(5) To develop concentrated attention, you must learn to analyze, analyze, and analyze the thing upon which you are bestowing concentrated attention.  Therefore, proceed by selecting an object and analyzing it by concentrated attention, taking one part after another, one by one, until you have analyzed and mastered the whole object.  Give it the same attention that the lover gives his loved one; the musician his favorite composition; the artist his favorite work of art; and the booklover his favorite book—­when you have accomplished this, you have mastered concentration, and will be able to apply the mind “one pointed” upon anything you wish, physical or astral; and, consequently will have no trouble in shutting-out disturbing impressions.

(6) Learn to concentrate on the physical plane, and you will be able to concentrate on the astral plane as well.  By the one who has mastered concentration, trances and abnormal psychic states will not be needed.  The needle-pointed mind is able to pierce the astral veil at will, while the blunt-pointed mind is resisted and defeated by the astral envelope, which while thin is very tough and unyielding.

A well-known authority on psychic development has well said:  “Occasional flashes of clairvoyance sometimes come to the highly cultured and spiritual-minded man, even though he may never have heard of the possibility of training such a faculty.  In his case such glimpses usually signify that he is approaching that stage in his evolution when these powers will naturally begin to manifest themselves.  Their appearance should serve as an additional stimulus to him to strive to maintain that high standard of moral purity and mental balance without which clairvoyance is a curse and not a blessing to its possessor.  Between those who are entirely unimpressionable and those who are in full possession of clairvoyant power, there are many intermediate stages.  Students often ask how this clairvoyant faculty will first be manifested in themselves—­how they may know when they have reached the stage at which its first faint foreshadowings are beginning to be visible.  Cases differ so widely that it is impossible to give to this question any answer that will be universally applicable.

“Some people begin by a plunge, as it were, and under some unusual stimulus become able just for once to see some striking vision; and very often in such a case, because the experience does not repeat itself, the seer comes in time to believe that on that occasion he must have been the victim of hallucination.  Others begin by becoming intermittently conscious of the brilliant colors and vibrations of the human aura; yet others find themselves with increasing frequency seeing and hearing something to which those around them are blind and deaf; others, again, see faces, landscapes, or colored clouds floating before their eyes in the dark before they sink to rest; while perhaps the commonest experience of all is that of those who begin to recollect with greater and greater clearness what they have seen and heard on other planes during sleep.”