THE HIDDEN SIDE OF THINGS/PART 23

 

CHAPTER XXIII

 

BY OUR RELATION TO LOWER KINGDOMS

 

DOMESTIC ANIMALS

 

WE have a responsibility which must not be forgotten towards the animals which we draw around us. This may be of two kinds, or rather of two degrees. A farmer in the course of his business has to deal with a large number of animals which may be described as semi-domesticated. His duty towards them is clearly to feed them well and to take all possible care to keep them in perfect health. He may sometimes attach to himself some one of these, but on the whole his relation towards them is in the mass only, and as they are yet far from the possibility of individualisation, it is not likely that his influence over them can go far, or be more than a general one. His relation with them is, in fact, a business relation, though he should look after them as carefully as though they were human.

 

The case is quite different with the really domestic animals which live in the house with us, and come into intimate personal relations with us. No one is obliged to keep a dog or a cat, but if he does so he incurs a much greater responsibility towards that animal than the farmer has towards any member of his flock. It would be unpardonable selfishness for anyone who keeps such an animal to think only of his own pleasure in connection with it, and not of the animal' s development.

 

The domestic animal is in fact a kind of younger child-- with this difference, that whereas the child is already an ego and has to be helped to control his new vehicles, the animal is not yet a separate ego and has to be helped to become one. The process of the individualisation of an animal has been often described; notes upon it may be found in A Text-book of Theosophy, The Inner Life, Man Visible and Invisible and The Christian Creed. A perusal of what is there written will show at once along what line our duties to the animals lie. We must endeavour to develop their affection and their intellect, and the principal factor in both those developments is the affection which we feel for them.

 

I have written at considerable length, in The Inner Life , Vol. ii, upon mistakes which are frequently made by men in their relation to domestic animals. All those mistakes are due to a selfish attitude with regard to the animal, an endeavour to employ him for the gratification of our own evil passions-- as, for example, when a dog is trained to hunt, and made in that way to do vastly more harm than his forefathers ever did as wild beasts in the jungle. For the wild beast kills only for food, when impelled to do so by hunger; but the dog is trained to kill for the pleasure of killing, and is thereby degraded in the scale of evolution instead of being raised.

 

Between the two categories, of really domestic animals and farm animals, we may place the horse, for it comes into more individual relation with the rider than does the farm animal, and yet at the same time it is far from possessing the intelligence of the dog or the cat. It also must be treated intelligently, and above all with unvarying kindness. The rider should remember always that the horse does not exist solely to serve him, but has an evolution of its own which it is his duty to forward. There is no wrong in his utilising it to help him, because the association with him may develop its affection and intelligence; but he must treat it always as he would treat a human servant, and never forget its interest while he is making it serve his own.

 

BIRDS

 

A student of the hidden side of life cannot but deprecate the practice of keeping birds in cages. Perfect liberty and the sense of great open spaces are of the very essence of the life of a bird, and his misery at being imprisoned is often intense and most pathetic. This is always especially marked in the case of those birds which are natives of the country, and all such ought certainly at once to be set free.

 

Foreign birds, which can live happily only in other climates, come under a different category. They also spend most of the time in memories of splendid tropical scenes, and in longing for the home from which they have been taken-- to which they ought to be sent back at the earliest possible moment. The sin there lies with those who originally caught them; and those who keep them now share in it only so far as that their action makes it profitable. A student who has already thoughtlessly acquired such birds as these, can hardly do other than keep them, unless he is in a position to return them to their native country; but he should provide them with the largest cages, and let them out of them to fly about the room as often as possible, while he certainly should not encourage a nefarious traffic by buying any more of such creatures.

 

The only rational and useful relation that we can establish with birds is that which occasionally exists in country places-- that food is regularly put out for the birds in a certain place and they come and take it, while remaining otherwise perfectly free. If a man wants to keep a bird, he should keep it precisely as he would keep a cat-- provide it with plenty of food and an abiding place whenever it chooses to accept it, but leave it otherwise free to go where it will. The difficulty in the way is that the bird' s intelligence is so much less developed than the cat' s that it would be more difficult to get it to understand the conditions of the arrangement. By far the best plan is to have nothing to do with foreign birds, but to try to make friends of the wild birds of the neighbourhood.

