Psychic Karma is experienced in the psychic zodiac of man and balanced in the physical within the psychic sphere.

यस रकम

THE

शब्द

कर्मा

IV

Psychic Karma

MANY psychic faculties much desired should be really called psychic diseases, because they are usually the abnormal development of one part of the psychic body, while the other parts remain undeveloped. What we know in medicine as gigantism, a disease where the bony structure of one part of the body continues to grow to an enormous size while the other parts remain normal, may be seen in psychic development also and in the psychic body. As, for example, in gigantism the lower jaw may grow to twice its size, or one of the hands increase three or five times its size, or one leg will increase while the other remains the same, so where one attempts to develop clairvoyance or clairaudience, the organ and inner sense of sight is increased or developed, while the other senses are closed. Imagine the appearance of a being who has one of the organs of sense and that sense developed, such as the eye, but who has none of the other organs with their senses at all, or so little in evidence as to be hardly distinguishable. One who attempts to develop one psychic sense and its corresponding organ appears malformed and monstrous to those who are normally developed and trained to live consciously in the psychic world. His attempt meets what it deserves. He perceives through the sense developed, but inasmuch as he has not its companion senses to balance it nor the wisdom to pronounce judgment concerning his experiences, he is not only deluded and confused by the absence of those senses which he has not, but is also confused even by that sense which he has. This is the psychic karma attendant on premature psychic thought and work.

That psychic faculty which at first seemed so desirable and alluring, is, when not preceded by knowledge, found to be the very thing which prevents man’s progress and holds him in bondage and illusion. Illusions and realities in the astral cannot be distinguished from each other by one who has the faculties without the knowledge. One must have knowledge to distinguish that which is real from that which is unreal in the astral, and the lesson will be learned that the knowledge is not dependent upon the faculties; but the faculties may be used and should be used only by one with knowledge. No one is safe where psychic faculties are developed before he has attained to some degree of knowledge of the real from the unreal in the world of thought, and to know in the world of knowledge or reason. When he knows or is able to follow a process of reasoning, to comprehend the problems and philosophize and understand their causes and results in the world of thought, then he may with safety descend into and allow the psychic faculties to develop in the psychic world. Until something is known of the nature, properties, dangers and uses of the psychic body with its desires and emotions, men will continue to make a Babel of the world, where each speaks in his own tongue, not understood by others, and hardly understood by himself.

One’s psychic body is in and acts through the physical body. The organs are actuated by psychic impulses; the involuntary movements of the body and its organs are due to one’s psychic body. As an entity, the psychic nature of man is the psychic breath, which acts through the physical breath and in the living blood of the body. Though operating through all organs and parts of the body, it is particularly connected with the different systems in the body through certain centers. These centers are the generative, the solar plexus, and the centers in the heart, throat and cervical vertebrae.

Physical practices for psychic development before one has overcome the instinctual impulses of the passional nature will be disastrous in proportion to the extent of the practice. The taking of drugs to excite the psychic nature and to throw or to bring it in touch with the psychic world, sitting in postures, or physical breathing to control the psychic nature and to develop psychic faculties is wrong, because the effort should be made on the plane of the desire. Psychic results may be obtained by the breathing exercises, such as are known as inhalation, exhalation, and retention of the breath, and the other practices, but generally, one who advises another to practice inhalation, exhalation, and retention of breath, does not know and cannot foretell how such exercise will affect the psychic body of the one who practices it. The one who exercises knows even less than his adviser. By the advice and practices, both will suffer the psychic and the consequent physical karma resulting therefrom to the extent of the wrong done. The one who advises will suffer some psychic calamity and will be responsible for and held to account for the injury done by the practice of his follower, and from this he will not be able to escape. It is his psychic karma.

