Master Course Recording. Chapter 5. Five states of mind. Defining conscious mind. Body of the soul.Defining subconscious mind. Programming subconscious. Attention and concentration. Mulingnishum.

Study Guide:

Breath is life, and life is breath. Awareness rides on breath. Before you turn on your cassette this week, become aware of your breath. Breathe easily, naturally, and in a relaxed manner for a few minutes. You will find that this quiets the body and the mind, and prepares you to go deeply within yourself. Set an even rhythm, and it will continue without having to think about it. Enjoy the story of The Donkey and the Carrot three times this week.

Unedited Transcript:

We have five states of mind. These five states of mind allow us to know where we are in consciousness all of the time once they're studied out thoroughly. The conscious and the subconscious work together, they're pretty much interrelated. The sub of the subconscious seems to work independently of both the conscious mind and the subconscious but it's not really, it's just another aspect of the same thing. The superconscious mind is our vast, pure intelligence. And the fifth state: the sub-superconscious mind.

Let's talk a little bit about the conscious mind, try to understand what it is. When we live in the conscious mind, we are aware of external people, external things, we are aware of other people's ideas. We listen with our ears, we smell with our nose, we see with our eyes, we feel with our fingers, we're in our physical senses. We are functioning instinctively, as far as the physical body goes, and we're functioning intellectually, as far as our education goes, and we are dealing and working vibrantly and vitally in the world. This is called the conscious mind.

We can live in the conscious mind and be aware of that area life after life after life after life because it's perpetuated by its own novelty. One thing leads us to another. And then we go on to another and another and another. We listen to people talk and we want to know what next do they have to say. The conscious mind is very curious. We taste something, we want to taste something else. We see something, we want to see something else. We feel something, we want to feel something else. And we go on completely dominated by our five senses. And the domination of the five senses make up the totality of the conscious mind. These senses are constantly active. The energy is flowing out into the external world through these senses.

The conscious mind makes up what is called the "external world" and the external world is the conscious mind and we're all participating in making our own conscious mind as we go along. Though it is only seeming, it is very real while we're in it. The conscious mind glorifies in adding to itself. That's called the intellect. Through concepts and partial concepts, we can develop an intellect that can hold us in the external realms so that we think--and we can train ourselves to think by developing the conscious mind--that the superconscious mind is nothing but a farce, that it doesn't exist at all, that the only reality is the external world and pleasing the external senses and that anything of an inner life, or an inner nature, is just pure fantasy, doesn't really exist. It's only what weak-minded people believe in. And much of the world lives in that way with their awareness stuck in an area of the conscious mind way outside their physical body.

When we're in the conscious mind we're like a donkey with a carrot in front of our nose and we're always walking to try to get that carrot. And we're never satisfied and we're never happy and we see that carrot and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. No matter how much money we have, we want more. No matter how many clothes we have, we need more. No matter how many television programs we watch, there's always a better one. No matter how many movies we have seen, the next one may surpass them all. No matter how much food we eat, there's always, always a next, big, wonderful dinner to have. No matter how many emotions we experience, the next set of those emotional experiences will be the high point of our entire life and we are sure of it. That is the conscious mind.

When we live in the conscious mind, we only surmise, we make guesses. We're never sure that we're right therefore we're insecure because the conscious mind only knows what has gone before it. It only knows for sure the past. Providing it has a good memory, it knows the past very well but if someone doesn't have a good memory the conscious mind doesn't know the past very well. So when we're in the conscious mind we have one predominant solid quality that we really can be sure of and is: we're scared.

