_Selfish Greed._--Fig. 28 gives us an example of selfish greed--a far
lower type than Fig. 21. It will be noted that here there is nothing
even so lofty as ambition, and it is also evident from the tinge of
muddy green that the person from whom this unpleasant thought is
projecting is quite ready to employ deceit in order to obtain her
desire. While the ambition of Fig. 21 was general in its nature, the
craving expressed in Fig. 28 is for a particular object towards which it
is reaching out; for it will be understood that this thought-form, like
that in Fig. 13, remains attached to the astral body, which must be
supposed to be on the left of the picture. Claw-like forms of this
nature are very frequently to be seen converging upon a woman who wears
a new dress or bonnet, or some specially attractive article of
jewellery. The thought-form may vary in colour according to the precise
amount of envy or jealousy which is mingled with the lust for
possession, but an approximation to the shape indicated in our
illustration will be found in all cases. Not infrequently people
gathered in front of a shop-window may be seen thus protruding astral
cravings through the glass.
[Illustration: FIG. 28. SELFISH GREED]
_Greed for Drink._--In Fig. 29 we have another variant of the same
passion, perhaps at an even more degraded and animal level. This
specimen was taken from the astral body of a man just as he entered at
the door of a drinking-shop; the expectation of and the keen desire for
the liquor which he was about to absorb showed itself in the projection
in front of him of this very unpleasant appearance. Once more the hooked
protrusions show the craving, while the colour and the coarse mottled
texture show the low and sensual nature of the appetite. Sexual desires
frequently show themselves in an exactly similar manner. Men who give
birth to forms such as this are as yet but little removed from the
animal; as they rise in the scale of evolution the place of this form
will gradually be taken by something resembling that shown in Fig. 13,
and very slowly, as development advances, that in turn will pass through
the stages indicated in Figs. 9 and 8, until at last all selfishness is
cast out, and the desire to have has been transmuted into the desire to
give, and we arrive at the splendid results shown in Figs. 11 and 10.
[Illustration: FIG. 29. GREED FOR DRINK]