Psychic Influence; Its Laws and Principles : Part 3

Clairvoyance and Occult Powers
By Swami Panchadasi

(Page 19 of 23)

The occult teachings lay great stress upon this power of mental concentration. All students of the occult devote much time and care to the cultivation of the powers of concentration, and the development of the ability to employ them. The average person possesses but a very small amount of concentration, and is able to concentrate his mind for but a few moments at a time. The trained thinker obtains much of his mental power from his acquired ability to concentrate on his task. The occultist trains himself in fixing his concentrated attention upon the matter before him, so as to bring to a focal center all of his mental forces.

The mind is a very restless thing, and is inclined to dance from one thing to another, tiring of each thing after a few moment's consideration thereof. The average person allows his involuntary attention to rest upon every trifling thing, and to be distracted by the idlest appeals to the senses. He finds it most difficult to either shut out these distracting appeals to the senses, and equally hard to hold the attention to some uninteresting thing. His attention is almost free of control by the will, and the person is a slave to his perceptive powers and to his imagination, instead of, being a master of both.

The occultist, on the contrary, masters his attention, and controls his imagination. He forces the one to concentrate when he wishes it to do so; and he compels the latter to form the mental images he wishes to visualize. But this a far different thing from the self-hypnotization which some people imagine to be concentration. A writer on the subject has well said: "The trained occultist will concentrate upon a subject or object with a wonderful intensity, seemingly completely absorbed in the subject or object before him, and oblivious to all else in the world. And yet, the task accomplished, or the given time expired, he will detach his mind from the object and will be perfectly fresh, watchful and wide-awake to the next matter before him.

There is every difference between being controlled by involuntary attention, which is species of self-hypnotization, and the control of the attention, which is an evidence of mastery." An eminent French psychologist once said: "The authority of the attention is subject to the superior authority of the Ego. I yield it, or I withhold it, as I please. I direct it in turn to several points. I concentrate it upon each point, as long as my will can stand the effort."

In an earlier lesson of this series, I have indicated in a general way the methods whereby one may develop and train his powers of concentration. There is no royal road to concentration; it may be developed only by practice and exercise. The secret consists in managing the attention, so as to fix it upon a subject, no matter how uninteresting; and to hold it there for a reasonable length of time. Practice upon some disagreeable study or other task is good exercise, for it serves to train the will in spite of the influence of more attractive objects or subjects. And this all serves to train the will, remember; for the will is actively concerned in every act of voluntary attention. In fact, attention of this kind is one of the most important and characteristic acts of the will.

So, as you see, in order to be successful in influencing the minds of others by means of mental induction, you must first cultivate a strong feeling of interest in the idea which you wish to induce in the other person, or a strong desire to produce the thing. Interest and desire constitute the fire which generates the stream of will from the water of mind, as some occultists have stated it. Secondly, you must cultivate the faculty of forming strong and clear mental images of the idea or feeling you wish to so induce; you must learn to actually "see" the thing in your imagination, so as to give the idea strength and clearness. Thirdly, you must learn to concentrate your mind and attention upon the idea or feeling, shutting out all other ideas and feelings for the time being; therefore you give concentrated force and power to the vibrations and thought-forms which you are projecting.

These three principles underlie all of the many forms of mental induction, or mental influence. We find them in active operation in cases in which the person is seeking to attract to himself certain conditions, environment, people, things, or channels of expression, by setting into motion the great laws of mental attraction. We see them also employed when the person is endeavoring to produce an effect upon the mind of some particular person, or number of people.

We see them in force in all cases of mental or psychic healing, under whatever form it may be employed. In short, these are general principles, and must therefore underlie all forms and phases of mental or psychic influence. The sooner the student realizes this fact, and the more actively does he set himself to work in cultivating and developing these principles within himself, the more successful and efficient will he become in this field of psychic research and investigation. It is largely in the degree of the cultivation of these three mental principles that the occultist is distinguished from the ordinary man.

It may be that you are not desirous of cultivating or practicing the power of influencing other people psychically. Well, that is for you to decide for yourself. At any rate, you will do well to develop yourselves along these lines, at least for self-protection. The cultivation of these three mental principles will tend to make you active and positive, psychically, as contrasted with the passive, negative mental state of the average person. By becoming mentally active and positive you will be able to resist any psychic influence that may be directed toward yourself, and to surround yourself with a protective aura of positive, active mental vibrations.

And, moreover, if you are desirous of pursuing your investigations of psychic and astral phenomena, you will find it of great importance to cultivate and develop these three principles in your mind. For, then you will be able to brush aside all distracting influences, and to proceed at once to the task before you, with power, clearness and strength of purpose and method.

In the following chapters I should give you a more or less detailed presentation of the various phases or forms of psychic influence. Some of these may seem at first to be something independent of the general principles. But I ask that you carefully analyze all of these, so as to discover that the same fundamental principles are under and back of each and every instance presented. When you once fully grasp this fact, and perfect yourselves in the few fundamental principles, then you are well started on the road to mastery of all the various phases of psychic phenomena. Instead of puzzling your mind over a hundred different phases of disconnected phenomena, it is better to master the few actual elementary principles, and then reason deductively from these to the various manifestation thereof. Master the principles, and then learn to apply them.