When a thought suddenly strikes you, keep it back, do not utter it at once, but nourish it; for it will condense through being retained in silence, and gain strength like steam under counter-pressure.
Pressure and condensation produce the quality of a magnetic activity, in accordance with the Law that all that is stronger attracts what is weak. Similar thought-forms are thus attracted from all sides and retained, constantly reinforcing the power of your own, your original thought, yet working in such a way that through the joining of other forms the originally produced form is refined, changes, and takes on different shapes until it comes to maturity. Indeed you sense all this inwardly, but you always think it is entirely your own volition. But you never give purely your own volition in any matter, there are always other influences as well!
What does this process tell you?
That only in the union of many elements can anything perfect be created! Created? Is that right? No, but formed! For there is really nothing new to be created; in everything it is merely a matter of producing new forms, since all the elements already exist in the vast Creation. But these elements are to be pressed into service for the way to perfection, which is brought about through union.
Union! Do not pass over this lightly, but try to become absorbed in the concept that maturity and perfection are achieved through union. The principle rests in all Creation as a treasure that needs to be unearthed! It is closely related to the Law that only in giving can there also be receiving! And what is required to grasp these principles aright? Thus to experience them? Love! And therefore love indeed stands as the highest power, as unlimited might, in the mysteries of the great Life!
As with a single thought, union moulds, refines and forms, so is it with man himself and with the whole of Creation, which in a never-ending fusion of existing, individual forms undergoes transformations through the power of volition, and thus becomes the way to perfection.
A single individual cannot offer you perfection, but the whole of humanity, with all its varied characteristics, may do so! Each individual has something which is definitely part of the whole. And this is also why one so far advanced as no longer to know any earthly desires loves all mankind, not one individual, because only the whole of mankind can make the strings of his mature soul, laid bare through purification, sound the chord of heavenly harmony. He bears the harmony within himself, because all strings vibrate!
Let us return to the thought that attracted the other forms, and thereby became strong and ever stronger. It finally emerges beyond you in firmly united power-waves, breaks through your own personal aura, and exerts an influence upon your wider environment.
Mankind call this personal magnetism. The uninitiated say: “You radiate something!” According to your nature, either unpleasant or pleasant. Attractive or repulsive. It is felt!
But you do not radiate anything! The process which engenders the feeling in these others has its origin in the fact that like a magnet you draw to yourself all that is spiritually similar. And it is this drawing that is felt by those around you. Yet in this, too, lies the reciprocal effect. Through the connection the other person then clearly senses your strength, and thereby “sympathy” awakens.
Always bear in mind: Expressed according to our concepts, all that is spiritual is magnetic, and you also know that the stronger always overcomes what is weak through attraction, through absorption. In this way “from him that hath not (the weak one), even that which he hath shall be taken away”. He becomes dependent.
There is no injustice in this, but it takes place according to the Divine Laws. Man only needs to pull himself together and will aright, and he will be protected from it.
You will now probably ask: What happens when all want to be strong? When there is nothing left to be taken from anybody? Then, dear friend, there will be a voluntary interchange, based on the Law that only in giving can there also be receiving. There will be no standstill on that account, but all that is inferior is eliminated.
Thus it happens that through indolence many become spiritually dependent, and sometimes, in the end, they hardly possess the ability to develop thoughts of their own.
It must be emphasised that only the homogeneous will be attracted. Hence the proverb: “Birds of a feather flock together.” Thus drinkers will always find each other, smokers will have “fellow feelings”, likewise gossips, gamblers, and so on; yet noble characters will also come together for a high aim.
But it goes further: Whatever is drawn to another spiritually will eventually also manifest physically, since everything spiritual penetrates into the gross material, whereby we must bear in mind the Law of Returns, because a thought always remains connected with its origin and radiates back to it through this link.
I am always speaking here only of real thoughts, which carry within them the vital power of the psychic intuition. Not of the power wasted by the brain-substance entrusted to you as a tool, which forms but fleeting thoughts that only manifest in a wild medley as shadowy phantoms, and fortunately very soon fade away. Such thoughts merely waste your time and energy, and thereby you fritter away a gift entrusted to you.
