Let us turn now to the second effect of thought, the creation of a
definite form. All students of the occult are acquainted with the idea
of the elemental essence, that strange half-intelligent life which
surrounds us in all directions, vivifying the matter of the mental and
astral planes. This matter thus animated responds very readily to the
influence of human thought, and every impulse sent out, either from the
mental body or from the astral body of man, immediately clothes itself
in a temporary vehicle of this vitalised matter. Such a thought or
impulse becomes for the time a kind of living creature, the
thought-force being the soul, and the vivified matter the body. Instead
of using the somewhat clumsy paraphrase, "astral or mental matter
ensouled by the monadic essence at the stage of one of the elemental
kingdoms," theosophical writers often, for brevity's sake, call this
quickened matter simply elemental essence; and sometimes they speak of
the thought-form as "an elemental." There may be infinite variety in the
colour and shape of such elementals or thought-forms, for each thought
draws round it the matter which is appropriate for its expression, and
sets that matter into vibration in harmony with its own; so that the
character of the thought decides its colour, and the study of its
variations and combinations is an exceedingly interesting one.
This thought-form may not inaptly be compared to a Leyden jar, the
coating of living essence being symbolised by the jar, and the thought
energy by the charge of electricity. If the man's thought or feeling is
directly connected with someone else, the resultant thought-form moves
towards that person and discharges itself upon his astral and mental
bodies. If the man's thought is about himself, or is based upon a
personal feeling, as the vast majority of thoughts are, it hovers round
its creator and is always ready to react upon him whenever he is for a
moment in a passive condition. For example, a man who yields himself to
thoughts of impurity may forget all about them while he is engaged in
the daily routine of his business, even though the resultant forms are
hanging round him in a heavy cloud, because his attention is otherwise
directed and his astral body is therefore not impressible by any other
rate of vibration than its own. When, however, the marked vibration
slackens and the man rests after his labours and leaves his mind blank
as regards definite thought, he is very likely to feel the vibration of
impurity stealing insidiously upon him. If the consciousness of the man
be to any extent awakened, he may perceive this and cry out that he is
being tempted by the devil; yet the truth is that the temptation is from
without only in appearance, since it is nothing but the natural reaction
upon him of his own thought-forms. Each man travels through space
enclosed within a cage of his own building, surrounded by a mass of the
forms created by his habitual thoughts. Through this medium he looks out
upon the world, and naturally he sees everything tinged with its
predominant colours, and all rates of vibration which reach him from
without are more or less modified by its rate. Thus until the man learns
complete control of thought and feeling, he sees nothing as it really
is, since all his observations must be made through this medium, which
distorts and colours everything like badly-made glass.
If the thought-form be neither definitely personal nor specially aimed
at someone else, it simply floats detached in the atmosphere, all the
time radiating vibrations similar to those originally sent forth by its
creator. If it does not come into contact with any other mental body,
this radiation gradually exhausts its store of energy, and in that case
the form falls to pieces; but if it succeeds in awakening sympathetic
vibration in any mental body near at hand, an attraction is set up, and
the thought-form is usually absorbed by that mental body. Thus we see
that the influence of the thought-form is by no means so far-reaching as
that of the original vibration; but in so far as it acts, it acts with
much greater precision. What it produces in the mind-body which it
influences is not merely a thought of an order similar to that which
gave it birth; it is actually the same thought. The radiation may affect
thousands and stir up in them thoughts on the same level as the
original, and yet it may happen that no one of them will be identical
with that original; the thought-form can affect only very few, but in
those few cases it will reproduce exactly the initiatory idea.
The fact of the creation by vibrations of a distinct form, geometrical
or other, is already familiar to every student of acoustics, and
"Chladni's" figures are continually reproduced in every physical
laboratory.
[Illustration: FIG. 1. CHLADNI'S SOUND PLATE]
[Illustration: FIG. 2. FORMS PRODUCED IN SOUND]
For the lay reader the following brief description may be useful. A
Chladni's sound plate (fig. 1) is made of brass or plate-glass. Grains
of fine sand or spores are scattered over the surface, and the edge of
the plate is bowed. The sand is thrown up into the air by the vibration
of the plate, and re-falling on the plate is arranged in regular lines
(fig. 2). By touching the edge of the plate at different points when it
is bowed, different notes, and hence varying forms, are obtained (fig.
3). If the figures here given are compared with those obtained from the
human voice, many likenesses will be observed. For these latter, the
'voice-forms' so admirably studied and pictured by Mrs Watts Hughes,[1]
bearing witness to the same fact, should be consulted, and her work on
the subject should be in the hands of every student. But few perhaps
have realised that the shapes pictured are due to the interplay of the
vibrations that create them, and that a machine exists by means of which
two or more simultaneous motions can be imparted to a pendulum, and that
by attaching a fine drawing-pen to a lever connected with the pendulum
its action may be exactly traced. Substitute for the swing of the
pendulum the vibrations set up in the mental or astral body, and we have
clearly before us the _modus operandi_ of the building of forms by
vibrations.[2]
[Illustration: FIG. 3. FORMS PRODUCED IN SOUND]
[Footnote 1: _The Eidophone Voice Figures._ Margaret Watts Hughes.]
[Footnote 2: Mr Joseph Gould, Stratford House, Nottingham, supplies the
twin-elliptic pendulum by which these wonderful figures may be
produced.]
The following description is taken from a most interesting essay
entitled _Vibration Figures_, by F. Bligh Bond, F.R.I.B.A., who has
drawn a number of remarkable figures by the use of pendulums. The
pendulum is suspended on knife edges of hardened steel, and is free to
swing only at right angles to the knife-edge suspension. Four such
pendulums may be coupled in pairs, swinging at right angles to each
other, by threads connecting the shafts of each pair of pendulums with
the ends of a light but rigid lath, from the centre of which run other
threads; these threads carry the united movements of each pair of
pendulums to a light square of wood, suspended by a spring, and bearing
a pen. The pen is thus controlled by the combined movement of the four
pendulums, and this movement is registered on a drawing board by the
pen. There is no limit, theoretically, to the number of pendulums that
can be combined in this manner. The movements are rectilinear, but two
rectilinear vibrations of equal amplitude acting at right angles to each
other generate a circle if they alternate precisely, an ellipse if the
alternations are less regular or the amplitudes unequal. A cyclic
vibration may also be obtained from a pendulum free to swing in a rotary
path. In these ways a most wonderful series of drawings have been
obtained, and the similarity of these to some of the thought-forms is
remarkable; they suffice to demonstrate how readily vibrations may be
transformed into figures. Thus compare fig. 4 with fig. 12, the mother's
prayer; or fig. 5 with fig. 10; or fig. 6 with fig. 25, the serpent-like
darting forms. Fig. 7 is added as an illustration of the complexity
attainable. It seems to us a most marvellous thing that some of the
drawings, made apparently at random by the use of this machine, should
exactly correspond to higher types of thought-forms created in
meditation. We are sure that a wealth of significance lies behind this
fact, though it will need much further investigation before we can say
certainly all that it means. But it must surely imply this much--that,
if two forces on the physical plane bearing a certain ratio one to the
other can draw a form which exactly corresponds to that produced on the
mental plane by a complex thought, we may infer that that thought sets
in motion on its own plane two forces which are in the same ratio one to
the other. What these forces are and how they work remains to be seen;
but if we are ever able to solve this problem, it is likely that it
will open to us a new and exceedingly valuable field of knowledge.
[Illustration: FIGS. 4-7. FORMS PRODUCED BY PENDULUMS]