhythmical universe. People who live near 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 sun. We do not have to believe in all the statements of newspaper astrologers in order to accept that there is a relation between the moon's position in the sky and the behaviour of the tides of the oceans on our earth.

7.07. But it is more than the rhythms of the moon and sun that we are concerned with in our Yoga breathing. 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 whole universe of manifest rhythms is what it is because of the infinitely deeper rhythm of the Will of God, which keeps all else in being.

7.08. In our ‘scientific’ period many people would rather avoid the expression, “Will of God”. But the same people would be quite prepared to accept that the energy which operates in the universe behaves in a rhythmical manner. Everyone knows that the earth turns on its axis and so gives rise to the rhythmical alternations of ‘night’ and ‘day’, and that the moon rhythmically goes through certain phases, and that the earth goes rhythmically round the sun once a year. Many people know that each of the planets in the solar system goes round the sun at a certain speed and completes its own ‘year’ in its own time and rhythm. But not everyone realises that all these different rhythms, of the earth and moon and planets and sun, are all 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.

7.09. 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 living beings, and the intelligence in all intelligent beings. There is a very intimate relation between all these phenomena. The air we breathe contains the oxygen which is essential not only to our physical living 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.

7.10. But the healthy rhythm of our breathing is easily disturbed by certain mental processes, of worry, anxiety, etc. The relation 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 allow ourself to indulge in negative thoughts, that is, thoughts that say, “No,” to life, we induce negative emotions in our feeling life, and depress or impede our physical functions and our breathing processes. We have all heard the unconscious sighing breaths of the person who is feeling depressed, seen the suddenly quickened breathing of a person who has been seized by an exciting idea. Such facts, meditated upon, can convince us of the very intimate relation which exists between breathing, emotional states, and thinking processes.

7.11. Because of this very intimate relation, 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 our 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, 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 with the underlying rhythm of Cosmic Power.

7.12. Now, breathing is best performed if the body is held in a certain posture. It is obvious that if we slump forward when sitting down and allow our shoulder blades to fall forward round our ribs, we are not allowing our ribs the full freedom they need for their expansion and contraction, which are essentials of the complete inhalation and exhalation which is proper to efficient breathing and to healthy living.

7.13. In Yoga philosophy there is one essential rule for good posture. It is that the spine must be held upright so that the spinal cord and nerves coming out from between the vertebrae are free from mechanical pressures which would otherwise impede the free passage of nervous impulses. If correct spinal posture is gained and maintained then the essential basic pre¬condition of proper function of the organism is present. 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.

7.14. If we sit down and allow our body to slump forwards, our back to take a very ‘round-shouldered’ position, and then we ‘un-round’ our back and lift our spine into the correct vertical position (easily and without tensed effort) we immediately experience a change, not only of physical posture, but also of mental attitude. As we move out of the slumped position into the correct spinal posture we feel that we have gained in human dignity. The reason for this is that what we call the feeling of human dignity is the result of the gaining by countless years of evolutionary effort of the vertical posture which is the chief postural difference between ourselves and the animals.

7.15. If we combine an easily held correct spinal posture with rhythmical breathing we find that 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.

7.16. Now we are ready to practice an important exercise in Christian Yoga. First we meditate on the relation between our own organism and the Great Universe in which it lives and moves. Then we focus our attention on the idea of the rhythm which runs through all things. Then we recognise that what rhythm there is in our organic functions is there because of the Great Cosmic Rhythm which moves all things. Then we say to ourself 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 life-breath, we become aware that we really are participating in the Great Rhythm of Divine Life. As we become more consciously aware of our deliberate participation in the rhythm of the 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 the Divine Life is always with us, that it is with us whether we are conscious of it or not. We begin to feel that if we practice to increase our daily awareness of this rhythm, to feel this rhythm as essential to our well-being, we shall become aware of the real meaning of the presence of God in us. We shall know that this very rhythm of life is itself evidence of the presence in us of the origin of life, that this rhythm is itself 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.

7.17. Next month we shall see how to combine our breathing and posture with the use of the symbols on which we meditate.

8.01. Last month we said that we would see how to combine our breathing and posture with the symbols we use for meditation. It is here that we enter into the consideration of our most important faculties, that which we call “Creative Imagination”.

8.02. We all know that imagination is that faculty or power of our mind which is able to create images, and we know that imagination is of two main kinds, which we may call “active” and “passive”.

8.03. Passive imagination is the kind which produces images in our mind without our control, which fills our consciousness (and our unconsciousness) with pictures of things, events and relationships apparently spontaneously. It is the kind of imagination which sometimes fills our mind with pleasant memories, sometimes with unpleasant ones, sometimes with memories of real events, and sometimes with unreal ones. Sometimes, as we say, this passive, uncontrolled imagination “runs away with us”, and then we may find ourselves in a state of fear or panic, or may even be forced into foolish or destructive activity of some kind.

8.04. But passive or uncontrolled imagination is luckily not the only kind we have. Active imagination is our power to control the production of mental images and to combine them and make new patterns with them, and even to create images which we have never had before in our mind. This power to control mental images, to combine them and pattern them in new ways, and to create entirely new images (new that is, to the time world in which we live our earthly lives) is the source of all new inventions, all new discoveries, all new values. Active or Creative Imagination is thus very important, and any exercise which helps us develop it is of tremendous value for our development, for our movement towards greater spiritual awareness and power.

8.05. Let us do a little preliminary exercise in the use of our Active Imagination, and in doing so use a symbol and particular body posture to provide us with a centre of stability and a living significance. We will begin by using the capital letter “1” as our meditation symbol and hold our spinal column vertical, using the letter “1” in our imagination to remind us to keep our spine upright. First we think of the letter “1”, then we place this “I” by the active use of our imagination in the place of our spinal column. Next we remind ourselves that in English this letter means the “human self”. (In other languages we would modify our meditation in accordance with the word there used for this self, but at the moment we are discussing meditation in English).

8.06. When we mentally visualise or imagine the letter “I” in the place of our spinal column, and remind ourselves that by it we mean our human self, then we experience what we call a congruence of our self, our symbol (“I”) and our spinal column. “Congruence” here means agreement or correspondence or harmony. It is from the Latin word congruere, which means “to come together, to coincide, to agree”. Congruence of self, symbol and body posture is very important for effective meditation, and for gaining the utmost value out of religious worship, prayer and ritual.

8.07. By this threefold congruence, this correspondence of self, symbol and body posture, we experience our being and its energies in a very special way. We use our Active Imagination to bring ourselves into realisation of our inner creativity.

8.08. Let us remind ourselves that all the matter in the universe, every material body is but a complex pattern of energy. And let us remember 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. All energy forms are mutually interchangeable. 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 influenceable 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. It enables us most efficiently to “fight the good fight” and to gain the victory which means more abundant living.

8.09. When, with our Active Imagination, we look at the letter “I” and imagine it to be a vertical line of energy in the place of our spinal column, and when we remind ourselves that this letter “I” and this spine are both 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 humans beings are really a very special kind of creature.

