THE

WORD

GHOSTS THAT NEVER WERE MEN

(Continued)

GHOSTS that never were men is the designation here used—when it is not otherwise stated—for some of the elemental ghosts within the sphere of earth, which belong to three lower groups of fire, air, water, and earth elemental ghosts, named the causal, portal, and formal groups, or to an upper angelic group of these four classes, and which ghosts can take on a form resembling the human in whole or as to some features.

The nature of the ghosts that never were men will be understood if man distinguishes in himself his physical body from his astral body, and from his life, and from his breath.

Each elemental contains a part of the nature of each of the other three elements, but the nature of its own element is predominant. Elementals have the ability to become visible or invisible, and audible or inaudible, and to give evidence of their presence by some odor. When any one or several of the senses are attracted, then there is evidence that an elemental wishes to receive attention or to communicate.

Elementals live in their own worlds; these are to them as real as is man’s world to him. There is a great twofold division among the elementals. The first division acts naturally and according to the ideal plan of the sphere. This kind is not contaminated by man. It is in the unmanifested side of the sphere of earth. The division line runs through all the four elemental classes of fire, air, water, and earth, so that parts of all the four classes are in this first division.

The first kind, the undefiled and natural, do not seek contact with nor do they make themselves known to man. This kind represents the separate parts of man—fire, air, water,—before he was fashioned and had evolved into a human being with mind. This first kind of the four classes carry out the law; they are servants of the law. They are sometimes spoken of as angels or ministers of God. They appear to know more than any human being. They seem to have great wisdom, and could, were it possible, communicate to man that about laws and the nature of the earth and its transformations, which would be revelations beyond the conception he has formed of marvels. Yet these pure beings have not mind. Their wisdom, their intelligence—this is the secret—is not theirs. It is the Intelligence of the sphere. They respond to it and they are in accord with it, because there is absent in them the distraction and independence of the individualized mind. These are not the rebellious angels; they are the good angels of religions and traditions. They will become men sometime; then they will cease to be good angels. These, the first kind, are the elementals in the unmanifested side of the sphere of earth.

The other division contains three groups, and they are all in the manifested side of the sphere of earth.

The first division, those which are the unmanifested ghosts, will be here called the upper elementals; the three groups of the second division, in the manifested side of the sphere of earth, will be called the lower elementals. The lower elementals carry out the practical regulation and government of the natural physical world. The government of the natural physical world follows an ideal plan. That plan is outlined—but not conceived—by the upper elementals. The plan and directions are given them by an intelligence, the Intelligence of the sphere of earth. The upper elementals follow the plan and hand it on to the three groups of lower elementals for carrying it out in the natural physical world. But the plan is not followed exactly in its execution. The plan is often departed from, because of the prerogative of man to use his own mind, which interferes and acts independently of any plan given by the law. (See below under Relations to Man).

All natural phenomena are brought about by the lower elementals of three groups, each group having in it elementals of the four classes: fire, air, water, and earth. These phenomena comprise everything from the breaking of a watch crystal through a fall, the germination and growth of herbs and human bodies, to the breaking up and destruction of a continent and of the physical world itself. All natural phenomena are produced by what to man is known as the action of fire and air and water and earth; but what to him is known as fire, air, water, and earth are merely the outer semblances of the unknown fire, air, water, and earth.

The government of the upper elementals, those in the unmanifested part of the earth, is the ideal government for earth beings. The administration and the arrangement of matters in that part of the sphere is just and harmonious. It is the ideal government that mankind will choose when mankind has sufficiently matured. What the government is will not be known until man approaches his maturity and will choose it intelligently. Should the government be known before man is ready, then there is always a danger present that some self-seeking politicians and business men will, through a religious system, attempt to apply in physical affairs to their own advantage, forms of a government which can rightly obtain only where the religious and physical phases of life work in accord, and without one attempting to dominate another. The life of the upper elementals is to worship and to serve. There is no selfishness in them. There is nothing to be selfish about, as they have no individual minds. These ghosts belong to hierarchies which administer the laws carried out in the physical world. These ghosts bring about the destiny of nations and individuals, according to law. All is done not with the idea of business, as men understand business and government, nor for the benefit of the hierarchies, but it is done in a pious spirit, and because the Intelligence of the sphere wills it, as law. Worship and service is the key note of the life of the upper elementals. What their world is to them cannot be easily understood by men. If men were to see into that world they could not understand how the elementals feel about this world. To man, in his present state, their world is as intangible as his own thought. To them it is the only real and permanent world. To them, our physical world is in constant flux.

