Section 2

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the psychic plane. So again thought-forms of a simi- lar character are attracted to each other, making a form of great energy and intensity, active in this astral world.
Thought-forms are connected with their progenitor by what — for want of a better phrase — we must call a magnetic tie ; they re-act upon him, producing an impression which leads to their reproduction, and in the case mentioned above, where a thought-form is re-inforced by repetition, a very definite habit of thought may be set up, a mould may be formed into which thought will readily flow — helpful if it be of a very lofty character, as a noble ideal, but for the most part cramping and a hindrance to mental growth.
We may pause for a moment on this formation of habit, as it shows in miniature, in a very helpful way, the working of Karma. Let us suppose we could take ready-made a mind, with no past activity behind it — an impossible thing, of course, but the supposition will bring out the special point needed. Such a mind might be imagined to work with per- fect freedom and spontaneity, and to produce a thought-form; it proceeds to repeat this many times, until a habit of thought is made, a definite habit, so that the mind will unconsciously slip into that thought, its energies will flow into it without any consciously selective action of the will. Let us fur- ther suppose that the mind comes to disapprove this habit of thought, and finds it a clog on its progress;
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originally due to the spontaneous action of the mind, and facilitating the outpouring of mental energy by providing for it a ready-made channel, it has now be- come a limitation : but if it is to be gotten rid of, it can only be by the renewed spontaneous action of the mind, directed to the exhaustion and final destruction of this living fetter. Here we have a little ideal kar- mic cycle, rapidly run through ; the free mind makes a habit, and is then obliged to work within that limi- tation; but it retains its freedom within the limi- tation and can work against it from within till it wears it out. Of course, we never find ourselves in- itially free, for we come into the world encumbered with these fetters of our own past making; but the process as regards each separate fetter runs the above round — the mind forges it, wears it, and while wear- ing it can file it through.
Thought-forms may also be directed by their pro- genitor towards particular persons, who may be helped or injured by them, according to the nature of the ensouling Elemental; it is no mere poetic fancy that good wishes, prayers, and loving thoughts are of value to those to whom they are sent; they form a protective host encircling the beloved, and ward off many an evil influence and danger.
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 from the astral plane around him, of the classes to which his own ensouled thought-forms belong. He
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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 a man's thoughts are pure and noble, he will attract around him hosts of beneficent entities, and may sometimes wonder whence comes to him the power for achievement that seems — and truly seems — to be so much beyond his own. Similarly a man of foul and base thoughts attracts to himself hosts of maleficent entities, and by this added energy for evil commits crimes that astonish him in the retrospect. ''Some devil must have tempted me," he will cry; and truly these demoniac forces, called to him by his own evil, add strength to it from without. The Elementals en- souling thought-forms, whether these be good or bad, link themselves to the Elementals in the man's desire- body and to those ensouling his own thought-forms, and thus work in him, though coming from without. But for this they must find entities of their own kind with which to link themselves, else can they exercise no power. And further, Elementals in an opposite kind of thought-form will repel them, and the good man will drive back by his very atmosphere, his aura, all that is foul and cruel. It surrounds him as a pro- tective wall and keeps evil away from him.
There is another form of elemental activity, that brings about widespread results, and cannot therefore be excluded from this preliminary survey of the forces that go to make up Karma. Like those just dealt with,
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this is included in the statement that these thought- forms people the current which re-acts upon any sensi- tive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. Toi some extent it must affect almost everyone, though the more sensitive the organization the greater the effect. Elementals have a tendency to be attracted to- wards others of a similar kind — aggregating together in classes, being, in a sense, gregarious on their own account — and when a man sends out a thought-form it not only keeps up a magnetic link with him, but is drawn towards other thought-forms of a similar type, and these congregating together on the astral plane form a good or evil force, as the case may be, embodied in a kind of collective entity. To these ag- gregations of similar thought-forms are due the char- acteristics, often strongly marked, of family, local and national opinion ; they form a kind of astral atmos- phere through which everything is seen, and which colors that to which the gaze is directed, and they re- act on the desire bodies of the persons included in the group concerned, setting up in them responsive vibra- tions. Such family, local or national karmic surrouna- \ngs largely modify the individual 's activity, and limit to a very great extent his power of expressing the capacities he may possess. Suppose an idea should be presented to him, he can only see it through this at- mosphere that surrounds him, which must color it and may seriously distort. Here, then, are Karmic limi-
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tations of a far-reaching kind, that will need further consideration.
