THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER IV

OPERATION OF THE LAW OF THOUGHT

Section 4

The law of thought. Exteriorizations and interiorizations. Psychic, mental, and noetic results. The power of thought. Balancing a thought. Cycles.

The law is: Everything existing on the physical plane is an exteriorization of a thought, which must be balanced through the one who issued the thought, in accordance with his responsibility, and at the conjunction of time, condition and place. Thus are explained the seemingly unjust, arbitrary or accidental events in a person’s life. Whatever happens to one, happens at the conjunction of time, condition and place. The physical events which occur to a man may or may not be exteriorizations of his own thoughts. But the psychic events, the feelings of joy or sorrow which he experiences from each and every event in his life are the results of his own thinking.

These are interiorizations—psychic, mental and noetic. They tend towards balancing the thought. Psychic results are the first interiorizations. Joys and sorrows, sensations and emotions, are furnished to the human as experiences. Through them he should learn, that is, get mental results. If he will not learn, the experiences are repeated and repeated and intensified until he does learn. All joys and sorrows are the results of events which are exteriorizations of prior thoughts. The sensations are produced by physical means, slight or potent, and the physical events and conditions are called physical destiny.

So come about the sale of worthless shares and the loss by investors, the dishonest conduct of a business and the ruin of innocent partners, the courageous deed of a lifesaver and his rescue of the doomed, and the act of a murderer and the death of his victim. So come about individual accidents as well as universal calamities, crop failures, famines and pests, strikes and wars and the subsequent shifting of the layers of society. These events produce sensations of joy or sorrow, and these come to each one as the reaping of his former sowing, as a result of his thoughts, that survive for him. So come about births of persons with strong or infirm characters, good or evil inclinations; so also the attraction exercised by religion, sport, gambling, drinking or by certain trades and lines of business. So comes about birth with the mental endowments and moral qualities that adorn or disgrace a man. So originate the treasures of insight and innate knowledge.

How do thoughts call for the happening of events which will permit them to be exteriorized? The answer to this explains the bringing about of such events as the Hundred Years War between France and England, the conquests of Mexico and of Peru, the Napoleonic wars, and the World Wars, which caused the death of millions and which have affected other millions favorably or unfavorably. It explains how some persons at the last moment get on a ship that will be lost, while others get off before it sails; how a merely inquisitive person gets into a crowd and is seriously hurt; how some survive unharmed all manner of dangers in an adventurous life, and how others are led into trouble by unexpected events. Physical events, no matter how great they seem to be, are small and like bits of straw blown by the wind, when they are compared with the thought that caused them or calls for them.

Thoughts live and last until they are adjusted. They are powerful beings, though not as men know beings. Thoughts urge, pull and press in on a person or set of persons who allow them to be exteriorized in an event that will affect physically the person or set of persons responsible for them. This urging and pressing by a thought can affect only those who will entertain the thought or who will allow themselves to be influenced by it. Persons who will not entertain or allow themselves to be influenced cannot be affected, or induced to commit acts. The thought lives in the mental atmospheres of persons or communities and is entertained or refused audience in the hearts. When it is entertained or allowed to enter, it suggests action; and when time, condition and place are fit the thought issues from the brain of someone, the design in it is exteriorized, and the person or persons will do an act which in turn will be an event in the life of the person or community whose thought is exteriorized through that event.

Events bring sensations, that is, results upon the doer-in-the-body and the psychic atmosphere of the human. These sensations, whether they come from physical or psychic causes, are experiences of a psychic kind and are content or discontent, well-being or uneasiness, delight or weariness, gladness or a heavy heart. These experiences are caused by the exteriorizations of a present or a past thought of the one who has the experience. A trifling event may bring on a tremendous sensation. The sensation is what counts. The event is negligible compared with the sensation. The importance of a thing or event is found in the sensation, the psychic result it produces. Any event that will lend itself to bring about the sensation required will suffice, but the sensation must be produced. Sensations mean paying or receiving pay for acts done or left undone. They may be the means of learning, which is a mental result.

If men would learn from experience, get learning from psychic results, they need not have the same experiences over again. But men will not learn from their experiences and so continue in the same round of thoughts and have the same experiences in life after life. Out of these repeated experiences is built up the psychic nature or character of man, with certain tendencies to criminality, selfishness, carelessness, lack of consideration for the feelings of others, or the reverse of all these. This psychic nature is expressed later in the physical body. So people are born afflicted with certain diseases, or develop them later. As thoughts enter the body and affect one of the four systems, so the elementals building out the thoughts carry with them and build out the disease which is called for by the thought. In turn, diseases are among the chief causes for sensation. They are the experiences of nearly everyone. On the other hand, events which are welcome are often a punishment in disguise, as will soon appear to those concerned, just as unwelcome events are often blessings in disguise. Such are the psychic results following the exteriorization of a thought. Mental results follow from the pleasure or pain of experiences.

