jecting according to its reasonableness or its lack of reason. In
such mental work for intellectual growth each paragraph can be
considered by itself and only a small portion of the time should be
given to the reading while the remainder is devoted to pondering over
what has been read. Of course a specific study is an advantage and
perhaps nothing is better than to study occultism, thinking deeply
upon the problems of human evolution.

Another method that goes admirably with such work is the close
observation and study of all the life in manifestation about us. We
should try to comprehend people, to observe and understand them. Every
word, act and facial expression has its meaning to be caught and
interpreted. All this will not only sharpen the wits but also
strengthen human sympathy for it enables us the better to know the
difficulties and sorrows of others. If such practices are followed
faithfully day by day the growth will be steady.

Still another useful practice is to exercise the imagination, the art
of creating mental pictures with no physical object present. The face
of an absent friend can be called up in the mind and reproduced in
every detail--the color of the eyes and hair, the various moods and
expressions. Or one's childhood home can be recalled and the
imagination made to reconstruct it. The house being complete the
landscape can be reproduced, with the hills, trees and roads. Repeated
practice at "seeing mentally" is of the greatest value in occult
development.

While the aspirant is thus working to improve the three essential
qualifications of desire, will and intelligence--to intensify his
desire to possess powers for the helping of others, to strengthen the
will to get such powers, and to steadily improve the intellect--he
should also be giving most earnest attention to meditation, for it is
through this practice that the most remarkable results may be produced
in the transformation of his bodies, visible and invisible, through
which the ego manifests itself in the physical world. In the degree
that these are organized and made sensitive and responsive they cease
to be limitations of consciousness. Such sensitiveness and
responsiveness may be brought about by meditation, together with
proper attention to the purification of the physical and astral
bodies; for purity and sensitiveness go together.

Meditation is a subject so very important to the aspirant that
specific instructions should guide h