THE HIDDEN SIDE OF THINGS/PART 16

 

CHAPTER XVI

 

BY MENTAL CONDITIONS

 

THOUGHT-FORMS

 

MAN clothes himself in other worlds than this, though in a somewhat different way. For in the astral world he draws round himself a veritable garment of the feelings which are habitual to him, and in the mental world a similar garment of the thoughts in which he commonly indulges. I should like to make it thoroughly clear that in saying this I am not speaking symbolically, but am describing an objective fact-- objective as far as those higher levels are concerned. It has been repeatedly explained that our feelings and thoughts generate definite forms in the matter which they respectively affect, and that these forms follow the thoughts and feelings which made them. When those thoughts and feelings are directed towards another person, the forms actually move through space to that person and impinge upon his aura, and in many cases blend themselves with it. When, however, the thoughts and feelings are self-centred (as I fear we must admit that the majority of many people' s are) the forms do not pass away, but remain clustering round the man who has given birth to them.

 

Thus we find that every man has built for himself a shell of such thought-forms, a veritable clothing at their level; thus all this thought and feeling is constantly reacting upon the man himself. He gave it birth; he made it out of himself; and now it is external to him and capable of reacting upon him, though he knows nothing of its propinquity and its power. Floating thus around him, the forces which it radiates seem to him to come altogether from without, and he often regards as a temptation from some external source, a thought which is in reality only a reflection of one of his own of yesterday or of yesterweek. “As a man thinketh, so is he.” And this is largely because his own thoughts are the nearest to him and are constantly playing upon him, so that they have a better opportunity than any others to act upon him.

 

The constant radiations which pour forth from his thought-forms impregnate the inanimate objects round him, so that even the walls and furniture of his room reflect upon him the thoughts and feelings to which he is accustomed. If a man sitting in a certain chair in a certain room devotes himself for many days to some train or type of thought, he fills the surrounding objects, the chair, the desk, the very walls of the room, with vibrations which express that type of thought. He unconsciously magnetises these physical objects, so that they possess the power of suggesting thoughts of the same type to any other person who puts himself in the way of their influence. Many striking instances of this may be found among the collections of stories which refer to such matters. I have already given one of a number of persons committing suicide, one after another, in the same prison-cell, because the place was reeking with that idea, and they felt it acting upon them as a force from without, which they thought themselves compelled to obey.

 

From these considerations emerge two main ideas on the subject of our feelings, which at first sight appear absolutely contradictory: first, that we must be most careful about our feelings; secondly, that they do not matter at all. But when we come to seek for the explanation of this apparent contradiction, we see that it lies in the fact that we are not using the word `feelings' in quite the same sense in the two statements. We must be careful what feelings we allow to arise within us; we need pay no attention to the feelings which press upon us from outside. True; but in the first case we mean original feelings-- thought -feelings which emanate from our own minds; in the second case we mean moods, which come without any volition on our part. These latter we can afford to disregard utterly. The mood is the result of our thought of yesterday, and we cannot alter that thought or affect it in any way; our business is with the original thought of to-day, for that thought is within our control, and when it suggests itself we can receive it and adopt it, or we can reject it. And the same is true with our feelings. You say you cannot help your feelings; that is what the ordinary uncomprehending person thinks, but it is not in the least true. You can help them and control them if you will.

 

MOODS

 

We have all had the experience of feeling moods of different sorts coming over us. On one occasion we feel joyful without knowing why, and on another occasion depressed and pessimistic. There may be many reasons for this latter feeling; indigestion in some shape or other is the commonest. It comes often, too, from lack of exercise, lack of sunlight, lack of open air; and too much night-work; but also sometimes it is simply the reaction upon us of previous thoughts of our own-- and sometimes of the previous thoughts of someone else. It may be due to the presence of an astral entity who is in a condition of depression, and contrives to communicate his vibration to our astral bodies. But whatever may be its cause, the depression must be thrown aside, and we must endeavour to go on with our work precisely as though it did not exist.

 

This is largely a matter of feeling, and that makes it difficult to take a coldly scientific view of it; yet it is precisely that which we must endeavour to do. These moods of ours make no difference whatever to the facts of life. Why therefore should we allow them to influence us? Our future destiny lies before us, and is entirely unaffected by the fact that we take at one time an optimistic and at another a pessimistic view of it. Why then should we allow ourselves to be worried to-day merely because we were worried yesterday, or because some astral entity feels worried? The hidden side of all these moods shows them to come from various causes; but it also shows us clearly that, whatever the causes may be, our duty is to go on with our work, and pay absolutely no attention to them.

