THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER VI

PSYCHIC DESTINY

Section 1

Form destiny. Strictly psychic destiny. Six classes of psychic destiny. The aia. The breath-form.

THE law of thought does not decree events beyond the physical plane, that is, beyond physical destiny. What then is psychic destiny?

Psychic destiny is a name for two kinds of destiny. One kind, form destiny, affects nature-matter on the form plane, and has to do chiefly with prenatal influences. The other, strictly psychic destiny, has to do with states in the psychic atmosphere of the doer, and affects the doer after the birth of the body. This is what is here called psychic destiny.

Form destiny is a thought so far advanced toward exteriorization that elementals have already built out the form of it as a future physical act, object or event. This form abides on the form plane of the physical world, ready for appearance on the physical plane when there is a juncture of time, condition and place to give it entrance; then it takes a set and is fixed in the radiant substates of the physical plane as physical destiny. This happens when the cycle of the thought, thus partly in form, intersects the cycle of at least one other thought of the same or of some other person. All physical destiny comes out of the ether, which is the solid state of matter on the form plane. It comes through the radiant, airy and fluid states of the physical plane into the solid state of the physical plane. There it appears in sensible, tangible actions and conditions, produced by elementals of the causal, portal, form and structure kinds under the control of structure elementals. The fluid, plastic form matter is hardened from the ether into the stiff material world. Only a small part can be precipitated at one time, because time, condition and place, which are different on the physical plane, limit the amount of form destiny that can come through. All in a thought that has become form is destiny; its arrival in the physical state may be postponed, but cannot be permanently avoided.

Psychic destiny is all that relates to the human who is conscious as feeling-and-desire. Such psychic destiny comprises all the states and powers of the doer in its psychic atmosphere.

Psychic destiny is of six classes. The first class is the feeling of pleasure or pain when the physical body is affected by contact. The second is the feeling of joy or sorrow when the doer is affected without physical contact, as by receipt of a message or by anticipation of a pleasure or of a calamity. The third class of psychic destiny, and the most important, is the character of the human, his disposition, endowments, sentiments, instincts, virtues and vices. This make-up comes into being before birth and lasts through life and for some time after death. The fourth class is sleep with its restoration of bodily energy, dreams, the adjustment of the doer during sleep, and states similar to sleeping and dreaming, where the doer relaxes its hold on the senses. The fifth class is death itself and the processes of death. The sixth class is shown in the psychic conditions through which the doer passes after death during the periods of its metempsychosis, heaven, transmigrations and re-existence, (Fig. V-D).

Three things are directly affected by psychic destiny: the aia, the breath-form and the doer.

The first of these three things, the aia, is the principle of form for a human. It is matter in a neutral state, matter which is no longer nature-matter but is not yet intelligent-matter and does not belong to any one of the four worlds of the earth sphere. The aia, like the mathematical point, is without dimension; it is not a form; it has neither parts nor size; it cannot be perceived by any of the four senses. The aia came out of Substance as a unit of fire, progressed through all the degrees of nature-matter until it became an aia, and is destined to become a Triune Self. Beings below the human stage have no aias. At the time of conception the aia which is itself without form and without dimension revivifies the form of the breath-form, which is to be distinguished from the radiant or astral body of the human.

The second of the three things affected by psychic destiny, the breath-form, has an active side which is the physical breath, and a passive side, the form, which receives impressions from the senses, and from the doer when it thinks. The aia stands back of the breath-form through life and after death until the breath of the breath-form is put out of phase with the form. The breath-form is an automaton; it is a harlot and an angel for nature and for the doer. It goes with that which is the stronger; it responds to the call that makes the strongest impression; it obeys man’s basest desires, yet it is his angel because, after it has been purified, it takes him into heaven. It is most delicately sensitive. It has no inclination to right or wrong, good or bad, health or disease. It responds to impressions made upon it, and then projects them and gives them form.

The breath-form does with the physical body whatever it is bidden to do by the senses or by the doer. It offers no resistance unless it is bidden to resist. It lives in the involuntary nervous system. From its station in the brain, the front half of the pituitary body (Fig. VI-A, a), it operates automatically the involuntary functions of the body. The physical destiny of the body is worked through the breath-form. Elementals build out the radiant-solid or astral body, and therefrom the airy-, fluid-, and solid-solid bodies or masses from invisible marks impressed on the breath-form.

All living beings or things that have form in the world of change, from a gnat to an elephant, from a toadstool to a star, from a devil to a god, get their forms through the breath-forms of human beings after death. These breath-forms express in nature the impressions they have borne as the record of human thinking and thoughts. Expression into nature forms is automatic; elementals of the causal, portal, form and structure kinds have to obey, build out and body forth the signatures on the breath-form. Each breath-form has issued millions of forms in and for nature and continues to issue them.

The breath-form cannot be seen by clairvoyants. That which is sometimes seen as phosphorescent, luminous or star-like, is the astral or radiant-solid body, which must not be mistaken for the breath-form.

Before conception of the physical body, the aia is in the psychic atmosphere. There it revivifies the form with its breath as the breath-form unit. Gradually the breath-form sinks to the light plane of the physical world. As it is lowered, life matter from the life plane and form matter from the form plane of the physical world collects around the invisible breath-form, which begins to glow. The breath-form is then like an ember that is coming to life, and this ember is the breath-form of the future physical human being. The breath-form is an invisible physical unit.

