Thought Power, It’s Control and Culture E-Book

Annie Besant

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of Annie Besant with this unforgettable book.

Leseprobe

Thought Power, It’s Control and Culture

Annie Besant

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

THIS little book is intended to help the student to study his own nature, so far as its intellectual part is concerned. If he masters the principles herein laid down, he will be in a fair way to cooperate with Nature in his own evolution, and to increase his mental stature far more rapidly than is possible while he remains ignorant of the conditions of his growth.

The Introduction may offer some difficulties to the lay reader, and may perhaps be skipped by such at the first reading. It is necessary, however, as a foundation for those who would see the relation of the intellect to the other parts of their nature and to the outer world. And those who would fulfill the maxim “Know thyself” must not shrink from a little mental exertion, nor must expect mental food to drop ready-cooked from the sky into a lazily-opened mouth. If the booklet helps even a few earnest students, and clears some difficulties out of the way, its purpose will have been served.

ANNIE BESANT

INTRODUCTION

THE value of knowledge is tested by its power to purify and ennoble the life, and all earnest students desire to apply the theoretical knowledge acquired in their study of Theosophy to the evolution of their own character and to the helping of their fellow-men. It is for such students that is written this little book, with the hope that a better understanding of their own intellectual nature may lead to a purposeful cultivation of what is good in it and an eradication of what is evil. The emotion which impels to righteous living is half wasted if the clear light of the intellect does not illuminate the path of conduct; for as the blind man strays from the way unknowing till he falls into the ditch, so does the Ego, blinded by ignorance, turn aside from the road of right living till he falls into the pit of evil action. Truly is Avidya—the privation of knowledge-—the first step out of unity into separateness, and only as it lessens does separateness diminish, until its disappearance restores the Eternal Peace.

THE SELF AS KNOWER

In studying the nature of man, we separate the from the vehicles which he uses, the living Self from the garments with which he is clothed. The Self is one, however varying may be the forms of his manifestation, when working through and by means of the different kinds of matter. It is, of course, true that there is but One Self in the fullest sense of the words; that as rays flame forth from the sun, the Selves that are the true Men are but rays of the Supreme Self, and that each Self may whisper; ” I am He “. But for our present purpose, taking a single ray, we may assert also in its separation its own inherent unity, even though this be hidden by its forms. Consciousness is a unit, and the divisions we make in it are either made for purposes of study, or are illusions, due to the limitation of our perceptive power by the organs through which it works in the lower worlds. The fact that the manifestations of the Self proceed severally from his three aspects of knowing, willing, and energising —from which arise severally thoughts, desires, and actions-—must not blind us to the other fact that there is no division of substance; the whole Self knows, the whole Self wills, the whole Self acts. Nor are the functions wholly separated; when he knows, he also acts and wills; when he acts, he also knows and wills; when he wills, he also acts and knows. One function is predominant, and sometimes to such an extent as to wholly veil the others; but even in the. intensest concentration of knowing—the most separate of the three’—  there is always present a latent energising and a latent willing, discernible as present by careful analysis.

We have called these three ” the three aspects of the Self”; a little further explanation may help towards understanding. When the Self is still, then is manifested the aspect of Knowledge, capable of taking on the likeness of any object presented. When the Self is concentrated, intent on change of state, then appears the aspect of Will. When the Self, in presence of any object, puts forth energy to contact that object, then shows forth the aspect of Action. It will thus be seen that these three are not separate divisions of the Self, not three things joined into one or compounded, but that there is one indivisible whole, manifesting in three ways.

It is not easy to clarify the fundamental conception of the Self further than by his mere naming. The Self is that conscious, feeling, ever-existing One, that in each of us knows himself as existing. No man can ever think of himself as non-existent, or formulate himself to himself in consciousness as “I am not”. As Bhagavan Das has put it: ” The Self is the indispensable first basis of life. … In the words of Vachaspati-Mishra, in his Commentary (the Bhamati) on the Shariraka-Bhashya of Sankaracharya: ‘No one doubts “Am I?” or ” Am I not? ” ‘ ” The Self-affirmation ” I am ” comes before everything else, stands above and beyond all argument. No proof can make it stronger; no disproof can weaken it. Both proof and disproof found themselves on ” I am”, the unanalysable Feeling of mere Existence, of which nothing can be predicated except increase and diminution. ” I am more ” is the expression of Pleasure; ” I am less ” is the expression of Pain.