 

RECURRENT THOUGHTS

 

In yet another way, too, we must carefully watch the action of recurring thoughts. What at first was merely an unfounded suspicion-- perhaps an unworthy suspicion-- may presently solidify itself into a prejudice; not because there is any additional evidence for it, but simply by virtue of its own recurrence. We adopt, often without due reason, a certain attitude towards some person or thing, and then, merely because we have taken it up, we persist in it; and even though we may be quite aware that at first it was nothing but the merest suspicion, by virtue of having thought it over and over again we believe it to be well-founded, and proceed to reason from it as though it were a fact. Thus often prejudices are born, and we have already explained that prejudices are fatal to progress.

 

Again, this reaction of thought-forms tends to set up in us certain qualities. Many a man has begun by being, quite rightly, careful as to the expenditure of his money; but the anxious thought which he has devoted to the consideration as to how he should economise has reacted upon him again and again until it has become the dominant idea in his mind-- until it has generated within him the quality of avarice. It is not only inward upon its maker that the thought-form pours its influence; it is also radiating outwards. And the effect of that outward vibration is to attract other similar thought-forms which strengthen the action of the original. It is therefore necessary for us to be on our guard in these matters, to watch carefully the thoughts and feelings which arise within us, and to distinguish between those which come from above, from the ego, and those which merely flow in at lower levels.

 

FALLING IN LOVE

 

Another instance of the repeated action of a thought-form is what is commonly called falling in love. Of this there are at least two clearly marked varieties, which are commonly defined by novelists as “gradually growing into love” and as “falling in love at first sight”. This latter phenomenon (if it ever really occurs, as I am inclined to think that it does) must mean the recognition by the ego of one who was well known in previous incarnations; but the former and more ordinary variety is usually due to the intensified action of repeated thought.

 

To speak with any degree of common sense on this subject is likely to render one unpopular, because each man regards his lady-love as the only woman in the world who is really an epitome of all the virtues, and is prepared to maintain that proposition at the sword-point if necessary. Yet if it were possible for him to take an unimpassioned and reasonable view of the matter (which of course it is not), he would have to admit that, while she is all this to him, there are other ladies in the world who appear to occupy the same position in the minds of other people-- people who are, in the abstract, just as intelligent and as capable of forming an opinion on such a matter as he himself is.

 

Why then, where there is no question of a tie formed in a previous incarnation, should he select a certain young woman out of all the rest of the world, to be for him an embodiment of all that is noble and beautiful? The truth is unromantic; it is largely a question of propinquity. The normal young man, thrown by circumstances into close relations with the normal young woman, is likely to fall in love with her; and though be would never believe it, if he had been thrown into similar intimate relations with any one of a hundred other equally normal young women, he would have fallen in love with that other just as easily!

 

In the first place a young lady makes upon him an agreeable passing impression; if he did not meet her again, it is probable that after a few days he would cease to think of her; but if he sees her often, his thought-form of her becomes strengthened and he begins, though he does not know it, to see more deeply into her than he did at first. And this process continues until he learns to see in her the divine reality which lies behind us all. It lies behind all equally, but he has learnt to see it only in her, and therefore for him it takes her form; and when once he has seen it through that form, to him at any rate it can take no other. And so he dowers her in his imagination with all sorts of virtues and all splendid qualities-- which are in her, as they are in us all, yet may not be manifested through her to other eyes than his. They are in her, because her ego, like all others, is a spark of the Divine Fire; and in Him these qualities inhere and exist in perfection. The manifestation of them in this physical world may be no greater in her than in a hundred others, but he sees them in her because it was through her that he first learnt to realise them at all.

 

And so in truth, from the occultist' s point of view the rhapsodies of thousands of lovers about the respective objects of their adoration are all true, even though they seem mutually exclusive; for the truth is that that which they all love is One, though for each It manifests through a different vehicle, and because they with their partial vision cannot separate the One from Its manifestation, they endow that special manifestation with qualities which belong not to it but to That which shines through. So all are right in the qualities which they see, and wrong only in claiming exclusive manifestation through the form through which they have learnt to see them.