 

Individualisation is not a possibility, as the bird is not developing along our line; when it transcends the bird evolution is passes directly into one of the higher orders of nature-spirits. Nevertheless, kindness shown to birds arouses gratitude and affection in them, and helps them forward in their evolution.

 

PLANTS

 

Another direction in which we may exercise a good deal of influence if we will, is upon the plants in our gardens. Plants, like animals, are quick to respond to wise and loving care, and are distinctly affected not only by what we do for them physically, but also by our feelings towards them. Anyone who possesses astral sight will be aware that flowers delight in and respond to a feeling of admiration. The feelings of the vegetable differ rather in degree than in kind from those of the animal or of the human being, and they bear somewhat the same relation to those of the animal as do those of the animal to those of the human being.

 

The animal is less complex in his emotions than the human being, but he is capable of affection and hatred, of fear and pride, of jealousy or of shame. Some animals, too, seem to have a sense of humour; at any rate, they keenly enjoy playing tricks on one another, and they object greatly to being made to appear ridiculous or to being laughed at. There is nothing to show that these emotions are less in proportion in the animal than they are in us; but we may say that the animal has fewer emotions and that they are less complex, and his methods of expressing them are more limited.

 

If we descend to the vegetable kingdom we find that the vegetable has scarcely any power of expression; but we shall be making a grave mistake if we therefore assume that there are no feelings to express. Emotion in the vegetable kingdom is again far less complex even than that of the animal, and it is altogether vaguer-- a sort of blind instinctual feeling. The chief physical manifestation of it is the well-known fact that some people are always fortunate with plants, while others are always unfortunate, even when the physical measures adopted are precisely the same. This difference exists everywhere, but in India it has been specially noted, and certain people are described as having the lucky hand, and it is recognised that almost anything which those people plant will grow; even under quite unfavourable conditions, and that anything which they cultivate is sure to turn out well. When this influence is universal over the vegetable kingdom it is not a question of individual liking, but of certain characteristics in the person, and certain qualities in his astral and etheric vehicles which prove generally attractive, just as there are some people with whom all dogs will at once make friends, and others who without effort can manage the most recalcitrant horses.

 

But plants are also capable of individual attachment, and when they get to know people well, they are pleased to see (or rather to feel) them near. A person who pours upon his flowers a stream of admiration and affection evokes in them a feeling of pleasure-- first of a general pleasure in receiving admiration, which might be thought of as a sort of germ of pride, and then, secondly, a feeling of pleasure at the presence of the person who admires, which in the same way is the germ of love and gratitude. Plants are also capable of anger and dislike, though outwardly they have hardly any means of showing them.

 

An occultist who has a garden will make a point of seeing that it is in every way perfectly and carefully looked after, and more than this, he will himself make friends with the flowers and trees and shrubs, and will go sometimes to visit them and give each its due meed of admiration, and so in giving pleasure to these lowly organisms he will himself be surrounded by a vague feeling of affection.

 

It may be said that the feeling of a vegetable can hardly be strong enough to be worth taking into account. It is true that the influence exerted by it upon a human being is less than would be produced by the feeling of an animal; but these influences do exist, and though the feeling of one plant may not seem important, the feeling of hundreds begins to be a recognisable factor, and if we wish to make the best possible conditions, we must not ignore our less developed brethren of the lower kingdoms. That much even from the purely selfish point of view; but the occultist naturally thinks first of the effect upon the plant.

 

When we form a garden we are drawing round us a number of members of the vegetable kingdom for our own pleasure; but at the same time this affords us an opportunity of helping them in their evolution, an opportunity which should not be neglected. Plants differ much in their power to receive and respond to human influences. A large tree, for example, with its slow growth and its long life, is capable of forming a far stronger a attachment than anything which is merely annual. Such a tree comes to have a decided personality of its own, and is even sometimes able temporarily to externalise that personality, so that it can be seen by the clairvoyant. In such a case it usually takes upon itself human form for the time, as I have mentioned in The Inner Life, Vol. ii. Those who wish to understand how much more intelligence there is in the vegetable kingdom than we usually think, should read a delightful book called The Sagacity and Morality of Plants by J.E. Taylor.