The influence of these congregated Elementals is not confined to that which they exercise over men through their desire-bodies. When this collective en- tity, as I have called it, is made up of thought-forms of a destructive type, the Elementals ensouling these act as a disruptive energy and they often work much havoc on the physical plane. A vortex of disintegrat- ing energies, they are the fruitful sources of "acci- dents," of natural convulsions, of storms, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods. These karmic results will also need some further consideration.
The Making of Karma in Principle.
Having thus realized the relation between man and the elemental kingdom, and the moulding energies of the mind — verily, creative energies, in that they call into being these living forms that have been described — we are in a position to at least partially understand something of the generation and working out of Karma during a single life-period. A "life-period," I say, rather than a "life," because a life means too little if it be used in the ordinary sense of a single incarnation, and it means too much if it be used for the whole life, made up of many stages in the physi- cal body, and of many stages without it. By life- period I mean a little cycle of human existence, with its physical, astral and devachanic experiences, in-
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eluding its return to the threshold of the physical — the four distinct stages through wliich the Soul passes, in order to complete its cycle. These stages are re- trodden over and over again during the journey of the Eternal Pilgrim through our present humanity, and however much the experiences in each such period may vary, both as to quantity and quality, the period will include these four stages for the average human being, and none others.
It is important to realize that the residence outside the physical body is far more prolonged than the residence in it ; and the workings of karmic law will be but poorly understood unless the activity of the Soul in the non-physical condition be studied. Let us recall the words of a Master, pointing out that the life out of the body is the real one.
The Veddiitins, acknowledging two kinds of con- scious existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual spheres must be thought an actuality, because it is there that lives our endless, never-changing, immortal I, the Sutrdtma, . . . . This is why we call the postMmious life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the personality itself, only imaginary.^
During earth-life, the activity of the Soul is most directly manifested in the creation of the thought- * Lucifer, October, 1892, art. ''Life and Death."
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forms already described. But in order to follow out witli any approach to exactitude the workings of Karma, we must now analyze further the term "thought-form," and add some considerations neces- sarily omitted in the general conception first pre- sented. The Soul, working as mind, creates a Mental Image, the primary '' thought-form "f ; let us take the term i\Iental Image to mean exclusively this immedi- ate creation of the mind, and henceforth restrict this term to this initial stage of what is generally and broadly spoken of as a thought-form. This Mental Image remains attached to its creator, part of the content of his consciousness : it is a living vibrating form of subtle matter, the Word thought but not yet spoken, conceived but not yet made flesh. Let the reader concentrate his mind for a few moments on this ]\Iental Image, and obtain a distinct notion of it, isolated from all else, apart from all the results it is going to produce on other planes than its own. It forms, as just said, part of the content of the con- sciousness of its creator, part of his inalienable prop- erty ; it cannot be separated from him ; he carries it with liim during his earthly life, carries it with him through the gateway of death, carries it with him in the regions beyond death ; and if, during his upward traveling through those regions, he himself passes into air too rarefied for it to endure, he leaves behind the denser matter built into it, carrying on the men- tal matrix, the essential form; on his return to the t Ante, p. 12 et seq.
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grosser region the matter of that plane is again built into the mental matrix, and the appropriate denser form is reproduced. This Mental Image may remain sleeping, as it were, for long periods, but it may be re-awakened and revivified ; every fresh impulse — from its creator, from its progeny (dealt with below), from entities of the same type as its progeny — in- creases its life-energy, and modifies its form.
It evolves, as we shall see, according to definite laws, and the aggregation of these Mental Images makes the character; the outer mirrors the inner, and as cells aggregate into tissues of the body and are often much modified in the process, so do these Mental Images aggregate into the characteristics of the mind, and often undergo much modification. The study of the working out of Karma will throw much light on these changes. Many materials may enter into the making of these Mental Images by the crea- tive powers of the Soul; it may be stimulated into activity by desire (Kama), and may shape the Image according to the promptings of passion or of appetite ; it may be Self-motived to a noble Ideal, and mould the Image accordingly; it may be led by purely in- tellectual concepts, and form the Image thereafter. But lofty or base, intellectual or passional, serviceable or mischievous, divine or bestial, it is always in man a Mental Image, the product of the creative Soul, and on its existence individual Karma depends. With- out this Mental Image there can be no individual Karma linking life-period to life-period; the manasic
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quality must be present to afford the permanent ele- ment in which individual Karma can inhere. The non-presence of Manas in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms has as its corollary the non-genera- tion of individual Karma, stretching through death to rebirth.
