Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tt00010)

At the end of this article is a long quote from WQ Judge.  If
anyone knows the source of it, please let me know.  Nicholas

>                         THE THOUGHT WORLD
>
>                          by H.W. Graves
>
> The welfare of Humanity turns upon the evolution of the Thinking
> Principle.  It is here that the springs of action lie.  "As a man
> thinketh in his heart, so is he." All that I am is the result of
> what I have thought, it is made up of my thought.  Hidden behind
> the veil of physical matter is the subtle machinery of
> thought--just as real, vital, as scientifically arranged as the
> machinery of the living body.
>
> And the activity of every human brain is as closely related to it
> as the physical body is related to the surrounding air in which
> it lives and moves.  In this thought-world the real inner man has
> his proper home, and uses his physical vesture merely as an
> instrument to contact the physical world in which so many
> problems have to be solved.
>
> The aspect which every man's environment wears to himself depends
> directly upon the quality of the thoughts which he himself
> evolves.
>
> And as man is part and parcel of Nature, embosomed therein at
> every moment of his life, it follows that his thinking acts
> directly and momently upon Nature as surely as it does upon
> himself.  Modern science has demonstrated nothing more clearly
> than the fact that the atoms of matter are forever bound together
> by a thousand unseverable ties, reciprocally active, and
> maintaining a marvelous equilibrium throughout the manifested
> universe.  Not less deeply united is humanity, and the breath of
> its inner and mental life is this living, all-pervading sea or
> breath of thought, to which, consciously or not, every human
> being constantly contributes, for evil or for good.  Precisely
> how thought acts and reacts incessantly on man and on Nature,
> science has never clearly shown.  But Eastern Philosophy long ago
> solved the problem of mind, and today throws a bright light on
> the question of human responsibility.
>
> "Every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner
> world, and becomes an active entity by associating itself,
> coalescing as we might term it, with an elemental--that is to
> say, with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms.
>
> It survives as an active intelligence--a creature of the mind's
> begetting--for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the
> original intensity of the cerebral action which generated it.
> Thus, a good thought is perpetuated as an active, beneficent
> power, an evil one as a maleficent demon.  And so man is
> continually peopling his current in space with a world of his
> own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses
> and passions; a current which reacts upon any sensitive or
> nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in
> proportion to its dynamic intensity...
>
> The adept evolves these shapes consciously; other men throw them
> off unconsciously." [THE OCCULT WORLD, pp.  131-32; THE MAHATMA
> LETTERS, Chronological ed.  p.  472.]
>
> The mind, working on its own plane, generates images, thought-
> forms.  Imagination is literally the creative faculty.
> Responsive to our thoughts are the Elementals which ensoul the
> forms so created.  An Eastern Sage speaking of the part played by
> sound and color in the psychic world says:
>
> "How could you make yourself understood, command in fact, those
> semi-intelligent Forces, whose means of communicating with us are
> not through spoken words, but through sounds and colors, in
> correlation between the vibrations of the two? For sound, light
> and color are the main factors in forming those grades of
> intelligences, those beings of whose very existence you have no
> conception, nor *are you allowed* to believe in them -- Atheists
> and Christians, Materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing
> forward their respective arguments against such a belief --
> science objecting stronger than either of these to such a
> `degrading superstition'." [THE OCCULT WORLD, pp.  147-48; THE
> MAHATMA LETTERS, C.E., p.  47]
>
> Elementals are addressed by colors, and color-words are as
> intelligible to them as spoken words are to men.
>
> The hue of the color depends on the nature of the motive
> inspiring the generator of the thought-form.  If the motive be
> pure, loving, beneficent in its character, the color produced
> will summon to the thought-form an Elemental, which will take on
> the characteristics impressed on the form by the motive, and act
> along the line thus traced.  This Elemental enters into the
> thought-form, playing to it the part of a soul, and thus an
> independent entity is made in the astral world, an entity of a
> beneficent character.
>
> If the motive, however, be impure, revengeful, maleficent in its
> character, the color produced will summon to the thought-form an
> Elemental which will equally take on the characteristics
> impressed on the form by the motive, and act along the line thus
> traced.  In this case also the Elemental enters into the thought-
> form, playing to it the part of a soul, and thus making an
> independent entity in the astral world, an entity of a maleficent
> character.
>
> For example, an angry thought will cause a flash of red, which is
> a summons to the Elementals, which sweep in the direction of the
> summoner, and one of them enters into the thought-form, endowing
> it with an independent, destructive activity.
>
> Men are continually talking in this color-language quite
> unconsciously, and thus calling round them these swarms of
> Elementals, who take up their abodes in the various thought-forms
> provided.  Thus it is that a man peoples "his current in space
> with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his
> fancies, desires, impulses and passions."
>
> Angels and demons of our own creating throng round us on every
> side, makers of weal and woe to others, and to ourselves.
>
> The life-period of these thought-forms depends on the energy
> imparted to them by their human progenitor.  Their life may be
> continually reinforced by repetition; and a thought which is
> brooded over, acquires great stability of form.  So again
> thought- forms of a similar character are attracted to and
> mutually strengthen each other, making a form of great energy and
> intensity.
>
> Not only does a man generate and send forth his own thought-
> forms, but he also serves as a magnet to draw towards himself the
> thought-forms of others.
>
> He may thus attract to himself large reinforcements of energy
> from outside, and it lies within himself whether these forces
> that he draws into his own being from the external world shall be
> of a good or of an evil kind.
>
> If one's thoughts are pure and noble, he will attract around him
> hosts of beneficent entities, and may sometimes wonder whence
> comes to him power that seems so much beyond his own.
>
> Similarly a man of foul and base thoughts attracts to himself
> hosts of maleficent entities, and this added energy for evil
> commits crimes that astonish him in the retrospect.
>
> William Q.  Judge wrote:
>
> "Can we, then, be too careful to guard the ground of the mind, to
> keep close watch over our thoughts? These thoughts are dynamic.
> Each one as it leaves the mind has a force of its own,
> proportionate to the intensity with which it was propelled.
>
> As the force or work done, of a moving body, is proportionate to
> the square of its velocity, so we may say that the force of
> thoughts is to be measured by the square or quadrupled power of
> their spirituality, so greatly do these finer forces increase by
> activity.  The spiritual force, being impersonal, fluidic, not
> bound to any constricting center, acts with unimaginable
> swiftness.
>
> A thought, on its departure from the mind, is said to associate
> itself with an elemental; it is attracted wherever there is a
> similar vibration, or, let us say, a suitable soil, just as the
> winged thistle-seed floats off and sows itself in this spot and
> not in that, in the soil of its natural selection.  Thus the man
> of virtue, by admitting a material or sensual thought into his
> mind, even though he expel it, sends it forth to swell the evil
> impulses of the man of vice from whom he imagines himself
> separated by a wide gulf, and to whom he may have just given a
> fresh impulse to sin.  Many men are like sponges, porous and
> bibulous, ready to suck up every element of the order prepared by
> their nature.  We all have more or less of this quality: we
> attract what we love, and we may derive a greater strength from
> the vitality of thoughts infused from without than from those
> self-reproduced within us at a time when our nervous vitality is
> exhausted.  It is a solemn thought, this, of our responsibility
> for the impulse of another.  We live in one another, and our
> widely different deeds have often a common source.  The occultist
> cannot go far upon his way without realizing to what a great
> extent he is `his brother's keeper.' Our affinities are
> ourselves, in whatever ground they may live and ripen."
>
> Earnestness, said Buddha, is the path of immortality,
> thoughtlessness the path of death.
>
> [UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, Vol. XIII, Mar. 1899, pp. 660-62.]