When we observe this ” I am”, we find that it expresses itself in three different ways: (a) The internal reflection of a Non-Self, KNOWLEDGE, the root of thoughts; (b) the internal concentration, WILL, the root of desires; (c) the going forth to the external, ENERGY, the root of actions; ” I know” or “I think”, “I will” or “I desire”, ” I energise ” or “I act”. These are the three affirmations of the indivisible Self, of the ” I am”. All manifestations may be classified under one or other of these three heads; the Self manifests in our worlds only in these three ways; as all colors arise from the three primaries, so the numberless manifestations of the Self all arise from Will, Energy, Knowledge.

The Self as Wilier, the Self as Energiser, the Self as Knower—he is the One in Eternity and also the root of individuality in Time and Space. It is the Self in the Thought aspect, the Self as Knower, that we are to study.

THE NOT-SELF AS KNOWN

The Self whose ” nature is knowledge ” finds mirrored within himself a vast number of forms, and learns by experience that he cannot know and act and will in and through them. These forms, he discovers, are not amenable to his control as is the form of which he first becomes conscious, and which he (mistakenly, and yet necessarily) learns to identify with himself. He knows, and they do not think; he wills, and they show no desire; he energises, and there is no responsive movement in them. He cannot say in them, ” I know”, “I act”, “I will”; and at length he recognises them as other selves, in mineral, vegetable, animal, human, and super-human forms, and he generalises all these under one comprehensive term, the Not-Self, that in which he, as a separated Self, is not, in which he does not know, and act, and will. He thus answers for a long time the question:

” What is the Not-Self? ” with

” All in which I do not know and will and act.”

And although truly he will find, on successive analyses, that his vehicles, one after another—save indeed, the finest film that makes him a Self—are parts of the Not-Self, are objects of knowledge, arc the Known, not the Knower, for all practical purposes his answer is correct. In fact he can never know, as divisible from himself, this finest film that makes him a separated Self, since its presence is necessary to that separation, and to know it as the Not-Self would be to merge in the All.

KNOWING

In order that the Self may be the Knower and the Not-Self the Known, a definite relationship must be established between them. The Not-Self must affect the Self, and the Self must in return affect the Not-Self. There must be an interchange between the two. Knowing is a relation between the Self and the Not-Self, and the nature of that relation must be the next division of our subject, but it is well first to grasp clearly the fact that knowing is a relation. It implies duality, the consciousness of a Self and the recognition of a Not-Self—and the presence of the two set over against each other is necessary for knowledge.

The Knower, the Known, the Knowing-—these are the three in one which must be understood if thought-power is to be turned to its proper purpose, the helping of the world. According to Western terminology, the Mind is the Subject which knows; the Object is that which is known; the Relationship between them is knowing. We must understand the nature of the Knower, the nature of the Known, and the nature of the relation established between them, and how that relationship arises. These things understood, we shall indeed have made a step towards that Self-knowledge which is wisdom. Then, indeed, shall we be able to aid the world around us, becoming its helpers and saviours; for this is the true end of wisdom, that, set on fire by love, it may lift the world out of misery into the knowledge wherein all pain ceases for evermore. Such is the object of our study, for truly is it said in the books of that nation which possesses the earliest, and still the deepest and subtlest, psychology, that the object of philosophy is to put an end to pain. For that the Knower thinks; for that knowledge is continually sought. To put an end to pain is the final reason for philosophy, and that is not true wisdom which docs not conduce to the finding of PEACE.

