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The Instruments of Shakti
165.
The first thing the will has to do with thebody is to impose 'on it progressively s now habit of all its being, consciousness, force and outward and inward action. It must be taught an entire passivity in the hands first of the higher instruments, but eventually in the hands of the spirit and its controlling and informing Shakti. It must be accustomed not to impose its own limits on the nobler members, but to shape its action and its response to their dó mands, to develop, one might sày, & higher notation, a higher scale of responses. At present the notation of the body and the physical consciousness has a very large determining power on the music made by this human harp of God; the notes we get from the spirit, from the physical soul, from the greater life behind our phy. sical life cannot come in freely, cannot develop their high powerful and proper strain. This condition must be reversed; the body and the physical consciousness must develop the habit of admitting and shaping themselves to those higher strains and not they, but the nobler parts of the nature must determine the music of our life and being.
The control of the body and life by the mind and its thought and will is the first step towards this change. All yoga implies the car. rying of that control to a very high pitch. But afterwards the mind must: itself give place to the spirit, to the spiritual force, the supermind and the supramontal force. And finally the body must develop a perfect power to hold