8.10. In the animal world we see passive imagination at work in certain kinds of camouflage. We see that certain kinds of animals are shaped or coloured in such a way that they are able to merge with the forms and colours of their environment so that other animals have difficulty in detecting their whereabouts. Certain butterflies show remarkable protective colouring; certain insects disguise their bodies as twigs and their wings as leaves; certain fish can change their colour so that they are very hard to see; the chameleon can change its colour as it passes from one situation to another. But we call these camouflage tricks and colour changes acts of passive imagination because we assume that the are the product, not of deliberate willing, but of spontaneous identification with their surroundings.

8.11. When a human being spontaneously changes colour, becoming pale with fear or red with embarrassment, this also is a result of passive imagination. But when a soldier in the jungle disguises his appearance deliberately by attaching branches and leaves to his helmet and by painting his face and hands green we see the result of his Active Imagination, although here at the very lowest level, that of external mimicry, which uses external aids to gain its effects.

8.12. Now, when we see a good actor deliberately changing his physical appearance, his posture, expression, facial colour, etc. by deliberate identification with the character he wills to portray, we see Active Imagination at a higher level. This actor plays on his own ideas and emotions by free action of his own Creative Imagination by his own will. Here Imagination is active.

8.13. But the actor is assuming the particular character he wills to play only for the duration of his presence on the stage. When he leaves the stage he quickly returns to his own character and takes up his own life more or less as he was living it before the play began. This is why an actor may play quite convincingly some hero or great man, responding fully and efficiently to the dramatic situation of the play, and then, the moment the play is over may behave in a very non‐heroic manner, quite unlike any great man.

8.14. But the Yogi, who aims to change his character not merely for the duration of the play, not merely for moments of his encounters with other persons during his daily life, but permanently and deeply, this man wills to change his character absolutely by 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. It begins with the will to discover the ultimate reality of being. It determines itself with a complete intention to comprehend the truth about itself. It directs all its mental processes towards this end. It feels its own state, its own emotions, likes and dislikes and brings the physical body into subordination to the truth which it discloses within itself.

8.15. This high kind of Active Imagination in the Yogi is the reflection in man of the process by which God brought into being the universe and everything in it. God creates, not from some original matter which exists independently of His Being. He creates 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 inside their own beings a new Creation, “Behold, I make all things new.”

8.16. 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.

8.17. As we do our little preliminary exercise with the letter “I”, as we place this “I” within our spinal column, and remember that we are doing so by the power of our Creative Imagination, willed into action by our 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 “1”, 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 this power, and whose continuance in existence depends upon the continued willed activity of this Creative Imagination.

8.18 . 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 first step towards deliberate self‐conscious control of the self and all its powers. We are not to think that this first step is too little to be of any real importance. As Michelangelo said, “Perfection is made of trifles, and perfection is no trifle.” “Faithful in little, faithful in much.” By realising the tremendous significance of this little 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 bear inside our souls as the supreme gift of God, the Great Creator of the Universe in which we live and move.

8.19. Faithfully practising this little‐exercise during the coming month, we shall be prepared and made ready for a more advanced one for next month.

9.01. We are now ready to consider certain other aspects of human nature important for the practice of our Christian Yoga. In order to do this we shall use a symbology, a system of signs that stand for certain parts of our being, for by means of such a system we can more easily remember all the things we have to consider in order to follow our meditations through to their true conclusions.

9.02. By means of our Yoga practice we aim to gain a full understanding of our own nature, its parts and their powers, in order to be able to develop them to their highest level of function, for only by such development is it possible to attain the ultimate happiness destined for us by our Creator. If we did not understand that in order to see clearly physically we must open our eyes, separate our eyelids, and focus our attention on the objects we wish to see, then we would fail to gain the kind of information our open, well‐focused eyes can give us.

9.03. In the same way, if we do not understand that to see clearly mentally we must open our mind, separate our ideas one from another, and focus our attention on those ideas which we wish to relate properly together, then we will fail to gain the kind of insight into our own nature that we seek.

9.04. All Yoga is based on a very simple idea, the idea that ultimate reality is somehow itself simple, that all the apparent complications and complexities of the universe in which we live are really governed by one supreme principle, which once thoroughly understood, will throw light into every dark corner of existence.

9.05. This simple idea was long ago put in a short formula which we may symbolise by a circle with a dot in its centre.

9.06. We can then put this symbol into words by saying to ourselves, “The dot is a contracted circle; the circle is an expanded dot”. The ancients used to put this in the words, “As within, so without; as without, so within.” This was a very convenient shorthand expression for, “Whatever is outside in the Great Universe is also inside the human being.

9.07. We can see that this must be so, for whenever we respond to anything in the world outside our physical body, we do so only because inside this body we have something of the same nature as that which is outside. We know that our physical body is composed of certain elements or atoms, each kind of atom having its own particular characteristics and modes of action and reaction. We also know that the world outside our body is made of the same kind of elements as those inside our body.

9.08. If the elements in the outside world were not the same as those inside our body we would not be able to respond to the outside world, we would have no possibility of communicating with the outside world's things and events.

9.09. In the same way, if the elements that constitute our minds, our ideas and concepts, were not of a similar nature to certain elements outside our individual minds we would not be able to have ideas or concepts about the outside world. For every physical element inside us there must be a correspondent physical element in the outside world. So also for every mental element. And we are to remind ourselves that all elements, physical or mental, are but different kinds of forces. All matter is energy; all energy is force at work. The whole universe, outside us and inside us is nothing but a play or activity of energy.

9.10 . This energy of the universe, inside us and outside us, is the product of the Will of the Creator, that is, of God. When we are thinking of God the Father we are thinking of the WILL aspect of God, the same aspect which in ourselves we call our will, that is, the power in us which enables us to initiate our actions, to overcome our inertias, to break the tyranny of old habits of thought, feeling or body activity. We symbolise this aspect of Initiative Will by the dot in the circle. This is the same dot that Christ calls the, “Jot which shall not pass away till all is fulfilled.”

9.11. Surrounding this dot is the circle which symbolises the all‐embracing love of God, which is personified in God's Son, Jesus Christ. By means of this all‐embracing power which is incarnated as His Son, God holds all creation together so that nothing can be lost. By this Son salvation is guaranteed for all beings who respond to the Divine Love.

9.12. Between the dot at the centre and the circle surrounding it is a space. This space symbolises the zone of free activity in which all human beings move under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit springs from the interaction of the Will of God the Father and the all‐comprehending love of God the Son. We say, “The Holy Spirit comes forth equally from the Father and the Son.” This means that whatever the Holy Spirit does springs from God’s Will and from His loving comprehension of what we need. In the same way, whatever a man does springs from his will and his level of understanding. If we as human beings wish to be like God, we have to strive to make our actions spring from our free will and from our loving comprehension of what is really needed in the situations in which we find ourselves.

