Introduction

We are presenting the first lesson of our current "Resonance" subscription series in an effort to acquaint students with this valuable lesson course designed by Vitvan to be a practical guide for self development. It includes many exercises to be practiced by one who is ready to "take the journey" and not just mentalize about it.

Intrinsically the power with which we are conscious is the one Power which motivates all of the configurational processes in the Mother. It makes no difference whether that substance is Light, energy, or living matter or one of the degrees and grades between light and energy, or between energy and living matter. There is a motivating force, a motivating power, a sustaining, quickening, creating, developing power. We call it the Power-to-be-conscious. The Power-to-be-conscious is that which constitutes the essential self of each and everyone of us. That same power is the one Power of the whole universe. If we have some understanding of what we are talking about we can label it God.

As persons we are in the process of awakening and quickening that God-consciousness. What we need is a method or procedure, for how to go about it. We need to know how to intelligently cooperate with it. In prior lesson courses I have been working on the idea that our individual development can proceed finer and better and freer from interferences if we have a clear understanding of the structure, function and order of the whole cosmic process. So in those lessons I went to great lengths to describe the background, the structure, function, order of the whole cosmic process in which we are integrated. My earlier idea was to facilitate understanding of the structure-function-order of the whole and then explain where we are in the process. Then, I thought, we could more intelligently cooperate with it. So I put a great deal of effort on describing the structure-function-order of the whole.

But while living the contemplative life at our retreat at Eschatalogia, I came to a complete reversal of the idea. I came to the conclusion that we should begin with the exercises, the discipline that constitutes cooperation with the process. In the School of the Natural Order no one is going to discipline anyone else. We don’t believe in that. We believe in presenting the way to do it, then leaving everyone free to do it or not, just as they choose. But my opinion as I begin this lesson course is that we should begin with the individual development process, emphasize that and exercise one’s self in order to do it. Then the results of self discipline, the practice, the work and the results of it, will open the understanding of the structure-function-order of the whole, the overall cosmic process in which we are integrated.

I am of the opinion that we can mentalize too much and neglect real self-development and cooperation with the process. We must continually remind ourselves that the finest and clearest and best mental construct is not the journey. It is only a road map. You can have the finest, clearest road map in your hand but you haven’t yet taken any journey; whereas the self-discipline program is definitely the journey and not just dwelling mentally, intellectually, in our mental constructs.

There are two main interferences to individual development. The first is influences that one inflicts on himself. The second is influences that one picks up from others. Even though one might have no aspiration whatever to develop conscious functioning on higher levels, the Garden of Aarru, or the Mind Level, he does have (or should have) a most ardent desire to get out of disagreeable influences. One cannot do anything about the turmoil going on in the humanity as a whole, because titanic and gigantic forces are determinative in national and international affairs. But with effort one can do a great deal about his own peace and harmony in order to escape from destructive and disagreeable influences in his own members. These exercises we will describe will accomplish that even if one has no higher ambition or desire to open the higher levels of his consciousness. To be in a state of peace and harmony within one’s self and free from discordant, destructive forces and influences is in and of itself something very worthwhile And this discipline will accomplish both that peace and development of the higher levels of functioning, depending upon how far one wants to go with them.

In order to reach either of these goals, to be immune from the destructive forces around you all the time or to reach a higher level of conscious functioning, the first step is to become free from interferences—destructive, inharmonious conditions—because they demand so much attention. They occupy your consciousness and keep your thought focused on them until you haven’t any time for anything but mentalizing, squirrel-caging around and around, and living in turmoil.

There is an outer and an inner side to these interferences. First, there is that which is created by one’s self. Second, there is that which is unconsciously registered from others— wave-frequencies, forces, etc. from others or from the environment or from the race psyche. We unconsciously register all sorts of conditions, vibrations, entities, etc. The self-inflicted interferences rest upon your value system. So the first practice is this: Constantly remind yourself that it is not what anyone says or does, which affects you or can affect you. It is the value that you give to it that reacts upon you. Do not think that this is not a practice. It is a practice that will test you. Whenever you think that someone is interfering or bothering you, just stop and reflect, "Nothing anyone can say and nothing that they can do can bother me! I give value to it and then I get the reaction of the value that I myself have created."

There are several ways to handle this. The way I handle it is when somebody calls me a so-and-so or expresses negative opinions about what they think of me, I say, "That is their business; it is their opinion, and I am not going to interfere with their opinion or their business. It is nothing to me." I need not say anything to change their opinions. They have as much right to their point of view as I have to mine. That is the way I rationalize it. When you think someone is interfering with you or has said something derogatory or demeaning about you, just say, "So what! That is just his opinion."

That reminds me of an account of an incident in the life of Gautama, the Buddha. His own son wanted to become one of his disciples. As the Master, not the father, Gautama, said to him, "You are welcome, but you will be treated the same as all of the other disciples, no difference. It is not a father and a son relationship; you are a student in training under the teacher." The son went along all right for quite awhile. Then he gradually took advantage of the fact that he was the son (actual blood relation) of the Great One and began to take liberties that were not allowed in that group of disciples.

