THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER IV

OPERATION OF THE LAW OF THOUGHT

Section 5

How exteriorizations of a thought are brought about. Agents of the law. Hastening or delaying destiny.

These difficulties, hindering the exteriorizations of a thought, are resolved in a marvelous way by a proper marshalling of the successive exteriorizations of every thought into events, which appear in an orderly way under the certain laws governing the conduct of physical matter. The certainty of the operation of these laws, such as those of chemistry, physics and the procreation, growth, disease, death and decay of organic bodies, is not interfered with; indeed these very laws are subservient to the law of thought.

The marshalling is done by agents of the law. Every being is an agent of the law, but not every being knows that it is. These agents may be elementals, nature units of the nature-side; or they may be on the intelligent-side; these range from the Supreme Intelligence of the sphere of earth, through lesser Intelligences, to Triune Selves, down to the doer-in-the-body in the lowest human being.

Among the conscious agents are three orders of Intelligences, named respectively Desirers, Thinkers and Knowers, (Fig. V-C); then there are Triune Selves who have not quite attained to the stage of an Intelligence. Besides these there are doers of Triune Selves that may have many weaknesses, but are at times aware that they have definite parts to take and things to do, in public and in private life. It is likely that such men in public life were William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Voltaire, Napoleon, Disraeli and Lord Shaftesbury; in private life, men like Emerson and Kerning are likely to have been conscious agents of their Triune Selves.

Then there are the unconscious agents of the law, either willing or unwilling. The unconscious but willing are those who wish to do right, like Luther; the unwilling are those who are self-seekers and do not want to do anything but what serves their interest and purpose, like Richard III, or Henry VIII. Among these agents again there are two kinds, the slothful, lazy ones, and such as are actually and actively disposed to do evil.

All these agents, the conscious as well as the unconscious, occupy their positions because they have earned them by thinking. The doers of Triune Selves operate the mechanism; the unconscious agents form the human part of it and are used for the ends of the law of thought while they are carrying out their own plans. Unconscious agents as well as conscious, always have a choice as to what they will and will not do. Nero, Attila, Pizarro, Genghis Khan, and the host of cruel despots were agents of the law as destiny; so is a pickpocket snatching a purse and a murderer striking his blow. They all act to carry out their own plans, inconsiderate of others. Such as these are parts of the machinery of the law. That does not mean that they deserve any credit, or will be excused for stealing, corruption or killing. Their motives and desires are used in the intelligent administration, as is a tiger that devours a child, or a saw that injures a laborer.

The beings on the nature-side which are agents of the law are in the four elements of the sphere of earth. The beings in the unmanifested part of the worlds do not usually come into manifestation and into relation with man. They are named the upper elementals, to distinguish them from the elementals, large and small, in the manifested part of the worlds.

These upper elementals are spoken of as angels and archangels and rulers over the four elements. To them the plan of worlds is outlined by complete Triune Selves under the Great Triune Self of the worlds; and the upper elementals give directions to be executed by the lower. There is the Great Triune Self of the worlds present in the unmanifested and the manifested, who keeps in unity and relation all the complete Triune Selves acting in the worlds. The upper elementals are called into existence by complete Triune Selves; they are pure, untainted by the world’s lust or ambition. They respond perfectly to the complete Triune Selves whom they worship but cannot sense. The upper elementals serve the purpose of these Triune Selves to control the elemental gods; they are the intermediaries and messengers to them from the complete Triune Selves. At special conjunctions of cycles in the history of the human race, the upper elementals, one or more, may appear to an individual or to a number of people, to issue an order to human beings as coming from the God of the particular religion these humans believe in. At certain crises of a nation’s history, these elemental messengers may appear and change the course of events.

They are the only nature beings that come under the Light of an Intelligence, without human beings as go-betweens. They differ from doers in that they act absolutely according to the behest of the Light and cannot use the Light for themselves. They are, and cannot be more than, messengers of the Light.

The lower elementals are of four groups, named the causal, portal, form and structure elementals, all in the manifested part of the sphere of earth, each group having in it elementals of the fire, air, water and earth. Causal elementals belong to creation and bring all things into existence, and also destroy them; they are the cause of change in substances and in structures. The portal elementals stir up things in nature and keep up a state of constant circulation in all things. Form elementals hold things together as they are in visible nature. These three groups do all things in visible nature, but cannot be seen. They do their work in the structures built by the fourth group. The structure elementals, in their mass, are the apparent forms of things. They are the builders and are the structure of the visible universe. They make things solid. They are surfaces. By these descriptions some of the activities of the lower elementals are shown. And each elemental is a nature unit of the element to which it belongs.

