What We Can Do By Thought
Part 3
from "The Hidden Side of Things"
Chapter XIX: By What We Think The Realm Of Thought
by CW Leadbeater
The wise man realises that truth is a many-sided thing, not commonly held in its entirely by any one man, or by any one set of men; he knows that there is room for diversity of opinion upon almost any conceivable subject, and that therefore a man whose point of view is opposite to his own may nevertheless have something of reason and truth in his belief. He knows that most of the subjects over which men argue are not in the least worth the trouble of discussion, and that those who speak most loudly and most confidently about them are usually those who know least. The student of occultism will therefore decline to waste his time in argument; if he is asked for information he is willing to give it, but not to waste his time and strength in unprofitable wrangling.
Worry Does not Benefit Constructive Thought
Another painfully common method of wasting strength is that worry of which I have already written as so serious an obstacle in the path of peace. Many men are constantly forecasting evil for themselves and for those whom they love-- troubling themselves with the fear of death and of what comes after it, with the fear of financial ruin or loss of social position. A vast amount of strength is frittered away along these unprofitable and unpleasant lines; but all such foolishness is swept aside for the man who realises that the world is governed by a law of absolute justice, that progress towards the highest is the Divine Will for him, that he cannot escape from that progress, that whatever comes in his way and whatever happens to him is meant to help him along that line, and that he himself is the only person who can delay that advance. He no longer troubles and fears about himself and about others; he simply goes on and does the duty that comes nearest in the best way that he can, confident that if he does that, all will be well for him. He knows that worry never yet helped any one, nor has it ever been of the slightest use, but that it has been responsible for an immense amount of evil and waste of force; and the wise man declines to spend his strength in ill-directed emotion.
Control Yields Better Thoughts
If he happens at the moment to be thinking of nothing in particular, and is consequently in a passive condition, it at once penetrates his mental and astral bodies and is lost in them, just as a comet might fall into the sun. It tends to arouse in them vibrations similar to its own-- which means that the man will begin to think upon that particular subject, whatever it may be. If he is in a condition of mental activity, and any part of that activity is of the same nature as the arriving thought-form, it enters his mental body through that part of it which is expressing the sympathetic thought, and adds its strength to that thought. If the recipient' s mind is so preoccupied that the thought-form cannot find entrance, it will hover about him until he is sufficiently disengaged to give it an opportunity to gain its object.
Merge with Buddha by Allison L. Williams Hill
So we see that if it is necessary for his own evolution that man should keep mind and emotion under control, and not foolishly waste his force, it is still more necessary from another point of view, because it is only by such care that he can enable himself to be of use to his fellow men, that he can avoid doing harm to them and can learn how to do good. If, for example, he lets himself feel angry, he naturally produces a grave effect upon himself, because he sets up an evil habit and makes it more difficult to resist the evil impulse next time it assails him. But he also acts seriously upon others around him, for inevitably the vibrations which radiate from him must affect them also.
Nature by Allison L. Williams Hill
If he is making an effort to control his irritability, so perhaps are they, and his action will help or hinder them, even though he is not in the least thinking of them. Every time that he allows himself to send out a wave of anger, that tends to arouse a similar vibration in the mind or astral body of another-- to arouse it if it has not previously existed and to intensify it if it is already present; and thus he makes his brother' s work of self-development harder for him, and places a heavier burden upon his shoulders. On the other hand, if he controls and represses the wave of anger, he radiates instead, calming and soothing influences which are distinctly helpful to all those near him who are engaged in the same struggle.
Consequence of Thought-Good or Evil
Few people realise their responsibilities in this matter. It is bad enough surely that any evil thought of ours should communicate itself to the minds of any persons within range of us who may happen to be idle and unoccupied. But the truth is much worse than that. In every man there lie germs or possibilities of evil which have come over from a previous life, but have not as yet been called into activity in this incarnation. If we send out an evil or impure thought, it may easily happen that it arouses into activity one of these germs, and so through our lack of self-control there comes into that man' s life an evil of which otherwise he might have got rid. We revive in him the dormant tendency which was in the act of dying out, and thereby we delay him in his upward progress.
So long as that germ is dormant the quality is dying out, but when it is aroused again it may increase to any extent. It is like breaking a hole through a dyke and letting out the water. In fact, a man who sends out an evil thought cannot tell for what amount of evil he may make himself responsible; for a man who becomes wicked, in consequence of that thought, may in turn affect other people, and those yet others in turn; so it is actually true that because of one evil thought generations yet to come may suffer. Happily all this is true of good thoughts as well as of evil, and the man who understands this fact uses wisely the power which it gives him, and may have an influence for good which is beyond all calculation.
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