THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER IV

OPERATION OF THE LAW OF THOUGHT

Section 2

Mind. Thinking. A thought is a being. The atmospheres of the Triune Self. How thoughts are generated.

Thoughts are generated and must be balanced through the action of mind and desire concerning objects of nature. By mind is meant that which uses the Conscious Light of an Intelligence loaned to its Triune Self. The general belief is that there is one mind,—no other is spoken of. Actually there are three minds that are available to the human, that is, three channels along which that Light flows. There is the body-mind, which operates through the senses concerning all things pertaining to nature. Then there is the feeling-mind which is concerned with sentiments and feelings; and there is the desire-mind which has to do with action and with desires. The subject of which a person thinks indicates which one of the three minds he is using; thus, when one thinks along the line of feeling, he is using the feeling-mind, controlled, however, by the body-mind and interpreted in terms of the senses. Besides these there are four minds that are used by the reason and the rightness of the thinker, and by the I-ness and the selfness of the knower of the Triune Self, but these four minds are not available to the doer.

Thinking is the steady holding of the Conscious Light within on the subject of the thinking. Because the functions of the knower, the thinker and the doer are to think, the I-ness of the knower thinks as identity and the selfness thinks as knowledge, the rightness of the thinker thinks as law and the reason thinks as justice; the feeling of the doer should think as beauty and the desire should think as power. But because of the reduced and imperfect condition of the doer-in-the-body, the feeling of the doer in the human thinks from feeling and the desire thinks from desire. And feeling-and-desire are both compelled by the body-mind and the senses to think of themselves as the senses and as sensation. So that the feeling of the doer-in-the-body thinks with the feeling-mind subject to the body-mind, and the desire thinks with the desire-mind subject to the body-mind, and both are made to think in terms of the senses.

Thoughts on subjects in the physical world are of four classes. They are sexual, elemental and emotional thoughts, all of which are stimulated by sensations, that is, elementals, nature units, coming from outside the human; and intellectual thoughts which may come from without or from within, but are always stimulated by sensations. The thoughts that are started from without or start from within are caused by the action of nature upon the breath-form, through the four senses and their systems, the representatives of nature. Thoughts of subjects in the light, life and form worlds are conceived of by men only as they are able to apply them to physical things. There can be thinking about the Triune Self, but thoughts are always concerned with nature and are the result of thinking with attachment to objects of nature. Therefore thinking which creates thoughts holds the human being to nature. That is the reason why freedom of the doer-in-the-body and immortality of the body can be attained only by the thinking which does not create thoughts or destiny, that is, thinking which is not attached to objects.

Thoughts on subjects in the physical world are those which have filled the heads and hearts of men. This kind of thoughts includes religions and even the metaphysics of religions, such as speculations about the Trinity and the nature of God. It includes politics, government, customs, literature, art; in short, everything that there is on the earth. In this book chiefly sexual, elemental, emotional and intellectual thoughts are dealt with, because they have made men what they are, and will for some time to come make the world and the men and the creatures in it and bring on the events which are usually ascribed to God, destiny or chance.

Thinking of time, of space, of mathematics or of any subjects in the life world or the light world of the earth sphere is not particularly dealt with here. Such thinking need have no direct physical expression and is not exteriorized, unless a thought is created that relates to the physical plane. The body will have to be cleansed, its centers brought to life and its channels opened, before thoughts of the life and light worlds can be had. Most men and women are merely doers whose feeling-and-desire are ruled by sensations and who refuse to be ruled by the thinker and knower parts of the Triune Self. They have few, if any, ideals. So thoughts of a sexual, elemental and emotional nature hold the stage, together with a few intellectual thoughts which are entertained to be the servants of the three other kinds.

As to the nature and properties of thoughts there is nothing on the visible plane to which a thought can be compared. This makes it hard to describe the nature and properties of a thought, even though all physical things are exteriorized parts of thoughts.

