We have often heard it said that thoughts are things, and there are many
among us who are persuaded of the truth of this statement. Yet very few
of us have any clear idea as to what kind of thing a thought is, and the
object of this little book is to help us to conceive this.
There are some serious difficulties in our way, for our conception of
space is limited to three dimensions, and when we attempt to make a
drawing we practically limit ourselves to two. In reality the
presentation even of ordinary three-dimensional objects is seriously
defective, for scarcely a line or angle in our drawing is accurately
shown. If a road crosses the picture, the part in the foreground must be
represented as enormously wider than that in the background, although in
reality the width is unchanged. If a house is to be drawn, the right
angles at its corners must be shown as acute or obtuse as the case may
be, but hardly ever as they actually are. In fact, we draw everything
not as it is but as it appears, and the effort of the artist is by a
skilful arrangement of lines upon a flat surface to convey to the eye an
impression which shall recall that made by a three-dimensional object.
It is possible to do this only because similar objects are already
familiar to those who look at the picture and accept the suggestion
which it conveys. A person who had never seen a tree could form but
little idea of one from even the most skilful painting. If to this
difficulty we add the other and far more serious one of a limitation of
consciousness, and suppose ourselves to be showing the picture to a
being who knew only two dimensions, we see how utterly impossible it
would be to convey to him any adequate impression of such a landscape as
we see. Precisely this difficulty in its most aggravated form stands in
our way, when we try to make a drawing of even a very simple
thought-form. The vast majority of those who look at the picture are
absolutely limited to the consciousness of three dimensions, and
furthermore, have not the slightest conception of that inner world to
which thought-forms belong, with all its splendid light and colour. All
that we can do at the best is to represent a section of the
thought-form; and those whose faculties enable them to see the original
cannot but be disappointed with any reproduction of it. Still, those who
are at present unable to see anything will gain at least a partial
comprehension, and however inadequate it may be it is at least better
than nothing.
All students know that what is called the aura of man is the outer part
of the cloud-like substance of his higher bodies, interpenetrating each
other, and extending beyond the confines of his physical body, the
smallest of all. They know also that two of these bodies, the mental and
desire bodies, are those chiefly concerned with the appearance of what
are called thought-forms. But in order that the matter may be made clear
for all, and not only for students already acquainted with theosophical
teachings, a recapitulation of the main facts will not be out of place.
Man, the Thinker, is clothed in a body composed of innumerable
combinations of the subtle matter of the mental plane, this body being
more or less refined in its constituents and organised more or less
fully for its functions, according to the stage of intellectual
development at which the man himself has arrived. The mental body is an
object of great beauty, the delicacy and rapid motion of its particles
giving it an aspect of living iridescent light, and this beauty becomes
an extraordinarily radiant and entrancing loveliness as the intellect
becomes more highly evolved and is employed chiefly on pure and sublime
topics. Every thought gives rise to a set of correlated vibrations in
the matter of this body, accompanied with a marvellous play of colour,
like that in the spray of a waterfall as the sunlight strikes it, raised
to the _n_th degree of colour and vivid delicacy. The body under this
impulse throws off a vibrating portion of itself, shaped by the nature
of the vibrations--as figures are made by sand on a disk vibrating to a
musical note--and this gathers from the surrounding atmosphere matter
like itself in fineness from the elemental essence of the mental world.
We have then a thought-form pure and simple, and it is a living entity
of intense activity animated by the one idea that generated it. If made
of the finer kinds of matter, it will be of great power and energy, and
may be used as a most potent agent when directed by a strong and steady
will. Into the details of such use we will enter later.
When the man's energy flows outwards towards external objects of desire,
or is occupied in passional and emotional activities, this energy works
in a less subtle order of matter than the mental, in that of the astral
world. What is called his desire-body is composed of this matter, and it
forms the most prominent part of the aura in the undeveloped man. Where
the man is of a gross type, the desire-body is of the denser matter of
the astral plane, and is dull in hue, browns and dirty greens and reds
playing a great part in it. Through this will flash various
characteristic colours, as his passions are excited. A man of a higher
type has his desire-body composed of the finer qualities of astral
matter, with the colours, rippling over and flashing through it, fine
and clear in hue. While less delicate and less radiant than the mental
body, it forms a beautiful object, and as selfishness is eliminated all
the duller and heavier shades disappear.
This desire (or astral) body gives rise to a second class of entities,
similar in their general constitution to the thought-forms already
described, but limited to the astral plane, and generated by the mind
under the dominion of the animal nature.
These are caused by the activity of the lower mind, throwing itself out
through the astral body--the activity of Kâma-Manas in theosophical
terminology, or the mind dominated by desire. Vibrations in the body of
desire, or astral body, are in this case set up, and under these this
body throws off a vibrating portion of itself, shaped, as in the
previous case, by the nature of the vibrations, and this attracts to
itself some of the appropriate elemental essence of the astral world.
Such a thought-form has for its body this elemental essence, and for its
animating soul the desire or passion which threw it forth; according to
the amount of mental energy combined with this desire or passion will
be the force of the thought-form. These, like those belonging to the
mental plane, are called artificial elementals, and they are by far the
most common, as few thoughts of ordinary men and women are untinged with
desire, passion, or emotion.