leaves him room and freedom.”  Simpson has said:  “A passionate desire and an unwearied will can perform impossibilities, or what seem to be such to the cold and feeble.”  And Maudsley gives to aspiring youth a great truth, when he says:  “Thus it is that aspirations are often prophecies, the harbingers of what a man shall be in a condition to perform.”  And we may conclude the paragraph by quoting Lytton:  “Dream, O youth, dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.”

This principle of the power of the Mental Image is strongly impressed upon the mind of the chela, or student, by the Yogi teachers.  The student is taught that just as the house is erected in accordance with the plan of the architect, so is one’s life built in accordance with the prevailing Mental Image.  The mind sub-consciously moulds itself around the prevailing mental image or attitude, and then proceeds to draw upon the outer world for material with which to build in accordance with the plan.  Not only is one’s character built in this way, but the circumstances and incidents of his life follow the same rule.  The Yogi student is instructed into the mysteries of the power of the mind in this direction, not that he may make use of it to build up material success, or to realize his personal desires—­for he is taught to avoid these things—­but he is fully instructed, nevertheless, that he may understand the workings of the law around him.  And it is a fact well known to close students of the occult, that the few who have attained extraordinarily high degrees of development, make use of this power in order to help the race.  Many a world movement has been directed by the mind, or minds, of some of these advanced souls who were able to see the ideal of evolution ahead of the race, and by visualizing the same, and concentrating upon it in meditation, actually hastened the progress of the evolutionary wave, and caused to actually manifest that which they saw, and upon which they had meditated.

It is true that some occultists have used similar plans to further their own selfish personal ends—­often without fully realizing just what power they were employing—­but this merely illustrates the old fact that the forces of Nature may be used rightly and wrongly.  And it is all the more reason why those who are desirous of advancing the race—­of assisting in the evolution of the world—­should make use of this mighty power in their work.  Success is not reprehensible, notwithstanding the fact that many have interpreted and applied the word in such a matter as to make it appear as if it had no other meaning or application other than the crude, material selfish one generally attributed to it, by reason of its misuse.  The Western world is playing its part in the evolution of the race, and its keynote is “Accomplishment.”  Those who have advanced so high that they are able to view the world of men, as one sees a valley from a mountain peak, recognize what this strenuous Western life means.