A thought is a being. It has a system, though only a rudimentary one. The system is made up of Light of the Intelligence, which represents some of the faculties of the Intelligence; of projections from the doer, thinker and knower; and of units from the four elements of nature. It is made up of and clothed in all the grades of nature-matter in varying proportions. It has in it matter of the four states of physical matter drawn through the four senses and their systems in the body; it has nature-matter of the form, life and light worlds, drawn from them in the same way through the breath; and it has intelligent-matter from the Triune Self itself, principally feeling-and-desire, and matter conscious in the degree called Light of the Intelligence.

A thought has no size in the physical sense but it is vast as compared to the physical acts and objects into which it is later precipitated. The power of a thought is enormous and superior to all the successive physical acts, objects and events that body forth its energy. A thought often endures for a time much greater than the whole life of the man who thought it. A thought summons and directs units as elemental beings which have to build out the design of the thought. The power of a thought when compared to the visible effect produced by it is of an enormous, towering quality; and indeed it must be so, because one of the parents is the Intelligence, which by its Light lends to the thought some of its creative power, while the other parent is the doer of the Triune Self, and behind the thought stands the whole force of nature.

The power of a thought is expressed in the acts, objects and events in which it is made manifest. Great or small, they are shadows on the physical plane, projections of projections by the thought.

In such a vast, powerful and lasting being are potentially a great many physical acts, objects and events, which gradually appear out of it, like all that comes out of a seed. There are many more thoughts generated than there are men, animals, plants and things in this world. Some thoughts are insignificant, like that of plucking an apple, or of saying “How are you?” habitually. Some thoughts are important, such as the definite and far reaching thought of William Penn, the philanthropist, or of Camillo Cavour, the statesman. It is therefore difficult to cover the whole field accurately and completely. The statements here made must of necessity be general, incomplete and subject to explanations and exceptions.

Thoughts are either conceived, gestated and born, or are former thoughts of the same or another person, which are received, entertained and issued again. Usually a thought conceived and born is entertained and issued many times before it is exteriorized.

There is a nature organization as well as the constitution of a Triune Self for thinking and the consequent production and exteriorizations of thoughts. The nature organization in the body comprises the four senses, their systems and organs and the physical atmosphere. The constitution of the Triune Self comprises the portions of its doer, its thinker and knower and their atmospheres and breaths.

The nature organization in the body is arranged to receive the impulse, pull and pressure of nature which come through the openings and nerve centers in the body. Through these the four senses are reached and compelled. The senses act on their respective four systems through the sympathetic or involuntary nervous system. All of this is the natural and involuntary activity of the body.

A Triune Self has three parts: the psychic part or doer, the mental part or thinker, and the noetic part or knower. A portion of the doer is in the kidneys and adrenals, the thinker contacts the heart and lungs, and the knower contacts the pituitary body and the pineal body. These three parts are active parts of the psychic, mental and noetic atmospheres, and are only partially connected with these organs.

There are four atmospheres: the physical atmosphere of the body, and the psychic, mental, and noetic atmospheres of the Triune Self, (Fig. V-B). The atmospheres of the Triune Self relate to the form, life, and light worlds of the earth sphere, and to the psychic, mental, and noetic atmospheres of the human, which in turn relate to the form, life, and light planes of the physical world. The physical atmosphere consists of units of the solid-solid, fluid-solid, airy-solid, and radiant-solid substates of matter, (Fig. III). These are kept in circulation in and through the physical body by the physical breath, which is the active side of the breath-form. With each inhalation there is an exhalation of matter through the openings of the body, including the pores of the skin. This physical atmosphere is usually invisible, though the sense of sight can be adjusted to perceive some of its radiations. It is not like a cloud of dust, but has a definite boundary in which are zones and a whirling through them. The physical atmosphere does not continue after death.

