Here we come definitely into the realm of material substance. This is essentially and in a peculiar manner the realm of force. Maya is predominantly (for the individual) the aggregate of the forces which control his septenary force centers to the exclusion, I would emphasize, of the controlling energy of the soul. Therefore, you will see that the bulk of humanity, until a man stands upon the Probationary Path, are under the control of maya, for a man succumbs to maya when he is controlled by any other force or forces than those energies which come direct from the soul, conditioning and controlling the lesser forces of the personality as they eventually and inevitably must and will.

It is for this reason that the study and understanding of motives is of such value and importance, for such a study determines intellectually (if properly investigated) what factor or factors inspires the daily life. This is a statement worth careful consideration. I would ask you: What is your major actuating motive? For, whatever it may be, it conditions and determines your predominant life tendency.

Many people, particularly the unintelligent masses, are solely inspired by desire - material, physical and temporary. Animal desire for the satisfaction of the animal appetites, material desire for possession and for the luxuries of existence, the longing for "things," for comforts and for security - economic, social and religious - control the majority. The man is under the influence of the densest form of maya, and the forces of his nature are concentrated in the sacral center. Others are motivated by some form of aspiration or ambition - aspiration towards some material heaven (and most religions portray heaven in this manner), ambitions for power, desire for the satisfaction of the emotional or aesthetic appetites and for the possession of the more subtle realities, and the longing for emotional comfort, for mental stability and assurance that the higher desires will meet with gratification. All this is maya in its emotional form, and it is not the same thing as glamor. In the case of glamor, the forces of a man's nature are seated in the solar plexus. In the case of maya, they are seated in the sacral center. Glamor is subtle and emotional. Maya is tangible and etheric. [150]

Such are the forces of maya which actuate, motivate and energize the life of the ordinary man. Under their influence he is helpless for they inspire all his thinking, all his aspiration and his desire, and all his activity on the physical plane. His problem is twofold:

1. To bring all his centers under the inspiration of the soul.
2. To transfer or transmute the forces of the lower centers, which control the personality, into the energies of the centers above the diaphragm, which respond automatically to the inspiration of the soul.

It is in this thought that the potency and the symbolic value of breathing exercises consists. The motive is soul control, and though the methods employed are (in many cases) definitely undesirable yet the developing tendency of the life thought will prove inevitably determining and conditioning. The methods used may not save the unprepared physical body from certain evil and disastrous results yet, in the long run and in the last analysis, they may condition the future experience (probably in another life) in such a manner that the aspirant will find himself more able to function as a soul than might otherwise have been the case.

Before I close this particular instruction upon glamor, I would like to call the attention of the group to the occult sentences which I gave to D.L.R. prior to his leaving the group. They have a definite relation to the group work and I would like you to give them careful consideration and study. The Old Commentary, in speaking of the work of those whose dharma it is to dissipate world glamor, uses the following illuminating sentences:

I would commend these lines to your careful thought. They convey to you not only the field of your group service but also the desired attitude of the personal life of every member of the group.