While the majority of our students, who are more or less familiar with the current material scientific conceptions, will readily accept the above idea of the ocean of Matter, and Energy, and the fact that there is a continual using up and replenishing of one’s store of both, they may have more or less trouble in accepting the idea that Mind is a substance or principle amenable to the same general laws as are the other two manifestations, or attributes of substance.  One is so apt to think of his Mind as “himself”—­the “I.”  Notwithstanding the fact that in our Second Lesson of this series we showed you that the “I” is superior to the mental states, and that it can set them aside and regard and consider them as “not-I” things, yet the force of the habit of thought is very strong, and it may take some of you considerable time before you “get into the way” of realizing that your Mind is “something that you use,” instead of being You—­yourself.  And yet, you must persevere in attaining this realization, for in the degree that you realize your dominance over your mind, so will be your control of it, and its amenability to that control.  And, as is the degree of that dominance and control, so will be the character, grade and extent of the work that your Mind will do for you.  So you see:  Realization brings Control—­and Control brings results.  This statement lies at the base of the science of Raja Yoga.  And many of its first exercises are designed to acquaint the student with that realization, and to develop the realization and control by habit and practice.

The Yogi Philosophy teaches that instead of Mind being the “I.” it is the thing through and by means of which the “I” thinks, at least so far as is concerned the knowledge concerning the phenomenal or outward Universe—­that is the Universe of Name and Form.  There is a higher Knowledge locked up in the innermost part of the “I,” that far transcends any information that it may receive about or from the outer world, but that is not before us for consideration at this time, and we must concern ourselves with the “thinking” about the world of things.

Mind-substance in Sanscrit is called “Chitta,” and a wave in the Chitta (which wave is the combination of Mind and Energy) is called “Vritta,” which is akin to what we call a “thought.”  In other words it is “mind in action,” whereas Chitta is “mind in repose.” Vritta, when literally translated means “a whirlpool or eddy in the mind,” which is exactly what a thought really is.

But we must call the attention of the student, at this point, to the fact that the word “Mind” is used in two ways by the Yogis and other occultists, and the student is directed to form a clear conception of each meaning, in order to avoid confusion, and that he may more clearly perceive the two aspects of the things which the word is intended to express.  In the first place the word “Mind” is used