In the Light of Truth

22. Thought forms

Take a seat in a tea-shop or in a restaurant and notice the people sitting at the tables around you. Listen to their conversation and hear what they have to say to one another. Go into the families of your acquaintance and observe their habits in their spare time, when work no longer presses.

You will be horrified at the hollowness of their talk when no longer speaking of their business. If you examine closely, you will sense with disgust the emptiness of their thoughts, the oppressive narrowness of the sphere of their interests, their terrible superficiality. The few exceptions you find, who in their leisure moments express a longing for spiritual enlightenment, will appear to you as solitary strangers in the midst of a fair.

It is in his leisure-hour that you are best able to perceive the inner man — when he is no longer busy with his daily tasks or under the spell of his habitual train of thought which runs on his special calling. What then remains is the real man. Consider him and listen dispassionately to his words. You will soon cease your study; it will become intolerable. Deep dejection will settle down on you, when you see how many men are no better than animals, not quite so dull, with better intellects, but, in the main the same. They go through life with blinkers on and only see what is purely material. They care for food and drink and aim at increasing to a greater or less extent their hoard of earthly treasure, seeking for all that affords physical enjoyment and regarding all reflections on things invisible as a waste of time, which they consider would be better employed in rest and recreation. They cannot and never will understand that their life on earth, in spite of all its physical enjoyment and delight, is only then a full life when they have become at least somewhat familiar with the ethereal world belonging to it and with the law of reciprocal action which does not allow life to be the plaything of chance. They repudiate the idea, under the misapprehension that, granted there exists an ethereal world, it would only bring them discomfort, if not dismay, should they meddle with it.

To them the idea is strange that physical life does not become really precious till it progresses upward. That then a new delightful warmth pulsates throughout all, including their physical enjoyment and pleasure. These are not pushed aside or discarded. On the contrary, as a happy result of reciprocal action those who seek purity and up-lifting are inspired with such an ardent love of life that it expresses itself in enthusiastic outbursts of admiration for all that exists and for all that existence proffers. Fools are they who pass by regardless! Cowards to whom the glorious felicity of those who advance courageously, will ever be denied. Rejoice therefore! Nothing is dead, nothing is void as it appears, but what surrounds you is alive, all is working and weaving in reciprocal activity according to Divine Law, far away to regions that appear immeasurably vast and you, human beings, are standing in the centre of this web. The threads of fate start from you and return to you and it is given to you to form and guide them. Mighty rulers are you! Each one of you establishing his own kingdom by means of which he will ascend or which, in falling, will bury him under its ruins.

Awake! and wield the power given you in full consciousness of the migthy happenings in progress. At present, in your stupidity, obstinacy and laziness you bring forth mischievous abortions that check all healthy growth and finally cause the authors of their being to totter and fall.

Man's immediate ethereal surroundings can do much to uplift him or debase him. And this is the strange world of thought-forms whose vitality only forms a small section of the huge network of manifestations in Creation. Its threads, however, find their way about not only in the material world, but ascend to the more ethereal world and descend to the realms of Darkness. Like a gigantic system of veins and nerves, all is intertwined, interwoven, untearable and undivisible. Take heed, therefore!

There are favoured ones who can from time to time see, or guess a part of this and, through them, some things have come to the knowledge of man. Building on this, man sought to construct a complete picture, but it was a picture full of gaps and defects. Then there were investigators into spiritual matters who again made such leaps and bounds that all consecutive connection was lost, and others filled up the gaps with fantastic imagery of their own, so disfiguring and distorting to the truth, that it tended to shake faith generally. The consequences were that the utter want of logic in the so-called spiritual investigators, called forth very justifiable derision, which then finally carried the day. It would be light on our path if we could perceive the hidden connection there is in all transcendental happenings.

Many processes that perplex the investigator have their origin in his immediate vicinity and one glance into the world of thought-forms would suffice to teach him much that seemed incomprehensible before. In law-suits it would often turn out that not the accused but the accusers were the real culprits and the former would call the latter to account. The clue to this lies in the connection between the individual and the world of thought-forms which world stands closest to humanity. For many, it is certainly a blessing that they are blind-folded and that they cannot see further than their physical eye will permit. The species of thought-forms in the present day would frighten them. Many naive harmless-looking people who never the less lead dissolute unscrupulous lives would be paralyzed with horror, for every thought immediately takes shape in the invisible world, a shape, which (like all else in the ethereal world) embodies the essential meaning of the thought.

The living creative force which flows through man, collects ethereal substance by means of an act of his will-power, and moulds it into a shape that expresses the nature of the will lying in his thought.

It is something real and living that attracts or is attracted by what is homogeneous in this world of thought-forms in proportion to its vitality and strength. In the same degree as a thought, arising in the brain, is felt in the soul with greater or less intensity will the vitality of its counter-part be in the ethereal world.

This thought world is densely populated. Centres have formed through mutual attraction which, by virtue of their concentrated energy, can exercise a powerful influence on man, in the first instance always on those who have sympathy with the class of thought, who have something of similar nature in their own composition. They will be strengthened in their intention and encouraged to continue producing similar forms to do the same work in the world of thought-forms.