We're scared of the future and some of the things in the past petrify us. And we don't want them to happen again and we don't quite know how to avoid it because by having awareness caught in the conscious mind, our superconscious faculties are temporarily cut off, they're not available. The superconscious mind, we see it as a-, as something religious people believe in and we know about them. The conscious mind is the real enemy, the real barrier, the real distractor to someone on the path of enlightenment. It's intriguing. It leads us on and on and on life after life after life after life after life after life after life, give or take a few. [Audience chuckles]

It's a wonderful state of mind, however, if our other faculties are available for awareness to flow into once in a while to get refreshed and renewed. It's a terrifically hard state of mind to be in, it really hardens us if we live in the conscious mind all of the time because when we do we have to build a shell around us, to protect us and that makes us mean. One of the big protecting influences of the conscious mind is anger. It makes us cunning in our thinking and of course the predominant quality is fear; we're always afraid of something. It's generally something that may happen or is going to happen. We're always combating with someone. These are the motivating forces of the conscious mind.

So when we say, "I'm aware of the conscious mind," now we know the city in which we live. It is the area of the mind where memory is the God, where time is the God. It is the area of the mind where reason is the supreme ruler. "If it's not reasonable, it doesn't make any sense at all and forget it," the conscious mind says. "And if we can't measure it, it doesn't exist and we won't acknowledge it," says the conscious mind. And those that live in it are called conscious-mind people according to the mystic.

The mystic doesn't communicate very much with conscious-mind people. Why? Because the conscious-mind people make up the world and they communicate with themselves. They don't communicate with the mystic. The mystic observes from his perspective those who live in the conscious mind. He loves them, he understands them because one or two lives back, his God was the conscious mind too. He believed that memory was the supreme ruler along with reason and that time was a God and that everything had to make sense according to what happened in the past. He also helped write those history books, read them and he believed them. That is the conscious mind. It's active, it's alive, it's one of the first things that man made for himself. He made the conscious mind before he even made the wheel or the airplane or any of our modern conveniences.

The conscious mind perpetuates itself and we all help it to do that. And it's carried on in ramification by its own novelty. We can always find some distraction to please us, to intrigue us, to dominate our senses of awareness of other states of consciousness in the conscious mind. And we don't have to look very hard to find it either. Now our goal as mystics is to control our awareness while we are in the conscious mind. To know where we are in consciousness, when we find we are aware in the conscious mind and the five senses becomes our ruler, the mystic then controls his awareness within the conscious mind itself and he does this in a number of ways through control of breath.

Breath is life and life is breath. Breath is a controlling factor of awareness. Awareness arides on breath. Breath is the controlling factor of our willpower and a mystic must have dynamic will to walk the path of enlightenment so that he doesn't stumble, he doesn't falter, he continues going no matter how difficult the path seems to be for him. The mystic knows that he made the path a long time ago himself. It's all finished, he just is finishing up, in one incarnation, the loose ends of other incarnations of the past. It's like making a quilt. In each life, we add a square to the quilt and finally we have a large quilt--about eight feet tall and six feet wide--and it's all made of squares and each square is one foot long and one foot high. And then we come to our last square to put into this quilt. And we've made it and it's our last incarnation before the quilt is finished or before complete liberation. Then we have to go back over all the- the entire quilt or all of the lives and tie up all the loose ends because in sewing it together, we left a lot of loose ends. Some have to be tied a little tighter or else they'll unravel; others have to be snipped off after having been tied tight. And it takes a whole lifetime to do this.

The conscious mind is only sure about yesterday. When our awareness is caught in the conscious mind we only know what has preceded us. A great statesman once said, "I can only judge the future by what has happened in the past." When we live in the conscious mind, move and have our being there, we look at the physical body as us. We say, "I am hungry," "I am happy," "I am not feeling well," "I want to go to America," "I have just come to Kauai." meaning, "My physical body is not feeling well," "I want to take my physical body to America," "I have brought my physical body to Kauai." Our language is a conscious mind language. The perspective of our language--this is the languages of the Western world--the perspective of these languages are all constructed to make the conscious mind the real thing, the entire thing, the reality of the world. And from little children we are taught that the conscious mind is real and be real dubious about anything that is other than this real, solid conscious mind.

