The average person allows his involuntary attention to rest upon
every trifling thing, and to be distracted by the idlest appeals to the
senses. He finds it most difficult to either shut out these distracting
appeals to the senses, and equally hard to hold the attention to some
uninteresting thing. His attention is almost free of control by the will,
and the person is a slave to his perceptive powers and to his imagination,
instead of, being a master of both.
The occultist, on the contrary, masters his attention, and controls his
imagination. He forces the one to concentrate when he wishes it to do so;
and he compels the latter to form the mental images he wishes to
visualize. But this a far different thing from the self-hypnotization
which some persons imagine to be concentration. A writer on the subject
has well said: "The trained occultist will concentrate upon a subject or
object with a wonderful intensity, seemingly completely absorbed in the
subject or object before him, and oblivious to all else in the world. And
yet, the task accomplished, or the given time expired, he will detach his
mind from the object and will be perfectly fresh, watchful and wide-awake
to the next matter before him. There is every difference between being
controlled by involuntary attention, which is species of
self-hypnotization, and the control of the attention, which is an evidence
of mastery.
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