Mental results will follow sooner or later. The Light of the Intelligence is on the doer which the Triune Self has in charge. By the use of that Light the doer is developed to value the fitness of things. Moral lessons are taught through religions and at the mother’s knee. The laws of a country also present a ready code for conduct. Further, there are the laws of nature which let him learn concerning digestion, breathing and disease. By all these means a human is taught directly.

He also learns by observing facts. When he has gathered enough facts, even though he may not know why or how he observed them, a desire to learn from them is awakened because the doer is in the Light of its Intelligence. Then the human begins to think, infer, combine and separate, by Light of the Intelligence. So he works with theories concerning his problems. He will feel what event has some meaning for him when it occurs, even though it be not perceptibly connected with him. Most events have a meaning for the one who experiences them or who observes them. While the doer-in-the-body is learning from a set of experiences it is like a man groping around in the dark trying to find out what the different things he contacts are, and who sees the objects from time to time by flashes of light. The events which come to the human in life cannot be related until he receives Light. By the Light, he learns. From learning many things and seeing them verified, the doer acquires a certain amount of knowledge of what is right. The amount of knowledge of what is right is his conscience.

The mental results are different in different cases. They are impressions that the act or event is right or wrong, and that it carries or does not carry a lesson for the thinking doer. When the impression is that the act or event was right or wrong, this mental impression is one of the factors in forming one’s opinions on right and wrong as to things in general. Even if the event was not due perceptibly to any act of his, there will be some indication that the occurrence has a meaning for him and some suggestion to make him look into it.

Every event has a meaning for the one to whom it comes, even though he rarely pays attention to the call. A man often tries to hide from himself the facts, when disagreeable, and so prevents himself from seeing what is right and what he should or should not do. From the manner in which one looks mentally upon acts and events and their psychic results to him, he creates or strengthens mental tendencies and confirms mental attitudes with which he regards those lines of right or wrong action; this causes the recurrence of thoughts with the same or a similar aim.

Noetic results, that is, results in the noetic atmosphere of the human come from the mental results which follow the psychic results of pleasure or pain from the experience of physical events. The noetic results are extracts of mental results, which contain the essence of the psychic results, and are the record of what the doer of the Triune Self has done with itself towards being conscious of what the knower already knows. What the doer has become conscious of as being morally right or wrong is kept as a record in the noetic atmosphere and is to the doer conscience. Conscience speaks only from or through rightness of the thinker of the Triune Self. Noetic results are the essence of what people learn, but as they learn so very little the noetic results from exteriorizations are meager.

A thought is exteriorized until there is a balancing of it by means of its physical, psychic, mental and noetic results. The physical results are the exteriorizations which were potentially in the thought from the beginning. Exteriorizations continue until the potential balance contained in the thought is made an actual one. The balancing factor in the thought by which the potential balance is forced on and exteriorized is conscience, which speaks as the result of knowledge and of departure from what is known to be right.

The actual balance of a thought is made when at last the noetic, mental, psychic and physical results are in agreement, that is, when the knower, the thinker and the doer are satisfied through the particular event which is an exteriorization of the thought. This exteriorization may mean much or little in the world, but it means much to the doer. The exteriorization is the only thing the world can see; but the Triune Self desires or thinks or knows what that event is to it. The important thing for the doer to do, after it has created a thought, is to desire to balance it in the three parts of the Triune Self with any physical event which is an exteriorization of the thought.

The balancing proceeds from the doer of the Triune Self. There takes place an accomplishment by and from all the experiences concerned with all the events that were potentially in and developed actually out of that thought. The doer is ready when it has had enough experiences through the thought; when it sees that what it actually wants is in itself, not in possessions; when it sees that it as desire cannot judge; when it desires the thinker to do the judging; when it wants to let go. The knower, as knowledge, and the thinker, as justice, are at all times ready for the balancing. They wait for the doer to be in the condition where it is willing to have the adjustment between itself and nature made. This adjustment is the balancing of the thought, and is made by returning to nature that in the thought which belongs to nature and by freeing the desire from its attachment to it. When the desire is to let go and to be guided by the thinker, the human is unattached to the event and is happy in the feeling of freedom. He is satisfied with the exteriorization even if it be the loss of everything, or the hardest fate. Though the human is not necessarily conscious of the balancing he is conscious of what his attitude towards the exteriorization means to him. This is in every case a step towards thinking without creating thoughts, destiny, that is, without attachment to objects of nature. The knower disapproves of every thought which is created, because this attaches the desire of the doer to the results of the thought.