The mystic has to walk in the other direction. He has to go against the crowd, he must learn to swim upstream. Go up the sacred river. It's a little more difficult but it's so worth it when he gets to the top. The mystic has to learn that the conscious mind is only a vast dream created by many, many people that are dreaming openly. They're dreaming and everybody knows it. They're dreaming by what they say, by the emotions emanating from their body, by what they think and by what they're involved in. The mystic knows there's no reality to the vast dream made up by people themselves.

If we are alone on a desert--on our last InnerSearch Travel Study Program, we flew for hours and hours over the vast plains and deserts of Australia on our way to the garden island of Ceylon--if we were alone there--one of us, two or three of us--there would not be much of the conscious mind present. We'd have to call upon our inner resources in order to subsist and to get along. But as soon as a city was built up around us and hundreds of people came, we'd have a vast conscious mind, everyone would contribute just a little bit. The inner resources would be forgotten. We wouldn't be depending on our own inner strength and innate intelligence in order to get along in life, we'd be depending upon a rulebook. We'd be depending upon what someone else thought. We'd be depending upon reading material and we would go to our libraries and we'd follow it religiously and glue it on to us and develop an intellect.

And all of these sheaths, these layers, of the conscious mind go over the soul, this beautiful, radiant, Christmas tree-like body of the soul. One after another, we cover it up in the very same way that we would take a lamp, a gorgeous lamp, glowing with light and keep putting pieces of fabric over it. We put a yellow piece of fabric over it; an intellectual coating. The intellect would get involved. We put a yellow piece of fabric over it; intellectual mind. We'd remember some of our superconscious knowledge. Then we'd argue about it with somebody and they say, "I don't believe you." And you would say, "I know I am right." And we put an orange piece of fabric over it. Orange is the color that we wear and use when we want to help our fellow man. People who are generous always wear orange.

We try to help our fellow man and he says, "I don't want any help. Get out of here!" We'd get mad at him, we'd put a red piece of fabric over it. We put a brown piece of fabric over this beautiful light. We'd be greedy, we'd want to get and get and get and get and get and get and draw it to us. We'd become depressed with all these mixed emotions and put a black piece of fabric over it. We'd become jealous of our fellow man, put a dark green piece of fabric over it. And then with all of this going on on the inside of us, we'd start decorating. We'd put a pink piece of fabric over it and say, "Don't I look wonderful? I'm all emotional and pink today." Then we'd read a few books and put another intellectually yellow piece of fabric over it and we'd be pink and yellow. And that is man in the conscious mind.

Where is the light of the body of the soul? It's all covered up. Where is the beautiful body of the soul, that crystal, clear light? You know what this body of the soul actually looks like? It looks like a plastic body filled with light. You've seen these plastic mannequins with the arms and legs and torso made of plastic. Then if you put a light in it, it'd just be glowing with light. That is what your soul body, your psyche looks like. The spine of that body looks like a beautiful Christmas tree. Merry Christmas. And that is the joy of that particular time of the year as we bring these symbols of the inner man out into the world.

Well, something has to be done. The conscious mind has become a reality. We're living with all of these emotions totally alive. This greed and love and hate and resentment and jealousy are all totally alive on the inside of us and yet we've plastered, on the outside, beautiful emotion and little bit more intellect from a few things we've remembered. For remember the sum total of the conscious mind only knows what's preceded us, what has gone before and what we can remember of that and will only accept that which seems to be reasonable. Then the process of going inward persists and as soon as we start to go inward, we have to remove these sheaths one after another. Or we have to quiet the senses and reeducate the subconscious mind.

This then is how the conscious mind and the subconscious mind work hand in hand. The subconscious mind is like a great computer. It responds to the programming that has been set in motion within it all through the lives. Our reactions and habit patterns of this life make our tendencies of next life. Our tendencies of our last life make our reactions and habit patterns of this life. Life after life after life we've been programming this subconscious mind and it's been mainly programmed by awareness caught in the instinctive, emotion of the senses of the conscious mind itself. And the conscious mind and the subconscious mind work hand in hand; they're partners.