9.13. We can make our symbolism slightly more complex by drawing a travelling line, like a spiral enclosed in the circle passing from the perimeter of the figure to the dot at its centre and back again continuously.

9.14. This travelling spiral, enclosed within the circle, represents the activity of the Holy Spirit filling the space between the circle and the central dot, that is between God the Son and God the Father, In the human being it represents the activities of the human spirit springing from the interaction of human will and loving understanding. If we hold our attention upon this symbol, we can use it to guide our meditation upon the divine Trinity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and upon the human trinity: Human Will, Human Loving Understanding, and divinely inspired activity.

9.15. The symbol of a circle with a dot in it is used by astronomers to represent the sun. It has been used so from early times; the dot is representing the sun itself, and the circle representing the orbit of any planet going round the sun. But in the solar system, the space between the visible body of the sun and any planetary orbit is not empty. It is full of forces which stream from the sun towards the outer limits of the solar system and beyond. And there are not only forces from the sun in that space, for the planets also radiate their influences into it, and the stars from the Milky Way and elsewhere also make their contribution to the total energy in the solar system. Up till the recent sending up of satellites to measure these forces most people believed that the space between the planets and the sun was empty. Now we know that the inter‐planetary spaces are not empty, that the vast interstellar spaces are all full of energies of many kinds; electromagnetic waves and gravitational forces etc. And we know that all these forces are somehow all working together as one vast harmonious Being. It is awareness of this fact that will help us to be better Christiana Yogis. For all the teaching of Christ to us has one supreme meaning, expressed in His words, “I and my Father are One.” The dot in the centre of the circle and the circle itself, and all the forces in the space between, are one.

9.16. “Love one another as I have loved you,” says Jesus. All the forces in the universe are in continuous necessary interplay. Upon their intelligent cooperation rests the destiny of the world and of humanity. Since the fall of man from a once high state of loving co‐operation, history has recorded a more or less continuous degeneration of human relationships. Man, once a single family, has spread his descendants over the face of the earth in ever more diversifying groups and individuals, each with its own language, its own vocabulary, its own private significances. A once harmonious being has become disharmonious by its self‐pluralisation and self division.

9.17. Of course, we could say that the differences between peoples and languages is a product of expansion of the family, of travelling into new territories, (encountering new and different environments, of being forced by these facts to invent new words, new vocabularies, new languages. We could say that these factors are the cause of the alienation, the estrangement of peoples and nations from each other. This is what optimistic groups like those who believe that if we had one universal language (like Esperanto, or ldo, or Interglossa) we would all be able to understand each other and so be at peace with each other.

9.18. But the facts are otherwise, and the will of each individual man is not to be tamed into “peace” by simply acquiring a “universal language”. There must be not only a will to peace in each man, but there must also be deep self‐understanding. And this can only come by sell‐searching in the depths of meditation. Before we can realize peace between nations, we must first realize peace between the various parts of our own being. And for this we must understand how we are related, not only to each other, but to the original source of our being, to our Creator.

9.19. Let us look at the symbol of the circle with the dot in its centre and the spiral in the space between. Let us see that it represents in every human being the three basic facts of human actuality, our will, our loving comprehension, and our activity that springs from the interaction of our loving comprehension and will. Then let us remind ourselves that these three facts of our nature originate in the Holy Divine Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

9.20. Next month we shall examine the Christian Yogis' insights into higher worlds.

10.01. Today in the realm of television, science fiction presents a world‐wide viewing public with ideas of many different worlds, worlds in which the ordinary laws of earthly existence no longer hold. In the past we have tended to view such worlds as mere flights of imagination, fantasies in their writers' minds, of no real significance to our lives.

10.02. But every now and then in the past some science fiction writer has described a new emergent, a new invention, or a new attitude of mind which has later come into existence and become of importance. In such cases the writer has played an almost prophetic role, has in some way given us a pre‐vision of things to come. We think of Jules Verne, of H. G.Wells and others as not altogether devoid of insight into possible future worlds.

10.03. But the possibilities of insight into the future are not the only ideas that have occupied the minds of science fiction writers. They have also thought of “worlds” at levels of being other than the physical. They have imagined worlds within worlds, realms of being other than that of the gross material world which we encounter with our ordinary physical bodies. They have visualised worlds of forces much finer than those of the material world of our daily experience; they have imagined our physical world as permeated with subtle powers wielded by higher intelligences than those of the ordinary materialistically‐minded men.

10.04. Many of the science fiction writers have drawn, consciously or unconsciously, on the world's great philosophies and religions, and have taken their ideas of other worlds from some of the great thinkers of past history. Such writers have compounded factors from the procedures of modern science with the most important ideas of the greatest spiritual leaders of mankind.

10.05. What do we mean when we talk about different “worlds”? What do we mean by a “world”? A world is any system of orderly functions viewed as a whole. A world is a system of forces, or things, or relationships, held together in some orderly manner so that it works as a whole.

10.06. Thus we can talk of the material world, the world in which physical objects exist and are related together in certain ways such that we see some order amongst them. Or we can talk of the “world of ideas” in which ideas or mental images are related together in such a manner that we can think of them as somehow making up a whole system of thought.

10.07. But there are other worlds also. There is the world in which feelings and emotions weave in and out of each other, following their own laws. Laws very different from those of the world of ideas, and the world of material objects, though related to both of these. And this world of feelings and emotions is much more important than many of us tend to think, for it is through this world that most human beings find their relationships with each other becoming pleasant or unpleasant.

10.08. There is another world, a world of comprehension in which the physical world and the world of ideas, and the world of feelings and emotions are held together in relation in such a way that all three of these worlds can be understood, and their ways of interaction clearly seen. This “comprehension world” is very important for the salvation of the human race, for it is through this world that the need for mutual aid in solving the problems of mankind can clearly be seen.

10.09. But there is yet another world, a world which we can call the “world of pure will”, or the “world of pure intentionality”. This world is one in which every content of consciousness is seen as an act of will, an intentional creative act by means of which there appears in consciousness an idea, or a feeling or an action or object of some kind. In this world of pure will, whatever exists owes its origin to nothing but an intention of will. All objects, actions, thoughts and feelings in this world are what they are only because of the will’s pure intentional self‐activation. This is the world of God the Father, as the world of Comprehension is that of God the Son, and the world of pure idea activation is that of the Holy Spirit.

10.10. Each of these worlds is a level of being complete in itself, yet related in its own special way to all the others. Each world has its own mode of operation, its own laws, its own powers and capacities, and its own limitations, without which it could not remain functionally separate from the others, a separation necessary for the avoidance of confusion.

10.11. The living human being lives in five worlds at once, or we may say, the whole human being contains in himself five different levels of activity or functioning. At the lowest level we live as a material or physical being with a body: composed of material particles, atoms, molecules, etc: At the next level we live in a world of feelings and emotions, a world of forces which are felt as an interweaving pattern of likes and dislikes, pleasure and pains, hopes and fears.

