LETTER VIII
THE WORLD OF MIND
March 24, 1917.
I WISH that more people of sane, sound mind would experiment in telepathic communication. I know there is any amount of uncoordinated and half-serious playing with phenomena; but with scientific accuracy of observation and scientific precision in recording data, not only the body of sensible literature on these subjects would be increased, but the habits of careful observation and precision in reporting supernormal facts would be developed in the experimentalists.
You who write for me, continue to make and to record experiments. You are almost too cautious, but most persons are not cautious enough.
Explain the necessary conditions of passivity and activity between those working together. Though the best results are often obtained by you alone, yet the testimony of one person is not so convincing as the testimony of several who have witnessed and taken part in the same phenomena. But you are right in hesitating to take on the psychic conditions of insincere and merely curious people who would like to work with you.
The great difficulty with most persons is that they cannot make themselves sufficiently negative for the time being. When the experiments are over they can and should become equally positive. They can shift from one pole to the other, and they must do so if they wish to preserve their physical health and balance.
But bear in mind that the influences from this side are good and bad, even as the influences in the world are; and if you feel that any “presence” is hostile, at once banish it and become positive. After any approach by an undesirable influence, you should not for some hours let yourself become negative. Go for a walk, or attack some difficult piece of work, or read a book that demands mental activity in order to grasp its meaning.
You live in a sea of mind, as well as in a psychic sea; they interpenetrate, and they interpenetrate with the physical; but in working through and with them, keep them as distinct as possible.
I work more and more in the mental world, and less and less in the astral; but the majority of my readers will not know exactly what I mean by that statement. There is a greater difference between the astral and the mental than there is between the astral and the physical.
Do not despise the astral. Its dynamics are of colossal import. But cultivate more and more the purely mental, because the astral in all of you is developed beyond the mental.
In my former writings I have told you something of the dangers of the astral. Now I want to tell you some of the more obvious dangers of the mental.
Those who learn that they can create in mind need to develop a sense of responsibility. They are too reckless in demonstrating their power. Remember that as you go up in the planes of being you get into subtler and subtler regions, and strength increases with the degree of subtlety—not the reverse, as you would naturally suppose.
One of the greatest temptations of the mental world is that of the creation of falsehoods. By stating that which is not true, you project into the realm of mind a picture that has a certain permanency. It may deceive others, but in time it will deceive you, its creator. Those who speak falsely cannot perceive truth. Those who create false pictures in the mental world will be deceived by those very pictures; they will reap the effects of the causes they have set up.
Have you not known people who were always being deceived by their “friends”? They are generally those who have left deceiving pictures behind themselves. There are people who cannot discriminate between the false and the true. They deceive and are deceived. Those who deceive are always deceived, whatever their supposed intellect may be.
And I would say to those to whom I now suggest experiments with clairvoyance and telepathy, that if they have planted the seeds of falsehood they will reap a harvest of deceptive appearances. Test yourselves in that way, you who believe yourselves to be sincere. You may learn something of value regarding your own karma. (Yes, I will use Theosophic or Indian terms when they express my meaning. Those who re-write the Oriental philosophies in western terms can pass for original only with the ignorant.)
What the new race needs most of all is truth. Modern science is preparing the world for the fearless facing of truth. The man who toils over a microscope that he may observe and record some fact in nature, is more the servant of God than the man who with sanctimonious face tells his fellow creatures what they must not do; for his work at least is positive in its results.
There are too many “thou shalt nots”; too few “I shalls.”
The new race will develop a wide tolerance. It will discourage undesirable things more by ignoring them than by attacking them. By attacking a thing we give it power.
Work more and more in the world of mind. The results in the physical will be immense.