The conscious mind can become just as vast as we want to make it. And it's a wonderful state of mind. It's not to be feared, it's not to be ignored, it's to be understood. The conscious mind is a state of mind just like all of the others for there's only one mind. Man's individual awareness flows through the various phases of that one mind. The conscious mind is primarily an odic force structure. Odic force is the emanation of actinic force through the physical body of man. When the subconscious mind, hidden tendencies, repressions, suppressions, reactionary habit patterns accumulate in the subconscious mind, that gives enough ballast, so to speak, for awareness to be neatly attached to everything that it is aware of and we are therefore then in the conscious mind most of the time and we are not inwardly oriented. Soon as we're on the path and begin to understand inner things then, at that moment, awareness detaches itself from that which it is aware of. The object is, is to keep ourself in that state and out of the conscious mind. In a state of sub-superconsciousness looking on the conscious mind, understanding it, being in it but not of it. You've all heard the statement, "Being in the world but not of it." That's what this statement means. It's an attitude, it's a perspective. It's how we hold ourselves within that really matters and basically that's the only difference in the beginning stages of someone who is on the path and someone who is not on the path is: how they hold awareness within. How they hold themselves within, the perspective in which they look upon the conscious mind.

The conscious mind is created and ramified by man himself. It's carried on by its own novelty and goes on and on and on and awareness can go on and on and on and on in it. Only in those quiet moments of retrospection does someone who lives in the conscious mind relax some, turn inward and understand a little philosophy. This gives a release, a new influx of energy. You have felt that. The object is, in being on the path, is not to have a little influx of energy but to be the energy itself, consciously. To have awareness basically attached to the primal life force as the real thing rather than awareness attached to something or a collection of things in the material world.

When we're strongly in the conscious mind, we have a feeling of possession, we have a feeling of fear for we're afraid our possessions might leave us. We own something, we love it. We break it, we cry because our awareness became hurt. It was attached to that which we owned; we were emotionally involved in it. Holding awareness within sub-superconsciousness does not mean we cannot own anything. It also means that we will love it more. But it means that we won't be attached to it to the point where we'll become drastically hurt when it goes into the process of disintegration. This is understanding the forces. Someone who's not very much in the conscious mind is a more real person and not subject to the instinctive emotions as much as someone who spends most of their time being totally attached to everything they've become aware of and therefore reacting accordingly.

The conscious mind, being only one-tenth of the mind, should therefore not scare us in any way nor should we wish to retreat from the conscious mind. The only retreat is simply to detach awareness from that which it is aware of and allow it to go soaring in and attach itself to that indefinable source from which all energies spring. Dive into the source and lose awareness within it and attain your ultimate goal. Then awareness merges back into the various and varied states of mind and sees things that you can feel, things that soon become real because the physical body itself can move those things. That is the conscious mind; meets people, talks with people. The exchange of ideas are all in the conscious and subconscious mind when they are about physical things or emotional areas.

The mystic loves the conscious mind for he sees it like an adult sees the toys of children. An adult does not take children's toys too seriously but the child does. Meditate on that comparison. Meditate on the conscious mind when you're in it all day long. Mark down on a piece of paper, if you like, the various areas of your daily experience over a period of three days that you find your awareness attached to that which it is aware of, and then meditate on those periods of time and you will find how basically that is the chemistry that makes the conscious mind appear to be what it is.

When you live two-thirds within yourself, and even deeper than that, even physical things begin to look transparent to you. So we begin to study about the spiritual body of the soul and it seems to be a real far out study--because it really is--or, a real far in study or, something very different or, something somebody experienced--maybe it's true and maybe it's not true--and we read books about it. And it doesn't seem to be a part of us at all because there's so many layers of emotion active. It so seems to be so deep within.

And in our study about the mystical teachings we begin to reprogram the subconscious mind and we mold it like we mold clay and we become conscious of our fears. And we tell ourself, "There's nothing to be afraid of. There's nothing to be afraid of." We talk our subconscious mind into that. That's called affirmation. "I'm a fearless being. I'm a fearless being." We keep saying that to ourselves time and time and time again, affirming a truth and reeducating, reprogramming the subconscious mind.

