Summary of Exercises of Step VII

It would be well for the scholar to pass at first through some preliminary exercises to get a sort of preparatory training. A very important preliminary exercise for the mental wandering is as follows: Sit down in your conventional asana in front of a mirror in which you can see yourself entirely. If you have a big mirror, you need not have a great distance between your body and the mirror, but with a small mirror the distance must be so great that the mirror reflects your entire figure. Regard your reflected image for a few moments, then close your eyes and imagine mentally your reflection in the mirror. Provided you have been able to imprint your features very distinctly on your imaginative faculty, you may continue. If you did not accomplish any result, you have to repeat the experiment until you have managed mentally to retain each detail of your reflected image. A particular attention has to be given to the head and the facial expression. As soon as you have been able to imaginarily grasp your reflected image in all the shades of the original, then transfer your consciousness into your reflected image in such a manner that you feel personified or embodied in it. This transference of the consciousness serves the purpose to teach you how to observe your body from the side of your reflected image. If you notice any success, try to observe those objects that are visible in the mirror, but always from the side of your reflected image. This exercise will be very difficult for you at the beginning, therefore you had better resort to your imaginative faculty, impressing all the objects that happen to be near you very scrupulously in your mind. In the course of time you will certainly manage to notice everything after transplanting yourself into your reflected image, as distinctly as if you did watch it with your physical eyes. When this faculty too has become a habit, you are fit for the actual mental wandering. The scholar may seriously be warned not to risk this experiment before having practiced thoroughly every single previous exercise, because the detachment or severing of the consciousness from the physical body might cause severe mental disturbances in frail people. For this reason the warning is absolutely understandable, and only those scholars who can assert that they are mastering the exercises of all the previous Steps may approach not only this exercise but all the others still ahead without any fear of damaging their health or their spirit.
For the exercise of the actual mental wandering, the material mirror is not required, and you work as follows: Take up you normal position and concentrate on your spirit. While you are doing so, think that it is your spirit that is seeing, hearing and perceiving everything and,
absolutely free from time and space, is able to move around as if still connected with the physical body. This operation has to be performed before every mental wandering. The deeper the penetration of your meditation, the stronger your sensory experience and the certainty that your spirit is unrestrained and able to step out of your body according to your will, all the better and quicker will be your progress and success in mental wandering. Provided you have the sensation of inner liberty and self-determination, following this meditation, which will require only a few moments, then imagine yourself stepping out of your body just as from a shell and standing beside it. You must understand how to transplant your consciousness into your spirit in such a manner that you can feel yourself standing physically beside your body,
just as if you were slipping out of a robe. This performance has to take place in exactly the same way with the help of your imagination. After all, you have been exercising long enough in the imagination of the spirit I the shape and size of your body in front of your reflected image.
Now try to look at your body sitting in its customary position as if it did not belong to you at all. Then try often to practice this consciousness of self-determination and standing aside, the point being to focus your attention on the body. Seek to see with your eyes every single detail on your body, such as the expression of the face with your eyes closed, the calm, regular breathing, the clothing, the seat on which your body is resting, and so on. At the beginning