 

NATURE-SPIRITS

 

This wonderful evolution has been described in an earlier chapter, but from the point of view of its effect upon us, rather than of ours upon it. Here we must consider the outer side of that relation-- the influence which we may exercise upon the nature-spirits of our neighbourhood, and the friendship which we may make with them. Many of their tribes are so beautiful and so interesting that their acquaintance would repay cultivation, and we may help to develop their intellect and affection, and so do them much good. Those of them who possess etheric bodies have the power to make themselves physically visible if they choose, so men who are happy enough to gain their friendship may occasionally be rewarded by a view of them even with ordinary sight. There is also a probability that such friends may be helped by these elves to attain flashes of temporary clairvoyance, in order that in that way they may see them.

 

A fairy has many points of resemblance to a wild animal, and the method of making friends with him is much what we should have to adopt if we were trying to tame birds or deer. He is shy and distrustful towards man; how is this distrust to be overcome? One who wishes to study at first-hand the habits of a bird usually goes to the haunt of the creature, conceals himself, and remains perfectly quiet, in the hope that the bird will not see him, or if it does, will be reassured by his absolute stillness. The etheric sight of a nature-spirit pierces through walls or bushes, so it is hopeless to attempt to evade his observation; and for him the stillness which is important is not that of the physical body, but of the astral. He objects to the filthy physical emanations of the average man-- of meat, of tobacco, of alcohol, and of general uncleanliness; obviously one who wishes to make friends with him must be free from all these. He objects, too, to storms of passion and impurity; so the man who seeks him must also be free from all low and selfish feelings, such as lust, anger, envy, jealousy, avarice or depression.

 

These negative qualifications being in order, can anything positive be done to invite the approach of so coy a visitor? Animals can often be attracted by the offer of food, but as a fairy does not eat, that particular allurement is not available in his case. The student can provide for him conditions which he is known to enjoy. Strong unselfish affection or devotion, or indeed any high feeling which burns steadily and without wild surgings, creates an atmosphere in which the nature-spirit delights to bathe.

 

The man-- the right sort of man-- who rests for a while in some lovely, lonely spot-- in a wood perhaps, or by a stream or a waterfall-- and revels in such thoughts as have been suggested, is quite likely to become aware of an unfamiliar presence, of something fascinating, yet strange and non-human; and perchance, if fortune greatly favours him, he may even see as well as feel, when the shy, wild creature becomes a little more accustomed to him, and gradually learns to trust and like him. But if the student remembers that to the nature-spirit this is an adventure such as it would be for a mouse to make friends with a cat, or for a man to endeavour to establish fraternal relations with a tiger in the jungle, he will learn to exercise unlimited patience, and not to expect immediate results.

 

Almost all nature-spirits delight in music, and some are specially attracted by certain melodies; so if the experimenter happens to be a performer upon some portable instrument, such as the flute, it may increase his chances of success if he plays upon it. I knew an elf in Italy who was so fascinated by a particular piece of music that when it was played on the piano, he would actually leave the wood in which he dwelt and come into the drawing-room to enjoy it and dance to it-- or rather to bathe in its sound-waves, to pulsate and sway in harmony with them. But I never knew him to do this if there were more than two or three people in the room-- and even those must be friends whom he had learned to trust.

 

More than once I have seen a shepherd-boy in Sicily, sitting in some lonely spot on the hillside, playing on his home-made double Pan-pipe like an ancient Greek, with an appreciative audience of fairies frisking round him of which he was probably blissfully unconscious, though no doubt their delight reacted upon him and added zest to his playing. Sometimes the peasants do see the nature-spirits, however; plenty of instances may be found in Mr. Wentz' Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.

 

INANIMATE SURROUNDINGS

 

We are all the while exerting an influence even on what we commonly consider our inanimate surroundings. Some of these, by the way, are not quite so inanimate as we are apt to think. We all know that the Divine Life exists in the mineral kingdom as well as in those which are higher, and in that sense rocks, stones, and minerals may rightly be thought of as alive. But certain objects have a more vivid and special kind of life, the study of which is of great interest.