Finally, we begin to believe it and we take the black piece of cloth off the light. The dark green one is still there so no light comes through yet. And we're faced with the next instinctive emotion: our great, protective power of being jealous. And fear and jealousy are protective mechanisms of the mind. And we work with our jealous nature and we make other affirmations: "I have all that everyone else has. The same power within everyone is within me." We begin talking ourself into the idea that we're not so bad after all and we really don't have to feel inferior to anyone for jealousy is inferiority. We feel we lack that which someone else has so we like to cut 'em down a little bit to our size. And jealousy makes people mean. And finally we work our awareness through this dark green cloth of jealousy and we remove it. A little of the light begins to shine through and we feel, "I'm not so bad after all. Pretty good. I might be a mystic some day, penetrate even deeper."

Then we start working on the next instinctive quality and the next and the next and the next and finally we take off the last sheath and we are that which we were all the time. We've removed awareness from the conscious mind, through the subconscious mind, into pure superconsciousness and the physical body seems to us as but a shell, a place in which we live in order to express ourself on the surface of the earth. And the spiritual body seems to us to be the whole thing. And we wonder why we didn't realize it before.

The subconscious mind is a very positive area of the mind if it's programmed correctly. It is just exactly like a computer and computer programmers say that if a computer is programmed correctly, it'll be a great servant and work faster than man can work himself. But if it's not, if you put garbage into it, you get garbage out of it. If you put a proper program in, it'll follow that program and follow it beautifully. And the only power a man has over the computer is to pull out the plug once it's going beautifully. Our subconscious mind can be used so beautifully, once it's programmed into a contemplative lifestyle, that it becomes almost identical to the superconscious area of the mind. Then we call it the sub-superconscious state of mind.

As we begin working with ourselves, we begin remolding the patterns that set the course of our life. As we prepare for the realization of the Self God in this life, we set new energies into action within our body, we begin to remold our subconscious mind, we begin to identify with infinite intelligence--not so much with the body nor the emotion or the intellect--we begin to flow our awareness out of the past and into the present, right in the now. This steadies emotion. We cease to have the concept that the physical body is "me" or "I" or the emotions. We claim spiritual independence and we're able to watch the mind think for when we're able to watch the mind think, we naturally claim our spiritual independence.

And by remolding old habit patterns in the subconscious mind, we cultivate a contemplative nature and then we're non-violent in thought and action for we have an innate understanding of the way the karmic cycles of the mind work. We're able then to love our fellow man. It's easy to keep promises and to keep confidences for we have a certain restraint for we direct our desires. We have a certain, inner poise which we didn't before. How does this all come about? We continually find new understanding through meditation.

We want to exercise at least a half an hour every day to keep the vital energies of the body high and healthy as well as eat simply and organically, feeding the stomach rather than the mouth. We want to be always considerate of others and to live in such a way that we're inconspicuous, or almost transparent by not making any noise, by not ruffling our surroundings, by keeping our homes neat and clean, spotless, by passing through a room and leaving it in a nicer condition than when we found it. In our normal, daily life it's wise to seek fresh air and breathe deeply, be out in the sun, move the physical body, dance, keep the energies vibrant and buoyant, be close to nature, grow our own food and develop an art or a craft so that we keep our hands active, creative. And of course being neat and attractive in personal appearance keeps those around us flowing through areas of mind where the thoughts are good as far as we're concerned.

In programming the subconscious mind, we have to move awareness out of the bondages of the five senses and in thinking the conscious mind is absolutely real. People caught in the conscious mind: They believe that when you're dead, you're dead so live your life and really get as much as you can out of it because when you're dead, you're dead and that's the end of it. They believe that the external world is absolutely real and that anything of an inner life is simply imagination. They live a rather simple life perpetuated by their emotional habit patterns and reactions. They anger quickly, they're quickly to become jealous, they are suspicious, they become emotionally attached to other people then they fight with them. They love to be entertained, they seek entertainment and they want to get more of everything that is possible to get. The desire nature can never, never be satisfied and it's never, never satisfied in the conscious mind. What do we do?

