LESSON NINE
1. To concentrate the mind means to fix all attention at a common center. To centralize and intensify attention. To make the mind one-pointed. One hundred per cent attention is concentration. One hundred per cent attention brings power and success.
2. Dynamite is concentrated and crystalized energy. Mind becomes dynamite when concentrated. Such a mind can do wonderful work and unthought of things. The dynamic mind makes a success where others fail. This is so because it evolves and invents means and methods to attract success. It has power to carry out its plans and methods.
3. Take a double convex lens and focus the rays of the sun on any combustible substance. Enough energy is centralized to fuse or diffuse the substance. Mind should be used for both fusion and diffusion.
4. The trained business mind dissolves undesirable conditions and produces desirable conditions by scientific concentration, In the dissolving concentration, you use a mental idea, or word. That word represents what you wish to happen; namely, scattering, diluting, vaporizing or disintegrating.
5. In attractive concentration, you use the words magnetism, attraction, adhesion, cohesion. In concentration these words become very powerful in accomplishing their purpose,
6. 6, The most ideal condition for concentration is solitude. The frame of mind should be one of earnest desire, solicitude and determination. To accomplish the greatest results in concentration determine first what your greatest desire is. Then concentrate upon that. Affirm that you will accomplish it. Know that you are not working alone, the indwelling mind works with you, guides your thoughts, decisions, and actions.
7. After you have decided on your greatest desire, and made your positive affirmation, be sure to relax every muscle of your body and be quiet in contemplative thought. You may sit quietly, or recline.
8. Concentration may be used to acquire business success, mental accuracy, wisdom, knowledge, power, inspiration and soul growth. Misdirected and undirected mind power are responsible for many failures in life. Too many people enter upon the business of life in a haphazard way, without definite aims or purposes.
9. Success has its definite law, as much so as mathematics or electricity. Your first consideration in life should be to familiarize yourself with the laws of success, both on the internal and external planes.
10. It is this ability to concentrate that has caused people, in all times to look upon the adepts and masters as miracle workers.
11. This understanding takes time, sometimes many years, but as the intensity of action will increase the speed, so the assimilation of knowledge will increase power, and enable the initiate to control conditions and experiences, for any extraordinary display of power is but the conscious control of prana, the source of all power, all motion and all being.
12. The finer forces of nature may be dormant in you, but they are awaiting the call. The door is there, the lock is awaiting the key. The key is the knowledge we possess which will open the combination lock of the cosmic treasure house where varied treasures are stored. Through knowledge, you are to live in a mansion of your own choice where peace and happiness prevail.
13. The nerve force of the human body governs and controls the circulation of the blood. In other words, the heart does not do all the work of circulating the blood through the body. Further, we know that the quantity of nerve force can be increased or decreased in any part of the body, by the centralization of the will in any part of the body. You can increase or withdraw the blood from any part of the body through the intelligent use of Will Power.
14. Intense mental activity immediately after meals increases the quantity of blood in the brain, and decreases the quantity in the stomach and bowels, leaving the work of digestion to stagnate for want of plenty of blood. People troubled with indigestion should increase the quantity of blood in the stomach and bowels immediately after meals, by an intelligent centralization of the will power in the stomach and bowels. This will cure indigestion without fail.
15. Prosperity is the fruitful result of endeavor in any field of human activity. It means not only an abundance of external things but an abundance of intellectual things. It is applying the knowledge you have learned. If you are progressive you are prosperous. Real prosperity is within you, and it is the greatest prosperity because it is with you always.
16. Prosperity is the measure that expresses the individual in accordance with the maintenance of a principle, followed by sagacity, endurance and continuity of purpose.
17. No one, the initiates in India alone excepted, ever dreamed that such marvelous things might be accomplished by a scientific and intelligent control of breath. But this is a fact which can be verified by all if they pay the price for such attainment. For what has been done, you can do, if you know how.
18. By the study of Yoga philosophy you will enrich your knowledge and achieve results in accordance with your capacity to receive. Rouse your dormant energy by the study of philosophy and this Philosophic Flame will find its own fuel and perpetuate itself into greatness which will enlighten the world,
19. Arguments cease when harmony is attained. A still higher plane exists called the super-conscious which is Samadhi, In this state everything is perfect, it is a unity of all that exists, there is no arguing or wrangling. In this serene silence all differences have been subdued, all is perfect.
20. This explains the ethical theory that we must not hate, but must love, because, just as in the case of electricity or any other force, this modem theory is that the power which leaves the dynamo will complete the circuit and return to the dynamo, so with all forces in nature, they must come back to the source.
21. Therefore do not hate anyone, because that force, that hatred which comes from you, must come back to you.