Let us now consider the primary thought-form in relation to the secondary thought-form, the thought- form pure and simple in relation to the ensouled thought-form, the Mental Image in relation to the Astro-mental Image, or the thought-form in the lower astral plane. How is this produced and what is it? To use the symbol employed above, it is produced by the Word thought becoming the Word outspoken ; the Soul breathes out the thought, and the sound makes form in astral matter; as the Ideas in the Universal Mind become the manifested universe when they are outbreathed, so do these Mental Images in the human mind, when out-breathed, become the manifested uni- verse of their creator. He peoples his current in space ivith a world of his own. The vibrations of the Mental Image set up similar vibrations in the denser astral matter, and these cause the secondary thought- form, what I have called the Astro-mental Image ; the Mental Image itself remains, as has been already said, in the consciousness of its creator, but its vibrations passing outside that consciousness reproduce its form in the denser matter of the lower astral plane. This is the form tliat affords the casing for a portion of ele- mental energy, specializing it for the time, that the
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form persists, since the manasic element in the form gives a touch of individuality to that which ensouls it. [How marvellous and how illuminating are the correspondences in Nature !] This is the active entity, spoken of in the Master's description, and it is this Astro-mental Image that ranges over the astral plane, keeping up with its progenitor* the magnetic tie spok- en of, re-acting on its parent, the Mental Image, and acting also on others. The life-period of an Astro- mental Image may be long or short, according to cir- cumstances, and its perishing does not affect the per- sistance of its parent ; any fresh impulse given to the latter will cause it to generate afresh its astral coun- terpart as each repetition of a word produces a new form.
The vibrations of the Mental Image do not only pass downwards to the lower astral plane, but they pass upwards also into the spiritual plane above itf And as the vibrations cause a denser form on the lovN^er plane, so do they generate a far subtler form — dare I call it form? it is no form to us — on the higher, in the kasha, the world-stuff emanated from the Logos Itself. The kasha is the storehouse of all forms, the treasure-house wherein are poured — from the infinite wealth of the Universal Mind — the rich stores of all the Ideas that are to be bodied forth in a given Kosmos; thereinto also enter the vibrations * Ante, p. 13, and see also diagram, p. 9.
t These words downwards and upwards are very misleading; the i)lanes of course interpenetrate each other.
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from the Kosmos — from all the thoughts of all Intelli- gences, from all the desires of all kamic entities, from all the actions performed on every plane by all forms. All these make their respective impressions, the to us formless, but to lofty spiritual Intelligences the formed, images of all happenings, and these Akashic Images — as we will henceforth call them — abide for evermore, and are the true Karmic Records, the Book of the Lipika,t that may be read by any who possess the "opened eye of Dangma."| It is the reflection of these Akashic Images that may be thrown upon the screen of astral matter by the action of the trained attention — as a picture may be thrown on a screen from a slide in a magic-lantren — so that a scene from the past may be reproduced in ^11 its living reality, correct in every detail of its far-off happening; for in the Akashic Records it exists, imprinted there once for all, and a fleeting living picture of any page of these Records can be made at pleasure, dramatized on the astral plane, and lived in by the trained Seer. If this imperfect description be followed by the read- er, he will be able to form for himself some faint idea of Karma in its aspect as Cause. In the Akasha will be pictured the Mental Image created by a Soul, in- separable from it ; then the Astro-mental Image pro- duced by it, the active ensouled creature, ranging the astral plane and producing innumerable effects, all accurately pictured in connection with it, and, there-
t Secret Doctrine, i., 157-159.
X Ibid., Stanza i. of the Bool'^ of Dsyan, and see p. 77,
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fore, traceable to it and through it to its parent, each such thread — spun as it were out of its own substance by the Astro-mental Image, as a spider spins its web being recognizable by its own shade of color; and however many such threads may be woven into an effect, each thread is distinguishable and is traceable to its original forth-giver, the Soul that generated the Mental Image. Thus, for our clumsy earth-bound intelligences, in miserably inadequate language, we may figure forth the way in which individual re- sponsibility is seen at a glance by the great Lords of Karma, the administrators of karmic Law; the full responsibility of the Soul for the Mental Image it creates, and the partial responsibility for its far- reaching effects, greater or less as each effect has other karmic threads entering into its causation. Thus also may we understand why motive plays a part so predominate in the working out of Karma, and why actions are so relatively subordinate in their genera- tive energy ; why Karma works out on each plane ac- cording to its constitutents, and yet links the planes together by the continuity of its threads.