Theos-Talk Archives (January 1997 Message tl00872)

If anyone knows the source of the WQ Judge quote at the end of this 
article, please let me know.  
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                        THE THOUGHT WORLD

                         by H.W. Graves

     The welfare of Humanity turns upon the evolution of the
Thinking Principle.  It is here that the springs of action lie. 
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."  All that I am is the
result of what I have thought, it is made up of my thought.  Hidden
behind the veil of physical matter is the subtle machinery of
thought--just as real, vital, as scientifically arranged as the
machinery of the living body. 
     And the activity of every human brain is as closely related to
it as the physical body is related to the surrounding air in which
it lives and moves.  In this thought-world the real inner man has
his proper  home, and uses his physical vesture merely as an
instrument to contact the physical world in which so many problems
have to be solved.
     The aspect which every man's environment wears to himself
depends directly upon the quality of the thoughts which he himself
evolves.  
     And as man is part and parcel of Nature, embosomed therein at
every moment of his life, it follows that his thinking acts
directly and momently upon Nature as surely as it does upon
himself.  Modern science has demonstrated nothing more clearly than
the fact that the atoms of matter are forever bound together by a
thousand unseverable ties, reciprocally active, and maintaining a
marvelous equilibrium throughout the manifested universe.  Not less
deeply united is humanity, and the breath of its inner and mental
life is this living, all-pervading sea or breath of thought, to
which, consciously or not, every human being constantly
contributes, for evil or for good.  Precisely how thought acts and
reacts incessantly on man and on Nature, science has never clearly
shown.  But Eastern Philosophy long ago solved the problem of mind,
and today throws a bright light on the question of human
responsibility.

     "Every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner
world, and becomes an active entity by associating itself,
coalescing as we might term it, with an elemental--that is to say,
with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms.
     It survives as an active intelligence--a creature of the
mind's begetting--for a longer or shorter period proportionate with
the original intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. 
Thus, a good thought is perpetuated as an active, beneficent power,
an evil one as a maleficent demon.  And so man is continually
peopling his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with
the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and passions; a
current which reacts upon any sensitive or nervous organization
which comes in contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic
intensity...
     The adept evolves these shapes consciously; other men throw
them off unconsciously."  [THE OCCULT WORLD, pp. 131-32; THE
MAHATMA LETTERS, Chronological ed. p. 472.]

     The mind, working on its own plane, generates images, thought-
forms.  Imagination is literally the creative faculty.  Responsive
to our thoughts are the Elementals which ensoul the forms so
created.  An Eastern Sage speaking of the part played by sound and
color in the psychic world says:  

     "How could you make yourself understood, command in fact,
those semi-intelligent Forces, whose means of communicating with us
are not through spoken words, but through sounds and colors, in
correlation between the vibrations of the two?  For sound, light
and color are the main factors in forming those grades of
intelligences, those beings of whose very existence you have no
conception, nor *are you allowed* to believe in them -- Atheists
and Christians, Materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing
forward their respective arguments against such a belief -- science
objecting stronger than either of these to such a `degrading
superstition'." [THE OCCULT WORLD, pp. 147-48; THE MAHATMA LETTERS,
C.E., p. 47]

     Elementals are addressed by colors, and color-words are as
intelligible to them as spoken words are to men.
     The hue of the color depends on the nature of the motive
inspiring the generator of the thought-form.  If the motive be
pure, loving, beneficent in its character, the color produced will
summon to the thought-form an Elemental, which will take on the
characteristics impressed on the form by the motive, and act along
the line thus traced.  This Elemental enters into the thought-form,
playing to it the part of a soul, and thus an independent entity is
made in the astral world, an entity of a beneficent character.
     If the motive, however, be impure, revengeful, maleficent in
its character, the color produced will summon to the thought-form
an Elemental which will equally take on the characteristics
impressed on the form by the motive, and act along the line thus
traced.  In this case also the Elemental enters into the thought-
form, playing to it the part of a soul, and thus making an
independent entity in the astral world, an entity of a maleficent
character.
     For example, an angry thought will cause a flash of red, which
is a summons to the Elementals, which sweep in the direction of the
summoner, and one of them enters into the thought-form, endowing it
with an independent, destructive activity.
     Men are continually talking in this color-language quite
unconsciously, and thus calling round them these swarms of
Elementals, who take up their abodes in the various thought-forms
provided.  Thus it is that a man peoples "his current in space with
a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies,
desires, impulses and passions."
     Angels and demons of our own creating throng round us on every
side, makers of weal and woe to others, and to ourselves.
     The life-period of these thought-forms depends on the energy
imparted to them by their human progenitor.  Their life may be
continually reinforced by repetition; and a thought which is
brooded over, acquires great stability of form.  So again thought-
forms of a similar character are attracted to and mutually
strengthen each other, making a form of great energy and intensity.
     Not only does a man generate and send forth his own thought-
forms, but he also serves as a magnet to draw towards himself the
thought-forms of others.
     He may thus attract to himself large reinforcements of energy
from outside, and it lies within himself whether these forces that
he draws into his own being from the external world shall be of a
good or of an evil kind.
     If one's thoughts are pure and noble, he will attract around
him hosts of beneficent entities, and may sometimes wonder whence
comes to him power that seems so much beyond his own.
     Similarly a man of foul and base thoughts attracts to himself
hosts of maleficent entities, and this added energy for evil
commits crimes that astonish him in the retrospect.
     William Q. Judge wrote:

     "Can we, then, be too careful to guard the ground of the mind,
to keep close watch over our thoughts?  These thoughts are dynamic. 
Each one as it leaves the mind has a force of its own,
proportionate to the intensity with which it was propelled.
     As the force or work done, of a moving body, is proportionate
to the square of its velocity, so we may say that the force of
thoughts is to be measured by the square or quadrupled power of
their spirituality, so greatly do these finer forces increase by
activity.  The spiritual force, being impersonal, fluidic, not
bound to any constricting center, acts with unimaginable swiftness.
     A thought, on its departure from the mind, is said to
associate itself with an elemental; it is attracted wherever there
is a similar vibration, or, let us say, a suitable soil, just as
the winged thistle-seed floats off and sows itself in this spot and
not in that, in the soil of its natural selection.  Thus the man of
virtue, by admitting a material or sensual thought into his mind,
even though he expel it, sends it forth to swell the evil impulses
of the man of vice from whom he imagines himself separated by a
wide gulf, and to whom he may have just given a fresh impulse to
sin.  Many men are like sponges, porous and bibulous, ready to suck
up every element of the order prepared by their nature.  We all
have more or less of this quality:  we attract what we love, and we
may derive a greater strength from the vitality of thoughts infused
from without than from those self-reproduced within us at a time
when our nervous vitality is exhausted.  It is a solemn thought,
this, of our responsibility for the impulse of another.  We live in
one another, and our widely different deeds have often a common
source.  The occultist cannot go far upon his way without realizing
to what a great extent he is `his brother's keeper.'  Our
affinities are ourselves, in whatever ground they may live and
ripen."

     Earnestness, said Buddha, is the path of immortality,
thoughtlessness the path of death.


[UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, Vol. XIII, Mar. 1899, pp. 660-62.]