But also others who have not these special qualities can come under these influences and gradually succumb to the attraction of these nuclei and continually receive reinforcements from them.

Only those are immune whose characteristics are quite different and more positive. These qualities (characteristics) frustrate all efforts made by opposing influences.

Unfortunately man at the present day principally tends towards hatred, envy, ill-will, lustfulness, avarice and all other evils and thus these form the most powerful centre in the world of thought-forms. Whereas purity and love have lost ground. For this reason evil has spread abroad with uncanny rapidity. Not only this but the centres of strength of the thought-forms keep up a connection with analogous sections in the regions of Darkness. From these they are continually being urged on to greater activity, so that their progress is marked by desolation and havoc.

Blessed, therefore, be the hour when thoughts of pure Divine Love once again get the upper hand, so that homogeneous centres may develop in the world of thought-forms, which can be reinforced from higher spheres, and thus not only strengthen those striving towards the Light, but also slowly work on darker characters gradually purifying them also.

In the immaterial world yet another phenomenon is to be observed. Thought-forms can be directed to certain persons and made to cling to them at the desire of the person who wishes. If these thought-forms be of a pure and noble nature, they beautify the persons to whom they are sent, strengthen the shield of purity around them and can, if they meet with feelings of an analogous nature, uplift them still further. Impure thoughts, however, cannot fail to soil the person towards whom they are directed in just the same way as the physical body is soiled when bespattered with dirt and mud. If a man so bespattered is not inwardly intimately allied with light-giving centres, it may happen that in time his intuition will become confused. The clinging impure thoughts are able to attract analogous matter, which strengthens them so that they can by degrees poison the person so encompassed.

The greater part of the responsibility naturally falls back on the author of the impure thoughts, on him who sent them out by his desire or lust to the person in question, for thought-forms remain attached to their author and accordingly react on him. For this reason it is most important always to repeat the injunction to those who really seek: see to the purity of your thoughts! Put all your energies into this effort! You cannot conceive what you are thus doing; something stupendous lies in it. Then you can fight like mighty warriors, you will be pioneers on the way to the Light and thus save your fellow-men from the poisonous growth in the world of thought-forms.

If now the bandage should be taken from the eyes of a man, and he could look into the ethereal world around him, he would have good reason to be alarmed at the wild and terrifying confusion there, but this only till he becomes aware of the power within him, with which like a sharp sword he can without difficulty hew himself a free passage merely by exerting his will. He sees thought-forms in a hundred thousand varieties, in all possible and, for physical eyes, impossible shapes, each one, however, sharply defined, reproducing the living wish exactly as it was, when it issued from its author, unvarnished and free from all deception.

Still, in spite of the thousands of varieties, one learns in time to distinguish at a glance the nature of each, that is to say, one knows to what category they belong, in spite of their different shapes. Just as one distinguishes a man from an animal by his appearance, or indeed the different races of men by certain peculiarities. In precisely the same way thought-forms have definite expressions that clearly point out to what type they belong, whether their form is allied to hatred, to envy, to lust-fulness or to some other type. Each of these cardinal types has its own stamp which appears on each separate thought-forms to show to what type it generically belongs, without regard to the specific shape that it owes to the author of its being.

Thus, in spite of the most grotesque distortion of a form till it becomes a repulsive deformity, one can immediately recognise to which cardinal type it belongs. This knowledge once acquired dispels the illusion, the wild confusion.

One sees the inexorable order and rigour of the laws governing Creation which, when once one knows and has accomodated oneself to, afford unbounded protection and great blessing. He, however, who would oppose these laws will be attacked and, if not cast down and utterly crushed, will at least come between the great mill-stones which grind slowly and painfully. Bitter experience will remodel him till at last he no longer offers resistance but acknowledges the Divine Laws. Not till then can he be uplifted.

These thought-forms not only react on humanity, they go further: for in the same ethereal world in their immediate vicinity there lives the greater number of the elementals. He who recognises the fact, that all is alive and also has a shape, or form whether physically visible or not, will not find it difficult to go a step further and believe that the powers in the elements also take shape. To these belong the gnomes, elves, sylphs, and nixies, etc., earth, air, fire and waterspirits, which formerly were more often seen than they are now. These are likewise influenced by the thought-forms and thus much good and evil is done. One thing fits into another like cogwheels in the finest and most highly finished mechanism.

In the midst of all this locomotion stands man. He is provided with the gift to decide the nature of the web that shall proceed from the cosmic loom and to set the mechanism in motion in different directions. You must appreciate this unbounded responsibility, for all is taking place in the narrow circle of our earth-life. By wise ordinance of the Almighty, nothing goes beyond the ban of man's earth-life. You are able to poison this world and the next with your wishes, thoughts and intentions, or to purify them and uplift them to the Light.

Therefore become lords of destiny: lead upwards by the purity of your thoughts.

[Grail Message by Abdrushin]  [Resonances to the Grail Message]