LETTER VIII
THE WORLD
OF MIND
March 24, 1917.
I wish
that more people of sane, sound mind would experiment in telepathic
communication. I know there is any amount of uncoordinated and half-serious
playing with phenomena; but with scientific accuracy of observation and
scientific precision in recording data, not only the body of sensible
literature on these subjects would be increased, but the habits of careful
observation and precision in reporting supernormal facts would be developed
in the experimentalists.
You who write for me, continue to make and record experiments.
You are almost too cautious, but most persons are not cautious enough.
Explain the necessary conditions of
passivity and activity between those working together. Though the best
results are often obtained by you alone, yet the testimony of one person is
not so convincing as the testimony of several who have witnessed and taken
part in the same phenomena. But you are right in hesitating to take on the
psychic conditions of insincere and merely curious people who would like to
work with you.
The great difficulty with most persons is that they cannot make
themselves sufficiently negative for the time being. When the
experiments are over they can and should become equally positive. They can
shift from one pole to the other, and they must do so if they wish to
preserve their physical health and balance.
But bear in mind that the influences from
this side are good and bad, even as the influences in the world are; and if
you feel that any “presence” is hostile, at once banish it and become
positive. After any approach by an undesirable influence, you should not for
some hours let yourself become negative. Go for a walk, or attack some
difficult piece of work, or read a book that demands mental activity in
order to grasp its meaning.
You live in a sea of mind, as well as in a psychic sea; they
interpenetrate, and they interpenetrate with the physical; but in working
through and with them, keep them as distinct as possible.
I work more and more in the mental world, and less and less in
the astral; but the majority of my readers will not know exactly what I mean
by that statement. There is a greater difference between the astral and the
mental plane than there is between the astral and the physical.
Do not despise the astral. Its dynamics are
of colossal import. But cultivate more and more the purely mental, because
the astral in all of you is developed beyond the mental.
Those who learn that they can create in mind need to develop a
sense of responsibility. They are too reckless in demonstrating their power.
Remember that as you go up in the planes of being you get into subtler and
subtler regions, and strength increases with the degree of subtlety—not the
reverse, as you would naturally suppose.
One of the greatest temptations of the
mental world is that of the creation of falsehoods. By stating that which is
not true, you project into the realm of mind a picture that has a certain
permanency. It may deceive others, but in time it will deceive you, its
creator. Those who speak falsely cannot perceive truth. Those who create
false pictures in the mental world will be deceived by those very pictures;
they will reap the effects of the causes they have set up.
Have you not known people who were always being deceived by
their “friends”? They are generally those who have left deceiving pictures
behind themselves. There are people who cannot discriminate between the
false and the true. They deceive and are deceived. Those who deceive are
always deceived, whatever their supposed intellect may be.
And I would say to those to whom I now
suggest experiments with clairvoyance and telepathy, that if they have
planted the seeds of falsehood they will reap a harvest of deceptive
appearances. Test yourself in that way, you who believe yourselves to be
sincere. You may learn something of value regarding your own karma. (Yes, I
will use Theosophic or Indian terms when they express my meaning. Those who
re-write the Oriental philosophies in western terms can pass for original
only with the ignorant.)
What the new race needs most of all is truth. Modern science is
preparing the world for the fearless facing of truth. The man who toils over
a microscope that he may observe and record some fact in nature, is
more the servant of God than the man who with sanctimonious face tells his
fellow creatures what they must not do; for his work at least is
positive in its results.
There are too many “thou shalt nots”; too
few “I shalls.”
The new race will develop a wide tolerance. It will discourage
undesirable things more by ignoring them than by attacking them. By
attacking a thing we give it power.
Work more and more in the world of mind. The results in the
physical will be immense.
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