 

To explain it we must revert for a moment to a familiar analogy. We know how the life of the elemental essence of the astral body gathers itself up into a kind of personality (which we call the desire elemental) and exists for the time as a separate being with definite desires and dislikes of its own, and with sufficient power to exercise a great effect in the course of its life on the man whose vehicle it informs. We know that the similar consciousness animating the cells of the physical body (including of course its etheric part) manifests itself in certain instinctive movements. In a way analagous to this, the consciousness which animates the molecules of certain minerals will combine into a temporary whole when those molecules are welded together into a definite form; and especially is this the case when that form demands the presence and attention of man, as machinery does.

 

A SHIP

 

The most perfect example of what I mean is to be found in a ship, for there we have a structure built of an enormous number of component parts, and usually of different substances. Kipling' s story of The Ship that Found Herself is not mere fiction, but has a real and important truth behind it. When a ship is first built she is not thus conscious of herself as a unit, but is a mere aggregation of a number of separate sentiences. But the whole fabric does become in time a unit of consciousness or awareness-- being to a certain extent aware of itself as a whole-- however dim and vague its percipience may be as compared with our own.

 

And that consciousness has what we can hardly describe as otherwise than feelings, indistinct though they are as compared with anything to which we usually give that name. Such an obscure semi-entity certainly may (and often does) like one person better than another, so that one person can do with it what another cannot. This in no way modifies the other fact that some men are better seaman than others, and with a little practice can get out of any ship the best that is to be got. Just so, some men are splendid riders, and can almost immediately establish a friendly understanding with any horse; but quite apart from that, a horse may become attached to a certain man, and learn to understand his wishes far more readily than a stranger' s. The same thing is true of the vaguer consciousness of the ship. I do not wish to be understood as suggesting by this term anything comparable, in definiteness or responsiveness, to the consciousness in man; but there certainly is a something, however loose and uncertain, which we cannot define by any other word.

 

MACHINES

 

The same thing is true of a railway engine, of a motor-car or a bicycle. Just as the driver or rider becomes accustomed to his machine and learns to know exactly what it will do, and to humour its various little tricks, so the machine in its turn becomes used to the driver and will do more for him in various ways than for a stranger. The same must be true of many other sorts of machinery, though for that I have not had the benefit of personal observation.

 

Apart from the influence acquired by an individual over the blended consciousness of a machine, the mere blending itself produces an effect upon the molecules of the substance of which it is made. Iron which has formed part of a machine, and so has experienced what is for it this exaltation of consciousness, may be thought of as somewhat more developed than iron which has not been used in the building of a self-contained system. It has become capable of responding to additional and more complicated vibrations, and that for a mineral is evolution. It is more awake than other iron. This condition of greater vitality would be easily visible to a clairvoyant who had learnt its indications, but I do not know of any method by which it could be observed physically.

 

The additional power of response is not always of the same kind, and variants of it may be aroused in different ways. Wrought iron, for example, is much more alive than cast iron, and this result is produced by the frequent blows which it receives in the process of its working. The same thing may be observed to a greater degree with a horse-shoe, for not only has that been wrought in the first place, but it has been subjected to constant striking upon the road when it was worn by the horse. This long-continued process has awakened it in a certain way which makes it exceedingly repulsive to some of the lowest and most malignant types of the astral and etheric entities; and that is the reason for the old superstition, that when hung over the door it kept away evil and brought good fortune to its possessor.

 

Another interesting point with regard to this curious composite consciousness is that after a certain time it gets tired-- a fact which has frequently been observed by those who have much to do with machinery. After a certain time a machine, though perfectly in order, gets into a condition in which it will not work properly, but becomes slack in its action. It often seems impossible to do anything to cure it, but if it is left alone for a time it presently recovers its tone and will go on working as before.