10.12. At the next level we live in a world of serialised ideas, which continually displace each other, or combine with each other according to laws of formal association, or disintegrate under the impact of other ideas. This world of ideas is in a state of continual flux. It is a world of mental experiences, of experiments, anticipations of possibilities, calculations of probabilities and improbabilities, a world of inventions and rehearsals of events and relations of events, a world in which new worlds of ideas continually arise and vanish. It is a world of temptations, of ideas of situations better or worse which might arise under certain pre‐imagined conditions. It is the world which gives from to our hopes and fears.

10.13. At the next level, we live in the world of comprehensions, the world in which all the moving ideas of the serial idea world are seen in their proper inter‐relationships. Here, in the comprehension world each idea is seen as we see the parts of a completed jigsaw puzzle; each idea has its own proper place within the whole pattern of structured consciousness; each idea contributes its own particular significance to all the others and receives from them their particular significances. Each idea “stands” in its own place within the whole comprehensive pattern, makes its contribution to that whole, and receives recognition from the whole. Thus here, in the comprehensive world, ideas do not arise and then vanish as they do in the serial idea world. Each idea has its place within the comprehended pattern and keeps this place so that all relationships between may be understood. This, the Comprehension World is called also the Sphere of Divine Wisdom, which is personified as Sophia, or Cosmic Wisdom.

10.14. At the next level we live in the world of Pure Will, the purely Intentional World. Here everything that exists does so only because of the Will's pure intention that it comes to existence. The Will posits, or creates, or brings into existence, by its own pure act the form of its own intention; and this formed intention is then a content of consciousness, an idea, a feeling or emotion, an action, or a material object.

10.15. When in our Christian Yoga we contemplate these different levels of being, or these different worlds, we begin to see how they are inter‐related, how one level affects the others. We begin to understand the real pattern of our whole being and so to approach the possibility of gaining real freedom.

10.16. In Christian Yoga there is a procedure whereby we rise in meditation from the lowest to the highest level of being, climb from the lowest to the highest world, from the physical through the emotional and the ideational and comprehensive levels until finally we reach the highest level of pure will.

10.17. This procedure consists in selecting and arranging the words of our vocabulary into five categories, those which refer to material or physical objects, those which refer to feelings and emotions, those referring to ideas and mental images, those which refer to the whole pattern of conscious contents, and those which refer to pure will or pure intentionality.

10.18. The selecting and arranging of our words into five categories is essential to true meditation, and so to the attainment of the state of pure contemplation which allows us to take the final step into the world of pure will, which because it is beyond all formal considerations, that is, beyond the limitations imposed by all lower levels, is called the “World of Transcendence” or the “Transcendental World”.

10.19. When we transcend something we go beyond its influence, we pass through its zone of authority, and continue beyond it till we are no longer under the laws which govern that area. Thus when we lift our consciousness above the level of merely material things, and above the level of feelings and emotional states, and above the level of serialised ideas, and above even the level of pattern‐comprehension, we arrive at the final state which transcends the four lower levels.

10.20. In the state of transcendence we see the whole universe with all the various worlds within it as the intentional creation of the Will of God the Father. It is in this transcendental state of consciousness that Christ says, “What I see the Father do in secret, that U do openly.” And, “It is my will to do the will of Him that sent me.”

10.21 In this transcendental state we are able to realise the true meaning of freedom, that freedom which is Divine Grace, the freedom that is gainable only by rising above the levels of formed existence and its implied possibility of reactivity and the bondage that reactivity inevitably brings.

10.22 We realise in the state of Transcendence that all slavery, all bondage, all misery, comes from identification with some form of existence, and this identification arises from forgetting the essential transcendence of our own true self, the self ‐the essential nature of which is pure Will.

10.23. The ordinary mental process we use in our daily life cannot deal with the idea of a world of purely transcendental will, a world in which the contents of consciousness are structured with such extraordinary fine forces that, from the viewpoint of the gross material world they must be as if they did not exist at all.

10.24. Yet it is precisely in the realm of these superfine forces that the real causes of material objects and events have their being. And it is in the realm of these subtle forces that the destiny of humanity as a whole and of each individual in particular is decided.

10.25. Next month we shall examine more closely the nature of the higher worlds and show how they may be entered.

11.01. A world, as we have seen, is an orderly system of some kind. Wherever one orderly system is different in some way from another, we can talk about a separate world. This means that we can talk about the material world as that system of material things which constitute the physical world in which our bodily life is conducted, and which imposes certain restraints upon us, such as gravity, momentum, etc.

11.02. As physically existent beings we occupy with our bodies a certain amount of space (which varies as we grow from childhood to maturity) ; and our movements take time to change position in space; and we have to expend a certain amount of energy (or power) in order to make these movements. Thus we can say that our bodies as physical things moving about must be governed by certain laws of space, time, and power. This means that if we are to understand our physical bodies we must do so in such terms.

11.03. Our bodies consume energy, or power, and take time to move through space; and are therefore subject to these three factors as kinds of limitations which make certain things possible at the physical level, and certain things impossible. Most of the frustrations of physically centred men arise from the action of the physical laws governing the realm of space, time, and power. This means that there are things that we would like to do in the physical world which we cannot do simply because these require energy expenditure in moving our bodies through space and time. And we cannot physically be in several places at once, though often we would like to be, as, for instance, when we would like to go out see some friends, and yet at the same time would like to watch a special film on T.V., or go to bed to catch up on lost sleep.

11.04. It is because of the limitations which our physical body imposes on us that we find ourselves becoming aware that we live also in another world, the world of feelings and emotions, a world that is not visible to our physical eyes, but which is not therefore less “real” than the physical world.

11.05. Although the world of feelings and emotions cannot physically be seen, yet it is not less important to us than the material world in which our physical body exists, for our feelings and emotions profoundly affect our physical body’s states and activities. If we have a feeling of sadness, our physical body does not work for us as well as when we have a feeling of happiness: Continuous sadness can much reduce the efficiency of our body’s functions; and deep misery persisting over a long time an seriously affect our physical health.

11.06. Our feelings and emotions, like our physical body, are composed of energies which act in specific ways, more subtle in their action than the visible activities of our bones and muscles and blood circulation, yet every bit as “real” as those bones and muscles, and so on. When we consider the totality of the energies we experience as feelings and emotions as a whole, we can think of them, in their wholeness as our emotional or feeling body.

11.07. The difference between “feeling” and “emotion” is this; in the state of feeling, the fine energies of our being are observing and assessing the degree of possible pleasure or pain in a given situation or activity, while in the state of emotion our fine energies are moving into active expression in the direction determined by our assessment. The difference is one of assessing and of activating or expressing.

11.08. Because our feeling energies and emotional energies are very fine compared with our physical body's constituent energies, we sometimes call the totality of our feeling and emotional energies considered as a whole a “subtle body”. This subtle body of feeling and emotional energies has its own laws, very different from those governing the activities of our body as a merely physical thing, and until we understand these laws we cannot gain control of our feelings and emotions, and thus cannot rescue ourselves from situations which stimulate our feelings or provoke emotional reactions. We have to learn how to be able to “swim” in a sea of feelings and emotions, to, “Keep our heads above water,” in order not to be “drowned”. Drowning in a sea of emotions, as anyone knows who has experienced it, is not merely a figure of speech.

