22. Thought Forms
Take a seat in any café or pub and observe the occupied tables around you. Tune in to the conversations. Listen to what people say to each other. Go into families, as well as your inner circle, during periods of rest when work is no longer pressing.
With dismay you will find the hollowness of everything that people talk about when they cannot talk about their usual occupations. You will feel the emptiness in their thoughts, the stifling narrowness of their range of interests, and the frightening superficiality to the point of revulsion, as soon as you seriously engage with keen observation. The few exceptions you may encounter, those whose words in the leisure time of daily life are filled with a longing for spiritual ennoblement, will seem to you like solitary strangers amidst the bustle of a fairground.
It is precisely during these so-called leisure hours that you can most easily recognize a person’s true inner nature, once the external support and the special field of their occupational activities have been pushed aside. What then remains is the true person. Observe them and listen to their words as an impartial bystander. Very will soon you stop your observations because they become unbearable to you. A deep sadness will come over you when you realize how many people are not much different from animals. Not quite so dull, with a higher capacity for thought, but essentially the same. As if with blinkers, they go through earthly life, seeing only the purely earthly before them. They care for food, drink, more or less accumulation of earthly values, strive for physical pleasures, and consider all thinking about things they cannot see to be a waste of time, which in their opinion could be better spent on “recreation”.
That earthly life, with all its pleasures and joys, only gains its true meaning when one becomes somewhat familiar with the Ethereal World connected to it, understands the reciprocation that connect the two, and thus no longer feels like being at the mercy of coincidences, this they can neither understand nor accept. They reject such thoughts, mistakenly believing that if an ethereal world truly exists, dealing with it would bring them nothing but inconvenience or fear.
Foreign to them is the thought that only through striving for higher ideals does earthly life gain real worth; that such striving sends a radiant warmth pulsing even through all earthly joys and pleasures – not pushing them aside; rather, as a reward and the most beautiful reciprocation for those who yearn sincerely for purer and higher things, a glowing affirmation of life itself, often swelling into jubilant enthusiasm for all that exists and all that presents itself.
Fools who pass this by! Cowards, to whom the glorious joys of courageous striving will forever be denied.
Rejoice that everything around you is alive, extending far out into seemingly immeasurable realms! Nothing is dead, nothing is empty, as it may appear. Everything works and weaves in the Law of Reciprocal Action, in the midst of which you stand as humans, reshaping and directing the threads anew, as starting points and as end goals. Powerful rulers you are, each forming your own kingdom, which either lifts you up or buries you beneath. Wake up! Use the power that has been given to you with full awareness of the mighty events around you, so that you do not, as you do now, in stupidity, stubbornness or even laziness, only produce harmful monstrosities that overgrow what is healthy and good and finally cause such creators themselves to totter and topple.
Even the nearest ethereal environment of all humans can contribute greatly to lifting them up or pushing them down. This is the strange world of thought-forms, the vitality of which is only a small part of the vast machinery of Creation as a whole. Their threads, however, go up into the Coarse Matter World and further into the Ethereal Matter, and downward too, into the realm of darkness. Like a vast network of veins or nerve strands, everything is interwoven and intertwined, unbreakable, inseparable! Pay attention to this!
Those favoured and sometimes allowed to perceive parts of it here and there, but much of it can only be guessed at. Thus, some things have already come to the human knowledge. They sought to build further on this knowledge to obtain a complete picture. Yet, not without leaving gaps and mistakes. Many researchers in the field of ethereality took leaps that caused them to lose the logicality. Others filled in the gaps with fantastical constructs that introduced distortions and misrepresentations, shaking the faith in the whole process. The result was justified ridicule, which, supported by the illogicality of the so-called spiritual researchers, had to win the day.
If we are to speak of these things, then first and foremost a line must be drawn through the entire Work of Creation, something observers can grasp and climb by. Many processes that are incomprehensible to them have their starting point already in their immediate vicinity. A glimpse into the world of thought-forms would help them understand many things that previously seemed inexplicable. Even those administering justice would find, in the assessment of certain cases, the actual perpetrators were entirely different from those accused by it and would thus hold them primarily accountable. The key lies in the connection of the individual person with the world of thought-forms, the realm closest to humanity on earth. It is indeed a blessing to many that they wear the blindfold that prevents them from seeing beyond what their physical eyes can perceive. The nature of current thought-forms would terrify them. Paralyzing horror would seize many who now live naively or even recklessly without scruples. For, every thought conceived, like everything in the Ethereal World, immediately takes on a form that embodies and represents the actual meaning of the thought.
The Living Creative Power that flows through humans converges ethereal substance through the focused will of a completed thought, binding it into a form that expresses the will of that thought. Thus, something real, something living, which now attracts, or allows itself to be attracted by, like things in this world of thought-forms by the Law of the Attraction of Homogenous Species, depending on its own strength. Just as a thought is felt more or less intensely when it arises, so too its ethereal form carries corresponding life within itself. This world of thoughts is densely populated. Entire collection points have been formed through mutual attraction, from which the influence of their collective power emanate upon humans.