The psychic, mental and noetic atmospheres of the Triune Self are intelligent-matter, not nature-matter, (Fig. V-B). The psychic atmosphere surrounds and pervades the physical atmosphere of the body during life, and is spherical with a definite boundary; it corresponds to the matter of the form world and is conscious in the degree of feeling-and-desire. Throughout the psychic atmosphere of the Triune Self is a definite circulation and surging, carried on through the blood and the physical atmosphere. Surrounding and passing through the psychic atmosphere is the mental atmosphere, which is spherical and with a definite boundary. It corresponds to the matter of the life world and is conscious in the degree of rightness-and-reason. That portion which is in the psychic atmosphere contracts and expands and in it is diffused Light of the Intelligence, like sunlight in a heavy fog. This Light comes from the noetic atmosphere which surrounds and is present throughout the mental atmosphere. The noetic atmosphere corresponds to the matter of the light world, and is conscious in the degree of I-ness-and-selfness or identity and knowledge. This atmosphere is clear; it is a colorless sphere of shadowless Light, which comes from its source directly into the noetic atmosphere.

Circulations of units are carried on through the four atmospheres by the breaths. The physical breath connects the three atmospheres of the Triune Self with the corresponding three atmospheres of the human, (Fig. V-B), and, through the physical atmosphere, with the four systems, and it further connects all these atmospheres with their respective planes and worlds. So the physical breath connects the constitution of the Triune Self, by way of the atmospheres of the human, with the nature organization in the physical body. By means of the physical breath there is a current between the human and the corresponding planes and worlds and the fire, air, water, and earth elementals in them.

Now, concerning the generation of a thought. In or through the physical atmosphere there is a constant pressing by elementals of the different worlds, to reach the organs and centers of the physical body so as to affect the feeling of the doer and get sensation through it. They throng this way because they seek sensation, for they themselves have no feeling, no sensation through feeling, except as they can get it through the feeling of an animal or a human. They are repelled or attracted by the character, good or bad, of the physical atmosphere. Elementals of the physical world are attracted or kept away particularly by the condition of the body, enfeebled, exhausted and unhealthy, or strong and vigorous. The elementals of the different worlds meeting and thronging around the physical atmosphere enter and leave it with the physical breathing, which takes them in and out through the openings and nerve centers of the body. With the elementals throng the thoughts of other persons. Elementals and thoughts of a sexual nature enter through the sex opening.

Elementals and thoughts of another kind having other aspects of sensation and excitement, enter through the navel and the pores. These are here called simply elemental, because they are especially connected with romping or playing rather than with lust. Such elementals and thoughts are those of hunger, thirst, running to see fires or accidents, doing such things as looking out of or into a window without having an object, splashing in water, dancing, making a noise, running, joining in a crowd, inquisitiveness without reason, mischief, traveling with swift movement, doing what gives a thrill or makes fun. Through the navel enter also elementals and thoughts of anger, fear, malice, hatred and drunkenness.

Emotional elementals and thoughts enter through the openings in the breasts. They are of ordinary religious exercises, of social activities at dances, card games, races and banquets, of oratory, of music, of sympathy, of suffering, of tolerance, of pathos, of kindliness, of fanaticism and of prejudice. In addition, elementals and thoughts may enter through the eye, ear, mouth or nose, which four organs of sense are common to all four classes of elementals.

Intellectual thoughts may enter from without or come from within. If they come from without they enter through the openings in the head; if they come from within they arise in the head. Of this order are intellectual thoughts concerned with sense perceptions, all thoughts of business, law, architecture, theology, chemistry and other branches of the natural and social sciences and speculations of a philosophical kind.

Elementals and thoughts of these various kinds enter through their appropriate gates at the proper swing of the breath. Once in the body, to which they can gain access only through their likeness to the mental, psychic and physical atmospheres surrounding it, they stir the astral body, which is a body of radiant-radiant, airy-radiant, fluid-radiant and solid-radiant units of physical matter, which are shaped into form by the much finer matter of the breath-form. The astral body puts the elementals or the thoughts in touch with the sensory side of the involuntary nervous system which connects with the opening or nerve center. The astral body also connects the elementals or the thoughts with the breath-form, while they are still in the nerve center. The breath-form is throughout the involuntary nervous system and is in this way reached by the elementals or the thoughts. The breath-form, when touched by the elementals or thoughts, acts automatically through the motor fibers of the involuntary nerve, on the sensory fibers of the voluntary nerve, which corresponds to the nerve by which the elementals or the thoughts entered. The elemental or thought travels with this communication and arrives at the sensory side of the voluntary system. There the breath-form puts the elemental or the thought in touch with feeling.