All material things are produced, maintained, changed, destroyed and reproduced by elementals of these four groups. The matter-force of the sphere of earth is under the rule of the great elemental Earth Spirit; and under it each element is under the rule of a great elemental God, the God of Fire, the God of Air, the God of Water and the God of Earth, which are not referred to in any religion and are not worshipped. Under each of these Gods are elemental beings in hierarchies, in and of the god of the element, diminishing in power from the greatest to the infinitesimal. There is the great God of Fire, who may cause the consuming of the earth crust by fire, and there is the elemental of a bacillus of fever, belonging to one of his hierarchies. All operations of nature are carried on by elementals under their rulers who receive the plan from upper elementals under the direction of an Intelligence of the sphere of earth. These operations are guided by an Intelligence according to the general definite plan. So elementals bring rescues, accidents, diseases, success, money and quarrels to individuals, and general calamities, storms, earthquakes, famines, epidemics and periods of opulence.

A thought issued comes into touch with elementals in the life world. Its soundless sound impresses some of them into its plan and there it takes life. Then the thought sounds in the form world. There elementals give it form. Then it comes to the physical world, where the four orders of earth elementals begin to give materiality to its form. The elementals which give this physicality are worked through the body of man. The beginnings are made on the light plane through the brain which summons and attracts radiant, astral matter. Then the heart and lungs, on the life plane, working with the brain, bind and change the particles of radiant matter into airy. The kidneys and adrenals, on the form plane, draw airy matter into the fluid state and hold it so. Finally, the organs of the digestive system consolidate fluid matter into the cellular or solid state. The breath-form, through the breath, organizes and coordinates these workings and their effects so as to produce the physicality of the thought, which will be exteriorized later at the conjunction of time, condition and place as an act, an object or an event. This is true where the thought of one man only is active, as well as where the thoughts of thousands are involved in the exteriorization. In this way everything in the physical world is brought about. Every structure that is built, every institution that is founded, every law that is enacted, all events in public and in private life, are so exteriorized.

Out of the thoughts available, some are selected to appear in form, others often contribute thereto. The selection of what act is produced physically cannot be made by elementals, for none of them are intelligent. The selection is made by complete Triune Selves according to the law and according to the possibilities permitted by the limitations of time and place and of existing conditions, and at their conjunction the elementals carry out the bidding of the Triune Selves, and in this way successive acts fit naturally into and develop from existing conditions.

Each man has stored up many thoughts which have not been given form, and many more have form and are thronging on the physical plane but have not yet been given physical expression. The Triune Selves administering the law and marshalling the order of exteriorization of effects, have to hold back on the radiant-physical plane many acts and events which will appear when place, time and conditions permit.

A man hastens or postpones the exteriorization of his past thoughts by his general mental attitude and definite mental set as to a certain course of action. All things which suit that course are drawn in whether they have been held back for a long or a short time. His thinking and acting make the time, place and conditions for events about to happen to him. He may postpone exteriorizations of his thoughts by trying to ward off events which threaten as natural consequences, just as he is able to put off a trial in a court or an appointment to meet a creditor. He may postpone by planning, but though a man may put off the events which are to come he cannot avoid them forever. If he succeeds in postponing what is unpleasant to him, he interferes with the Triune Selves who arrange the actions of the elementals and who see to the arrival of events at the proper conjunction of time, place and condition. If he is successful, many of the conditions which are due him accumulate. The tendency of the accumulated energy is to increase their pressure. The longer he continues his accumulating the greater is the pressure, until finally vast elemental powers may be disturbed, and they react on him and will force him to make an opening through which the accumulated destiny will pour in on him.

Every one knows as much of his destiny as is necessary. It is his good fortune that he does not know more than that, because knowledge of unpleasant things about to happen might prevent him from doing his present duty, and knowledge of agreeable things to come might cause him to neglect it. All that is necessary for one to know is his present duty. He can always know it if he wishes. Duty is that part of his destiny selected by his Triune Self from all of his past, which he should dispose of in the present. His Triune Self marshalled his past and present and some of his future destiny so that all three converge into the duty of the present moment. If one refuses to do his duty, he merely postpones it; it must be performed by him in time. The performance of duty opens the road to other duties leading into larger fields. So the willing performance of duty allows him to see his duties more clearly and to come more under the Light of the Intelligence.