which knows the Truth.


MENTAL DRILL.

Place yourself in a calm, restful condition, that you may be able to
meditate upon the matters that we shall place before you for
consideration. Allow the matters presented to meet with a hospitable
reception from you, and hold a mental attitude of willingness to receive
what may be waiting for you in the higher regions of your mind.

We wish to call your attention to several mental impressions or
conditions, one after another, in order that you may realize that they
are merely something _incident_ to you, and _not_ YOU yourself--that you
may set them aside and consider them, just as you might anything that you
have been using. You cannot set the "I" aside and so consider it, but the
various forms of the "not I" may be so set aside and considered.

In the First Lesson you gained the perception of the "I" as independent
from the body, the latter merely being an instrument for use. You have
now arrived at the stage when the "I" appears to you to be a mental
creature--a bundle of thoughts, feelings, moods, etc. But you must go
farther. You must be able to distinguish the "I" from these mental
conditions, which are as much tools as is the body and its parts.

Let us begin by considering the thoughts more closely connected with the
body, and then work up to the higher mental states.

The sensations of the body, such as hunger; thirst; pain; pleasurable
sensations; physical desires, etc., etc., are not apt to be mistaken for