The seat of feeling is in the kidneys, at present. Feeling is usually not felt there; it extends throughout the body wherever the blood goes and nerves are. There is no feeling in the involuntary nervous system, but only in the voluntary system; however, there are reactions between the voluntary and the involuntary systems, which let it appear that feeling is in the involuntary system. But nature has no feeling and the system through which it works in the body has none. The other side of feeling is desire. Desire has its center in the adrenals, but is not noticed there any more than feeling, its counterpart, is noticed in the kidneys. Desire responds to feeling, into which it shades imperceptibly, so that at no time a clear line can be drawn between the two. There can be no feeling without some desire and no desire without some feeling. When feeling is affected desire acts from its seat in the adrenals and sends an adrenal secretion into the venous bloodstream and so to the heart and lungs. This secretion causes the blood in the lungs to take up oxygen, and so desire from the psychic atmosphere enters the arterial bloodstream, through the breath. Feeling and desire travel along the bloodstream and the nerves.

Up to the time when the breath-form puts elementals and thoughts in touch with feeling in the voluntary nervous system, in the kidneys, the procedure is the same, but after that a distinction must be made between the area of elementals and that of thoughts. When elementals have come into touch with the feeling aspect of the doer, they act from the kidneys, where they are, however, not felt. They travel along the sensory nerves of the voluntary system. There they are the sensations in the parts to which they are attracted. They dance and play and sport, so to speak, on the nerves there. The doer feels their action and they share in that feeling. They produce the sensations; they are the sensations as long as they are in touch with feeling.

The sensations mostly produced are of a sensual and simple elemental kind. They affect the nerves in the pelvic and the abdominal sections. Elementals come because they want fun, activity, sensation and excitement, and they want to come under the Light of Intelligence. They will swarm into one’s body when his psychic and physical atmospheres permit. These atmospheres always permit one or another species to enter. Therefore elementals are always in the body. What kind can come in and the length of time they may stay in the body, depends on one’s thinking. Elementals want continuous sensation. One sensation cannot last long; it has to give way to another. It matters not to the elementals whether the sensations are pleasant or unpleasant to the human. They are as much thrilled by pain as by pleasure. They leave a body when they are crowded out by other elementals, or when thinking shuts them out.

The feeling caused by the action of elementals starts desire, which is as continuous as the sensations. Desire carries the impressions into the mental atmosphere. It reaches that in the heart with which a portion of the thinker of the Triune Self is in contact. Desire, the active side of the doer, rushes to the passive side of the thinker, rightness. Through the heart, the blood and the nerves, flows a stream of desires aroused by elementals. The desire comes from the psychic atmosphere with the intake of the breath and enters the heart with arterial blood from the lungs. When the sensory nerves of the voluntary system are affected by feeling, in the kidneys, they start the motor nerves connecting with the adrenals and reaching the heart. With the nerve action there is a flow of secretions from the adrenals to the heart. The motor nerves from the adrenals affect the sensory nerves of the heart which belong to rightness, the passive side of the thinker. The action causes a mild emotion of approval or disapproval, which is the response of rightness. If no action is taken against these impressions feeling and desire begin to work some of the motor nerves of the heart and lungs belonging to the thinker, and these communicate back to the sensory nerves of the voluntary system in the kidneys, which belong to the doer. Some of the nerves of the lungs which belong to reason, the active side of the thinker, are then concerned with the feeling. The flow from feeling-and-desire of the doer to rightness-and-reason of the thinker, and back to feeling, that is, from the kidneys and adrenals to the heart and lungs, and back to the kidneys, is passive thinking.

