Lesson 1 Study and Introspection Guide

1. Lesson 1: Key Points for Practice…

• Study the Lessons for a half-hour each day, in order to keep your high spir-
itual goals always before you.
• Consider your study of the Lessons as a form of spiritual practice — a
technique of attuning your consciousness with divine wisdom and in-
spiration, a practice that requires calm focus and disciplined attention for
intuitive absorption of the truths you are receiving.
• Remind yourself as you look at your mortal body: “I am a divine immor-
tal soul, dwelling temporarily in a physical form.”
• If possible in your home, set up a meditation space with an altar for your
daily periods of interiorized divine communion.
• Schedule a regular time for morning and evening meditation each day.
• Before meditation, perform the preliminary breathing and tensing-
relaxing exercises.
• Train the eyes to remain gently upturned to the point between the
eyebrows during meditation.
• During meditation, deeply pray or affirm, and feel the actual presence
of the Divine surrounding you and permeating your whole being as
peace and joy.
• Carry into your daily activities the peace and calmness of meditation.
• Tune in with the blessings of the Masters by using the technique on page
24.
• Keep inwardly aware of God’s presence while performing your outer
duties during the day. (This is known as “practising the presence of God.”)
• Read with attention the words on page 8, and practise the affirmation
given there. Affirmations, rightly used, impinge truth-realizations deep
within your consciousness and create tangible changes in your inner
being.

2. Fix in your mind the benefits of practising…

• In this Lesson, you have learned the first steps of a successful meditation
practice — preparing you to get the most from the higher techniques to
be given in subsequent Lessons.
• By meditation, you will overcome identification with the physical body
so that the soul can abide in the perfect tranquillity and bliss of its true
nature.

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Lesson 1 Study and Introspection Guide

• You will gradually deepen your personal experience of God in higher and
higher states of consciousness.
• You will learn how to train your mind to perform necessary outer duties
and still enjoy the blissful consciousness of God within.
• By carrying into all activities the calmness you feel in meditation, you
bring harmony and happiness into your life, which naturally overflows
into the desire to serve others.
• You learn to draw upon the cosmic power of Spirit to help you in every
phase of daily life.
• You will make an inner connection through which you will unfailingly
receive the blessings and light of the Masters guiding the followers of
this path.

3. Check your understanding and absorption…

The questions below are designed to help you absorb the truths in this Lesson
and establish them in your memory and daily life. After you have read the Lesson
a few times with deep attention, introspect about these questions and write out
the answers from memory. Then go back to the text of the Lesson and check
your answers. The process of writing helps to impress these thoughts of truth upon
your memory. If you keep these answers in a journal or notebook of your spiritual
life, and refer to them again from time to time, you will find them to be an index
to your spiritual progress and your deepening understanding of the teachings.

1. What is the definition of Self-realization? (p. 5)

2. What are the three bodies or encasements of the soul? (pp. 6 – 7)

3. List the key elements of the basic meditation practice given in this Lesson.
(pp. 12 – 19)

4. Summarize the essential point of the story of King Janaka and Shukadeva.
(p. 28)

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4. Apply the spiritual science of changing yourself…
As a soul endowed with infinite potentials, always have faith that you can change and
improve. Take to heart these words from Paramahansa Yogananda:

“Human beings are not like material things, whose nature cannot be
changed. No matter what nature they might have inherited or created by
their own actions, it can be changed — not by mere wishing, but by acting
in the right way repeatedly and patiently for some length of time. Human
nature, even when hardened into rocks of habit, still retains its inherent
plasticity, which reappears under the fire of constant discipline.
“See yourself as the maker of all that you are, possessed of the power
to make yourself whatever you wish and ought to be.”

Affirmations to Practise

This day shall be the best day of my life. Today

I will start with new determination to dedicate my
devotion forever at the feet of God.

❖ ❖ ❖

In the stillness of my soul I humbly bow before

Thine omnipresence, knowing that Thou art ever
leading me onward and upward on the path of Self-
realization.

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