The mind of the Master no longer drifts in a boundless sea of fantasy, but with rudder and compass, he guides his ship whithersoever he would go.
This does not mean that there are not still degrees and related states and conditions of consciousness in his experience.
It does mean, however, that all these states and conditions, with all his faculties, capacities, and powers, are co-ordinated, not only in his awareness of them as a whole, but in the exercise of each and its relation to the others, dominated by his own Will.
He has “Mastered” them, and can incite or repress them, while they can no longer dominate him. Can the reader imagine such a degree of Self-Control?
This, however, is but the beginning, as the “Secret of Power,” and by no means the end.
Controlling the phases and forms of consciousness, there comes next the determination to extend their boundary and to refine and elevate the powers of the Soul.
In the first case, that of co-ordination, the ancient Wisdom admonishes the student or chela to “make the mind one pointed, like a light burning in a quiet place.” Light a candle and put it in a corner where no draught can reach it, and the flame will seem as though cut out of solid fire, and “one pointed.”
It is at the point of refining and elevating the individual consciousness that Ethics or Morals come in. It is just at this point also that the Path is determined.
What our ancient Brothers called “the power of Will and Yoga”—self-control—may ignore Ethics. Here the paths separate, and are called “the Right-hand Path” and “the Left-hand Path,” determining the “White” and the “Black Magician,” about whom so much is said in all ancient scriptures and traditions regarding “Sorcery” and “Black Magic,” of which Egypt and Rome and Modern Mediumship and Hypnotism, are illustrations.
The supreme importance of this natural division or “parting of the way” reveals the real and final reason why the Masters of the “right-hand path” conceal their knowledge from the profane and reveal it only after an ethical formulary has been learned and once for all ingrained.