Passive thinking is the play of desire and mind, that is to say, the play of desire in the Light of the Intelligence, which is diffused in a part of the mental atmosphere. It is the haphazard, purposeless, unintentional, random thinking which fills nearly all the waking hours of the run of human beings. It is produced by pictures, sounds, tastes, odors and contacts which strike the four senses, and by elementals which enter the openings of the body. It goes on without sequence, without reasoning, and it changes with each new impression that comes into the body. By this flaccid and aimless thinking, a little of the Light that is found in the mental atmosphere is drawn off into nature by elementals as they leave through the openings. Only feeling and desire are concerned in this kind of thinking.

Passive thinking leaves impressions on the breath-form. When these become strong enough a different kind of thinking is started. When an impression is marked distinctly and deeply enough it suggests the subject of thought for which it stands. If this is in accord with reason, reason directs Light of the Intelligence on the subject of thought. The I-ness of the knower is a witness to the thinking. Thus passive thinking may induce and compel active thinking. The motor nerves of the voluntary nervous system in the heart and lungs act on the sensory nerves in the pituitary body and the cerebrum, and the motor nerves from the hemispheres of the cerebrum react on the sensory nerves in the heart, which start again the motor nerves in the heart and lungs.

By this continuing process certain thinking on the subject of thought is urged on by desire and an effort is made to focus Light. This is active thinking. It continues for a short time only, is intermittent and is the effort to hold the diffused Conscious Light of the Intelligence steadily on a given subject of thought.

Through active thinking thoughts are produced by the union of desire and an impression of nature with Light of the Intelligence. In passive thinking, thinking merely plays in the Light, but by active thinking the Light is sought to be held on the subject of thought. During this effort a thought is conceived when Light unites with desire, that is, with the subject of thought. The union is made in a point of nature-matter which has been carried by desire into the mental atmosphere. Union can occur only when Light is sufficiently focused, and this happens at the moment between the inbreathing and the outbreathing of the physical breath, at which time all the breaths are in phase.

Desire comes into the heart impressed with getting or avoiding an act, an object or an event. This desire is the subject of the thought, and it has in it nature-matter of the physical world furnished by the senses of the body. The desire itself is matter of the psychic atmosphere; rightness-and-reason allow the drawing in of matter of the mental atmosphere; and the knower allows the drawing in of matter of the noetic atmosphere. Then there is the Light of the Intelligence.

Therefore, when a thought is conceived in the heart it has in it actually matter of all the worlds, of all the atmospheres of the Triune Self, and Light of the Intelligence. It has further potentially a structure, which though yet nonexistent will accord later with the systems of the three factors of which it is composed. The desire is no longer desire, but is a part of a new entity and can therefore, when it is united to Light, ascend in the body to regions to which it could not go as desire.

The newly conceived thought goes by the joint action of the blood, the breath and the nerves in both systems, to the cerebellum. There the thought is gestated for a short or for a long time. Then it passes into the cerebrum and into the ventricles of the brain, where it is elaborated and matured. Finally it is born and sent forth through the frontal sinuses at a point above the nose.

Not only elementals and one’s own thoughts but thoughts from other persons enter through the openings and nerve centers in the body. By whatever gate elementals enter, they cannot go farther than the adrenals. The last thing they do is to leave their impress on desire before it starts toward the heart. It is different with thoughts from others. They go beyond the adrenals and enter the heart itself, because in them is Light of an Intelligence. In the heart they are either approved or disapproved by rightness.

If they are disapproved they are expelled through one of the openings with the outward breath. If they are approved, or if rightness suffers desire to have its way, they are entertained in the heart and then pass on to the cerebellum, as does a newly conceived thought. In the brain they can be nourished, weakened or slightly modified. Their aim cannot be changed, but their design can be varied. They are issued through the frontal sinuses, like thoughts that are newly born.

Thoughts of one’s own return to him from time to time. Once a thought has been conceived, gestated and issued, it remains in the mental atmosphere of the one who created it. It circulates in the atmosphere and may re-enter the body from time to time. It enters through the breath and does not again pass through the lower stages of thinking by which it became a thought.

This ends the description of the generation of a thought, which may be the conception, gestation and birth of one’s own thought, or the reception, entertainment and issue of a thought generated by someone else or by oneself, in the past.