 

Metals show plainly that they are subject to fatigue. A steel pen will sometimes scratch and write badly when it has been used continually for several hours, but the clerk who understands nature so far, will put the pen aside, instead of throwing it away, and maybe the next day will find it even better than it was at first. A barber often finds his razor refusing to take a keen edge, and it is quite customary for him to say that it is “getting tired” and to put it aside to rest. Some days later that same razor will be in perfect order, keen and sharp as ever.

 

Railway engines are known to want regular rest, and after a certain amount of work are put into the shed, and allowed to cool; and so the engine has its rest just as regularly a human being. So we see that fatigue is one of the conditions possible to the mineral kingdom and may be felt by metals as well as by men in their physical bodies. (See Response in the Living and Non-living, by Professor J.C. Bose.) As a matter of fact fatigue is not felt anywhere except in the physical world.

 

There are men, but so far I know only few, who are unusually charged with electricity, and thus produce a special effect upon any metal with which they habitually come into contact. It is said, for example, that such people cause quite considerable deflections of a ship' s compass when they come near it; but this is physical, and hardly occult.

 

UNLUCKY SHIPS

 

A curious instance of the intervention of the hidden side in the ordinary affairs of life is furnished by the experience of practical men connected with such matters, that certain ships or engines are what is called unlucky-- that accident after accident occurs in connection with them, without any obvious negligence to account for it. Naturally some machines are better made than others; some men are more careful than others; but I am not referring to cases into which either of these factors enters. In some cases where two ships or two engines are precisely similar, and the men who manage them are of equal capacity, one proves always fortunate, or meets with only an average proportion of accidents, while the other is perpetually in trouble for no obvious reason.

 

There is no question at all that this is so, and it offers an interesting problem to the occult student. I am inclined to think that various reasons may sometimes comes into play in producing the results. In one such case at least it appeared to be due to feelings of intense hatred nourished by all the men against the first captain of the vessel, who seems to have been a petty tyrant of the most objectionable description. A large number of men continually cursed the captain, the ship, and all that belonged to her, with all the will-power at their command; and the state of their feeling produced this evil result, that disaster after disaster overtook her. By the time that that captain was removed, the ship had acquired a definite reputation of being unlucky, and so her successive crews have surrounded her with thought-forms to that effect , which naturally enough justify themselves by continuing the series of misfortunes.

 

In other cases I think that ill-feeling directed towards the builder of the vessel has produced similar results. I doubt whether any such directions of evil force would in themselves be sufficient actually to cause serious misfortune. But in the life of every ship there are a great many occasions on which an accident is only just averted by vigilance and promptitude-- in which a single moment' s delay or slackness would be sufficient to precipitate a catastrophe. Such a mass of thought-forms as I have described would be amply sufficient to cause that momentary lack of vigilance or that momentary hesitation; and that would be the easiest line along which its malignity could work.

 

STONE USED IN BUILDING

 

In speaking of our houses I have already mentioned the effect which we are constantly producing upon the walls which surround us and the articles of furniture in our rooms. It obviously follows that stone which has been used for a building is never afterwards in the same condition as the stone which is as yet unquarried. It has been permeated, probably for many years in succession, with influences of a certain kind, and that means that for ever after it is capable of responding to such influences more readily than is the unused stone.

 

We are therefore actually assisting in the evolution of the mineral kingdom when we use these various materials for our buildings. I have already explained how the different influences which we put into them react upon us; so that just as a church radiates devotion, and a prison radiates gloom, so each house in the business part of a city radiates anxiety and effort, too often coupled also with weariness and despair. There are instances in which a knowledge of these facts may prove useful in the prosaic matters of physical life.

 

SEA-SICKNESS

 

We know, for example, that many sensitive ladies are often seized with the pangs of sickness as soon as they go on board a vessel, even though the sea may be perfectly smooth and there may be no physical excuse for the sensation. No doubt this is partially auto-suggestion, but most of it comes from outside. Many a cabin is so thoroughly loaded with this suggestion that it requires considerable mental force for a newcomer to resist it; so it is not only the physical consideration of fresh air which makes it desirable for anyone who is likely to suffer in this way to be on deck as much as possible.

 

 

 CHAPTER XXIV