CHAPTER I THE NATURE OF THOUGHT

THE nature of thought may be studied from two standpoints: from the side of consciousness, which is knowledge, or from the side of the form by which knowledge is obtained, the susceptibility of which to modifications makes possible the attainment of knowledge. This possibility has led to the two extremes in philosophy, both of which we must avoid, because each ignores one side of manifested life. One regards everything as consciousness, ignoring the essentiality of form as conditioning consciousness, as making it possible. The other regards everything as form, ignoring the fact that form can only exist by virtue of the life ensouling it. The form and the life, the matter and the spirit, the vehicle and the consciousness, are inseparable in manifestation, and are the indivisible aspects of THAT in which both inhere, THAT which is neither consciousness nor its vehicle, but the ROOT of both. A philosophy which tries to explain everything by the forms, ignoring the life, will find problems it is utterly unable to solve. A philosophy which tries to explain everything by the life, ignoring the forms, will find itself faced by dead walls which it cannot surmount. The final word on this is that consciousness and its vehicles, life and form, spirit and matter, arc the temporary expressions of the two aspects of the one unconditioned Existence, which is not known save when manifested as the Root-Spirit—(called by the Hindus Pratyagatman), the abstract Being, the abstract Logos—whence all individual selves, and the Root-Matter (Mula-prakriti) whence all forms. Whenever manifestation takes place this Root-Spirit gives birth to a triple consciousness, and this Root-Matter to a triple matter; beneath these is the One Reality, for ever incognisable by the conditioned consciousness. The flower sees not the root whence it grows, though all its life is drawn from it and without it it could not be.

The Self as Knower has as his characteristic function the mirroring within himself of the Not-Self. As a sensitive plate receives rays of light reflected from objects, and those rays cause modifications in the material on which they fall, so that images of the objects can be obtained, so is it with the Self in the aspect of knowledge towards everything external. His vehicle is a sphere whereon the Self receives from the Not-Self the reflected rays of the One Self, causing to appear on the surface of this sphere images which are the reflections of that which is not himself. The Knower does not know the things themselves in the earlier stages of his consciousness. He knows only the images produced in his vehicle by the action of the Not-Self on his responsive casing, the photographs of the external world. Hence the mind, the vehicle of the Self as Knower, has been compared to a mirror, in which are seen the images of all objects placed before it. We do not know the things themselves, but only the effect produced by them in our consciousness; not the objects, but the images of the objects, are what we find in the mind. As the mirror seems to have the objects within it, but those apparent objects are only images, illusions caused by the rays of light reflected from the objects, not the objects themselves; so does the mind, in its knowledge of the outer universe, know only the illusive images and not the things in themselves.

These images, made in the vehicle, arc perceived as objects by the Knower, and this perception consists in his reproduction of them in himself. Now, the analogy of the mirror, and the use of the word ” reflection ” in the preceding paragraph, are a little misleading, for the mental image is a reproduction not a reflection of the object which causes it. The matter of the mind is actually shaped into a likeness of the object presented to it, and this likeness, in its turn, is reproduced by the Knower. When he thus modifies himself into the likeness of an external object, he is said to know that object, but in the case we are considering that which he knows is only the image produced by the object in his vehicle, and not the object itself. And this image is not a perfect reproduction of the object, for a reason we shall see in the next chapter.

“But”, it may be said, “will that be so ever? shall we never know the things in themselves? ” This brings us to the vital distinction between the consciousness and the matter in which the consciousness is working, and by this we may find an answer to that natural question of the human mind. When the consciousness by long evolution has developed the power to reproduce within itself all that exists outside it, then the envelope of matter in which it has been working falls away, and the consciousness that is knowledge identifies its Self with all the Selves amid which it has been evolving, and sees as the Not-Self only the matter connected alike with all Selves severally. That is the ” Day be with us”, the union which is the triumph of evolution, when consciousness knows itself and others, and knows others as itself. By sameness of nature perfect knowledge is attained, and the Self realizes that marvellous state where identity perishes not and memory is not lost, but where separation finds its ending, and knower, knowing, and knowledge are one.