Harnessing Instinctiveness
Yes, man has outgrown jealousy and deceit, but how often does he realize this? The newspapers are filled with examples of people who let themselves be controlled by these emotions. When jealousy is felt, one feels that the person they admire has more control over the odic and actinic forces than they do, and in a frantic effort to balance the forces, they devise plans to tear down the odic forces or cease the flow of actinic forces of their prey. Jealousy is treacherous when it turns active and aggressive and makes a person deceitful.
Many people do not feel deceit to be an emotion after it has been existent in their nature long enough to become a habit. Instinctive emotions often become habits when allowed to be indulged in too much, especially these basic and baser ones—fear, anger, jealousy and deceit—all of which are resident in the lower chakras, below the mūlādhāra chakra.
Fear, anger, jealousy and deceit produce an odic aura web of green, gray, black and red, running through and through the organs of the astral body, affecting the organs of the physical body, as well as draining the vital health body of needed odic power. This cuts the actinic flow to a minimum, so that the only life in the body exists in a dull, crafty sparkle in the eyes.
These basic instinctive emotions of the subconscious mind are the substance through which we evolve. As more control of the forces is effected, the colors of the aura lighten and the nature is refined. This refining process is done quickly through discipline on the rāja yoga path to enlightenment. Every effort that you make to curb and control your base, instinctive nature brings you that much closer to your spiritual goal. There is a very true saying, “You are only as actinic as your lowest active odic force.” Those things to which you still react represent your low points and must be turned into actinic understanding before you can dissolve the odic force field that contains them.
Another dimension of the instinctive mind is the habit mind. Habits are built into us from childhood. Some remain conscious and others enter the subconscious. The most difficult to overcome are our habitual identifications with the force fields of our city or state, our country, our race, and even the world itself. The many ramifications of human behavior which pertain to a study of the habit mind could fill many books. Prejudice is one of the negative emotions contained in the habit mind. We may not think of prejudice as being a habit, but it is. Many adults retain very strong habitual prejudices. They do not care for people who do not belong to their particular race, caste or social class.
When there is any sudden shift or disturbance in the race’s instinctive mind, its forces may very suddenly and quickly become aggressive, arousing the lower instinctive emotions. When, however, the race mind is allowed either to run its natural evolutionary course, or it is kept under control and its own sense transcended, then man realizes that he cannot judge himself or another on the basis of race, color, caste, creed or nationality, but rather on the basis of spiritual individuality.
Make a list of all the negative emotions which still reside in your instinctive force field. Should you find that you are dominated by one or more of these emotions, admit it to yourself honestly. This admission, this facing yourself, loosens the hold of the odic force and allows some actinic force to penetrate and dissolve the lower force field of the instinctive emotion you are examining. First step, admission; second step, observation. When, for instance, you become angry, fearful or jealous, observe yourself in this action. Immediately become aware of actinic force. Become an empty being of colorless energy; see the dark auric colors dissolve into a radiance of blue, yellow, lavender and white. You can do this with your present understanding that the actinic force is much higher than the instinctive mind, much greater than the astral or the physical or health bodies.