The brain suffers principally in two ways:

• From congestion, causing a suffusion of the blood [104] vessels and a consequent strain upon the delicate brain tissue. This may result in permanent injury, and may even cause imbecility. It shows in the initial stages as numbness and fatigue, and if the student persists in meditation when these conditions are sensed the result will be serious. At all times a student should guard against continuing his meditation when any fatigue is felt, and should stop at the first indications of trouble. All these dangers can be guarded against by the use of common sense, and by remembering that the body must ever be trained gradually and be built slowly. In the scheme of the Great Ones, hurry has no place.
• From insanity. This evil has often been seen in earnest students who persist in unwise pressure or seek unguardedly to arouse the sacred fire through breathing exercises and similar practices; they pay the price of their rashness through the loss of their reason. The fire does not proceed in due geometrical form, the necessary triangles are not made, and the electrical fluid rushes with ever increasing speed and heat upwards, and literally burns away all or part of the brain tissue, thus bringing about insanity and sometimes death.