THINKING AND DESTINY
Harold W. Percival
CHAPTER VII
MENTAL DESTINY
Section 1
The mental atmosphere of the human.
ALL destiny begins with thinking. When the thought is developed to exteriorization, that is the physical result; from that comes a psychic result, from that a mental result and from that a noetic result, for the human. All this is done by his thinking around the thought. A thought as a whole is his mental destiny, and his other three kinds of destiny and their results come out of it by thinking. These four kinds of destiny are the destiny of the human, not of the Triune Self. The thinker and the knower have no destiny, because they do not create thoughts when they think.
The mental destiny of a human is his predisposition to think as he does. It is the state of the mental atmosphere of the human, (Fig. V-B). It is his mental character, his mental endowments, which are used by his feelings and desires.
The active part of the mental atmosphere is represented in the human by three of the minds of the thinker of the Triune Self which are put at the service of the doer. There is the body-mind, with which feeling-and-desire should think to care for and to control the physical body and nature. Then there is the feeling-mind, which feeling should use to find and distinguish itself from the body, and also to give forms to the matter of nature—by thinking. And there is the desire-mind, which desire should use to control its feelings and desires, to distinguish itself as desire from the body in which it is, and to have union with feeling. But feeling-and-desire, the doer in the human, usually think with the body-mind and in the service of nature. In the run of human beings the doer works chiefly with its body-mind for its feelings and desires, as a laborer, a trader, a lawyer, a manager, an accountant, an inventor, a builder. The use of the three minds lowers or elevates feeling-and-desire. Feeling-and-desire are concerned with physical things; they are busy with material things; they live in them, are bound up with them and do not leave them. They are the servants of the body. The thinking which the three minds do is that which is and makes mental destiny.
Thinking is of two kinds: real thinking, which is the steady holding of the Conscious Light within on the subject of the thinking, and the ordinary human thinking, which is either passive or active to the subject of thought. Passive thinking is of objects of the senses, merely listless and casual, and without effort to hold the Light. Active thinking is the effort to hold the Light. Passive thinking begets active thinking. In consequence, thoughts are conceived and issued. They are beings and have in them something which, once they have been exteriorized, requires their successive projections until they are balanced.
Thinking, and the thoughts which follow it, depend on the condition of the mental atmosphere, which is the mental destiny of the person. The atmosphere has a moral aspect and is dominated by a ruling thought. It has mental attitudes and mental sets, a certain amount of knowledge which is based on experiences through the four senses, and warnings of conscience. In its most general aspect the atmosphere is either honest or dishonest and has accordingly a tendency to truthfulness or to lying. The atmosphere shows what the human is responsible for. The good and evil thinking that men have done remains with them in their mental atmospheres until removed by thinking. Certain mental attitudes towards responsibility will raise the thinking from servitude and interference to a mental excellence which in later lives appears as an endowment.
Responsibility is connected with duty, the present duty, the doing of which leads to the balancing of a thought. One of the objects of life is to think without creating thoughts, that is, without being attached to the object for which the thought is created, and can be attained only when desire is self-controlled and directed by thinking. Until then thoughts are created, and are destiny.
Copyright 1974 by The Word Foundation, Inc.