By Chris Walker - Advanced Awareness Course

INTRODUCTION Everyone realises that they lack proper control of their faculties and has little or no influence over their impulses and appetites. The desire for self-improvement being universal, it is natural that the question should be asked how order can be brought out of this chaos of conflicting emotions and elements in the body.

Before it is possible to advance a solution it is necessary to carefully analyse the problem. Presuming for the sake of argument, something which can’t always be presumed as a fact, namely, that the human-development exercises now in vogue for development purposes are authentic and unadulterated instruction, then we have the

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fundamental principles of metaphysics mixed with the most dangerous of all sciences, that of operative advanced human development being dabbled with promiscuously by those with little more than a desire to feel good, help others seek pleasure and make money. These human development exercises create distinct vibratory rates so radically different from those of the average individual so any attempt to superimpose them on their organism will definitely result in psychic disorganisation and potentially ungrounded and irresponsible behaviour. One doesn’t have to look far to witness this in individuals returning from retreats or seminars aglow with new energy only to be humiliated and embarrassed when it all evaporates and things return to the emotional status quo they held before.

A person's normal functioning results from a fine equilibrium between their parts. In the average person there is no faculty or part either so much higher or lower than the rest that their balance is destroyed. In other words, our eating is on a level with our thinking, our actions synchronise with our

desires, and our ideals, while generally the highest parts of us, are still in reasonable relationship to the whole. True, there is discord in the body, but for the most part this discord is in a minor key. In other words, while we are not obsessed with self development or pain eradication, we do not over exercise one aspect of our nature, and all the bits that make up the whole are, more or less, in synch. Nature effects the growth of the soul by gradual environmental

modifications, in other words, the improvement of the entire nature. This has been introduced to you in the most gross of forms in the wheel containing the seven areas of life where you have learned that a balanced person is balanced in each area of life, rather than, as is the norm for the masses, to balance one area against the other in some compensational balance referred to with ignorance as work - life balance. Such a contradiction in the alignment of a human with nature leads to illness, disease, marriage failure, mental health and more.

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Where we are in life s determined by what we are in life and each of us is placed in a world not too far beyond our capacity to understand. It is then that self-development exercises, intriguing the mind, lead to excesses which may bring down the life into self obsession, emotional ruin and paranoia over control and fear. A right thing is only really right when it is in the right place, and methods of human development which may bring a properly qualified practitioner to the dignity of a saint can also destroy the reason and well-being of the beginner who has not received the necessary preliminary instruction. One only needs to look at advertisements selling pranayama, yoga asana, meditation to see the tip of this iceberg. Advanced teachings which take years to prepare for and even more to integrate into a responsible lifestyle are taught to beginners at a price we cannot measure.

This unwise instruction is given in American and other western nations in self help circles because of the incentive of haste which is our national disease. It is little short of a crime, in fact, Isn’t it criminal to collect a group from the streets to whom even the term consciousness is a stranger, and then promise these same people that through some Asiatic technique they can acquire control of the psychical forces of their lives in ten simple lessons, etc ., etc? The rationale of Nature is totally violated and the Universal laws of life are put at variance with life's purpose, and the farce rapidly turns into tragedy. The fault lies in the attempt to “storm the gates of heaven” or to force upon oneself a state inharmonious with the qualifications of the nature.

The average individual is not fit to contemplate the profundity of universal mysteries and when they attempt to do so through new age material, they simply sprain their intellect. It is absurd for men and women with no comprehension of the meaning of life about them (fretting over whales, deforestation, global warming etc) to attempt to visualise or feel Nirvana (grace, enlightened, stillness, unconditional love).

When the uninformed go into Samadhi, they are not likely to return because by not knowing how they got there they would not be able to find their way back. Metaphysical distances and intervals are very real and it would be easier for a small child lost in the heart of Africa to find its way to civilisation than for the unqualified student to return from the invisible worlds which are separated from this earth by immense intervals of quality and consciousness. Enthusiasm is one of the emotions that is not permissible among the elect. If we do not appreciate what we have got, we lose it. Enthusiasm is the unbridled excitement that comes from gain. You already

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know that you cannot change. You can only love who you are. You have everything - you can only change form. We have replaced the motive to expand by shifting from enthusiasms of the lower mind to inspiration and purpose of the higher mind.

Our attitudes toward life create their invisible counterpart in the subtle substances of the causal spheres, (what we create in our relationships, wealth, mind, home, health etc) So, those attitudes become powerful factors in human development. The Orient and the Occident are not only separated from each other by huge oceans but by even wider intervals of attitude. The East is metaphysical, the West is physical. The East is ascetic, the West is materialistic. The East has extraordinary powers of concentration and continuity, the West very little of either. The East has all eternity in which to accomplish, the West regards five minutes as a period long enough for almost any attainment. These variances in racial attitudes and beliefs render it absolutely necessary to modify Eastern teachings and exercises before they can possibly serve the needs of Western students. Hence, the twenty minute yoga class or the five minute abs class. Most Asiatics teachers who come to the West and are not adulterated by the yearning for money and fame, have never made such changes and modifications and, therefore, they cannot understand why the majority of their students fail and why the most sincere die off within a short time.