 

Often the impartial outsider finds it difficult to understand, looking at it from the point of view of the physical world, what a certain man saw in a certain woman to induce him to desire to make her his wife. The answer is that the husband saw in her something which is not visible on the physical level; something which is to be discerned only by looking much deeper than that, and his attraction to her was that it was through her that that aspect of the Divine was revealed to him.

 

People often say that the lover' s imagination gives to his prospective bride qualities which in truth she does not possess. The occultist would say that the lover is right; she does possess them, because God, of whom she is a part, possesses them. And for her lover she is a channel through which he can see Him. But others for whom she is not the channel cannot see those qualities through her, but may at the same time be seeing them through someone else.

 

One great advantage of this is that, if the woman be a good woman, she tries to live up to the level of her lover' s thought-form of her. She is fully conscious that he is idealising her, that he endows her with qualities which she does not believe herself to possess; but in order that he may not be disappointed, in order that she may be worthy of his love and trust, she tries hard to develop these qualities in herself-- to be what he thinks her to be. And because in essence she is what he thinks her, because in the Monad behind her those qualities do exist, she is often successful, at least to some extent, in bringing them down into manifestation, and thus the confidence of the lover is justified, and his faith in her brings forth her higher self and helps her on the path of evolution.

 

All this, be it observed, works both ways, and the woman tries to find her ideal through a man just as does a man through a woman. The human being as at present constituted usually finds his ideal most readily through some one of the opposite sex, but this is not invariably so. Sometimes a younger man adores an elder one, and through his admiration and affection for him obtains his glimpse of that true world which we call the ideal; and sometimes the same feeling exists between a younger woman and an experienced matron.

 

Since that real ideal is behind us all alike, the mystic who lives wrapped in solitary contemplation may find it just as perfectly within himself. It is the tendency of every man to seek it, whether through his own self or through another, and the feeling which moves him to seek it is the divinely implanted force of evolution, the desire to find and to return to the Divine from whom we came. For the force which at this early stage can only manifest itself in this way is the very same that later on will bring the man to final union. As Saint Augustine beautifully put it: “God, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are ever restless till they find their rest in Thee.”

 

UNSET BLOSSOM

 

A beautiful variant of this, which is often misunderstood, is the “falling in love” of children. Unsympathetic adults often ridicule it, because they know that in nine cases out of ten its object is quite unsuitable, it does not last, and it comes to nothing. All that is true, yet in essence it is the same feeling as that which comes in later life, and it is usually a far purer and more unselfish form of it. If you could penetrate the secret heart of a young lover of ten or twelve, you would find that often he does not even dream of marrying his prospective bride and settling down comfortably to be happy for ever after; his idea is rather to sacrifice himself for her, to exhibit splendid heroism in her defence, and die at her feet. Absurdly romantic, no doubt, yet not without its good effect upon that young heart-- indeed, upon both the young hearts concerned.

 

To pour out such thought-forms as these is indeed well, both for their creator and their recipient, and they are preparing both for the maturer but not more beautiful feeling which comes in later life. Have you ever seen the vast amount of unset blossom on our cherry-trees or plum-trees? One might think of all that as a useless waste of Nature' s energy, because it never comes to fruit. Yet the botanist tells us that it is by no means useless-- that it has an important purpose to serve in drawing up the sap and thereby strengthening the tree, and so preparing the way for finer fruit in the autumn than could have existed without it. These innocent young love-affairs of childhood have precisely the same effect; they strengthen the nature and prepare it for the fuller development which comes later.

 

OCCULTISM AND MARRIAGE

 

Yet in spite of all that I have said above-- in spite of the beauty and exaltation of the love affair-- can we from the point of view of occultism advise our students to marry? I think the best answer is to be found in the words of our great founder, Madame Blavatsky:

 

It depends on the kind of man you mean. If you refer to one who intends to live in the world-- one who, even though a good, earnest Theosophist and an ardent worker for our cause, still has ties and wishes which bind him to the world-- who, in short, does not feel that he has done for ever with what men call life, and that he desires one thing and one thing only-- to know the truth, and to be able to help others-- then for such a one I say there is no reason why he should not marry, if he likes to take the risk of that lottery where there are so many more blanks than prizes. ( The Key to Theosophy, Section xiii, “Theosophy and Marriage”.)

