As promised, we are going to start this presentation by looking at the role talismans play and the effect they have on the emotional envelope. The methods of making them have already been described in our look at the etheric body. We are only going to look at their general effects here.
When an object is strongly charged with magnetism for a particular purpose by a knowledgeable person, it becomes a talisman and when properly made, continues to radiate this magnetism with unimpaired strength for many years. It may be used for many purposes. Thus, for example, a talisman may be charged with thoughts of purity, which will express themselves as definite rates of vibration in emotional and mental matter. These vibratory rates, being directly contrary to thoughts of impurity, will tend to neutralise or overpower any impure thought, which may arise. In many cases, the impure thought is a casual one that has been picked up and is not therefore a thing of great power in itself. The talisman, on the other hand, has been intentionally and strongly charged, so that when the two streams of thought meet, there is no doubt that the thoughts connected with the talisman will vanquish the others. In addition, the initial conflict between the opposing sets of thoughts will attract the person’s attention and thus give them time to prepare themselves, so that they will not be taken off guard, as so frequently happens.
Another example would be that of a talisman charged with faith and courage. This would operate in two ways. First, the vibrations radiating from the talisman would oppose feelings of fear, as soon as they arose and thus prevent them from accumulating and strengthening one another, as they often do, until they become irresistible. The effect has been compared to that of a gyroscope, which once set in motion in one direction, strongly resists being turned in another direction. Secondly, the talisman works indirectly upon the mind of the wearer. As soon as they feel the beginnings of fear, they will probably recollect the talisman and call up the reserves of strength of their own will, to resist the undesirable feeling. A third possibility for a talisman is that of its being linked with the person who made it. In the event of the wearer being in desperate circumstances, they may call upon the maker and evoke a response from them. The maker may or may not be physically conscious of the appeal, but in any case, their “soul” will be conscious and will respond by reinforcing the vibrations of the talisman.
Certain articles are to a large extent natural amulets or talismans. All precious stones fall into this category, each having a distinct influence, which can be utilised in two ways: (1) the influence attracts to it elemental essence of a certain kind and thoughts and desires, which naturally express themselves through that essence; and (2) these natural peculiarities make it a fit vehicle for the magnetism, which is intended to work along the same line as those thoughts and emotions. Thus, for example, for an amulet of purity, a stone should be chosen whose natural vibrations are inharmonious to the vibration in which impure thoughts express themselves.
Although the atoms of the stone are physical, they are in a vibrational frequency identical at this level with the frequency of purity on higher levels. They will, even without the stone being magnetised, check impure thoughts or feelings by virtue of the overtones inherent in them. Furthermore, the stone can readily be charged at emotional and mental levels with the vibrations of pure thought and feeling, which are set at the same frequency.
As already discussed, other examples of talismans are (1) the rudraksha berry, frequently used for necklaces in India, which is especially suitable for magnetisation, where sustained holy thought or meditation is required and where all disturbing influences are to be kept away; and (2) the seeds of the tulsi plant, whose influence works in a different manner.
Objects, which produce strong scents are natural talismans. Thus the gums chosen for incense give out radiations favourable to spiritual and devotional thought and do not harmonise with any form of disturbance or worry. Mediaeval witches sometimes combined the ingredients of incense so as to produce the opposite effect, and it is also done today in Luciferian ceremonies. It is generally desirable to avoid coarse and heavy scents, such as that of musk, as many of them are reminiscent of sensual feelings.
An object, not intentionally charged, may sometimes have the force of a talisman: e.g., a present from a friend, worn on the person, such as a ring or chain, or even a letter. An object, such as a watch, habitually carried in the pocket or worn on the wrist, becomes charged with magnetism and is able, if given away, to produce recognisable effects on the recipient. Coins and paper currency are usually charged with mixed magnetism, feeling and thought and may, therefore, radiate a disturbing and irritating effect. Hence the term, dirty money, which today has different connotations.