In their philosophic intercourse with India and Persia, the Greeks brought most of the Oriental exercises into the Hellenic states prior to the Christian Era. Pythagoras, the greatest of the Greek school, having been initiated at Ellora and Elephanta, was unquestionably instructed in the esoteric practices of the Brahmans (India). If other evidences are lacking, the fragments of their esoteric disciplines that have survived, support this viewpoint. We find that the Greeks modified the Asiatic disciplines, bringing them into harmony with the great body of Western thought. Through Platonism the Oriental traditions were widely disseminated and perpetuated to this day in reasonably complete form, although Plato has not been properly interpreted for many centuries. The Greeks devised a positive approach to truth: Instead of the universe absorbing a person, as in the Asiatic mode, they conceived a person absorbing the universe. Pythagoras taught perfection through the glorification of self, that is, through release of all the potential powers of self; whereas the Orientals taught perfection through the debasement a renunciation of self and the denial of all individual existence. It is not difficult to see that to the Western mind, individuality and identity is the cornerstone of life. Even the human soul has

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become a part of western identity, “my soul.” In the last analysis, however, both schools have the same ultimate goal: both achieve perfection and the state itself is identical in both systems.

The psychology of the approach in both East and West is entirely different, and this difference is not only an intellectual one but expresses itself through every nerve and fibre of the human organism. 'To deny this expression is to throw the whole life out of harmony with both its environment and its natural plan. Hence, when that which is naturally positive attempts remain isolated from it’s associated negative, discord begins, becoming more acute as the sacred premises of human development are violated. The question then naturally arises, “What are the disciplines peculiarly suitable to the Western world? Where can those disciplines be found and how can they be applied in an effort to accelerate the perfection of the organism, you?

Before taking up these questions, one other point must be made clear. No human development can produce permanent results which in any way compromises the laws of life. There can be no growth apart from growing nor can any individual improve more rapidly than they can grow. Growth does not imply a sudden

spurt in any one direction. It involves the symmetrical expansion the increase of all parts in harmony with the law of natural unfoldment. See Innerwealth Personal Change Diagram.

In other words, true spirituality cannot in any way exist apart from a spiritualised condition of the whole constitution: mental, spiritual, and physical. A person cannot be spiritual in their right hand and physical in their

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left, nor can one organ exceed another in virtue, because all take part in the diffusion of life that is permeating the whole and cannot separate or manage one thing apart from the rest. A person can no more over-reach themselves spiritually that they can be truly virtuous on Sunday and sinful the rest of the week. Sunday piety is not virtue, we know, nor can any false stimulation of a single part, which is not justified and substantiated by the testimony of all other parts, be considered legitimate spiritual growth. Our attitudes toward life, our capacity to learn, our value sense, and our morality-these are all chemical products of the separate parts of ourselves combined to form ethical compounds.

Hence, our ability to see intellectually is indivisible from what we are, and no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot be more than the sum of ourselves nor appreciate qualities with which our whole being is not comfortable. The student who feels that they will become spiritual in spite of themselves has a rude awakening ahead, because they can only gain true metaphysical power because of themselves, in total. This is what you have learned in the 30 Day Challenge.

Even the simplest exercises that can be designed for the improvement of person's physical state cannot, therefore, be successfully performed unless the whole disposition is placed under an increasingly rigid discipline. By this discipline I do not mean to infer inhibition, but simply a realisation of the interrelationships existing throughout the human constitution. More simply put, what is the right amount of this or that, what is health and memory causing and what debilitates the mind. As one ages past 40 the realisation of the efficiencies of the mind, body and spirit become crucial. Time is precious and energy more so. Instead of losing weight, one might be wiser asking how not to put it on in the first place. Instead of fixing broken love life one might be wiser to ask how not to mess it up in the first place.

The simple exercises outlined in the 30 Day Challenge and subsequent Advanced Teachings involve no extreme asceticism nor is any radical departure from the natural order of life necessary or desirable. The discipline is concerned largely with attitudes and those disquieting fluxes which destroy the harmony of the inner life. Mental peace and emotional poise must be first cultivated. These will result in a greater degree of corporeal harmony, and that harmony provides the proper environment for the directionalisation of the abstract faculties (focus on vision, inspiration and purpose).

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Concentration is impossible or, at least, its success is seriously jeopardised by intemperate attitudes and emotional - mental instability. As the Bhagavad--Gita so aptly puts it, “only the person balanced in pain and pleasure is fitted for immortality. Many people believe that peace will result from the cultivation of a spiritual state, when, in reality, the spiritual state results from the development of peace.

Perfection is the end and not the means; perfection is the consummation of enlightened effort and bestowed only on those who have greatly achieved in other things. When the mind is torn with discord and sped up to an abnormal intensity by uncontrolled nerve impulses, or the emotions are rendered intemperate by grief, fear or hate, no illumination can result from the performance of human development exercises, only disaster can follow unbalanced effort or effort supported only by unbalanced functioning.

So East and West alike warn their disciples that before they put their feet upon the path of wisdom, they must place their own beings in a state of order.

Love and Wisdom

Chris

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