Though the doer-in-the-body is not conscious of what goes on in the Triune Self, one does the acts which are the balancing when he performs his duties gladly, without attachment to their results. Few persons balance their thoughts, because most people are not willing to perform their duties and they refuse to understand that the doer-in-the-body must be willing to be guided by the thinker and not by sensations. Yet they are generating new thoughts without balancing many and they go through life like comets, with enormous tails of unbalanced thoughts following them.

In the course of making the adjustment of a thought a man has to pay his old debts, and he receives compensation for what is due him. A thought cannot be balanced without payment having been made or received and the accounts settled in connection with that particular thought. The payment may be made in pain, sorrow, terror or despair, for payment is always made in psychic coin, but the psychic conditions result from physical conditions. Likewise, payment is received always in psychic coin as pleasure, well-being, serenity.

Payment alone is not enough. A man must pay whether he wills to or not; he will continue to pay over and over again until he learns why the payment must be made. This does not mean that he must know the one whom he wronged and where and when he became a debtor, but that he must learn how not to injure others and how not to allow others to injure him; how to be considerate of the rights and feelings of others without becoming their prey. Payment and learning alone are not enough. There must be a noetic enlightenment accomplished by the results of what he has learned from his experiences. This is usually shown by his attitude of mind towards his duties. Duties performed with willingness and understanding effect a balance of the thought of which they are an exteriorization.

A thought must be balanced by the one who issued it according to the responsibility which was his at the time he generated or entertained it. His responsibility is his appreciation of right and wrong, his standard of right. He is informed of this responsibility not by reason, but by direct warning from his conscience, given through the rightness of his thinker. This warning stamps the thought for life through death, and throughout the existence of the thought. The thought will continue until that stamp is matched. The stamp is the balancing factor, that compels cyclic exteriorizations out of the thought until the thought is balanced by the agreement of the physical, psychic, mental and noetic results. One’s responsibility is his knowledge as the result of all that his doer has learned from all its experiences through all its lives. This knowledge is abstract; but a concrete expression of this abstraction is found in the duty which is his at any given time. That duty is a mirror of his responsibility.

A thought once issued moves in a cycle. It is issued from the light world and its course is towards exteriorization. It is exteriorized on the physical plane as an act, an object or an event that produces results which are interiorized as psychic, mental and noetic results in Triune Selves.

If no balance of the thought is made, desire starts the action of the thinking and desire on a new cycle of the same thought. Frequently the old thought which has not been balanced returns. It is not again conceived, but is entertained in the heart, reinforced through the brain and reissued, and then it seems to be a new thought. That is one reason why one’s thoughts run along certain lines and are related to each other. The aim always brings the thought back to where it started, and then the aim may be slightly changed as the thought is sent on its new cycle. A thought once issued has a tendency to cause continued similar thinking to reinforce it.

If a thought, when its results are interiorized in the psychic, mental and noetic atmospheres of the human, be not balanced, it has while it is going through its cycles, decided effects upon the human. The results on the human are feelings of joy or sorrow and desire for continuance or cessation of the results and, further, sharpening, dulling or control of that desire. The human senses the desire as being right or wrong. If the desire wants to be right, rightness strengthens it; if desire insists on the wrong, rightness gives way. Yet the thinking may be active and effective. That is very often so when the personality is by the cycles of a thought built up on a morally wrong basis, as of cunning, selfishness or crookedness. In such cases the human regards everything as right that he desires, and everything that stands in his way as wrong.

The cycle of a thought has a certain path. At one point in its path the thought is exteriorized. Here the cycle is dealt with only in so far as it produces the exteriorization in orderly succession. One part of the path is toward exteriorization, the other part of the path is interior and subjective and comes after the part that appears as the exteriorization. Of course, when a thought issues on the light plane of the light world, which is formless, the thought is formless and its movements are not cyclic in the same sense in which they are when the thought has form and cycles in the physical world. For simplicity the term cycle is applied also to the prior stages.

Within the larger course of the thought from issuance to exteriorization are many smaller cycles, so that in one cycle from the mental atmosphere in the life world by way of the physical plane of the physical world and back to the mental atmosphere in the life world there may be many lesser cycles. These are produced by desires and thinking toward the exteriorization of that thought. The act, object or event may be followed by other cycles within the greater cycle of the thought, the smaller cycles producing feelings, sensations and emotions. These may be followed by innumerable cycles of mental processes. A thought cycles downward by mental activities to find a way toward exteriorization. As it takes on a definite design, plan and form by which it will be exteriorized it approaches and finally appears on the physical plane. After this exteriorization of a part of the thought it goes on, affecting the doer subjectively, first by feeling, sensation, emotion and sentiment, all flowing as results from the exteriorization. This is a cycle of experiences, (Fig. IV-A).