If, for instance, you seriously ponder over something, this thought becomes strongly magnetic within you through the power of silence, attracting all that is similar and thus becoming fructified. It matures and rises above the commonplace, thereby even penetrating into other spheres, from which it receives an influx of higher thoughts … inspiration! Hence, in contrast to mediumship, the basic thought in inspiration must proceed from yourself, must form a bridge to the beyond, to the spiritual world, in order to draw consciously from a spring there.
Inspiration has therefore nothing whatever to do with mediumship.
In this way the thought is brought to full maturity within you. You approach its realisation, and bring into effect, condensed through your power, what already in countless elements was floating in the Universe before as thought-forms.
Through unification and condensation of what has long existed spiritually you thus produce a new form! So in the entire Creation it is always only the forms that change, because all else is eternal and indestructible.
Beware of confused thoughts, of all shallowness in thinking. Carelessness will exact a bitter revenge; for it will speedily debase you to the level of a playground for alien influences, through which you very easily become sullen, moody and unjust to your surroundings.
If you have a genuine thought and cling to it, then the gathered power must eventually also press towards realisation; for
the evolution of everything takes place entirely in the spiritual, since every power is purely spiritual! What then becomes visible to you are always only the final effects of a preceding spiritual-magnetic process, which takes place continually and uniformly according to a firmly established order.
Observation of your thoughts and feelings will soon prove to you that all real life can in truth only be spiritual life, in which alone the origin and also the development lie. You must come to the conviction that everything you see with your physical eyes is in reality only the manifestations of the eternally driving spirit.
Every action, even the slightest movement of a human being, is indeed always first spiritually willed. The physical bodies merely act as spiritually animated instruments, which themselves only took shape through the power of the spirit. The same applies to trees, stones and the whole earth. Everything is animated, permeated and driven by the Creative Spirit.
However, since all matter, thus all that can be physically seen, is simply the outcome of spiritual life, it is not hard for you to comprehend that conditions on earth are also formed according to the nature of the spiritual life which immediately surrounds us. What logically follows from this is clear: Through the wise ordering of Creation man has been given the power to shape conditions for himself with the Power of the Creator. Happy is he who uses it only for good! But woe unto him who succumbs to the temptation to use it for evil!
The spirit in men is only encompassed and darkened by earthly desire, which clings to it like dross, burdens it and drags it down. However, his thoughts are acts of will endowed with spiritual power. The decision to think in a good or evil way lies with man, and he can thus guide the Divine Power to good or evil purpose! Therein lies the responsibility that man bears, for reward or retribution will infallibly be his, as all the consequences of his thoughts return to the starting-point through the established reciprocal action, which never fails, and which is quite inflexible in this matter, thus inexorable. Thereby also incorruptible, stern and just! Do people not also say the same of God?
If today many opponents of religion reject the existence of a Godhead, this cannot in any way alter the facts I have cited. People need only omit the little word “God”, and engross themselves deeply in science, and they will find exactly the same, only expressed in different words. Is it not absurd, therefore, still to argue about it?
There is no getting round the Laws of Nature, no man can defy them. God is the Power that activates the Natural Laws; the Power that nobody has yet grasped or seen, but whose effects every one, daily, hourly, indeed in every fraction of a second, must see, intuitively sense and observe, if only he wants to do so – in himself, in every animal, every tree, every flower, in every fibre of a leaf swelling and bursting its sheath to come to the light.
Is it not blindness to oppose this so obstinately while everyone, including these stubborn repudiators themselves, confirms and acknowledges the existence of this Power? What is it that prevents them from calling this acknowledged Power God? Is it childlike obstinacy? Or is it a certain shame at being obliged to confess that they have been obstinately trying all the time to deny something, the existence of which has always been clear to them?
Probably nothing of all this. The cause may well lie in the caricatures of the great Godhead held up to mankind from so many sides, which on serious investigation they could not accept. Any attempt to press the all-embracing and all-pervading Power of the Godhead into a picture must certainly debase and dishonour It!
On serious reflection no picture can be brought into harmony with It! Just because every man bears within him the awareness of God, he rejects with misgiving the narrowing down of the great inconceivable Power that created and guides him.
