Course I - Teaching 4: Backward Survey

More or less approximately we can represent the thought as water flowing down continuously from unknown mountains (the instinctive, the rational part), following a course previously shaped and traced, and at the end flowing into the vast sea of matter.
The thought ever flows, its activity is ceaseless, when not consciously, then subconsciously; this occurs at night, when we sleep and our body rests. If not, chaos would reign. If for a second the root principle of thought stopped, the Cosmos should disappear.
But if we were able to retain mental forces (thoughts), their power would highly multiply by bringing them again into motion.
Results would be surprising; Matter would respond to its call. The thought would be made flesh and Christ’s word would be understood: “If you have true faith, you could say to the mountain, “Move”, and the mountain should go with you”.
The control of mental forces is so important that is the first teaching that an aspirant learns at any Initiation School.
The aim is this: the thought must be the horse of the Higher Mind, and the Higher Mind is not subject to the thought.
Beings are unable to control their thoughts and to calm down the turbulent waters of the lake of the Soul, and this is one of the causes by which we are not aware of events of our past lives.
The “backward survey” is the root exercise introducing the disciple in the knowledge of his mental world. By one name or another, and practiced in several forms, all religions and all Schools have made use of this exercise.
Now we say how to do it.
Preferably it shall be made at night, when you retire or a little earlier. Night silence helps on inner silence; the inner rest instinctively induces the body to rest and forget any event of the day, and this helps on thought during this inner rest. Of course, if at this moment you do not use the will, then the sleep controls at once a being; that is why, even though a relaxed body helps on mental relax, attention must be alert enough not to lose control of reason.
After a minute of mental rest, one should try to remember events of the day, from the moment when the exercise starts, coming back successively up to the moment of awakening.
Usually in the beginning, you take long to remember events; you can solve this by stopping, or rather, by paying attention to the most important thing, discarding trivial events. Always there are three or four outstanding events. You should pay objective attention, and not qualify it.
It is irrelevant if the exercise is good or bad: during the sleep, the mind shall subconsciously do this work and the following day one shall know instinctively what could be properly repeated o not.
In the exercise, in reaching a point where we pay attention to the time of awakening, thought should be discontinued, and we should imagine blood accumulated in our brain by efforts made during the day, slowly descending into the heart, and being purified there. From there it shall continue its descent to the sole of our feet. Then one will sleep peaceably.
After a practice of three to four months, one can see with further details and perceive rapidly the most insignificant event.
Progress can be appreciated when a disciple is able to play quickly the movie picture of events exactly, without any omission.
“Exercise” can be defined as a set of practices, whose object is to develop a faculty or, if one already has the latter, to keep it whole and vigorous.
The purpose of a backward survey is to develop the faculty to manage mental forces at will, and to control the horse of the Higher Mind by using the image employed above.
In the Physical plane, a being is very limited and in the dark.
Immersed in the time, the three Times of Hindus –past, present and future– one finds the future to be unknown, present inaccessible, and past limited to our present incarnation, an insignificant distance on the way, which you bring from the Infinite, and the Infinite carries you.
How to glimpse the goal?
It is impossible to go forward, since the way is in the dark.
One cannot be even absorbed in the present.
Then, the short distance of a way traveled that illuminates the memory, remains; and the being must be exercised in it, moving further and further back.
When a disciple advances further, every eight to ten days he can travel through events occurred during the month, until the moment when the light of thought shone for the first time in the mind of the child.
And further back?
One should not get discouraged; thought should aim at the point of the pin through which one enters the unknown supra-physical world.
There one can travel through vast ways of past lives.