So one day the Master called the student, his son, to him and said, "I told you when you came in that you must undergo the discipline of the disciples. There will be no difference and no partiality shown. You know up there in the hills..." and he mentioned the place, "Some of our people have a cabin up there. You take your provisions and go up to that cabin. Remain there. You are banished from this group for one year." The son had to do it. He went up to the cabin and stayed a year. At the end of the year the Great Teacher went up to see how his disciple was faring.

A neighbor who lived nearby had learned that the father had banished his son up there for a year. So when the Master and the little group that was with him approached the cabin, this man came out to the road and said, "You so-and-so, you cruel man, banishing your son...," and called him all sorts of vile names. The Buddha just stood there in a sort of semi-meditation until the man finished his harangue. Then he went on and greeted his disciple and saw that he had obeyed and had become rather contrite and wanted to come back. He was invited to rejoin the group and they all went down the mountain. On the way down those who were with the Great One said to him, "Why did you tolerate those accusations? They were false and wrong. Why did you take it? You never refuted or disputed him. You never said he was wrong, you were just silent. Why did you take it?" Gautama answered, "I didn’t take it. If a man gives you a present and you do not receive it, whose present is it?" If a man calls you a dirty so-and-so and if you don’t receive it, whose present is it?

That is non-value giving. Don’t give it any value. He has made an offering to you and if you don’t accept it, whose offering is it? I am very fond of that story. I don’t care how often I’ve told it, I like to tell it again. It does me a lot of good to remember it. I like that. But if you want to heap coals of fire upon a persons head (I know you don’t want to do that) but if you want to heap coals of fire upon his head, don’t accept that present. A force that is sent out has to have a circuit. If you accept it, you complete the circuit. If you don’t accept it, in order to complete it’s circuit it must go back. It functions like a boomerang! So don’t revile or curse another person; don’t send out any force against anyone, anytime. But don’t accept! Practice non-acceptance. The only thing that affects you is the value that you give. The quality of the value that you give will react upon you.

Frederick Nietzsche put this another way. He said, "Don’t be a fly swatter! There are too many flies." What he meant was this: Every person that attacks you is like a fly. If you swat it, you will be so busy swatting that you won’t have time for anything else. You’ll become involved in swatting flies; so don’t swat even one! Then you have that much more time for your real work, for something that is worthwhile. The moment you begin bristling like a porcupine (porcupines don’t shoot quills, but the old legend says they do) you’ll be so busy shooting quills you won’t have time to do anything else. So be at peace within yourself. If a person offers you a present, a vile name or accusation, don’t accept it, don’t give value to it. If you persevere with this practice you will preserve your peace and cut off interferences.

Even though you might be able to refrain from giving value one hundred percent of the time, you still might be subject to taking on and registering the vibrations, the wave-frequencies, of others. Whatever another might have in his consciousness that he hasn’t expurgated, if you have an affinity for it in your own consciousness or in your psyche you can register the frequencies. But it will not be one hundred percent because there is also an inner side. You can practice not giving value or changing your value system. You can also send out love where the other person is sending out hate. That is another way of protecting yourself. That is a different sort of thing, but there is a way of handling it.

In the psychic nature unconscious registry of inharmonious forces and frequencies occurs. More precisely, beneath the level of the cortex, beneath or other than objective conscious thinking, we can take on conditions ‘subjectively.’ I single quote the word ‘subjectively’ because we can only use the word ‘subjective’ in juxtaposition to the word ‘objective’. But we take on conditions, register energy wave-frequencies, etc., according to the qualities, gunas, with which those frequencies are loaded. There are feelings, and desirings and thoughts that everyone carries around, some of which are not so elevated. We don’t want to register them. Nor do we want to contend with them after we relax in bed at night and the cortex goes into abeyance. In sleep your members can be stirred with forces and influences you have picked up from others during the day. You know all that sort of thing, and you want to be free from them. You don’t want to be annoyed by those things even when you are asleep and absent from the protection of your etheric physical and your psychic self. You don’t want to register anything from anyone. You want to reach the point where you can go to bed at night and go to sleep and not be interfered with by any wave-frequency or force, or influence from anyone, anywhere! You want that inner, subjective, harmony and peace, and non-interference with what you are doing in your self-development or other work.

Here is how we accomplish that. Please refer to the chart, "The Four Somatic Divisions of Man" as we continue this description. The psychic nature is characterized by five force centers: the genital center, solar center, heart center, throat center, and the center in the forehead. The Sanskrit words and the zodiacal symbolism for them are shown on the chart, but for this lesson we are primarily concerned with the activity in the psychic centers. The psychic nature, the ‘subjective side’ of everyone of us, is characterized by these dynamic centers of force. They are similar in nature to a restaurant entrance that has two doors; one swings out, one swings in. When one’s own force resides in one or another of these centers, that is the level from which he is sending out wave-frequencies and from which he is receiving the subtle influences of the psychic world. So, if one doesn’t like the influences he are receiving, he must simply withdraw his energies from that center! It is as elementary as that. Anyone can learn to do that with a little practice.

