(in the initial work of cultivating acquaintanceship with your soul) of coming to these sittings the same hour each day, you are ready to commence your work. For the first few weeks, and probably for a full month, I advise you to pay no attention whatever to your thoughts during these hour sittings; let them run on, let them run whither they will. Your first discipline is physical-this too many have ignored. Within a month, by such discipline, you can stop in your walk even, and find a delightful stillness surrounding you, and the mind absolutely free. This physical rest and stillness is most essential to true progress. Having gained this stillness you commence to command thought. Send it on the simplest of errands at first. Keep it within your physical selfhood. Center it on some portion of the body--say the hand-and then try to trace every sensation you feel in the hand. Follow this by directing to other parts of the body. An increased supply of blood is sent to these members by this exercise, and atrophied organs and muscles have thereby been restored to their normal condition. Following the study of sensation leads us, natually and logically, to that of the study of images. The lowest forms of life feel, even the amœbas, and so sensations are known to them.

To image requires intellect; in its exercise it calls on both memory and imagination. Let your first imaging be of the real, not of the ideal. Say a city you visited long ago. Call up in memory all it readily gives forth; and, passively waiting, enjoy, as you can, looking at these mental pictures. The next day you will find the pictures more distinct. Some details you had not even noticed when you saw the church, or town-house, or school-house, or monument, now appear. A street you scarcely recognize comes to your vision more or less distinctly. A week or two of these sittings pass; and your soul, through the subconscious mind, will have revealed all it has to reveal on that subject. Possibly you have not gained any valuable knowledge; but if you have been patient and followed this course carefully, you have opened communication with your soul. You can want nothing to which your thought, rightly directed, may not help you. Follow for some weeks the calling up of images which will put memory to its test. Say the school and playmates of childhood, their youthful faces, their names, their characteristics. The soul has forgotten nothing; let it prove this to your consciousness. Within three months of faithful work, following these simple lines, you will

find yourself fast approaching mastery of your own thinking self. That mastery opens the portals to the soul, the treasure-house.

The next step in unfoldment goes beyond the individual or conscious self. You want to reach out mentally to others. Your discipline has now prepared you for this. In your first attempts, select some purpose most unselfish in itself and directly affecting the good of another. If you can know when he is asleep, select that hour to treat or help him. This, of course, as to time, refers to your beginnings. Sit still; image him where he is, and you near him; speak your wisdom to his soul. You will be surprised how quickly the work will be done. In your practise, always preserve the attitude of listening, as intuition speaks more frequently through the medium of the mental ear than through that of mental sight. I suggest that you begin your sittings with your eyes open, but close them as soon as there comes a sense of strain upon them.

The Hindoos make measured breathing preliminary at almost every sitting. There is a world of discipline in their breathing exercises, and I cannot commend them too heartily. Inhale, counting, say, four; hold the same; count, and exhale, and rest the same. Modify this exer

cise from time to time. All well-directed breathing exercises harmonize the system and fit you mentally for the more serious work. One of their exercises, you will find, at first, quite difficult, but I feel I ought not to pass without mentioning it here. Inhale deeply through the left nostril, centering thought on the nerve current, or spinal column, as if you were sending your breath through it so that it may strike (mentally) on the last plexus, which they call the seat of the Kundalina. Then hold for a short time, and exhale slowly through the right nostril. This practise is conducive to repose or rest. If you have tired nerves, it will calm them down so that such peacefulness will come, that you will feel you have before known what rest meant. After you have followed the method suggested a few months, there should be seasons of rest, seasons when you cease to strive for anything. During these it might be well to give, say fifteen minutes of the early day, or the same time just before retiring, to a sitting; this simply for preserving harmony of the forces, and keeping the way to the source open and clear. When, from time to time, you are about to undertake some serious task to which you feel called, read books that bear upon the subject, and talk with people who understand some

never

thing of it. Do not strain to reach what does not appear through these avenues, but let the main features rest quietly in your mind. Note the facts that you have, and skip the speculation advanced; you are seeking the truth. All the speculation, all the theories of others cannot help you. You are reaching for a point beyond. If you desire this knowledge, that desire proves your soul has it in her storehouse, and you now know the way to find it. Having brought about you consciously an atmosphere that can receive and hold the vibrations that you are calling to yourself, you again enter the silence and receive from the soul the revealings which it is ready to give to your consciousness. Later on, you will come to the more serious purposes that dominate your life. Having learned, tested, and proved, that the "straight and narrow way" leads to knowledge, you will enter it with absolute faith and trust. You will not trouble about time and dates, for living will have begun to you to be an eternal Now. In the brilliant radiance of the present, and the knowing that it always IS, you can have no longing for a future.

Herein I have presented you with an outline of work on the details of which I might elaborate for the next hundred pages were I attempting