t
may be interested and may open itself to what is ready to come into it
from its own higher regions. We are appealing to the Intellect to direct
its attention to this great matter, that it may interpose less resistance
to the truths that are waiting to be projected from the Spiritual Mind,
which knows the Truth.

MENTAL DRILL.

Place yourself in a calm, restful condition, that you may be able to
meditate upon the matters that we shall place before you for
consideration. Allow the matters presented to meet with a hospitable
reception from you, and hold a mental attitude of willingness to receive
what may be waiting for you in the higher regions of your mind.

We wish to call your attention to several mental impressions or
conditions, one after another, in order that you may realize that they
are merely something _incident_ to you, and _not_ YOU yourself--that you
may set them aside and consider them, just as you might anything that you
have been using. You cannot set the "I" aside and so consider it, but the
various forms of the "not I" may be so set aside and considered.

In the First Lesson you gained the perception of the "I" as independent
from the body, the latter merely being an instrument for use. You have
now arrived at the stage when the "I" appears to you to be a mental
creature--a bundle of thoughts, feelings, moods, etc. But you must go
farther. You must be able to distinguish the "I" from these mental
conditions, which are as much tools as is the body and its parts.

Let us begin by considering the thoughts more closely connected with the
body, and then work up to the higher mental states.

The sensations of the body, such as hunger; thirst; pain; pleasurable
sensations; physical desires, etc., etc., are not apt to be mistaken for
essential qualities of the "I" by many of the Candidates, for they have
passed beyond this stage, and have learned to set aside these sensations,
to a greater or lesser extent, by an effort of the Will, and are no
longer slaves to them. Not that they do not experience these sensations,
but they have grown to regard them as incidents of the physical
life--good in their place--but useful to the advanced man only when he
has mastered them to the extent that he no longer regards them as close
to the "I." And yet, to some people, these sensations are so closely
identified with their conception of the "I" that when they think of
themselves they think merely of a bundle of these