Of these there are many kinds. First, elementals. They try to bar the
astral plane against man. And naturally so, because they are concerned
with the building up of the lower kingdoms, these elementals of form,
the Rupa Devas; and to them man is a really hateful creature, because
of his destructive properties. That is why they dislike him so much. He
spoils their work wherever he goes, tramples down vegetable things, and
kills animals, so that the whole of that great kingdom of nature hates
the name of man. They band themselves together to stop the one who is
just taking his first conscious steps on the astral plane, and try to
frighten him, for they fear that he is bringing destructiveness into
the new world. They cannot do anything, if you do not mind them. When
that rush of elemental force comes against the man entering on the
astral plane, he must remain quiet, indifferent, taking up the
position: “I am a higher product of evolution than you are; you can do
nothing to me. I am your friend, not your enemy, Peace!” If he be
strong enough to take up that position, the great wave of elemental
force will roll aside and let him through. The seemingly causeless
fears which some feel at night are largely due to this hostility. You
are, at night, more sensitive to the astral plane than during the day,
and the dislike of the beings on the plane for man is felt more
strongly. But when the elementals find you are not destructive, not an
embodiment of ruin, they become as friendly to you as they were before
hostile. That is the first form of the dweller on the threshold. Here
again the importance of pure and rhythmic food comes in; because if you
use meat and alcohol, you attract the lower elementals of the plane,
those that take pleasure in the scent of blood and spirits, and they
will inevitably prevent your seeing and understanding things clearly.
They will surge round you, impress their thoughts upon you, force their
impressions on your astral body, so that you may have a kind of shell
of objectionable hangers-on to your aura, who will much obstruct you in
your efforts to see and hear correctly. That is the chief reason why
every one who is teaching Yoga on the right-hand path absolutely
forbids indulgence in meat and alcohol.
The second form of the dweller on the threshold is the thought forms of
our own past. Those forms, growing out of the evil of lives that lie
behind us, thought forms of wickedness of all kinds, those face us when
we first come into touch with the astral plane, really belonging to us,
but appearing as outside forms, as objects; and they try to scare back
their creator. You can only conquer them by sternly repudiating them:
“You are no longer mine; you belong to my past, and not to my present.
I will give you none of my life.” Thus you will gradually exhaust and
finally annihilate them. This is perhaps one of the most painful
difficulties that one has to face in treading the astral plane in
consciousness for the first time. Of course, where a person has in any
way been mixed up with objectionable thought forms of the stronger
kind, such as those brought about by practicing black magic, there this
particular form of the dweller will be much stronger and more
dangerous, and often desperate is the struggle between the neophyte and
these dwellers from his past backed up by the masters of the black
side.
Now we come to one of the most terrible forms of the dwellers on the
threshold. Suppose a case in which a man during the past has steadily
identified himself with the lower part of his nature and has gone
against the higher, paralysing himself, using higher powers for lower
purposes, degrading his mind to be the mere slave of his lower desires.
A curious change takes place in him. The life which belongs to the Ego
in him is taken up by the physical body, and assimilated with the lower
lives of which the body is composed. Instead of serving the purposes of
the Spirit, it is dragged away for tile purposes of the lower, and
becomes part of the animal life belonging to the lower bodies, so that
the Ego and his higher bodies are weakened, and the animal life of the
lower is strengthened. Now under those conditions, the Ego will
sometimes become so disgusted with his vehicles that when death
relieves him of the physical body he will cast the others quite aside.
And even sometimes during physical life he will leave the desecrated
temple. Now after death, in these cases, the man generally reincarnates
very quickly; for, having torn himself away from his astral and mental
bodies, he has no bodies with which to live in the astral and mental
worlds, and he must quickly form new ones and come again to rebirth
here. Under these conditions the old astral and mental bodies are not
disintegrated when the new mental and astral bodies are formed and born
into the world, and the affinity between the old and new, both having
had the same owner, the same tenant, asserts itself, and the highly
vitalised old astral and mental bodies will attach themselves to the
new astral and mental bodies, and become the most terrible form of the
dweller on the threshold.
These are the various forms which the dweller may assume, and all are
spoken of in books dealing with these particular subjects, though I do
not know that you will find anywhere in a single book a definite
classification like the above. In addition to these there are, of
course, the direct attacks of the Dark Brothers, taking up various
forms and aspects, and the most common form they will take is the form
of some virtue which is a little bit in excess in the yogi. The yogi is
not attacked through his vices, but through his virtues; for a virtue
in excess becomes a vice. It is the extremes which are ever the vices;
the golden mean is the virtue. And thus, virtues become tempters in the
difficult regions of the astral and mental worlds, and are utilised by
the Brothers of the Shadow in order to entrap the unwary.
I am not here speaking of the four ordinary ordeals of the astral
plane: the ordeals by earth, water, fire and air. Those are mere
trifles, hardly worth considering when speaking of these more serious
difficulties. Of course, you have to learn that you are entirely master
of astral matter, that earth cannot crush you, nor water drown you,
etc. Those are, so to speak, very easy lessons. Those who belong to a
Masonic body will recognise these ordeals as parts of the language they
are familiar with in their Masonic ritual.
There is one other danger also. You may injure yourself by
repercussion. If on the astral plane you are threatened with danger
which belongs to the physical, but are unwise enough to think it can
injure you, it will injure your physical body. You may get a wound, or
a bruise, and so on, out of astral experiences. I once made a fool of
myself in this way. I was in a ship going down and, as I was busy
there, I saw that the mast of the ship was going to fall and, in a
moment’s forgetfulness, thought: “That mast will fall on me” that
momentary thought had its result, for when I came back to the body in
the morning, I had a large physical bruise where the mast fell. That is
a frequent phenomenon until you have corrected the fault of the mind,
which thinks instinctively the things which it is accustomed to think
down here.
One protection you can make for yourself as you become more sensitive.
Be rigorously truthful in thought, in word, in deed. Every thought,
every desire, takes form in the higher world. If you are careless of
truth here, you are creating a whole host of terrifying and deluding
forms. Think truth, speak truth, live truth, and then you shall be free
from the illusions of the astral world.