11.09. We have also another world in which we live, governed by laws other than those which govern our feelings and emotions, and our physical body. This other world is also made of fine energies. It is the world of thinking, the world in which separate ideas exist and relate to each other according to certain rules which are peculiar to this world.

11.10. The totality of our moving ideas, viewed as a whole process, we call our “thinking body”. This is just as real as our feeling and emotion body; just as real as our physical body, but it is composed of ideas related together in a certain way, as our feelings and emotions are related together in another way, and the material atoms of our physical body are related together in yet another way.

11.11. When we focus our attention into our thinking processes, we enter the world of thinking, the world in which ideas continually move about making relations with each other, building up patterns of thinking which constitute our mental life. In this world of ideas, which is a real world, our life movements take definite forms which enable us to make comparisons between clearly defined patterns of subtle energies, sharply contoured shapes which provide our mental life with visually representable contents which enable us to conduct certain formal operations in consciousness.

11.12. By these clearly defined formal operations we are enabled to reproduce in our minds, shapes of things we have seen in the physical world; to produce images of things we have encountered in our life experiences, in the order is which we have seen them, or in the actual places or times which we have sees them. We are able also to alter the relative positions of our mental images, to place them in a different order, to move them about in our mental space and time so that they are brought into new relationships. When we do this kind of operation with our mental images or ideas, we say that we are using our imagination.

11.13. Imagination is the capacity to rearrange the elements of our experience, our ideas, our images of things seen in our life experience. Imaginative control is a means whereby we can do experiments in our mind (or in the world of thinking) which might be very difficult to perform in the physical world, or might take too long, or be too costly in terms of material expenditure.

11.14. Thus imagination is one of our best ways of discovering new arrangements, new patterns of things. It is one of our chief tools in producing new inventions, of creating new ways of doing things. Imagination put idea-men on the moon long before physical men actually arrived there. Imagination flew in Concorde before the first drawings were laid on the designer's board. Imagination, or manipulations in the world of ideas, has carried man from stage to stage of human evolution from the most early times when man first sought his food in the forests; through the periods heralded by the invention of the plough; the stone headed weapons; the bronze swords; the iron and steel instruments of war and industry; the periods of aircraft and radio and television; to laser beams and inter-continental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. All these are the products of our imagination.

11.15. Imagination, then, is a powerful weapon, and like everything powerful, is not only useful but also potentially dangerous, Thus imagination, like our physical body, and feelings, and emotions, needs controlling. And to gain this control we must study the laws governing imaginative operations, as we have to study the laws governing the world of feelings and emotions, and those governing the physical world.

11.16. Finer still than the energies constituting the world of thinking, are those constituting the “World of Understanding”, or of “comprehension”. For in this world the energies do not move about within the “mental space and time” in a serial manner; that is, the energies constituting the ideas or forms in consciousness do not change places or displace themselves in time, but all stand within consciousness together as one whole pattern, the parts of which mutually define each other's significances.

11.17. In this world of understanding and comprehension, there is no changing of places and times, no shifting of the mental forms from one situation to another, or from one historical time to another. Here, all times and places stand together in one great whole pattern of universal significance. This world is said to transcend time and space, that is, to stand above or beyond any temporal sequence of spatial events. We say that the world of understanding transcends the world of serial thinking processes.

11.18. In this world of understanding are comprehended all the forms of experience undergone by the consciousness of any being, and not merely of any particular being's own experiences in time and space, but of all beings whatever, in the whole of reality. This is why another name for this world is Sophia, or Wisdom, which is the word of God. It is this world in which Wisdom enlightens the world’s sages and prophets, the world in which lives the resolution of all man's problems of knowledge and action.

11.19. But even this “World of Understanding” is not the highest of all worlds, for beyond it is the “World of Free Will” or of “Initiative”. The world of Understanding or Wisdom is the world of the second person of the Holy Trinity, the World of God the Son, who in the Gospel of St. John is called the “Logos” or Principle of Cosmic or Universal Truth. This is the world we enter when we thoroughly accept that Universal Truth is the revealer of all mysteries. It is the “Mind of Christ”, the expressed Word of God, the saviour of mankind, which, if we place our lives in its care will bring us from the darkness of earthbound materialism to the highest reaches of divine spirituality.

11.20. This “Mind of Christ” lives in the centre of each human soul. Its working in us we call the operation of the Holy Spirit. Above this “Christ Mind” is the “Divine World of God the Father”. Into this world we enter when, like Christ, we will with our own will to will as God the Father Wills.

11.21. Next month we shall look more closely into the Higher Worlds and see how entrance into them can transfigure our lives.

12.01. Most of us go to sleep and wake up in the morning. Those of us who are on night‐work sleep by day and wake up at night. But to whichever of these categories we belong, when we sleep, we pass into a state very different from that which we experience when we are awake.

12.02. As we pass from our sleeping to waking state, we often feel as if we have passed from one “world” to another, and it is not merely a figure of speech when we say so. We really do live in different “worlds” when we sleep and when we are awake.

12.03. How do we pass from one “world” to another? We do so by applying certain rules of concentration. In order to pass from the sleeping to waking state we concentrate our attention upon physical facts. First of our physical body, then of other material things of the world about us.

12.04. If we wish to pass from the waking to the sleeping state, we first withdraw our attention from the outer things of the material world, then relax our physical body. Then we shift our attention into the images and feelings of our mind and so gradually “forget” our physical body.

12.05. Often the transition from physically centered consciousness to that of sleep is so gradual that we cannot be sure, of the precise point at which we “fell” asleep. But once we have fallen asleep we are living in a “world” in which operate laws quite different from those of our waking state.

12.06. Considering that most of us spend about one third of our life asleep, it is surprising that we know so little of what happens during this state. Even today's science is yet far from understanding the mysteries of the sleeping mind of any individual. Experimental science which confines its methods to those of external laboratory techniques cannot hope to do more than exhibit certain measurements on electrical and other instruments, and presume these measurements to correspond in some way to inner mental processes.

12.07. But from the viewpoint of the practicing Christian in his personal meditations, these same mental processes are experienced not as so‐called “objectively” measurable events, but as real events within his own being, External experimental science in the past has tended to devalue such real events within the personality of the human being, because these events are inaccessible to its techniques. It has called such events “subjective”, in opposition to those it has called “objective” in the external physical world, and has then suggested that “subjective” events (those events which occur within the private mental world of the individual human being) are not “valid”; first because “scientifically” unverifiable and then as not valid at all. It is easy for us to understand that experimental physical science, in its search for “objective” certainty, would have to disregard the mental processes of human individuals which are beyond the reach of its physical measuring instruments. It is less easy for the experimental physical scientist to accept that the so‐called “subjective” experiences of human beings in meditation, which occur at levels of being beyond the reach of physical instruments are quite valid, meaningful and very important for the individuals in whom they occur.

