To date, we have looked at the basic structure and mechanism of a thought form. We will now look into the component parts of these thought forms. The colours in which thought forms express themselves are identical to the colours found in the aura. The brilliance and depth of the colours are usually a measure of the strength and the activity of the feeling. For our present purpose, we will classify thought forms into three kinds: (1) those connected solely with their originator: (2) those connected with another person: and (3) those not defined as being personal.
If a person’s thought is about themself, or based on a personal feeling, as the vast majority of thoughts are, the form will hover in the immediate neighbourhood of its generator. Any time, then, when the person is in a passive condition, their thoughts and feelings, when not being specifically occupied, will return to them and discharge back into the envelope that created them. In addition, each person also serves as a magnet to draw towards themselves the thought forms of others similar to themselves, thus attracting towards themself, reinforcements of energy from outside. This can be a positive or a negative feedback loop, the choice is yours. People who are becoming sensitive have sometimes imagined, in such cases, that they have been tempted by the “devil”, whereas it is their own thoughts-desire forms, which are the cause of the “temptation”. This throws out the widow reams of Medieval treatise on how some saint or other was assailed by the devil. On the one hand, you now know they were the ones with the forked tails, yet through their written works you also know they eventually triumphed and banished their demons, we hope. Excessive brooding over the same subject may create a thought form of tremendous power. Such a form may last for many years and have, for a time, all the appearance and powers of a real living entity. Most people move through life enclosed literally within a cage of their own building, surrounded by masses of forms created by their habitual thoughts. One important effect of this is that each person looks out upon the world through their own thought forms and thus sees everything tinged by them. This is the most pernicious form of confirmation bias.
A person’s thought forms react upon them, tending to reproduce themselves and thus setting up definite habits of thought and feeling, which may be helpful if of a lofty character, but are often cramping and a hindrance to growth, obscuring mental vision and facilitating the formation of prejudice and fixed moods or attitudes, which may develop into definite vices. This explains so much about ourselves and the world we experience around us. I am sometimes dumbfounded by the perceptions held by people, thinking to myself, how can they be so blind? When you begin to understand how thought forms work and how they can imprison us, you realise they are not stupid or naive, well yes they are, but there is an excuse…sort of.
As a Master has written: “Man is continually peopling his current location in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and passions.” These thought forms remain in a person’s aura, increasing in number and intensity until certain frequencies of them so dominate the mental and emotional life that the person would rather answer to their impulse than decide on the evidence at hand. In this manner, habits are formed and the outer expression of their stored force that has been created becomes the foundation of their character.
Moreover, as each person leaves behind them a trail of thought forms, it follows that as we go along a street we are walking amidst a sea of other people’s thoughts. If a person leaves their mind blank for a time, the thoughts of others drift through it. If one of these thoughts happens to attract their attention, their mind seizes upon it, makes it their own, strengthening it by the addition of their force and then casts it out again to affect somebody else. A person, therefore, is not responsible for a thought, which floats into their mind, but they are responsible if they take it up, dwell upon it, and then send it out again strengthened. This is exemplified in a shared anger by a family, a community, a country or a race of people. They create an emotional narrative, which then circulates around the community reinforcing itself. You do not need to look far at the protracted conflicts in the world to find examples. Social media has turbocharged this effect to the detriment of us all.
An example of thought forms is that of the shapeless clouds of heavy blue, which may often be seen rolling along like wreaths of dense smoke, over the heads of the congregation of a church. Arthur Power gives a quaint example in which he says, “You may find in churches, when the level of spirituality is low, the minds of men may create rows of figures, representing their calculations of business deals or speculations, while the minds of the women may create pictures of millinery and jewellery, etc.” I wonder what the congregations of today would be imagining. Terrifying thought.
Hypnotism provides another example of thought forms. The operator may make a thought form and project it onto blank paper, where it may become visible to his hypnotised subject; or they may make the form so objective that the subject will see and feel it as though it were an actual physical object. The literature on hypnotism is full of such examples.
If the thought-form is directed towards another person, it will go to that person. One of two effects may then result. (1) If the aura of the person concerned has material capable of responding sympathetically to the vibration of the thought form, the thought-form will remain near the person, or even in their aura. As opportunity allows, it will automatically discharge itself, thus tending to strengthen in the person that particular rate of vibration. If the person at whom a thought form is aimed happens to be busy, or already engaged in some definite train of thought, the thought form, is unable to discharge itself into the person’s mental body, which is already vibrating at a certain determinate rate, hang in the vicinity until the person’s mental body is sufficiently at rest to permit its entrance, when it immediately discharges itself. In doing this, it will display what appears to be a very considerable amount of intelligence and adaptability, though it is a force acting along the line of least resistance – pressing steadily in one direction all the time and taking advantage of any channel that it can find. Such elementals can, of course, be strengthened and their life-period extended by repetition of the same thought.
The second effect (2) occurs if, on the other hand, there is in the person’s aura no matter capable of response, then the thought form cannot affect it at all. It will therefore rebound from it, with a force proportional to the energy with which it was primed and return to and strike its creator. This is why it is not productive to have negative feelings about someone who you know has negative feelings about you. It may be difficult to maintain detachment from such negative situations, but you can now see, in the long run, why this is the wisest course of action. On the other hand, a thought form of love and of desire to protect, strongly directed to some beloved objects, acts as a shielding and protecting agent. It will seek every opportunity to serve and defend. It will strengthen friendly forces and weaken unfriendly ones, that impinge on the aura. It may protect its objects from impurity, irritability, fear, etc. Friendly thoughts and earnest good wishes thus create and maintain what is practically a “guardian angel”, always at the side of the person being thought of, no matter where they may be. Many a mother’s thoughts and prayers, for example, have given assistance and protection to her child. They may often be seen by clairvoyants and in rare cases they may even materialise and become physically visible.
It is thus apparent that a thought of love sent from one person to another involves the actual transference of a certain amount, both of force and of matter, from the sender to the recipient. If the thought is sufficiently strong, distance makes absolutely no difference to it; but a weak and diffused thought is not effective outside a limited area. This highlights the need for you to protect yourself from negative external influences by imagining a shield of blue light around you at all times. Could this shield block our potentially positive thought forms heading your way? Yes, it probably could, but if it is an either-or situation, which situation would you prefer to have covered?
A variant of our first group consists of those cases where a person thinks strongly of themself in a distant place. The form thus created contains a large proportion of mental matter; takes the image of the thinker and is at first small and compressed. It draws around itself a considerable amount of emotional matter and usually expands to life-size before it appears at its destination. Such forms are often seen by clairvoyants and not infrequently mistaken for the person’s emotional body or even for the person themself.
When this takes place, the thought or desire must be sufficiently strong to do one of three things: (1) To call up, by mesmeric influence, the image of the thinker in the mind of the person to whom they wish to appear: (2) by the same power in (1), to stimulate for a moment that person’s psychic faculties, so that they can see the emotional visitor; and (3) to produce a temporary materialisation, which will be physically visible.
Apparitions at the time of death, which are by no means uncommon, are very often the emotional form of the dying person; but they may also be thought forms called into being by their earnest wish to see some friend before they pass on. In some instances the visitor is perceived just after the moment of death, instead of just before: but for various reasons, this form of the apparition is far less frequent than the other.
This leads into a fascinating, if, worrying realm of ghosts and elementals and how they can impact our environment, which will be discussed in the next presentation.