In the next lesson we will call your attention to other features and qualities of this great field of mind, showing you how you can put it to work, and Master it.  Remember, always, the “I” is the Master.  And its Mastery must always be remembered and asserted over all phases and planes of the mind.  Do not be a slave to the sub-conscious, but be its MASTER.

MANTRAM (OR AFFIRMATION).

I have within me a great area of Mind that is under my command, and subject to my Mastery.  This Mind is friendly to me, and is glad to do my bidding, and obey my orders.  It will work for me when I ask it, and is constant, untiring, and faithful.  Knowing this I am no longer afraid, ignorant or uninformed.  The “I” is master of it all, and is asserting its authority.  “I” am master over Body, Mind, Consciousness, and Sub-consciousness.  I am “I”—­a Centre of Power, Strength, and Knowledge.  I am “I”—­and “I” am Spirit, a fragment from the Divine Flame.

THE ELEVENTH LESSON.

SUBCONSCIOUS CHARACTER BUILDING.

In our last lesson (the Tenth Lesson) we called your attention to the wonderful work of the sub-conscious regions of mentation in the direction of the performance of Intellectual work.  Great as are the possibilities of this field of mentation in the direction named, they are equaled by the possibilities of building up character by similar methods.

Every one realizes that one may change his character by a strenuous course of repression and training, and nearly all who read these lines have modified their characteristics somewhat by similar methods.  But it is only of late years that the general public have become aware that Character might be modified, changed, and sometimes completely altered by means of an intelligent use of the sub-conscious faculties of the mind.

The word “Character” is derived from ancient terms meaning “to mark,” “to engrave,” etc., and some authorities inform us that the term originally arose from the word used by the Babylonian brickmakers to designate the trade mark impressed by them upon their bricks, each maker having his own mark.  This is interesting, in view of the recent theories regarding the cultivation of characteristics which may be found in the current Western works on psychology.  But these theories are not new to the Yogi teachers of the East, who have employed similar methods for centuries past in training their students and pupils.  The Yogis have long taught that a man’s character was, practically, the crude character-stuff possessed by him at his birth, modified and shaped by outside influences in the case of the ordinary man, and by deliberate self-training and shaping by the wise man.  Their pupils are examined regarding their characteristics, and then directed to repress the undesirable traits, and to cultivate the desirable ones.