12.08. When we focus our attention on the material things of the external physical world, we condition the way our thoughts and feelings develop. We place our mental processes, as it were, under the laws governing material things, laws of place and time and energy. For everything we see in the outer material world occupies a certain place, in a certain time, and embodies a certain amount of energy, which gives it mass‐inertia, or what we loosely call “weight”, and resistance to being moved by an external force.

12.09. But when we withdraw our attention from the external things of the material world and enter into the inner world of ideas and feelings, we find that the laws governing the things of the outer world are no longer operative. Here in the inner mental world the contents of our mind are not limited in their action by place and time and energy in the same way as are the things of the outer physical world, for we can perform operations with our mental images of things that we cannot externally perform with the things themselves. This fact is of the utmost importance for us, not only because it is the key to all human inventions and discoveries, but because it enables us to create new conditions of life and provides the key to real self‐discovery.

12.10. If when we withdraw our attention from the things of the outer material world, and we focus our attention consciously and deliberately upon the images which arise in our mind, we find that we can mentally manipulate them, rearrange them into new patterns, consider their various parts separately, and place them with parts of other images and so produce new forms of possibility, not merely of possible external, material things, but of possible new forms of relationships between persons and between different parts and activities of the same individual.

12.11. If the full significance of this fact were more widely known and acted upon, most of the relational problems of human beings would be solved, for whatever is intensely imagined affects not only the mental world but also, through the energy inserted into it, the emotional state of the individual, and through this, his physical processes and so his health and happiness.

12.12. Let us state this law of mental life again: Whatever is intensely imagined affects not only our mental world, but also our emotional state, and through this, our physical processes, health and happiness.

12.13. We do not practice our Christian Yoga merely for the exercise of our physical muscles and their mental equivalents. We have a much higher aim than this. Christ came and taught us so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Increase of life is His aim for us. His method is the method of Love.

12.14. Love as taught by Christ is not to be thought of as desiring something for oneself. Christ's love is a giving, not a grasping at pleasure‐providing things. This is the Key to Christian Yoga, for in this we deliberately mentally visualise ourselves giving our love, that is, our good will to help all beings in the universe towards higher levels of being, fuller expressions of life.

12.15. When we withdraw our attention from outer material things and focus our consciousness in the inner mental world and deliberately image ourselves in some situation doing some act as Christ would do it if He were presented with this situation, we are bringing ourselves into harmonious interrelation with Christ's Will and Being. When we do this we change the, disposition of all the forces which constitute our mental and emotional life, and through this, also our physical condition. By this means we change our Being, and with this change of Being, our destiny.

12.16. The faculty with which we deliberately create and manipulate images in our mind is “Creative Imagination”. This Creative Imagination is not like the ordinary process of image formation which drifts aimlessly from one vaguely formed image to another, to no useful purpose. Creative Imagination is the most powerful force man possesses. not only because it is responsible for all the material inventions which are so useful in our daily lives, but because it has given to man this significance in the universe, has given him not only the “know‐how” of science but the “why” of the great philosophies, and finally, in the great religions, the vary identity of Man as the child of God.

12.17. Creative Imagination is God's gift to Man, which man may use, abuse, or neglect. According to which of these he does so man rises or falls.

12.18. We enter the world. of Creative Imagination by withdrawing the focus of our attention from the outer things of the material world and directing it to one idea which we select from amongst other ideas we find in our consciousness. Usually we select the idea which we intend to make the basis of our exorcise because we find this idea “interesting”’ by which we mean that, consciously or unconsciously, we believe that somehow our life will be made more full, more vital, by examining this idea and then applying the results of our thinking about it in our daily life.

12.19. The one thing we are not to do when thinking about the nature of Creative Imagination is to think of it “merely” or only imagination, as if imagination were somehow unreal or a mere game of “let’s pretend”. Creative Imagination is a real power in man's soul by means of which he may make or break his life‐pattern, to increased good, or to evil.

12.20. Just as’ “Fire is a good servant, but a bad master” so also is the power of Creative Imagination. For, not only can we deliberately imagine good things for ourselves, but we can also deliberately imagine bad things, for ourselves or for others, and when we do so we do ourselves a great disservice because everything that we strongly visualise or say to ourselves acts not only upon our ideas, but also upon our emotions, and through these upon our physical body. Our fate and destiny lie in our use of our Creative Imagination.

12.21. The world of Creative Imagination is a real world, with its own laws, its own power, its own function within the whole divine scheme of things. In this world man has taken every upward step of his evolution, and in this world has fallen often into bondage to self‐made fantasy and mis‐direction. Thus it is in this world that we most need a sure and true directive.

12.22. Christ said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” The image he provides for us, when set up in our inner world of Creative Imagination, will lead us to all the good things of life we can conceive in our hearts and minds. What we have here to do, is to establish in our consciousness by the power of our Creative Imagination, the mental image of Jesus Christ. Then having established this image in our consciousness we are to hold this image, not only as representative of Christ, but as the why means by which we have gained access to the Way of True Life which He offers us. Then, within the life‐circumstances in which we find ourselves with this Christ‐image, address the Christ there visualised and ask Him what He, in our circumstances, would do. When we do this in full sincerity we will feel in our heart and know in our mind what He would do, and therefore what He would will us to do. Then our Creative Imagination will have led us to the innermost Chamber of our being wherein we will find ourselves in the presence of Christ Himself.

12.23. Next month we shall consider further the nature of Creative Imagination and how it can lead us into higher and higher levels of self‐realisation.

13.01. The procedure for entering higher worlds is always the same. It is by identification. We have inside ourselves various levels of awareness each of which has its own laws. Our physical body is under the laws of gravity and mass and momentum and so on. If we wish to enter with our consciousness into the physical world, we focus our attention on the weight and mass of our body, we feel the tension of our muscles, the pressure of our weight on the soles of our feet, or, when we are lying down, on the couch or bed or floor. We feel the expansion of our chest or the movement of our diaphragm as we breathe. We open our eyes and look at the things which reflect the light around us. We listen to the noises made by things, the sounds of pots being used, of motor cars going down the road, of doors being opened or closed. We use all our five physical sense organs to gain such information, and by focusing on it we are enabled to hold ourselves in contact with the physical world of material objects, to identify our consciousness with the' material facts of this world.

13.02. When we do so identify our consciousness with our physical body, by this fact we tend to create within us a belief that we are physical beings. If we persist in this identification throughout all our waking hours we may come to believe that we are merely physical beings and nothing more. This is how so many people are brought to a belief in materialism.

