Alice Bailey - From Intellect to Intuition - IX- The Practice of Meditation

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From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Nine - The Practice of Meditation

The various avenues of sense perception are brought into a quiescent condition. The consciousness of the real man no longer surges outwards along its five avenues of contact. The five senses are dominated by the sixth sense, the mind, and all the consciousness and the perceptive faculty of the aspirant is synthesized in the head, and turns inward and upward. The psychic nature is thereby subjugated and the mental plane becomes the field of man's activity. This withdrawal or abstracting process proceeds in stages:

The withdrawal of the physical consciousness, or perception through hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell. These modes of perception become temporarily dormant, and man's perception becomes [214] simply mental and the brain consciousness is all that is active on the physical plane.
The withdrawal of the consciousness into the region of the pineal gland, so that man's point of realization is centralized in the region between the middle of the forehead and the pineal gland.
- Bailey, Alice, The Light of the Soul, pages 229-230.

Five: When this has been done, and the aspirant is acquiring the ability so to focus in the head, the result of this process of abstraction is as follows:

The five senses are being steadily synthesized by the sixth sense, the mind. This is the coordinating factor. Later it is realized that the soul has an analogous function. The threefold personality is thus brought into a direct line of communication with the soul, and the man, therefore, in time becomes unconscious of the limitations of the body nature, and the brain can be directly impressed by the soul, via the mind. The brain consciousness is held in a positive waiting condition with all its reactions to the phenomenal world utterly, though temporarily, inhibited.

Sixth: The high grade intellectual personality, with its focus of attention in the region of the pituitary body, begins to vibrate in unison with the higher center in the region of the pineal gland. Then a magnetic field is set up between the positive soul aspect and the waiting personality which is rendered receptive by the process of focused attention. Then the light, we are told, breaks forth, and we have the illumined man, and the appearance of the phenomenal [215] light in the head. All this is the result of a disciplined life, and the focusing of the consciousness in the head. This is, in its turn, brought about through the attempt to be concentrated in the daily life, and also through definite concentration exercises. These are followed by the effort to meditate, and later - much later - the power to contemplate makes itself felt.

This is a brief summation of the mechanics of the process, and is necessarily terse and incomplete. These ideas have to be accepted tentatively, however, before there can be an intelligent approach to the meditation work. It is as justifiable to accept such an hypothesis as the above as to accept any hypothesis, as a working basis for investigation and conduct. It is perhaps more justifiable, for so many thousands have proceeded upon these assumptions, have fulfiled the needed requirements, and - as a result - have changed assumption into certainty and reaped the reward of open-mindedness, persistence, and investigation.

Having formulated our hypothesis and accepted it temporarily we proceed with the work, until it proves false, or until our attention is no longer engaged. An hypothesis is not necessarily false because it fails to prove itself in the time we deem proper. People frequently give up their pursuit in this field of knowledge because they lack the needed perseverance, or their interest becomes engaged elsewhere. However, we are determined to go forward with our investigation and give the ancient [216] techniques and formulas time to prove themselves. We proceed, therefore, to comply with the first requirements and endeavor to bring to bear upon life a more concentrated attitude of mind, and to practice daily meditation and concentration. If we are beginners, or are possessed of an unorganized mind, fluidic, versatile and unstable, we start in to practice concentration. If we are trained intellectuals, or have the focused attentiveness that business training confers, we need only to reorient the mind to a new field of awareness and begin truly to meditate. It is easy to teach meditation to the interested business executive.

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