Attention and concentration to pull awareness out of the conscious mind. We begin to breathe regularly, we begin to become aware of only one thing in the physical world, have one thing attract our attention rather than a lot of things. And we'll begin to unweave awareness from the conscious mind and we'll begin to reprogram the subconscious mind itself. For instance, we take a flower and we begin to only think about the flower. We put it in front of us and we look at it. This flower is of the conscious mind. Our physical eyes are also of the conscious mind; we're looking at the flower, we're becoming aware of the flower and we cease to become aware of any other thing in the world. It's just the flower and our awareness. And each time we forget about the flower and think about something else, we bring our awareness right back to that little flower and think about the flower itself.

Each time other types of thoughts enter our state of awareness, we excuse ourselves from those thoughts. We say, "You go away and come back later. I'm aware of this flower. I'm concentrating on it. Doing a little research here on this flower." And handle each thought like you'd handle a person coming into a room if you were busy doing something else. You'd politely ask them to come back a little later. This is the first step of unraveling awareness from the bondages of the conscious mind because awareness, our individual awareness, has become caught up in the conscious mind over a long period of time. We don't even know how we got there so we have to start going within. This is the first step in going within is having a conscious mastery of our awareness in the conscious mind itself. Attention and concentration.

As soon as we bring awareness to attention and train awareness in the art of concentration, we are constantly in a state of observation. All awakened souls have keen observation. They don't miss very much that happens around them on the physical plane or on the inner planes; they're constantly in a state of observation.

Our biggest battle for the first month or two will be to control our breath. We won't want to sit long enough to even become quiet enough to have a beautiful flow of breath. After five minutes, the physical elements of the conscious mind will become restless. We'll want to squirm about, move about. We'll be thinking of all sorts of other things that we should be doing instead. You'll sit down to concentrate on the flower and you'll start thinking, "I should have done my washing first." And, "Maybe, I'll be staying here for half an hour and I might get hungry. Maybe I should have a sandwich first." That's the physical body talking. Then the telephone will ring and an area of you will say, "I wonder who's calling. Maybe I should I get up and answer it." Another part of you will say, "Let it ring, I'm here to concentrate on the flower." And you go through all of that within yourself. This is how we live in the conscious mind. All the distractions that come up within us as we're sitting, trying to concentrate on this one, simple, little flower show us exactly how the conscious mind operates for all of these distractions are in everyday life and have been there life after life, year after year, making it impossible to realize anything other than distractions and desires of the conscious mind itself. Even the poor, subconscious mind has a time keeping up with the new programming that's coming into it from the experiences our awareness goes through in the conscious mind. And when the subconscious mind has a bad time keeping up with what goes into it from the conscious mind, this is called frustration, neuroses, nervousness, insecurity and all of these subconscious ailments that are so popular in the world especially today.

So there comes a time in man's life when he has to put an end to it all, sit down, begin to breathe, and think about one thing so his awareness becomes so dynamic, his will becomes so strong, that he can put his attention on one thing, such as a little flower, he can concentrate on that flower and when his breath becomes regular, his body becomes quiet. One faculty of the soul, of his spiritual body, becomes predominant and that is observation. The first faculty of the awakening of the soul--it's already awake of course but as it awakens up to the conscious plane, as the body of the soul can see out through the physical eyes, and as the soul looks through the physical eyes at that flower, he begin[s] to observe all sorts of things about the flower. He begin to see where it came from, he begin to see how that one, little flower had enough memory locked up within the seed to come up again and again and again in the very same way. A rose doesn't forget and come up as a tulip nor a tulip doesn't forget and come up as a pansy nor does a pansy forget and come up as a peach tree. There's enough memory locked up in the cells so that they, each season, they come up as the same species. We begin to observe all of this and we look into the inner realms of the mind and we see the flower as large as a house or as small as the point of a pin because the eyes of the superconscious mind, the spiritual body, can magnify or they can diminish any object in order to study it and understand it.

