486 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
condition the desire body is gripping the muscles. It cannot
do otherwise till we calm the mind.
CONCENTRATION
The first thing to practice is fixing one's thoughts upon
some ideal and holding them therewithout letting them
swerve. It is an exceedingly hard task, but, to some extend at
least, it must be accomplished before it is possible to make
any further progress. Thought is the power we use in making
images, pictures, thought-forms, according to ideas from
within. It is our principal power, and we must learn to have
absolute control of it, so that what we produce is not wild
illusion induced by outside conditions, but true imagination
generated by the spirit from within (see diagram 1).
Skeptics say that it isall imagination but, as said before,
if the inventor had not been able to imagine the telephone,
etc., we would not today possess those things. His
imaginings were not generally correct or true at first,
otherwise the inventions would have worked successfully
from the beginning, without the many failures and
apparently useless experiments that have nearly always
preceded the production of the practical and serviceable
instrument or machine. Neither is the imagination of the
budding occult scientist correct at first. The only way to
make it true is by uninterrupted practice, day after day,
exercising the will to keep the thought focused upon one
subject, object, or idea, exclusive of all else. Thought is a
great power which we have been accustomed to waste. It has
been allowed to flow on aimlessly, as water flows over a
precipice before it is made to turn the wheel.
The rays of the Sun, diffused over the entire surface of
the Earth, produce only a moderate warmth, but if even a
few of them are concentrated by means of a glass, they are