Dwellers
on the Threshold
Of these there are many
kinds. First, elementals. They try to bar the astral plane against
man. And naturally so, because they are concerned with the building
up of the lower kingdoms, these elementals of form, the Rupa Devas;
and to them man is a really hateful creature, because of his destructive
properties. That is
why they dislike him so much. He spoils their work wherever he goes,
tramples down vegetable things, and kills animals, so that the whole
of that great kingdom of nature hates the name of man. They band
themselves together to stop the one who is just taking his first
conscious steps on the astral plane, and try to frighten him, for
they fear that he is bringing destructiveness into the new world.
They cannot do anything, if you do not mind them. When that rush
of elemental force comes against the man entering on the astral
plane, he must remain quiet, indifferent, taking up the position:
"I am a higher product of evolution than you are; you can do
nothing to me. I am your friend, not your enemy, Peace!" If
he be strong enough to take up that position, the great wave of
elemental force will roll aside and let him through. The seemingly
causeless fears which some feel at night are largely due to this
hostility. You are, at night, more sensitive to the astral plane
than during the day, and the dislike of the beings on the plane
for man is felt more strongly. But when the elementals find you
are not destructive, not an embodiment of ruin, they become as friendly
to you as they were before hostile. That is the first form of the
dweller on the threshold. Here again the importance of pure and
rhythmic food comes in; because if you use meat and alcohol, you
attract the lower elementals of the plane, those that take pleasure
in the scent of blood and spirits, and they will inevitably prevent
your seeing and understanding things clearly. They will surge round
you, impress their thoughts upon you, force their impressions on
your astral body, so that you may have a kind of shell of objectionable
hangers-on to your aura, who will much obstruct you in your efforts
to see and hear correctly. That is the chief reason why every one
who is teaching Yoga on the right-hand path absolutely forbids indulgence
in meat and alcohol.
The second form of the
dweller on the threshold is the thought forms of our own past. Those
forms, growing out of the evil of lives that lie behind us, thought
forms of wickedness of all kinds, those face us when we first come
into touch with the astral plane, really belonging to us, but appearing
as outside forms, as objects; and they try to scare back their creator.
You can only conquer them by sternly repudiating them: "You
are no longer mine; you belong to my past, and not to my present.
I will give you none of my life." Thus you will gradually exhaust
and finally annihilate them. This is perhaps one of the most painful
difficulties that one has to face in treading the astral plane in
consciousness for the first time. Of course, where a person has
in any way been mixed up with objectionable thought forms of the
stronger kind, such as those brought about by practicing black magic,
there this particular form of the dweller will be much stronger
and more dangerous, and often desperate is the struggle between
the neophyte and these dwellers from his past backed up by the masters
of the black side.
Now we come to one of
the most terrible forms of the dwellers on the threshold. Suppose
a case in which a man during the past has steadily identified himself
with the lower part of his nature and has gone against the higher,
paralysing himself, using higher powers for lower purposes, degrading
his mind to be the mere slave of his lower desires. A curious change
takes place in him. The life which belongs to the Ego in him is
taken up by the physical body, and assimilated with the lower lives
of which the body is composed. Instead of serving the purposes of
the Spirit, it is dragged away for tile purposes of the lower, and
becomes part of the animal life belonging to the lower bodies, so
that the Ego and his higher bodies are weakened, and the animal
life of the lower is strengthened. Now under those conditions, the
Ego will sometimes become so disgusted with his vehicles that when
death relieves him of the physical body he will cast the others
quite aside. And even sometimes during physical life he will leave
the desecrated temple. Now after death, in these cases, the man
generally reincarnates very quickly; for, having torn himself away
from his astral and mental bodies, he has no bodies with which to
live in the astral and mental worlds, and he must quickly form new
ones and come again to rebirth here. Under these conditions the
old astral and mental bodies are not disintegrated when the new
mental and astral bodies are formed and born into the world, and
the affinity between the old and new, both having had the same owner,
the same tenant, asserts itself, and the highly vitalised old astral
and mental bodies will attach themselves to the new astral and mental
bodies, and become the most terrible form of the dweller on the
threshold.
These are the various
forms which the dweller may assume, and all are spoken of in books
dealing with these particular subjects, though I do not know that
you will find anywhere in a single book a definite classification
like the above. In addition to these there are, of course, the direct
attacks of the Dark Brothers, taking up various forms and aspects,
and the most common form they will take is the form of some virtue
which is a little bit in excess in the yogi. The yogi is not attacked
through his vices, but through his virtues; for a virtue in excess
becomes a vice. It is the extremes which are ever the vices; the
golden mean is the virtue. And thus, virtues become tempters in
the difficult regions of the astral and mental worlds, and are utilised
by the Brothers of the Shadow in order to entrap the unwary.
I am not here speaking
of the four ordinary ordeals of the astral plane: the ordeals by
earth, water, fire and air. Those are mere trifles, hardly worth
considering when speaking of these more serious difficulties. Of
course, you have to learn that you are entirely master of astral
matter, that earth cannot crush you, nor water drown you, etc. Those
are, so to speak, very easy lessons. Those who belong to a Masonic
body will recognise these ordeals as parts of the language they
are familiar with in their Masonic ritual.
There is one other danger
also. You may injure yourself by repercussion. If on the astral
plane you are threatened with danger which belongs to the physical,
but are unwise enough to think it can injure you, it will injure
your physical body. You may get a wound, or a bruise, and so on,
out of astral experiences. I once made a fool of myself in this
way. I was in a ship going down and, as I was busy there, I saw
that the mast of the ship was going to fall and, in a moment's forgetfulness,
thought: "That mast will fall on me" that momentary thought
had its result, for when I came back to the body in the morning,
I had a large physical bruise where the mast fell. That is a frequent
phenomenon until you have corrected the fault of the mind, which
thinks instinctively the things which it is accustomed to think
down here.
One protection you can
make for yourself as you become more sensitive. Be rigorously truthful
in thought, in word, in deed. Every thought, every desire, takes
form in the higher world. If you are careless of truth here, you
are creating a whole host of terrifying and deluding forms. Think
truth, speak truth, live truth, and then you shall be free from
the illusions of the astral world.
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