It is directed first and foremost on those who are inclined towards a similar nature and who thus harbour corresponding tendencies within them. These tendencies are thereby strengthened in their corresponding will and stimulated to continually generate similar forms, which enter the world of thought-forms with a similar effect.
But even others who do not possess these qualities can also be affected by them and gradually drawn to them, when these collection points receive an enormous strength through a constant influx of new energy. Only those who possess stronger qualities of a different kind are protected from this, rendering a connection with what is dissimilar impossible.
Unfortunately, in the present time, it is only hatred, envy, lust, greed, and all other evils which, through their greater number of adherents, have the strongest collection points of force in the world of thought-forms. Less so purity and love. This is why evil is spreading with frightening rapidity. In addition, these power-collection points of the thought-forms in turn receive connections with the similar spheres of darkness. From there, they are further incited to ever greater efficacy, enabling them to wreak formal devastation among humanity.
Blessed, therefore, shall be the hour when the thoughts of pure Divine Love shall again take a greater place among humanity, so that similarly strong collection points can develop in the world of thought-forms and receive influxes from the luminous spheres. This will not only strengthen those striving for the good, but also slowly purify darker natures.
There is, however, another activity to be observed in the Ethereal World: Thought-forms are driven by the producer’s wishes towards certain individuals to whom they can cling. If these thought-forms are pure and noble, they beautify the individual and reinforce the protection of purity around them, invigorating their ascent if their inner feelings are in harmony. But impure thoughts must defile the person to whom they pertain, just as a physical body becomes soiled by excrement and mud. If a person so defiled in this way is not firmly anchored inwardly with collection points of light currents, it can happen that their intuition becomes confused over time by these assaults of impure thoughts. This is possible because the adhesive impure thought-forms are able to attract similar ones and, thus strengthened, gradually poison the thoughts of the person being encompassed.
Of course, the main responsibility falls back on the person, who generated the impure thoughts and sent them out to the individual concerned, through their wishes or desires, as the thought-forms also remain connected with the producers and have a corresponding effect on them.
Therefore, all true seekers must be called out to again and again: “Pay attention to the purity of your thoughts!” Use all your strength for this. You cannot imagine what you can create with it. How powerful you can be as fighters with it. Pioneers for the Light and thus for the liberation of your fellow humans from the strangling growths of the poisonous fields in the world of thought forms.
There is something mighty in it! You can act as powerful warriors, pioneers for the Light, and liberators of your fellow beings from the strangling growths of the poisonous fields in the world of thought-forms.
If someone were to have their blindfold removed so that they could see into the nearest ethereal environment, they would initially see a wild confusion that could frighten them. But only until they recognize the power that rests within them, with which, like a sharp sword, they could clear path for themselves. Effortlessly, simply through their will. They would see hundreds of thousands of different thought-forms, with all different variations, all possible and often impossible shapes for earthly eyes. But each one sharply defined, unmistakably expressing what the true will at its creation had been. Unvarnished, stripped of all pretence and disguise.
But despite of the myriad of species, with time, one soon learns to recognize at a glance the nature of each thought-form, that is, knowing where it belongs despite its different shape. Just as one can distinguish a human from an animal by their face, or even recognize the different human races by certain facial features, so do the thought-forms have quite definite expressions that clearly indicate whether the form belongs to hatred, to envy, to lust, or some other fundamental category. Each of these basic categories has its own stamp, which is impressed upon the individual thought-forms as the basis of the qualities they embody, regardless of outer shape these forms have assumed through the generating thought. Thus, despite the most bizarre distortion of a form into the most hideous deformities, the basic type to which it belongs is immediately recognizable. With this understanding, the seemingly wild confusion ceases to appear as such.
Instead, one sees the immutable order and strictness of the fundamental laws that permeate all Creation, which, when known and adhered to, grant immeasurable protection and bring great blessings. But those who oppose these Laws will naturally be attacked and, if they are not thrown down and crushed, will at least experience sharp abrasions that will reshape them through pain and bitter experience until they fit into the flow of these Laws and no longer pose an obstacle. Only then can they be carried upwards.
These thought-forms send their effects not only back to humanity, but they reach further; for the majority of nature beings also belong to the same Ethereal World of the immediate surroundings. Once one has come to terms with the fact that everything lives and therefore everything has form, whether visible on earth or not, it is not be a difficult step for them to imagine that the forces of nature are also formed. These include the gnomes, elves, sylphs, nymphs, and so on; beings of earth, air, fire, and water, which many have already seen – albeit more in former times than now. They are influenced by the thought-forms, which in turn bring about much good or evil. And so it goes on. One thing interlocks with another, like the gears of a machine crafted to the highest perfection.
Amidst of all this activity stand humans! Equipped with the means to determine the type of the fabric that is to emerge from the workings of Creation, adjusting the gears in various directions. Be conscious of this immeasurable responsibility; for everything takes place only within the circle of your earthly limits. Beyond that, according to the wise arrangement of the Creator, nothing happens beyond this; it all returns only to you. You can poison here and beyond the earth through your wishing, thoughts and will, or elevate them in a purifying way towards the Light. Therefore, become rulers of the destiny that leads upwards, through the purity of your thoughts!
