Thought Forms
Thought Forms
A thought form is an aggregate of matter drawn either from the mental or from the astral plane or even a combination of both. Its shape is determined by the clarity of the thought and its color by the quality of the thought. In other words, the clearer the thinking, the more precise will be its shape, and the higher and purer its quality, i.e., its motivation, the more vibrant and brilliant will be its color.
Thought forms are created by the soul to use them as vehicles to express itself on the 3 lower planes of manifestation. The soul is intelligence itself and therefore able to analyze, discriminate and divide within the realized synthesis (a conscious whole in service) which governs its activity. The soul is the mediator between the world of divine ideation and the world of forms. As a conscious unit in service for the divine purpose it is constantly aspiring toward that which is higher than itself and is conditioning that which is lower than itself, namely the personality. It is always in touch with the Universal Mind and its very existence can be known by its capacity and the way through which it conditions the personality. Through these conditioning factors of the soul, man’s life, his desires, his habits, his tendencies and his thoughts are gradually brought in line with the impulses from the soul.
The principle of manas, the mind, is an attribute of the soul. The soul communicates by sending out impulses. These impulses bring the mind stuff (chitta) into activity. By using its creative imagination, the soul on its own plane produces thought forms that embody divine principles, divine ideas and ideals. The function of such a though form, created by the soul on it sown plane, is 3-fold:
1. to respond to vibrations,
2. to provide a vehicle for an idea,
3. to carry out a specific purpose.
These thought forms are brought down to the astral plane via antahkarana where they then can be picked up by the personality. The personality, sensing these thought forms, now tries to interpret them and bringing them down to its own level via brain. By doing that, the personality now creates its own thought form, based on what was sensed before. But this new thought form of the personality is influenced by the personality’s own desire and ambition and therefore often grossly distorted and misinterpreted to fit its own purpose.
A perfect example of such a misinterpretation and distortion is the principle of love as it was practiced and taught by Christ himself. It took humanity a long time, almost two thousand years, to become consciously aware of this divine principle. It is only beginning now to penetrate into the consciousness of man and is still only a faint reflection of the love as Christ presented it and lived it. True love is motivated by pure reason in complete harmony with the divine will and divine purpose. In fact, the divine principle of love on the higher planes is PURE REASON. It is the divine principle of LOVE-PURE REASON which will become totally unfolded during this Solar System because this Solar System is governed by the Second Ray, the Ray of LOVE-WISDOM.
A divine principle works out in three stages during the evolutionary process of consciousness in man. For example, the principle of love will first be expressed by man as physical desire and will be totally self-centered. The second stage will be a soul expression when desire is transmuted into aspiration which is group-oriented. The third stage is an expression of spirit in which aspiration is transmuted into all-inclusive PURE REASON, the true expression of the divine principle of LOVE.
The majority of man is still entirely concerned with the first stage of the principle of love, namely physical desire – sex expressed by the personality. A few of the more advanced human beings are in the train of transmuting this sexual desire into aspiration which is an attribute of soul expression, constituting the second stage. The third stage is still in a very, very far distance.
Concerning this divine principle of love, brought down to the astral level by Christ, we know that it has been presented in myriads of thought forms on both planes, the astral and the mental, created by man on every rung of the ladder of spiritual evolution, the evolution of consciousness. In fact, the astral as well as the lower mental plane are crowded with thought forms and images created by man himself who has thus created the worlds of glamour and illusion. Many or even most of these thought forms and images are built unconsciously. The mind stuff is thrown into activity by soul impulses and the form-building faculty of the concrete mind begins to express the desires and ambitions of the personality through thought forms.
The matter of which these thought forms are built depends on which sub plane of the mental or astral plane the personality is focused and on the degree of sensitivity the personality is displaying. The higher the sensitivity, the higher will be the sub plane and the finer the matter used to build the thought forms, whether the personality is focused on the mental or astral plane, the polarization of a certain vehicle depends on the dominant ray at a given time.
In fact, it is man who fills the two planes with myriads of images and thought forms and creates large regions of glamour and illusions. These deceptive worlds, created by humanity, must also be dissipated by humanity. This can only be done after man has reached the stage of a soul-infused personality and is able to use the soul energy consciously. This potent soul energy is powerful enough to disperse the huge and deceptive clouds of glamour and illusion.
Thought forms of a higher quality, which are fashioned by the personality, after those coming from the soul’s own plane, and are used to inspire and guide humanity, are always containing a grain of truth which is grasped by the personality. This grain of truth will become the motivating power, regardless to what degree the sensed divine idea or principle might be distorted and/or misinterpreted by the limited view of the personality. According to the point in its evolution of consciousness, the personality, influenced by emotion and/or intellect, will view this grain of truth as the whole truth and thus this grain of truth becomes inevitably distorted and is misinterpreted. Only the soul on its own plane can view the divine principle or idea as a synthetic whole because the soul is consciously in contact with the Universal Mind or the Mind of God. So this grain of truth is only a fragment of the whole principle or idea, that fragment which could be comprehended by the limited faculties of the mind of the personality. It therefore can only be a temporary truth, that is to say, it is a fragment or one point of the whole idea that will bring some hidden fact and/or hidden purpose into the light and thus aide man to widen his horizon and to expand his consciousness.
After man has reached the higher level of consciousness and begins to understand the phenomena of the level, the fragment of truth that caused the expansion of consciousness might have lost its validity because of the now extended view of the personality sees a larger portion of the idea sensed before and realizes that those grains can only present the truth of the universal principle and idea when viewed as a synthetic WHOLE. As a single grain it is only a partial and temporary truth, used to aid man in the process of the evolution of his consciousness through constant expansion.
Although the latent seed or germ of consciousness is present all the time from the first moment of physical manifestation, it has to be awakened and developed. In order for this latent germ to become awake, grow and develop it needs an adequate channel to express itself and totally unfold. Such a channel of expression is the personality with its various vehicles.
The word evolution is often misleading to those who search for the deeper meaning of life because they immediately think of the evolution of matter and form as it is stated and proven by scientists. Undoubtedly the evolution of matter and form is the prerequisite for the evolution of consciousness to provide a refined channel for the soul to express itself and entirely unfold the seed or germ of consciousness, but modern man has individualized long ago and is now in the second stage of development. During this second stage man is now becoming slowly aware of his basically dual nature which will eventually lead him to the recognition and conscious awareness of his soul and the intangible worlds surrounding him.
This second stage in the evolutionary development of humanity is called initiation. Initiation means entering into a new and larger world through expansion of consciousness and the subsequent comprehension of the energy and phenomena of this new and wider dimensional world. The evolutionary process which underlies the whole divine scheme of creation to which everything manifested, including man, is subject, is very slow. With regard to man, it entails many series of incarnations and constant experiences in matter and its vibrational value. Although evolution of consciousness is inevitable, man can choose to accelerate the extremely slow general process by following a prescribed narrow path instead of following the wide road of the masses. Both roads will lead man to the threshold of liberation, the only difference is the time element and the additional unselfish service for the sake of mankind in full co-operation with the divine plan, known to the Hierarchy, the 4th Spiritual Hierarchy for Humanity, of which the man following such a narrow path will eventually become an initiated member long before humanity as a whole reaches that stage.