 

But if the man means to be more than this, if he intends to devote his whole life to Theosophical work, and aspires to become a pupil of one of the great Masters of the Wisdom, then we cannot advise him to divide his attention between that world and this. Again Madame Blavatsky tells us:

 

Practical occultism is far too serious and dangerous a study for a man to take up, unless he is in the most deadly earnest, and ready to sacrifice all , himself first of all , to gain his end. I am only referring to those who are determined to tread the path of discipleship which leads to the highest goal. ( Ibid., Section xiii. )

 

There is nothing to prevent a man from loving his ideal as much as he will; the mistake is in the desire for sole possession, in the animal passion which prevents him from being satisfied to worship at a distance, in the jealousy which is annoyed that others should love and worship also. The student who wishes to devote himself even to the uttermost must keep himself free from all entanglement-- free for the work; and let him not, as has been the case with many, be deceived by the specious reasoning of his passion, and fall under the delusion that he can work better in chains. But, remember once more, this is only for the man who is absolutely determined to go on to the end. Short of such high resolve, there is a vast amount of good work that may be done-- and even of progress that may be made-- by taking advantage of the troubles and trials of the ordinary worldly life, and endeavouring to live one' s highest, even though it be in chains.

 

Another excuse which is sometimes put forward is that it is necessary that bodies should be provided for the high-class in-coming egos who will be needed to do the work; it is argued that students can surely provide these better than the good people of the outer world. This is probably so, and therefore in certain rare cases students have been ordered to marry for this very purpose; but it is surely wisest to wait for such an order from a source that cannot be questioned. Meanwhile we have plenty of good married members who are perfectly capable of providing bodies for the occult workers of the future. Truly there can be no greater honour than to be selected by the karmic Deities to provide those, except the still greater honour of training them when they are provided. Let it be the work then of the student who still retains his ties with the world to provide those bodies, and let those who feel themselves capable of the higher life help in their training. For verily no man can serve two masters, and the path of occultism demands the whole energies of body, soul and spirit.

 

CHANGES IN CONSCIOUSNESS

 

The human consciousness has wonderful possibilities, and what we commonly call by that name is only the fragment of it which we can use for the moment. We may perhaps take an analogy from the action of our physical senses. There is an enormous gamut of possible vibrations. One little group of those at a certain level appeals to us as light; another little group at a much lower level appeals to us as sound. We are conscious in various ways of other intermediate groups. But we are fully aware from our knowledge of science that the gamut extends at both ends far beyond our possibilities of dealing with it.

 

We may suppose the human consciousness to be like that gamut, and the part of it now in action in the physical brain to correspond, let us say, to the block of oscillations which we call sound. Following out the same analogy, we might suppose our block of astral consciousness to be equivalent to the wave-lengths which we call light; but here again there are many undulations capable of carrying light which we cannot see-- undulations both below and above our limit of vision. In just the same way, below our physical consciousness and above it, and below our astral consciousness and above that, are further sets of vibrations to which our consciousness might be adapted, but is not.

 

There are two ways in which it can be adapted; permanently and intentionally, by the development of that consciousness so that it can receive more of those waves which are above and below its normal possibilities; or temporarily, by some disease or abnormality which shifts our octave of consciousness either upwards or downwards. An example of the first way is the development of psychic powers of all sorts. But it is unnecessary for me to take up the consideration of those here, as I have already done it in other books-- Clairvoyance, The Other Side of Death and Some Glimpses of Occultism. Various drugs have the power of temporarily changing or widening the scope of consciousness, and therefore they enable us to see things normally unseen by us, sometimes at the sacrifice of our ordinary power of vision for the time, and sometimes without robbing us of that.

 

What we call our physical consciousness is not a fixed and determinate amount which has always been the same. It has gradually grown to be what it is, and many things which were formerly within its purview have now passed below it-- or more accurately, it has so developed itself as to rise above them. Its level is gradually rising; our descendants will be able to see colours which at present are invisible to us-- higher, purer and more delicate colours. Whether they will at the same time lose the possibility of appreciating some of the coarsest of the colours which we now know, is uncertain.

 

Delirium shifts the place of this consciousness, and often altogether shuts out from us the everyday world which we know, giving us sometimes in its place memories of our past-- not only of the past of this life but of the longer-forgotten part of the human race. Such sight as delirium gives often includes the power to see the sufferer' s own thought-forms, or those of others, and sometimes also to see the astral and etheric creatures which are around him. In the case of delirium-tremens, for example, the snakes and other horrors are almost invariably creatures of low type which are feasting upon the fumes of alcohol exuding from the body of the drunkard.

CHAPTER XVII