At the time of copulation of the parents, this breath-form enters their joined physical atmospheres—flashing with lightning speed through their breaths and blood and along all the nerves—and then or later the form of the breath-form blends the radiant part of the seed cell with the radiant part of the soil cell. A vortex is formed at the blending. Radiant matter begins to flow into the vortex and so builds up the radiant or astral body. The physical cells divide, multiply by division and make up the fleshly body according to the model of the radiant body, made by the form of the breath-form. This astral body is radiant matter which now begins to change and take on the visible embryonic forms leading eventually to the human form. The general form has remained and will remain the same throughout the present period of human progress and is not carved out by the thoughts of each person in the preceding life. People cannot think of themselves except as in this form; so they perpetuate the type. An individual determines by his thoughts in one life the changes which will be brought about through his aia for the succeeding life; thus an athlete may become a hunchback, a beauty a hag, and vice versa.

From the time of conception the form grows from the state of the glowing ember and gives form to the radiant matter of the cells of the embryo which is drawn into the vortex, so it builds up the radiant body and according to that the airy, the fluid and the fleshly bodies. The form which expands is the reproduction of the form of the last life of the doer, with the variations as to feature, habits and rudimentary tendencies to health and disease, into which past thoughts will be exteriorized at the proper age of the fleshly body. During fetal development the breath of the breath-form is separated from its form, but will again unite with it at the birth of the body.

In the prenatal state the aia reawakens some of the impressions of the past lives, and so provides for the signatures on the form of the breath-form which will be quickened at the proper season into the characteristics of the human being. Not only the future physical formation and psychic traits are on the form of the breath-form in rudimentary, symbolic, magic outlines, but there also are sketched the signatures for future success or failure. As called for by the symbolic lines on the form of the breath-form, elementals come in from nature and build up the finer bodies and then the fleshly body, and the form coordinates them. This goes on until the fleshly body is born; then the breath enters into and unites with its form and they are the breath-form.

From birth to death the breath-form is the coordinating formative unit, which gives form to and holds the four senses, the systems, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, and particular elementals which are, or function through, these, into one complete organization, and through the fourfold physical body keeps them in proper relation. It causes all involuntary movements of the body in waking or sleeping and also obeys the directions of the doer for voluntary movements. The breath-form does what some people attribute to the “subconscious mind,” the “unconscious mind,” the “subconscious self” or the “inner consciousness.” It obeys whatever makes the clearest and the deepest impression. So it obeys the impulses of nature in carrying on the involuntary functions; it obeys conscious or unconscious self-suggestion; or it will act on a lie, such as that a rooted disease does not exist. But it will only obey an impression as long as that is the strongest. In this way it may seem to go against the law for a while, but in time that impression which has behind it the universal law of thought must become the strongest.

The breath-form plays an important part in feeling. The doer can feel a physical object only when its physical body contacts the object and this contact is transmitted through the nerves to the finer bodies, which transmit the impressions to the breath-form. The doer makes the contact through the breath-form. This lines up and relates to the doer the impression received. During waking life the breath-form is connected with the doer. During deep sleep the doer is out of touch with it. The breath-form holds the same general shape throughout life, but it changes from youth to age and assumes the features revealed by the changing appearance of the human. These changes come, not because the breath-form itself grows old, but because of man’s thinking and mode of living. By different thinking the breath-form could be kept young forever and be made exempt from death.

The breath-form is for communication of the doer with nature by the body-mind, through the senses. Animals do not have a breath-form; they do not need a breath-form, because they do not think—though it is often supposed that animals do think. How then, it may be asked, can animals feel and desire without the breath-form? The answer is that the feelings and desires of animals are automatically put directly in touch with nature through the four senses of nature, by sight and hearing, and by taste and smell. The animal feels and desires with that portion of the feeling-and-desire of the doer, cast off after death, which animates and is the type of the animal. While having modified characteristics of human beings, animals are relieved from the restrictions of human thinking according to human customs; they are dependent on the senses in their relation to nature. They are impressed by nature directly through the senses and respond immediately to the impressions received. Thinking would inhibit their immediate response to impressions. Animals are specialists in response to nature impressions through the senses, without inhibitions.

After death the breath-form remains for a while with the doer, but later is separated from it. The doer and its breath-form unit are in touch and out of touch at various times after death. At the end of the heaven period, the breath and form of the breath-form unit are out of phase and are quiescent. When it is time for the new life on earth, the aia stimulates the breath, which revivifies its form and then is the breath-form for the next physical body. The aia is not the astral or radiant-solid body, nor is the breath-form the astral body. The astral body is a body of radiant matter, not a unit. It is made of radiant matter of the physical plane, of the same matter as are the stars and lightning. It may be seen at times as separate from the physical body, but the aia and the breath-form cannot be seen at all. The astral body grows with the fetus and after birth surrounds the nerves through which the breath-form lives. The destruction and dissipation of the astral body, as by burning or decay, does not affect the aia or the breath-form.

The astral body has little more permanence than has the gross physical body. However, it is nearly as different from the solid-solid as is the breath-form from it. The astral body is the means by which figure is transmitted from the breath-form to the fleshly body. It is plastic, elastic and electric. It can exhibit tremendous strength, can extend beyond or out of the physical body, and get away from it for some distance. It can be molded into any shape and take any color. It may diminish or increase in size. Physical bodies cannot be mutilated without destroying them; thus the head cannot be flattened or elongated, or a sword cannot be pushed through the heart without causing death. But the astral body can for a time assume any shape and return uninjured to its physical body. So it is possible that a person while walking through a garden may reach out his astral arm and pluck an apple or a flower, or in a room apport objects, which then come to him through the air by means invisible to one who cannot see the operator’s astral body. The astral body of a medium furnishes the matter in which materializing entities clothe themselves; when they cease to use it, it reenters the body of the medium. In these and other respects the astral body differs from the breath-form.

The third of the three things affected by psychic destiny, the doer, and the manner in which it is so affected, are discussed in subsequent pages.