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do things at the same time of day because of habit. People
smoke even knowing that it is killing them! because of
habit.
Habit starts like the gossamer thread of a spider's web. One
thread is weak and can easily be broken, but lay those threads
side by side so that you have a hundred, a thousand, a million
threads, and one would be immovably bound, powerless, al-
most impotent to break the habit without really determined
efforts.
Look upon habit as upon a series of binding threads. Replace
bad habits with good habits. That will make it like replacing
each thread individually instead of trying to snap the whole.
You cannot take away a thing without replacing it with some-
thing more suitable.
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If you are a pessimist, smile instead of scowl, it is easier to
smile. Make a habit of smiling, make a habit of being kind
to people, make a habit of being Honourable and keeping your
word. Soon you will be a different person, a person whom all
will admire and respect. Habit is one of the most important
things of life, and a good habit helps one, but a bad habit
stultifies one's development.
HALASANA : This is sometimes referred to as the Plough
Posture. It should be emphasized again that all these exercises
really do not do anyone any good. Sometimes it is claimed that
it develops spiritual discipline, but if one already has the disci-
pline necessary to tie oneself in a knot, then surely that
discipline can be directed into far more useful channels.
Let me put on record that I regard all these exercises as
crackpot inventions designed to lead one away from true pro-
gress. But if you want to try the Plough Posture, here it is :
Lie on your back, keep your arms parallel and very tightly
pressed against your body. Press your palms against the floor.
Take a deep breath (you will need it!), and then raise your
legs and move them up and over your body so that your legs
are over your head and your toes are touching the ground
beyond the top of your head.
Raise up your body as much as possible, and put your arms
around your head. This particular exercise makes one assume
the shape of an old-fashioned plough.
If you want to do shapes, etc., etc., it is much more comfor-
table to have a darkened room and a white wall, and put your
hands between a lighted candle and the wall, then you can
make all sorts of shapes in shadow, rabbits and cats and things
like that. It's much more fun and much more comfortable.
HARI : Sometimes people call Vishnu by that name, but
actually Hari means to take away.
The mistake arose in an original translation because Vishnu
was alleged to remove sins and faults by love and wisdom.
Actually, of course, we can only remove faults and sins our-
selves by adopting the right attitude to life, and towards others.
There are other meanings attached to Hari.
HARI BOL : This means chant the name of the Lord that ye
may be purified and your sins may be washed away.
HARI OM : This meaning of Hari is that of a sacred syllable,
or actually, to be strictly correct, sacred syllables.
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By repeating Hari Om, Hari Om, Hari Om when one is
alone, of course, one's own personal vibrations may be in-
creased, one s spirit may be elevated, and so one approaches
more closely to one's God.
Friendly advice if you try any of these syllables or exercises,
then do it when you are alone or people will look at you sus-
piciously and send for the man in the white coat which ties
at the back!
HARMONY : There are stated to be Three Powers of Divinity.
Harmony is one of those Powers.
It is necessary to have all organs of the human body in
harmony with all other organs in the body. If you have that,
then the result is a person who is well balanced and healthy.
A person with harmony in the mind is one who has pure
love and compassion for others, and that person is able to
assist others without thought of self-gain.
If all people of this world had harmony within them this
would indeed be the Golden Age, because then there would be
no difficulty in following the Rule which says, Do as you
would bc done by.
HATHA-YOGA : This is just a series of exercises, a system
of physical exertion. It is meant to give one mental or
spiritual discipline, or something like that, but it is concerned
only with postures of the body and need not be taken in any
way seriously. It should be borne in mind that the true Masters
of the Occult, the true Adepts, never go in for this Hatha-
Yoga stuff.
According to the people who do try these stunts, Ha means
the sound of a breath going in, and Tha is the sound of the
breath coming out.
The really evolved person does not go in for these circus
turns without, of course, being in a circus, and these rather
stupid exercises merely take one's attention from that which is
more essential spirituality and the desire to help others.
The practitioners of these exercises have a wholly inflated
idea of their own importance, but that only means that
spiritually they are very poorly evolved.
There are systems of Yoga devoted to the attainment of
spiritual perfection, of course, but Hatha-Yoga is not one of
them.
HEAD : Apart from being that knob which protrudes from
the end of the neck and bears the organs of sight, sound, and
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smell, the head also contains the mechanism through which
one can receive messages from the Overself, and transmit
messages to the Overself.
The head is a rather delicate contraption which suffers from
the fact that all blood supplies, all nervous energies, must go
through a rather narrow channel in the already narrow neck.
It follows that the head should be well balanced so that there
is no undue constriction of the spinal cord.
A very good exercise to get balance of the head is to put two
or three heavy books on the head, and provided that you can
keep them there long enough, put your hands on your hips
out of the way, and then walk up and down the room several
times without shedding the books in the process.
This is not to be confused with any Hatha-Yoga 'exercise '
but this is a definite thing to enable one to attain poise. It will
help your poise, and will also help your posture. It will cause
you some pleasurable surprise, too, that you can walk up and
down with a load of books on your head.
If you want to do things properly, have a basin of ice-cold
water on your head, because then you have an incentive to do
it seriously.
In the East the small boys who are going to be monks of any
kind sometimes have a bowl full of hot wax in which there is
a lighted floating wick. The wretched boy walks up and down
the corridors with this bowl on his head. If he cannot balance,
and the bowl spills, the hot wax goes on his clothes and he
spends the next day scrubbing them clean.
Only small boys, and possibly small girls, do these things.
The person who has progressed, even a little, does not have to
indulge in such things.
HEALING : When we refer to healing we do not intend to
indicate the stuff dispensed by the local doctor. Our reference to
healing is that process carried on by the etheric double during
the physical sleep of the material body.
The material body gets a lot of misuse and abuse during the
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