13.03. But we have other facts of experience than merely physical ones arising from focusing our attention on our physical body and on the material objects of the external world. Within ourselves we also ex‐perience feelings and emotions. We like and dislike things, prefer some activities to others. We love and hate. And these feelings and emotions are not subject to the same laws that govern the world of outer material objects, so if we are to remain true to the facts of our experience, we have to say that when we focus our attention in our feelings and emotions, we enter into a level of being very different from that in which we experience external material objects. This level of feeling and emotion is a world in itself, governed by its own laws, filled with its own energies. To move about freely in this world we have to learn to control our feelings and emotions, just as in the physical world we have to learn to control our muscles in order to move: our physical body in chosen directions.

13.04. The method of controlling our feelings and emotions is based on the fact that when we make ourselves fully conscious of them, we become aware that our feelings are assessing something for its capacity for introducing some degree of pleasure or pain into our consciousness, and that emotions are overflowings of energy in our organism which tend to lead us into some kind of reactive behaviour determined by the pleasure or pain we believe will result from this behaviour.

13.05. As we become aware that our feeling is assessing the degree of pleasure or pain which may arise in us from some experience, and that our emotions tend to carry us into action because of our assessments, so we find that our awareness of these facts begins of itself to modify our feelings and emotions, which then become calmer and more balanced. What we are saying is that fuller consciousness of the results of our feeling assessments and emotions result in more balanced, more intelligent action.

13.06. Once the awareness of this fact has become sufficiently established in us we can move about with surety in the world of feelings and emotions. We become able to look into the patterns of feelings and emotions which fill this world, not only the patterns of own our feelings and emotions, but also those of other beings. We find that we can feel other persons' feelings and emotions, and anticipate their reaction to different stimuli in different situations. We begin to understand that although our physical bodies are separated from each other in space, our feelings and emotions are not completely insulated from those of other persons. We begin to see that in our feelings and emotions we share in an ocean of life‐force which extends far beyond our physical bodies. We find by our own experience that the expression, “A sea of emotion,” is not just a figure of speech. Now we understand one of the significances of the “fish” symbol used by the early Christians. “He who would swim must become a fish.” If we are to become able to direct ourselves in the common sea of emotion, which we share with other living beings, we must become as sensitive as a fish to everything that might affect our feelings.

13.07. When we can swim in the great sea of emotions, sure of our own feeling assessments, and in charge of own emotions, we can live in the world of feelings, the world of the life‐force which animates every living being, without losing our self‐control or direction. Then, because of our emotional stability we can help other less controlled people towards a similar balance of feeling‐forces. When we are balanced enough in the feeling world we can enter the next world, the world of serially presented ideas without losing our way.

13.08. By “serially presented” ideas we mean the appearance in our thinking processes of ideas, one after another, in a series. With our attained balance of feeling we are able to look at each idea as it presents itself in a new way. Ordinarily each idea we find in our serial thinking has a feeling charge upon it, a degree of liking or disliking, which tends to make us in the one case “hang on” to the idea, and in the other case to turn away from it or to suppress it. It is just this tendency which causes us so much unnecessary suffering in our minds and hearts.

13.09. If we think very carefully, we will find that every idea we have, simply because it is an idea, if it is not charged with excessive feeling or emotion, must be as “real” as any other idea. An idea of a box, as idea, is as real as an idea of a broken box. But if we have a material box to which we have attached certain feelings or emotions, perhaps because it was given to us by someone we love, then the idea of this box will tend to have associated with it the same feelings and emotions. Now if some person comes to us and tells us that our beloved box has accidently been broken, we will tend to be emotionally upset, and perhaps become angry, and this even if we have not yet seen the actual box but have so far only the idea that it has been broken.

13.10. From this we can see how important it is for us to be able to balance our feelings and control our emotions. Perhaps in fact the box has not been broken. Perhaps our informant is having a joke at our expense, because he knows that we value the box highly. Perhaps he actually desires to upset our emotional balance. Unfortunately there is very much of this kind of thing in the world of human relations. The way Iago acts upon Othello by inserting certain ideas in his head of Desdemona’s possible unfaithfulness illustrates what we mean, and life and literature abound with other examples.

13.11. It is obvious that it will be to our benefit if we can remove from our ideas the emotional charges that have become attached to the things we value, love or hate. For if we do not do so we are very easily manipulated by other people, or provoked into activity by stray stimuli that strike into our mind.

13.12. When we have balanced ourselves in the sea of feelings, and then entered into the world of serial ideas which we use in our thinking, we are able to strip away the feelings and emotional charges from the ideas, so that we now look at them clearly without being emotionally disturbed. Now we are able to move about in the world of ideas without liking them or disliking them in an uncontrolled way. We can assess the idea now as ideas, that is simply as forms in the mind, some originating from our external experiences and some from our own inner creative activity.

13.13. When we can see ideas simply as ideas, that is, as forms in our mind, freed from feelings charges and emotional tendencies, we can deal with them in a logical, rational manner. Until we can do this we think illogically, irrationally, make errors of judgment, react emotionally to situations in which it would be much better to use our reason. A tremendous amount of human sorrow and suffering arises just from the non‐attainment of the capacity to see ideas simply as ideas.

13.14. There is a saying of Christ's, “See a hand in the place of a hand, an eye in the place of an eye.” This refers to the possibility of seeing everything exactly as it is in itself, unmixed with other things. If we are able to do this we cannot become mentally confused. Confusion of mind is a state in which ideas which would be better separate are allowed to mix together too closely, so that we are unable to act discriminately. To discriminate is precisely to keep separate whatever ideas do not logically belong together. “Try all things; hold fast the good,’ means, be discriminate in subjecting yourself to experiences, mentally or physically.

13.15. When we are freed from false feeling assessments and emotions, and when our ideas are properly discriminated, then we find that the serial activities of our thinking processes slow down, and a change of mental attitude begins to appear in us. We find that instead of seeing our ideas passing before our mind’s eye one after another, that they are beginning to be presented in a patterned way, that is, we begin to see whole relations of ideas instead of merely separate ideas following each other as if on a mono‐rail.

13.16. This seeing of whole relations or patterns of ideas is our evidence that we are now beginning to enter the world of comprehension, the world in which we are able to see the whole pattern of things and events and to understand their interrelationships.

13.17. As our pattern‐comprehension becomes progressively more and more established in us we become gradually more able to understand something of what it means to, “Have the Mind of Christ.” For the Christ‐Mind is the Mind that comprehends all things in the universe as one great Cosmic pattern, the pattern which is created by the Divine Word or Logos, by the power of God the Father.

13.18. Next month we shall finish our articles on Christian Yoga by further examining the world of the Mind of Christ and how to attain it.

14.01. All our Christian Yoga meditations culminate finally in one Great Identification. In our thinking through the nature of reality; in our progressively deeper understanding of the different worlds in which we may move; and different levels of being in which we exist, we become at last able to see how we can become one with Jesus Christ. How we can partake of His Grace, and so fuse our mind with His.

14.02. The Mind of Christ is the same Mind which holds the whole Universe within itself as the Great Plan for the salvation of the human race, the same mind which we call the Logos or Cosmic Reason, the working of which is carrying us all onwards and upwards towards that final freedom of Spirit which alone confers real meaning on the human soul, which alone gives to many kind an ultimate dignity as the collective and individually conscious willing servant of God.