It is dogma that is to blame for a great number of those who, in their antagonism, seek to overstep the mark altogether, very often against the certainty living within them.
The hour is not far distant, however, when spiritual awakening will come! When the words of the Redeemer will be rightly interpreted and His great Work of Redemption rightly grasped; for Christ brought redemption from the Darkness by pointing out the way to the Truth, by showing as a man the path to the Luminous Height! And with His blood shed on the cross He set the seal to His conviction!
Truth has never yet been different from what it was even then, and is today, and still will be tens of thousands of years hence; for it is eternal!
Therefore learn to know the Laws contained in the great Book of the entire Creation. To submit to them means: To love God! For then you will bring no discord into the harmony, but will help to bring the resounding chord to its full magnificence.
Whether you say: I voluntarily submit to the existing Laws of Nature because it is for my own good, or: I submit to God’s Will, Which manifests in the Laws of Nature, or to the unfathomable Power Which activates the Laws of Nature … would the effect be any different? The Power is there and you recognise it, you simply must acknowledge it, because as soon as you reflect a little there is nothing else you can do … and thereby you acknowledge your God, the Creator!
And this Power also operates within you when you are thinking! Therefore do not misuse it to evil purpose, but think good thoughts! Never forget: When you are producing thoughts you are using Divine Power, with which you can achieve the purest and highest!
Try never to forget here that all the consequences of your thoughts always fall back upon you in proportion to the power, importance and extent of the effect of the thoughts for good or evil.
Since thought is spiritual, however, the consequences will return spiritually. They will thus affect you no matter whether here on earth, or later in the spiritual after your departure. Being spiritual they are by no means bound to the material either. Thus it follows that the disintegration of the body does not prevent the consequences from taking effect! The requital in the reaction will surely come, sooner or later, here or hereafter, with all certainty.
The spiritual link with all your works remains firm; for indeed earthly, material works also have a spiritual origin through the creative thought, and will remain in existence even when everything earthly has passed away. It is therefore rightly said: “Your works await you, in so far as the effect has not yet reached you through the reaction”.
If you are still here on earth when a reaction is due, or if you are again here, the consequences coming from the spiritual will exert their force according to their nature either for good or for evil, through your circumstances and your environment, or directly on yourself, on your body.
Here it must once more be specially emphasised: The true real life takes place in the spiritual! And that knows neither time nor space, and therefore no separation either. It stands above earthly conceptions. For this reason the consequences will strike you, wherever you may be, at the time when, according to the Eternal Law, the effect returns to its starting-point. Nothing is lost in the process; it is bound to come.
This now also answers the question so often asked: Why is it that obviously good people must sometimes suffer such bitter adversity in their earth-lives as to make it appear unjust? These are reciprocal effects, which must strike them!
Now you know the answer to this question; for your existing physical body plays no part in it. Your body is not you personally, it is not your entire “ego”, but an instrument which you have chosen or which you were obliged to take according to the existing Laws of the spiritual life, which you may also call Cosmic Laws if that makes them easier to understand. The particular earth-life is but a short span of your real existence.
A crushing thought if there were no escape, no protecting power to counteract it. On awakening to the spiritual many a person would then have to despair, and wish rather to go on sleeping in the same old way. For he has no idea what awaits him, what will still strike him in the shape of reaction from former times! Or as people say: “What he has to make good.”
But take comfort! In the wise provision of the great Creation, as you awaken a path is also shown to you through that power of good volition to which I have already called special attention, and which mitigates or entirely pushes aside the dangers of the karma that is taking effect.
This, too, the Father’s Spirit has given into your hands. The power of good volition forms a circle around you capable of disintegrating the evil pressing upon you, or at least of greatly modifying it, exactly as the atmosphere also protects the earth.
But the power of good volition, this strong protection, is fostered and nourished by the power of silence.
Therefore I once more urgently
exhort you, seekers:
“Keep the hearth of your thoughts pure and then, above all, exercise the great power of silence if you wish to ascend.”
The Father has already endowed you with the strength for everything! You have only to use it!