Path of the Masters

"It is in the soul that all consciousness and all power resides. All below the soul, even the mind itself, is unconscious, automatic and mechanical in action... It is the mind working always under the law of cause and effect that creates karma... The mind is not self-conscious, nor self-acting. It has no power of automotion or of initiative. It is simply a machine, though highly sensitive and extremely powerful when motivated by spirit. As a machine, it can be made to do what it was intended to do, and that only just like any other machine. It will never do anything different from what it was fashioned and trained to do. Of course, all machines are automatic in action. But we speak of the mind as an automatic machine, for the sake of emphasizing that point. This is an important fact which must be made as clear and as definite as possible. It is a new thought to the western world. We are not accustomed to think of mind as a machine. We have always been taught that if there was anything that had powers of origination and initiative, it was mind. But that was because we had been taught a wrong psychology. Mind and spirit have been greatly confused in western psychology. Mind works only when activated by the Soul. But in western psychology mind and spirit are generally confused. But few, if any, know the difference between them... Of course, mind is a most useful instrument, provided it is kept under the control of the spirit. Mind is an excellent servant, but a very bad master. Your automobile or your airplane is a fine instrument for travel. But you must keep it under control and guide it. It has no will but your will. So it is with your mind, exactly so. If your car is permitted to run wild, under full power, it is sure to come to grief. It knows no better than to run on as it has been trained to run. It cannot see, and it cannot reason. So it is with mind, in every particular. It is your servant, but if it becomes your master, it may speedily bring disaster upon you. We have always been taught that mind reasons, but it does not reason. It acts with automatic precision exactly as it is stimulated to act... Everywhere and all the time, people act more like machines than they do like rational beings. And that is because they are moved by mind in grooves, just as they have been taught to act. It is the rare individual who does independent thinking and when one does that it is because his spirit has, to some extent, become emancipated from the domineering control of mind." ~Julian Johnson: The Path Of The Masters