14.03. As we in our meditation raise our consciousness through the different levels of being, gathering our thought and feeling and will together and lifting them from the merely material affairs of the world, passing through the lower levels of feeling where likes and dislikes move through us like waves through the ocean, thinking beyond the ordinary levels of everyday ideas, to those thoughts which bring us to consciousness of universal realities, so we find ourselves finally in the presence of the Great Idea, the Cosmic Plan for mankind which fills the Mind of Christ.

14.04. When Jesus in Gethsemane fought through the great mass of ancestral fears which His earthly inheritance had bequeathed to Him; when His soul was fully gathered together and given without reserve to God, then He had already in effect lived through His Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection. His will wholly given to realise the Great Plan, His body could no longer fail to fulfill His part in it.

14.05. In the same way, when in our meditation we think through Jesus Christ’s Great work, and finally commit our own wills to oneness with His, then we contemplate ourselves as one with Him. In the coincidence of our will with His, we become in that will one with Him in such a way that our thoughts also become one with His thoughts and our actions become one with His.

14.06. This is not merely a figure of speech. It is not as if we willed and thought and acted like Him, merely as an actor might act like the character he portrays. No. It is that the same Mind, the Cosmic Mind that illuminated Jesus in Gethsemane, now illuminates us.

14.07. The Great Cosmic Mind is the very Mind of God, the Mind that guided Jesus into His Christhood, that conferred upon Him the title “King of Kings”. This same Mind fills our mind in the moment of our contemplative identification with Christ. Here we fulfill His intention that we should be at one with Him as He is at one with His Heavenly Father, the Creator of all things.

14.08. In this identification we do not merely think about Christ and His oneness with God, we do not merely try to feel as Jesus felt in accepting the responsibility placed by God upon Him, we do not merely act externally as we think God would like us to act for Christ's sake. We experience instead a full coincidence, a congruence, oneness of thought, feeling and willed action with Jesus Christ in the accepting with Him of God's will.

14.09. In this contemplative identification, it is not as if we attain to some likeness with Jesus Christ, and yet stand apart from Him like some brother who bears a family likeness. Our identification here is infinitely more intimate than this, for our mind is permeated with the Mind of Christ as an iron poker is permeated with the heat of the fire so that the heat totally outshines the dullness of the iron, making it glow intensely with vibrant light.

14.10. Our physical self is still there, as the iron poker is still there, but it is no longer experienced in the old way. The Will of God now vitalises our being from within. The Mind of Christ conformed to this Will shines in our mind, so that the dark thoughts of our ordinary egotistic thinking are utterly eliminated in the outshining light and loving heat of the Divine Will.

14.11. In this contemplative identification we experience no sense of ego effort or strain to maintain it. Our whole being is warmed through from within by the Love of God. And we feel this Love of God as a beneficent power giving itself to all beings who will receive it.

14.12. This Divine Love is not the kind of love which is ordinarily experienced between human beings, for the ordinary human love has in it an element of wanting something for itself, while the Divine Love wants nothing, for it lacks nothing.

14.13. The Divine Love is essentially giving. It does not reckon up how much to give to each person according to some idea of the meritoriousness or worthwhileness of the person. The Divine Love gives itself without measure, wholly and fully. Nothing limits its reception but the degree of readiness to receive it which exists in each person. It will not compel us to receive its healing power, for its whole intent is that we shall be free to accept it. Love under compulsion would not be the free response which God makes possible for us.

14.14. The Divine Love is eternally present with us in every moment, in the Christ who stands and knocks at the door of our hearts. In the contemplative identification with Christ this door is opened by our own free will, and the light and love of God shine into us through this open door, entering into every element of our being and raising it beyond all grossness of egoic matter into the state of spiritual incandescence which outshines every dark element of self, which has till this moment barred the doorway to the freedom of the Loving, Divine Spirit of God.

14.15. We repeat: It is not that in the contemplative identification we behave externally as we imagine Jesus Christ behaved whilst on earth, or as we believe He would behave today if He were in our material situation; it is that the actual Mind of Christ, wholly given to the Will of God, now permeates our own mind, as the heat of the fire permeates the iron poker, so transforming its dull blackness into the glowing presence of the fire Spirit.

14.16. Here our gross earthly nature is swallowed up in the eternal Love of God. We no longer need to make epic efforts to try to make ourselves love God's creatures. In the Love of God, we feel the absolute value of the whole creation. In the light of the Christ Mind we see the supreme Truth which forms all crea‐ tures and all things within the Universe. Effortlessly we understand that without the Christ Mind, the Logos of God, nothing could have come into being.

14.17. Within our heart we feel the Divine Love as it is in Itself, an infinite oneness embracing and permeating all things, all creatures. Within our mind, which is now wholly suffused with the Christ Mind, we see the Eternal Truth manifesting in the forms of all creatures and things. We see the Wisdom of this Divine Truth in the forms of the snowflakes, in the shapes of delicate flower petals, in the wings of the lark, in the curve of the elephant's tusks, in the forehead of man.

14.18. Everywhere we turn we see the working of the Holy Trinity, the Will of God the Father, the Truth of God the Son, the operation of the Holy Ghost. Nothing exists that is not the interplay of this Divine Threeness.

14.19. Here, in this contemplative identification with the Mind of Christ, we finally understand how our “own” three-foldness of Will, Thought and Feeling has its source in the Divine Trinity. And we understand that nothing can separate any creature from the Love of God, but the creaturely will itself, and this only in its mode of operation or activity, and not in its essence. For the ultimate essence of all things and all creatures is the Divine Power Itself. Whatever exists, in any way whatever, does so only because of the Divine Power there formulating Itself and operating as that thing. If the Divine Power were to withdraw Itself from the existent thing or creature, that thing or creature would immediately vanish. In the contemplative identification with the Christ we deeply understand how our “own” being has nothing in it of its “own”, that all we are, have been and may be, is from the Divine Power.

14.20. And we understand also that all unhappiness and all misery of the human soul, arises from the self cutting off of the soul from the Divine Will, not in essence, for this is not possible, but in act, in mode of behaviour.

14.21. We can behave as if we did not belong to God. We can tell lies to ourselves and pretend that what power we have is our “own”, that our thoughts and feelings are generated by power which we ourselves owe to no one but ourselves. But we have not actually the power to cut ourselves off from the Power of the Almighty Creator whose Will originally begat us, and whose Will still maintains us.

14.22. 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 either to 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.

14.23. 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 law of the operation of their being. To exist is to be under the law governing existential beings, to be under the law of action and reaction, and the law of gravity, which is bondage. And if we choose to act as separate egotistic beings we go under the law of separativity, which is isolation from all other beings.

14.24. But if we choose identification with the Will of God in Jesus Christ, then all separation is done away with and our Christian Yoga has reached its goal in the Oneness of the Divine Love.