So the course of the thought continues until the doer learns from its experiences through these exteriorizations. After the doer has learned and there is a willingness and readiness in the doer to do what it feels it should, there is a noetic, mental and psychic agreement between knowledge, conscience, desiring and doing or suffering in relation to the exteriorization of that thought, and the cycle of the thought is completed—balanced in the mental atmosphere.

The length of the cycle and the number of the lesser cycles within its path are determined by the responsibility of the doer and its willingness to learn and perform its duties. No one thought can be exteriorized separately from everything else, because no thought or thing can act independently of its relation to another thought or thing. Two or more thoughts of the same person, or a thought of one person and at least one thought of another person are necessary to bring about an exteriorization. Two or more thoughts must touch or cross each other for the exteriorization of either or both. When at least two thoughts make such a junction, coalescing, intersecting or coinciding, one or both are ready for exteriorization, if place and condition can be found. The time is determined by the fact that the thought is on the form plane of the physical world. Only there thoughts can meet for exteriorization.

A thought, once it is issued and exteriorized in part, continues its cyclic paths after the death of the body of the one who generated it. It goes with the doer-in-the-body and stays in the mental atmosphere of the human, (Fig. V-B). It appears cyclically in that portion of the doer after death during the different after death states. Its thoughts are the accusers and witnesses that come to the doer for or against it in the Hall of Judgment and the states of expiation and purification. The cycles continue. Only portions of the best thoughts accompany the doer into its heaven and stay with it there, (Fig. V-D). When the doer portion returns to physical life and enters a human body, its former thoughts continue to cycle around the human. The human in the early stages of life is not conscious of the cycling thoughts. As the body matures and the doer finds itself, it has thoughts. These thoughts which come to it in cyclic recurrence are its former thoughts. They are not conceived anew but are entertained in the heart, reinforced in the brain and from there reissued. The cycles of a person’s thoughts determine the length and nature of his hell and his heaven and approximately the time between re-existences.

So far past thoughts of a single individual have been considered; but that is not enough. All human beings are generating thoughts. Their thoughts, like those of the individual, are condensed and so gradually exteriorized.

All these thoughts have formed the conditions of the past with its savagery, despotism, slavery; its feudal and absolute monarchies, with its serfs and peasants subject to forced labor, tithes and taxes; with its nobles and their right to jurisdiction and to the services of those who belonged to the land; and then the changing conditions in the nineteenth century, when thoughts found expression in wider education, united nations, bureaucracies and in manufacture and commerce, with railroads, telegraph and further inventions, whereby the middle classes and laborers came to the front and education became common in all civilized lands.

If others’ thoughts were not opposed to his, the individual could nearly always count upon a realization of his own thoughts in the physical world, though not always as he wishes it to be, because no man can consider all of the factors in the light, life, form and physical worlds; nor can he know when the cycles will meet, favorably or unfavorably, to permit exteriorizations. All human beings are issuing thoughts. Many of these run counter to the thoughts of any one; some coincide with them. When thoughts of people cross each other or coincide there is usually an encounter or a coinciding on the physical plane, in acts and in things. So friends, business associates, persons thinking of a common cause or occupation, adherents of church or political movements meet; their thoughts bring them together. In the same way enemies, individuals struggling or races warring meet, because of their conflicting thoughts. So nations are divided, as was Poland, and united, as was Italy after her long struggle.

Thoughts do not usually result in exteriorization as a person would wish, because he cannot consider the unknown factors. Important among these are his past thoughts which have not yet come into realization, and the results of which may prevent the immediate exteriorization of his present thought. Another factor is that out of the millions of thoughts, his own and those of others, only a small number can be realized in the physical world at any one time, as place and time on the physical plane condition the exteriorization of thoughts. Then exteriorization into physical acts and events can take place only under physical laws, and further, when the meeting of cycles of thoughts permits. Moreover, no thought could be exteriorized if it were not for present thinking. So there are many obstacles which are not known and overcome. But the most mysterious of all factors is the balancing factor in the thought, which is connected with the universal tendency to adjustment and continues to impel exteriorizations of the thought until it is balanced.

Because these factors are unperceived and because it appears that there is no immediate, just retribution, it seems that morally acts do not produce the effect which they should produce. Acts worthy and noble often appear to be without reward, and mean and unjust acts to be crowned with worldly success. In this way the moral requirements which men feel as the rule of their own lives appear to be absent in the management of the world.

Justice on the physical plane cannot be had at once because of people’s unwillingness to have justice done to them; because of the unresponsiveness of physical matter to thought; because of the hindrances on the physical plane to immediate exteriorization of everything that is required for adjustment; because the cross-currents of various persons’ thoughts interfere; because the time is not ripe for those involved to come together; and, because of other difficulties indicated.