ay
have noticed that I used the word "normal" evolution, orderly
evolution on the lines of natural evolution, always from above. But
you may stimulate it from below. It is possible to stimulate the
astral body, at least, from the physical plane, but you do it at the
cost of higher evolution a little later on, and the reason you can do
it is simple enough. In the astral body are all the centres of your
senses. You know how after death a man's desires are the same as they
were during his physical life. You know how in dreams your desires
resemble desires that you may have in your waking consciousness. The
centre of all your psychic powers, of your conscious powers, the
centres of these are in the astral, and if (especially with your
senses, each of which has its own centre in the astral body) you
overstrain the physical senses down here, you will get an action on
the astral plane, but an unhealthy, because disorderly one, one not
going along the line of evolution but trying to create from below
instead of from above. None the less, you may have some results, and
in the two famous Indian systems for developing the powers of the
consciousness, and for unfolding the consciousness itself, you have
this recognised, and you read of Raja Yoga and of Hatha Yoga, of the
Kingly Yoga and of the Yoga of Effort. The Yoga of Effort is Hatha
Yoga, and is practised by physical means and followed by physical
effects. The eye is stimulated in certain ways, and the effect of
straining the physical eye is to bring about a certain limited kind of
clairvoyance. You can gain it in that way by gazing into crystals, and
so on. They do stimulate the centre of physical sight, but not the
astral; and that is why they cannot go very far. You can get a certain
amount of clairvoyance by these means, but you are only expanding your
physical sight, and working on centres of the astral body connected
with the physical organ of vision, the eye. The true astral sight is
an entirely different thing. That comes from a centre of its own in
the astral body. It has to be created from the mental body, as the
organ of the physical was from the astral. The centre of that sight
will be in the mental body and not in the astral, and only the organ
of it in the astral body. The method of the Kingly, the Raja Yoga, is
always by thought--concentrate, meditate, contemplate, think: by that
means, in a healthy, normal, natural way you will inevitably develop
the powers of s