A person’s thoughts and feelings thus affect not only themselves and other people but also impregnate the inanimate objects around them, even walls and furniture. People thus unconsciously magnetise these physical objects, so that they have the power of suggesting similar thoughts and feelings to other people within range of their influence.
That is our look at Physical Life, with regard to emotional influences. Now we go on to the second; The Emotional Life. –
It is scarcely necessary to insist that the quality of the emotional body is largely determined by the kind of feelings and emotions, which constantly play through it. A person is using their emotional body, whether they are conscious of the fact or not, whenever they express emotion, just as they use their mental body whenever they think, or their physical body whenever they perform physical work. This, of course, is quite a different thing from utilising their emotional body as an independent vehicle, through which their consciousness can be fully expressed, a matter which we shall have to consider later, in due course.
The emotional body, as we have seen, is the field of manifestation of desire, the mirror in which every feeling is instantly reflected. Every thought, which has in it anything that touches the personal self, must express itself in this envelope. From the material of the emotional body, bodily form is given to the dark “elementals”, which humanity creates and sets in motion by evil wishes and malicious feelings. From this envelope are also sent forth the beneficent elementals, called into life by good wishes, gratitude and love.
The emotional body grows by use, just as every other body does and it also has its habits, built up and fixed by constant repetition of similar acts. The emotional body during physical life being the recipient of and respondent to stimuli both from the physical body and from the mental envelope, tends to repeat automatically vibrations to which it is accustomed; just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so does the emotional body repeat a familiar feeling or thought.
All the activities that we call evil, whether selfish thoughts or selfish emotions, invariably show themselves as vibrations of the coarser matter of those sub-planes in the emotional envelope, while good and unselfish thoughts or emotions are set in vibrations of the higher types of matter. As the finer matter is more easily moved than coarse, it follows that a given amount of force spent in good thought or feeling produces perhaps a hundred times the result as the same amount of force sent out into the coarser matter. If this were not so, it is obvious that the average person could never make any progress at all.
The effect of 10 per cent of the force directed to good ends, enormously outweighs that of the 90 per cent devoted to selfish purposes and so on the whole, such a person makes an appreciable advance from life to life. A person who has only 1 per cent of good intent, makes a slight advance. A person whose account balances exactly, so that they neither advances nor retrogresses, must be living a distinctly evil life: whilst to go downwards in evil, a person must be an unusually consistent villain.
Thus even people who are doing nothing consciously towards their evolution and who let everything go as it will, are nevertheless gradually evolving, because of the irresistible force of the Logos and the Law of Developement, which is steadily pressing them onwards. But they are moving so slowly that it will take them millions of years of repeated incarnations and troubled karma, to gain even a step.
The method by which progress is made certain is simple and ingenious. As we have seen, evil qualities are vibrations of the coarser matter of the respective sub-planes, while good qualities are expressed through the higher grades of matter. From this follows two remarkable results. It must be kept in mind that each sub-plane of the emotional body has a special relationship to the corresponding sub-plane of the mental body (47:4-7); thus the four lower emotional sub-planes (48:4-7), correspond to the four kinds of matter in the mental body, while the three higher emotional sub-planes (48:1-3) correspond to the three kinds of matter in the causal body (47:1-3).
Therefore, the lower emotional vibrations can find no matter in the causal body capable of responding to them and so the higher qualities alone can be built into the causal body. This is why, as has been mentioned on many occasions, it emerges that any good that a person develops in themselves, is permanently recorded by a change in their causal envelope, while the evil which they do, feel, or think, cannot contaminate the casual envelope, an envelope many think of as the “soul”. It can cause disturbance and trouble only to the mental body, which is renewed in each fresh incarnation. The result of evil is stored in the emotional and mental permanent atom and molecule, respectively. The person, therefore, has still to face their misdeeds all over and over again, until they have vanquished it. This is accomplished when all the tendencies, aka the offending elemental essences, are rooted out from the emotional envelope. That is a very different matter from taking it into the causal envelope and making it a part of the “soul”.
You now know what lies ahead of you; let’s reconvene in the next presentation.