everything is based of course on your imaginative faculty, as mentioned before. Later on there will be no need of any imagination at all. As soon as you are positively sure of consciously standing beside and watching your body, your next task will be to examine your nearest environs. Your imagination will be a good help for you here as well. After having finished your exercise always return into your body, just as if you were slipping on your garment, wake up, and at once check if everything you imagined corresponds to the facts. You should attain to such a skill of imagination that your imaginary mind does perceive all the objects in the room as distinctly and truly as if you were looking at these objects with your physical eyes.
Provided you can book a success after a long spell of exercising, you may go a step ahead.
Now transfer yourself beside your body, and do not remain on one spot but try, similar to a child, to walk around in the room, and do it in manner as if you were relying on your physical body. Your own weightlessness and the sensation of timelessness and spacelessness may tempt you eventually to move about with unusually long strides, unaccustomed to your normal body, an occurrence that you ought to avoid in the beginning in order to allow a manifest separation of the mental body. What matters is that you regard yourself as being earthbound. Much later, after a long time of practice, you can make use of the rules of the mental sphere. Providing the striding up and down in the exercise room has been successful,
go through the door as if you were inside your physical body, and try to leave the room, step by step. At first it will be sufficient to go to the hall or the next room, where your repeat the imagination of the objects there, and as soon as you have returned to the physical body,
identify these objects with the reality. Provided you are quite sure about being able to move about in your mental body and also to perceive everything in the same way as with your physical body, you are ready to continue. Practice makes perfect, and the whole secret of mental wandering lies in continuous exercising. It cannot be emphasized often enough how very important all these exercises are, because they represent the preliminary step to the astral separation from the body, known as the so-called ecstasy, during which not only the spirit but also the soul together with the spirit separate from the body. I will treat this problem in detail in Step IX under the heading “Magic Psychic Training”.
Once you are able to move about with the spiritual mental body in the same way as with the physical body in your own house or flat, you may undertake short walks outside of it too. At first it will be quite sufficient to visit the house of a neighbor or to look up friends and acquaintances who live in the vicinity and whom you know very well. Provided you have obtained certain experiences after some of these exercises, other impressions are to be won too, not only those of objects. The consciousness is being skilled in the course of these exercises to such an extent that it will be capable of receiving sense-impression such as hearing, seeing, and feeling in the mental body in exactly the same way as if one were actually present with one’s physical body. Any result like this can, of course, only be achieved by persistent exercises during the training of mental wandering. Go on visiting friends just to see what they are occupied with at this moment. For example, you see people doing everyday work. At first you can do this with the help of imagination. In order to make sure whether the imagination coincides with the real facts, all you need to do is to imagine that the person is doing something quite contrary. If you can manage this imagination just as easily, in contradiction to your perception, you may then be sure that neither one or the other is true,
that it is still a matter of imagination. At first you will only sense that the imagination responds factually to the reality, because your senses have already been withdrawn in a great measure from your body. Later on there is no more reason for apprehensions, because you are wining complete certainty about this problem, and consequently you will be able to differentiate correctly whether the things being seen, heard or felt wile in the mental body are real facts or imagination. After a long time of exercises, this faculty will become quite

familiar to the magician, and wherever he transfers his mental body, he will perceive only what is true and coincides absolutely with the circumstances.
Provided you have made good progress insofar as you can walk greater distances without feeling tired, exactly like in normal walking, only then have you matured to such a degree as to occupy yourself with the laws of timelessness and spacelessness, and not before. In the manner just described, separate from your material body and think that you are of longer bound to time or space. While I the mental body, meditate on your being with it everywhere you want to be at this moment. You will achieve this firm conviction by frequent deep meditation while being in the mental body. If you wish to be anywhere with your mental body, it will be sufficient for you to suppose you have already arrived there, and your wish will be granted instantly. In the case of greater distances, you will obtain a satisfying skill only after a long period of patient exercises and frequent transferences. Of course, you ought to visit places that are known to you for a second time. Only when you are finally convinced of being able to perceive everything with your senses, no matter where your mental body happens to be, at whatever distance, at any time of the day, then you are allowed to visit places absolutely unknown to you. The sense perceptions accepted on the very spot will leave no room for doubt that all you have seen, heard or felt there was not fully up to the facts. You must exercise for a long time and with great patience before you get used to such unfamiliar impressions. For this particular reason, while in your mental body you will do well to visit tropical countries, large cities, to go everywhere and see all that your heart desires. You will achieve a wonderful success after numerous exercises.
The purpose of mental wandering is not only to perceive everything on earth that is actually happening at the moment, but to be really active there too. For example, you are not only able to see an illness wit your mental eyes, but you also have the chance to treat sick people with your mental body, right on the spot, or of performing other favorable influences. All the success and work you learned to accomplish with the help of an elementary now can be managed by your own mental body on the mental plane.
If you are at home at last in the entire physical world with the help of your mental wandering,
and if this world has nothing new to offer you, try to visit other spheres in your mental body,
contacting the beings there and acquiring a knowledge of things of which the average human being hasn’t the faintest idea. The elevation to any other sphere is now very simple and you have to do nothing else but concentrate on the sphere that you would like to visit with your mental body; you will feel, as it were, whirled round and lifted up vertically through a funnel.
The transition from our material world to another sphere happens as fast as if you were flying around the world in a single moment. I had better say no more about this problem just now,
because the magician must make his own experience as far as this part of mental wandering is concerned.
At the beginning in mental wandering the magician probably will feel an invincible drowsiness that he must fight off with all his strength. This kind of drowsiness is explained as the result of the separation of the mental body, i.e., the vital bond between the mental and astral body is loosened, which consequently causes a transference of the consciousness, from which follows drowsiness. As soon as the sending-off of the mental body has become a mater of routine by constant exercises, the drowsiness gradually will vanish.
The mastery of this kind of wandering, described here, is an indispensable preparation to send off the astral body. The detailed description of this practice will follow in the next Step,
under the heading of “Magic Psychic Training”.

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