I. The previous experiment has little value, and leads to few results of importance. But is susceptible of a development which merges into a form of Dharana - concentration - and as such may lead to the very highest ends. The principal use of the practice in the last chapter is to familiarise the student with every kind of obstacle and every kind of delusion, so that he may be perfect master of every idea that may arise in his brain, to dismiss it, to transmute it, to cause it instantly to obey his will.
2. Let him then begin exactly as before; but with the most intense solemnity and determination.
3. Let him be very careful to cause his imaginary body to rise in a line exactly perpendicular to the earth’s tangent at the point where his physical body is situated (or, to put it more simply, straight upwards).
4. Instead of stopping, let him continue to rise until fatigue almost overcomes him. If he should find that he has stopped without willing to do so, and that figures appear, let him at all costs rise above them.
Yea, though his very life tremble on his lips, let him force his way upward and onward!
5. Let him continue in this so long as the breath of life is in him. Whatever threatens, whatever allures, though it were Typhon and all his hosts loosed from the pit and leagued against him, though it were from the very Throne of God Himself that a Voice issues bidding him stay and be content, let him struggle on, ever on.
6. At last there must come a moment when his whole being is swallowed up in fatigue, overwhelmed by its own inertia*. Let him sink (when no longer can he strive, though his tongue be bitten through with the effort and the blood gush from his nostrils) into the blackness of unconsciousness; and then on coming to himself, let him write down soberly and accurately a record of all that hath occurred: yea, a record of all that hath occurred.
*This in case of failure. The results of success are so many and wonderful that no effort is here made to describe them. They are classified, tentatively, in the “ Herb Dangerous,” Part II.