When they appear to men, as they do appear at certain times, they are seen as fiery serpents, as fiery wheels, as pillars of light, or in the human form, with or without wings. The reason for this appearance to man as he sees them, is that these elemental beings must be seen in a manner in which he is capable of seeing them, and yet these ghosts must preserve in form that which is indicative of their hierarchy. They take on from the atmosphere in which man sees them what is necessary for their appearance. Each of the upper elementals is surrounded by an aura. The aura is not usually seen by man when the elemental appears. Elementals of non-human appearance are not seen as often as those in a human form. When they have appeared in human form, they have been called angels or divine messengers, or in terms of other tongues meaning the same. The wings with which they come are not wings, but a form their aura takes. Their life of bliss without choice, would be too insipid to man with mind, not alone because he has mind but because he is not able to appreciate their state. These ghosts are great beings of power and splendor, and at the same time mindless beings through which the Intelligence of the sphere acts.

The lower elementals or nature ghosts are of three groups, each group being of the four classes: fire, air, water, and earth. These ghosts are all in the manifested part of the sphere of earth. The three groups will here be called: the first group causal elementals, belonging to creation and bringing all things into existence; the second group, portal elementals, stirring up things in nature and keeping nature in a state of constant circulation; and the third group, formal elementals, which hold things together as they are. By these descriptions some of their activities are shown.

The causal elementals are the immediate causes of the germination in plants and conception in animals and humans. For example, the fire elemental here is the active spirit of the new being; it is the vital spark in the nucleolus in the cell. The destruction of physical bodies as well as their coming into existence is due to the action of the elementals of this first group. There is a great variety among these causal elementals, considered from what is to man a moral point of view. The extremes are more pronounced in this group than in either of the other two groups. The highest of these causal elementals encourage a man to virtue; the lowest impel him to vices. They are the causes of all fires and of all combustion without fire. They bring about chemical changes. They are the fevers, and also the healing of fevers. They are the lightning flash, the heat in animals and plants, the glow of the worm and firefly, the sparkle in sunlight and the rust and corrosion of metals, the rotting of wood, the breaking up of stone into dust, and the decay and death of all bodies, as well as the bringing of the matter from these into new forms.

The causal elementals bring a thing into being, the portal keep up the circulation of the elements of which it is composed, and the third, the formal, hold the thing in form as an individual being, be it a chromosome or a whale. It is due to these three groups of elementals, each of the four classes of fire, air, water, and earth, that nature is as it is.

There never will be any true physical sciences until the existence of these ghosts is recognized and their presence and action in all physical processes is studied. All processes of nature are the working of these ghosts. Without them nothing can come into physical being; nor can any physical thing be maintained or changed without them.

These three are essential to all physical things. If it were not for the causal and portal ghosts, the earth would remain as it is; no being could move; all beings would stop, motionless; no leaf could move, grow, decay; no man could speak, move, or die; no clouds, no winds, no water, could move; nothing would change. If there were only the causal and portal there would be a constantly rolling, changing, whirling, dissolving mass, and nothing else in place of this physical world.

The mass of the element should be distinguished from the beings or ghosts of the element, similarly as a distinction is made between our earth and the physical beings on it. As the physical earth enters into the constitution of the different beings of the earth, so does each element enter into the constitution of the elementals as beings in it, distinct from the element. However, the god or over-elemental of each of the four elements is at once the elemental as well as the whole element.

These three groups of causal, portal, and formal elementals, are governed by the upper elementals in the unmanifested side of the sphere of earth. They know the laws which they are to obey. They know naturally what to do. They make a natural response. No long course of instruction is necessary. There is a difference in development and qualification, and, accordingly, the less advanced of the lower elementals are directed by those of their own kind which are more progressed.

To a man not clairvoyant, the shapes of all in the three lower groups, when he sees them as elementals, seem human. Some of these elementals have parts human and parts not human; but the more advanced of each kind are of excellent and god-like appearance, like the fabled heroes of the ancients, and have the beauty and loveliness and strength ascribed to the gods and goddesses. Greater than the differences in looks and behavior of human beings, are the varieties of the forms and actions of the elementals.

What has been stated will show something of how the physical world comes into existence and is maintained and changed. All is done by three lower groups of the elementals of the fire, the air, the water, and the earth, within the sphere of earth. It is too difficult to tell of worlds vaster and filled with beings more numerous than the physical world, and which are of states of matter not like any perceived through the human senses. Enough has been set forth to enable one who so desires, to understand what the elemental ghosts are, and to perceive the meaning of the statements here of the relations of elemental ghosts and men.

Not only is inorganic and organic nature controlled by means of elementals, but the destiny of nations and of men is brought to fruition by elementals. The currents in the air, storms and breezes, earthquakes and conflagrations, mountain torrents and rippling brooks and devastating floods, the mighty currents in the ocean and the very ocean itself, and the rain that feeds the thirsty earth, are elementals. The mere valor and number of men, the perfection of organization and destructive weapons, have never decided a war. Elementals, great and little, under the Intelligence of the sphere acting by the rule of Karma which man himself had laid down for himself, have won the battles and destroyed or built up civilizations.

(To be continued)