Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson
Ashiata Shiemash
” ‘So, when I finally became a responsible being, before making my choice of one of the three sacred ways, I decided to bring my planetary body into the state of the sacred “ksherknara,” that is, into the state of “all-brains-balanced being-perceptiveness,” and only in that state to choose the way for my future activities.
‘With this aim I then ascended “Mount Veziniama,” where for forty days and nights I knelt on my knees and devoted myself to concentration.
…’And it was only when I had finally attained complete freedom from the influence of all bodily and spiritual associations linked with the impressions of ordinary life that I began to ponder (with my purified Reason) what I was to do.
Views From the Real World
February 17, 1924
Working on oneself is not so difficult as wishing to work, taking the decision. This is so because our centers have to agree among themselves, having realized that, if they are to do anything together, they have to submit to a common master. But it is difficult for them to agree because once there is a master, it will no longer be possible for any of them to order the others about and to do what they like.
In Search of the Miraculous
Chapter 9
“In order to understand the work of the human machine and its possibilities, one must know that, apart from these three centers and those connected with them, we have two more centers, fully developed and properly functioning, but they are not connected with our usual life nor with the three centers in which we are aware of ourselves.
…This present teaching differs from many others by the fact that it affirms that the higher centers exist in man and are fully developed.
“It is the lower centers that are undeveloped. And it is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower centers that prevents us from making use of the work of the higher centers.
…”In order to obtain a correct and permanent connection between the lower and the higher centers, it is necessary to regulate and quicken the work of the lower centers.
…the primary object must consist in freeing each center from work foreign and unnatural to it, and in bringing it back to its own work which it can do better than any other center. …
“In order to regulate and balance the work of the three centers whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste this energy on unnecessary functions, and to save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower centers with the higher.
The Reality of Being
9. New knowledge is necessary
Self-observation must always be related to the idea of centers and of their automatic functioning, in particular, the lack of a common direction. Our three centers—mind, body and feeling—work with different energies, and their disposition determines the influences that reach us. We can receive more subtle, higher influences only if our centers are disposed in a certain way. When we are wholly under the power of lower influences, the higher cannot reach us. Everything depends on the quality of the influences that we obey, higher or lower. As we are, each influence produces a kind of reaction that corresponds to it. Negative emotions are a negation on a very low level. If our reactions are on a low level, what we receive is on a low level. We need to learn to obey the law governing higher forces, consciously to submit our will to the higher.
Opening, William Segal
Freely flowing, the concentrative, transforming effect of conscious attention brings the disparate tempos of the centers to a relatively balanced relationship. Thought, feeling, and sensing are equilibrated under this vibrant, harmonizing influence.
Attention is an independent force which will not be manipulated by one’s parts. Cleared of all internal noise, conscious attention is an instrument which vibrates like a crystal at its own frequency. ….
However, the attention is not “mine.” In a moment of its presence, one knows that it does not originate entirely with oneself. …
One needs to be at the service of conscious attention; one prepares for its advent through active stillness.
What Is the Attention (from the papers of William Segal)
… in sensation the attention is more anchored. Its fragmentation is momentarily counteracted with the body’s sensitivity, providing it with a kind of habitat. Within this dwelling place it is not so liable to veer into tyrannizing the mental channels that consume its power.
From this position it is possible to notice both the separateness of the body and the mind, and how to make the connecting link. Mind races at an accelerated tempo. By the same token, the body is curtailed in its attempts to move by the state of tension it lives in. When the attention is on this discrepancy, however, the two, body and mind, come to a more balanced relationship, one where the tempos are in harmony with one another. Opening to the harmonizing force of the attention, one begins to appreciate also how feelings of wholeness quicken perceptiveness as well as the body’s sensitivity.
…The attention lives in, and through the body. Returning to the body is a gesture of welcoming the attention. Welcomed by a person, the attention is then ready to serve its cosmological function.
The Reality of Being
101. A conscious posture
The position of the body is very important. …Its position must … be precise, and be maintained by a close and continual cooperation between my thinking, my feeling and my body. I need to feel at ease, with a sense of well-being and stability. Then the position itself can allow the mind to come to a state of total availability, naturally becoming empty of agitated thoughts. In the right posture, all my centers come together and are related. I find a balance, an order in which my ordinary “I” is no longer the master but finds its place. The thought is freer and also my feeling, which now is purer, less avid. It respects something.
21. A new way of functioning
The state of my being today is conditioned by my way of thinking, feeling and sensing, which takes all my attention and restricts me to a narrow part of myself. In order for me to go beyond this, there must appear in me a new way of functioning. …
Each of my functions responds to impressions as though it were alone, from its point of view based on what it knows. But the functions cannot separately perceive reality, which includes a much higher energy. Their force is too passive. For understanding in the light of consciousness, the functions must all be attuned and united in a single movement of availability. If there is any distance between them, the common aim is lost and the blind function acts according to its habit. Thus the first thing to understand is this availability of my thought, my body and my feeling to receive together, at the same time, an impression that they cannot know in advance. Everything they know is not the immediate perception of what is here, now, when they are quiet. And I must pass through the disappointment of seeing that their intervention, in which I always believe, only brings images of the known instead of direct experience. Then perhaps I will begin to understand why this teaching places such importance on the fact that our centers work without any relation with each other. So long as a relation is not made, I cannot go beyond my habitual state of consciousness.
…(A)ccord of my centers of energy and their functioning cannot be brought about by forcing. There must be a quieting, a letting go of their movement, in order for a balance of energy to appear between them. But something is missing. I feel I am always too passive. So the need for an energy appears, an attention that will stay free and not become fixed on anything. It is an attention that will contain everything and refuse nothing, that will not take sides or demand anything. It will be without possessiveness, without avidity, but always with a sincerity that comes from the need to remain free in order to know.
61. The aim of my effort
My whole struggle, the aim of my effort, is to come to a certain unity. I can have a more conscious state only at the moment when my centers are balanced and the links between them are maintained by the attention. The different parts of my Presence must learn to work together in the same direction, engaged toward the same aim, to receive the same impression. I see that my vision and understanding, my intelligence, depend on this state of Presence. When I am attentive to this Presence, I feel its life, a mysterious life that relates me with every living thing in the world. My vision of myself is related to the whole.