To ----.
There is a sentence in your letter not explained by J. Niemand, which,
however, needs explaining, for it is the outgrowth of an erroneous idea
in you. You say: "Can I help these ignorant elementals with mental
instruction? I tried it, but not successfully."
In all those cases where it is caused by the elementals you _cannot_.
Elementals are not ignorant. They know just as little and just as
much as you do. Most generally more. Do you not know that they are
reflectors? They merely mirror to you either your own mind, or that
mental strata caused by the age, the race, and the nation you may be
in. Their action is invariably automatic and unconscious. They care not
for what is called by you "mental instruction." They hear you not.
Do you know how they hear, or what language they understand? Not human
speech; nor ordinary human thought clothed in mental speech. That is a
dead letter to them altogether.
They can only be communicated with through correlations of colours and
sounds. But while you address yourself to them, those thoughts assume
life from elementals rushing in and attaching themselves to those
thoughts.
Do not, then, try to speak to them too much, because did you make
them know they might demand of you some boon or privilege, or become
attached to you, since in order to make them understand they must
_know_ you, and a photographic plate forgets not.
Fear them not, nor recoil in horror nor repulsion. The time of trial
must be fulfilled. Job had to wait his period until all his troubles
and diseases passed away. _Before_ that time he could do naught.
But we are not to idly sit and repine; we are to bear these trials,
meanwhile drawing new and good elementals so as to have--in western
phrase--a capital on which to draw when the time of trial has fully
passed away.
On all other points Niemand has well explained. Read both together.
Lastly; know this law, written on the walls of the temple of learning.
"Having received, freely give; having once devoted your life in
thought, to the great stream of energy in which elementals and souls
alike are carried--and which causes the pulse beat of our hearts--you
can never claim it back again. Seek, then, that mental devotion which
strains to give. For in the law it is written that we must give away
all or we lose it: as you need mental help, so do others who are
wandering in darkness seeking for light."