When your forces are out of a certain center you can’t register anything on that level. Your own forces have to be in that center, on that level, to activate all of the faculties, all of the functions, of that center. Your force has to be on that level in order to function there. Pull your force out of that level and you can’t register, nor can you send out anything on that level. It is just the same as if the force with which you think is withdrawn from the thinking apparatus. For instance, under hypnotism, anesthesia, or some cryptoid induced state, if the force is gone there is no function! All the functions of any sheath, body, or level depend upon the motivating force to sustain the function.

If I should suddenly withdraw from this body, the body would collapse on the floor. It couldn’t function. It depends on that force being there to function. It is that elementary. Do you think that I am saying something that is so obvious that there is no use in saying it? Perhaps you are thinking, "Go on, Vitvan, we all know that." But do you know it functionally? We are just mentalizing, intellectualizing about it here, thinking we are doing something. We are doing nothing but mentalizing until we learn to consciously function in those centers.

You cannot function in two centers at once, although it may seem that you do. There is such a rapid exchange of force from one to the other that it may seem that you are in two centers at the same time because the force by which these centers function is a magnetic force which functions at just a little under the speed of light.

So how does one gain control of the force in these centers? The ruler of the whole psychic nature is not mental thought, but that which is comparable to thought in the consciousness. It is not Mind Level functioning; we are still dwelling in the psychic world, the personality level. But there is a feel-know determination in which we do not have to think. We do not have to mentalize or determinedly set our jaw and pound the table. It is nothing like that. Quietly, deep within yourself, feel-know it is so. Does that say anything to you? No thinking! Get very quiet in yourself and set a feel-know determination. Determine in and by a feel-know. The Sanskrit label for that process is surya. Get hold of that feel-know and then focus it on the next highest center or on the highest center. I can feel-know that my forces are flowing to the highest center, or if that is too high for what I am doing and want to get down to the love level and ray out love, why then, I just focus on the heart center and feel-know I am there. Feel-know within the center and the forces begin to flow there.

Your psychic forces will flow in the direction or to the point sustained by attention — feel-know attention. Focus your attention and sustain it; your forces will flow there. Now carry that on into your creative work, to your job, to whatever you are doing or want to do. Learn to change the residence of the force from one center to another.

Note one important little word here — SUSTAIN! Here is where the majority of students fall down in their efforts toward self-discipline. Students will do this exercise spasmodically and then forget it. Then they remember again and do it spasmodically again, then forget. Pay attention to that word SUSTAIN! Your psychic forces will flow in the direction upon which you sustain attention. Let us call this exercise "Operation Bulldog." Focus feel-know determination, then sustain the effort. If you get enough feel-know into it the psychic forces will move immediately! If you have enough oomph, enough feel-know, you can do it instantly. But we are not so well trained so we make up for our lack of Will by sustaining attention. So focus, then sustain attention. This is a wonderful exercise, It is worth a million dollars, I don’t care who you are. But it takes work.

One more point is vital. Your attention will be distracted by a million and one invisible hangers-on. They will "rattle the pans and dishes," create whoopee, and stand up on their little hind legs and howl like coyotes to the moon. There will be more and more clamor to distract you from that sustained attention, because those little imps know what is going to happen to them if you get your force away from them. That force is their food and they are going to atrophy, become emaciated and then gradually curl up their little toes and die when their sustenance is taken away from them. So they kick up a lot of racket to distract you and prevent your doing it.

For the past several hundred years, if not the past thousand years, there is been a whispering campaign that was started by those entities. "Don’t fool with those centers! Leave those chakras alone; they are dangerous. Don’t have anything to do with those centers." No, don’t have anything to do with those centers and you will keep your energy down where you feed them. They can grow fat and sassy and continue to motivate you in all sorts of ways you don’t want to be motivated. As Paul said in the Christian scriptures, "Those things that I would do, I do not; and those things that I would not do, that I do." That I do! Why does he do it? The entities get him and motivate him, urge him to hanker, to hunger for expression. There are entities that we all are harboring. So when you work to pull your forces away from one level of entities in your psychic make-up they sit up on their hind legs and howl and exercise through others all sorts of influeences to distract you and prevent your getting the force out of those lower centers.

You must work to get that feel-know. The more of that oomph the you can put into it, the quicker it can be done. Step by step we can climb to higher levels on the psychic world and finally cross on over to Mind Level, that wonderful lucid level of Light where first the brain is suffused with Light; then the Light spreads throughout all the members and the "house" becomes full of Light!

—Vitvan, Tape series 1955

Marj Coffman, editor, 1999

1. Recognize that it is the value you give, not what anyone says or does, that affects you. Become conscious of the values you give so that you can change your value system or stop giving value. Nothing can affect you except that to which you give value.

2. Develop a feel-know awareness of the force centers in which you are functioning. Practice moving the force with feel-know determination.