Powers of the Mind

Take control of your life and health with your mind. The mind (brain) controls it all.

A previous attempt was made to describe to some extent the astral plane - the lower part of the vast unseen world in the midst of which we live and move unheeding. In this little book must be undertaken the still harder task of trying to give some idea of the stage next above that - the mental plane or the heaven-world, often spoken of in our Theosophical literature as that of Devachan or Sukhavati.

That the grey matter of the cerebral hemispheres is the exclusive seat of mind is proved in two ways. In the first place, if we look to the animal kingdom as a whole, we find that, speaking generally, the intelligence of species varies with the mass of this grey matter. Or, in other words, we find that the process of mental evolution, on its physical side, has consisted in the progressive development of this grey matter superimposed upon the pre-existing nervous machinery, until it has attained its latest and maximum growth in man.

You come now to a study of the phenomenon of memory, the instrument by which your mind retains and makes use of its knowledge, the agency that has power to resurrect the buried past or power to enfold us in a Paradise of dreams more perfect than reality.

Imagination relates either to the past, the present or the future. On the one hand, it is the outright re-imagery in the mind's eye of past experiences. On the other hand, it is the creation of new and original mental images or visions by the recombination of old experiential elements.

Are you an unusually persevering and persistent person? Or, like most of us, do you sometimes find it difficult to stick to the job until it is done? What is your usual experience in this respect?

In this book I have sketched the principles of the mental life of groups and have made a rough attempt to apply these principles to the understanding of the life of nations. I have had the substance of the book in the form of lecture notes for some years, but have long hesitated to publish it. I have been held back, partly by my sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the subject and the inadequacy of my own preparation for dealing with it, partly because I wished to build upon a firm foundation of generally accepted principles of human nature.