One of the finest ways to live in the conscious mind is to learn to speak mulingnishum. It is a form of the Shum language with a vocabulary of only 108 words which are, each one, forms a complete concept of material thing that you can see and touch. And only 18 connections such as up and down, over and under and so forth. Each tone of the language catalyzes sub-superconscious states for they all are the very tones of superconsciousness, of the chakras as heard deep within oneself. Mulingnishum when spoken on retreat--say on a religious retreat, or around the home, or for monastics in their monastery--allows one to remain within himself, powerfully within himself and yet deal with other people, communicate some, and deal with material things in a very enjoyable way while, in a sense, incantating or chanting a mantram as he speaks mulingnishum. It's not enough to memorize the five states of mind, conscious mind, subconscious mind, sub of the subconscious mind, superconscious mind and sub-superconscious mind, and also memorize the processes of unwinding awareness and reprogramming the subconscious and attention, concentration and observation, because if we do this, we're only putting another covering over the beauty of our soul itself; another intellectual covering. And then we become a predominant ego and explaining it all to somebody else who hasn't had the opportunity of the same study. And that puts another covering over the beauty of our soul.

This knowledge should be kept unto yourself. If you understand it, keep it secret. Work with it. Prove it to yourself. Actually discover the mechanism of the conscious mind and be able to know whether your awareness is in the conscious mind or whether it's in the subconscious or whether it's in superconscious. There's nothing more detrimental on the path of enlightenment as a blabbermouth, someone who knows it all and blabs about it to everybody who they can grab a hold of. This inner knowledge should be protected and should be protected well. Live two-thirds within yourself and only one-third in the external regions of the mind. Two-thirds sub-superconsciously, or superconsciously, and one-third in the conscious or subconscious area of the mind. And other people are in the subconscious and conscious area of the mind. Try to surround yourself with superconscious people. They will help you. Their presence will help you. Don't talk too much to them because they know the same things you know. Surround yourself with a good environment, a clean house, physically clean, clean clothing, a clean body and people that are shining forth from within. Don't surround yourself with people that are living and bound up in the conscious mind, covered with jealousy and hate and fear, repressions and all of the instinctive and intellectual qualities that cause contention in and among them and also with you. This will disturb you on the path.

If you're going to sit down to meditate, you have to make a drastic change in the patterns of your life. Don't argue with anyone in the conscious mind. A mystic never argues. Argument pulls us into the conscious mind and programs the subconscious in the funniest ways you'd ever want to program it. It mixes it up. And then we have to unscramble it and start all over again from the beginning. The powers of argument are out. Never try to convince anyone of anything. If you're talking to a mystic, he'll understand what you're going to say as you say it and generally before you have said it. He'll have grasped the point. He's that sharp, he's that keen. If you're talking to someone who lives in the conscious mind and the intellect, he'll want to discuss, he'll want to argue. And inner teachings cannot be brought out that far in the conscious mind; they don't live there.

The conscious mind is for the instinctive areas of our being. It is for recording happenings, for the expression of emotion and of course the subconscious records happenings. The mystic who sits down and ask the question, "Who am I? Where did I come from? And where am I going?" and has the sensitivity to take a little flower and look at it and study the functions of distraction while looking at it, holding his awareness at attention, like a soldier, well disciplined, with his supreme will governing that attention, that type of a mystic will learn to concentrate. Concentration is the supreme will dominating our powers of awareness, bringing forth the body of the soul into the physical elements so that keen observation is there, observing in that little flower, where it came from, how it was made, the whole evolution of it, and the cellular structure of it and the energy flows within it even to the structure of its processes of decay. This mystic will inwardly begin to unravel all of that.

The famous mystic, George Washington Carver, said, "I concentrated upon the peanut. The peanut gave up all its secrets to me." And as you know, he invented hundreds of uses for peanuts bringing to us all types of wonderful things which has helped humanity just from the little, tiny peanut and his powers of concentration on it.