The psychic nature or the psychic body of man is not an abstract metaphysical problem with which the mind alone is concerned. The psychic nature and body of man has to do directly with the personality and is a semi-physical fact, which is sensed by other personalities. The psychic body is the direct cause of one’s personal magnetism and influence. It is a magnetic force, which, acting from within the physical body, extends around and about it as an atmosphere. The psychic atmosphere is the emanation of the psychic entity acting from within the physical body. This magnetism, emanation, or psychic influence affects others with whom it comes in contact. As the vibrations of heat are thrown out by a hot iron, so the magnetic or psychic force acts from individuals. But such magnetism affects different people with whom one comes in contact differently, each according to the magnetic attraction and repulsion. Some attractions will be physical, because the psychic magnetism is of a more physical type. Some men will be attracted more psychically, and still others mentally, all depending on the predominating influence of magnetism as determined by the physical or sensual, by the form or astral, and by the thought or mental force. The sensualist is one whose body seeks body; the psychic is one whose astral seeks astral; the man of thought is one who is attracted by thought, all through the psychic nature of each. The psychic nature or magnetism is the aroma of a personality, which speaks of the nature of that one, as the odor of a flower will tell what the flower is.

The psychic nature with its attendant faculties should not be dreaded; benefits are to be derived from psychic development as well as possible harm. The psychic nature of one enables him to come more closely in touch with humanity, to share in the joys and sorrows of others, to assist and sympathize with them, and to point out the better way in preference to the way of ignorant desire.

Psychic powers should not be sought, nor the corresponding faculties be developed, before one is able to control in the physical world those forces which represent the psychic faculties. When one has his appetites, his desires, his passions and prejudices under control it is safe to begin the use of psychic faculties and powers, for as physical avenues are closed to the psychic outlets, the faculties will grow and develop of themselves in his psychic nature, which will then not need special urging, but rather the training and development which all new growths require. When the desires are changed from the gross to a finer nature, the psychic nature will be stimulated and refined.

At present, all psychic faculties seem to be used and developed for the curiosity of the credulous and the sceptic, to feed the psychic hunger of the spook-hunter, to produce sensation for those who like to have their fancies tickled and amused, and for making money by psychic practices. This is the psychic karma of those concerned as it is their just deserts for their psychic interests and actions.

But aside from all the fads and fancies of the curious and the psychomaniac, psychic faculties and powers have a practical bearing and a practical use in physical life. A knowledge of the psychic nature and body of man, together with the development of the psychic faculties would enable physicians to diagnose and treat such diseases as are of psychic origin and relieve the afflicted and suffering. Physicians would then also know the properties and uses of plants, how drugs should be compounded and administered with the greatest efficiency, and how to control abnormal psychic tendencies in animal and man.

None of these powers and faculties can be used at present because the physician has too strong an appetite for money, because the hunger for money is too strong in humanity to allow the general use of psychic faculties and powers intelligently, and because, by common consent and custom, people are not able to discern that the receiving of money is prohibited in return for psychic benefits conferred. The using of psychic faculties and powers for money destroys the psychic nature.

There are many psychic faculties and powers which are even now manifesting in some; they are the psychic karma of those who possess them. Among them is personal magnetism, which, if increased, may become the power to heal by the laying on of hands. Personal magnetism is in the human what gravitation is in the earth. Personal magnetism is a psychic radiation from the astral form body, and the attraction of other form bodies to it. Personal magnetism affects other personalities through their psychic or form bodies. Personal magnetism is expressed by and attracts through movement and speech, which charm and fascinate those who listen and observe. Personal magnetism is the result of having a strong form body through which the principle of life operates, and such a strong form body results when the sex principle was developed in prior lives and not abused. Then personal magnetism comes over from the past personality into the present, as a psychic karmic credit. One whose magnetism is strong, is prompted by a double force to express the sex nature. If the sex nature is abused, the personal magnetism will be exhausted and not go over to the future life. If it is controlled, the personal magnetism will be increased in the present as well as in the future life.

The power to heal by the laying on of hands, is the good psychic karma of one who has used or desired to use his magnetic power for the benefit of others. Power to heal by touch comes with the attuning of the psychic form body to the universal principle of life. The psychic body is a magnetic battery through which the universal life plays. In the case of a healer, when this battery touches another battery which is out of order it sends the life force pulsing through the psychic body of the other and starts it into orderly operation. The healing is effected by connecting the disordered battery with the universal life. Those who become devitalized after healing, do not heal as effectively and beneficially as those who feel no exhaustion nor ill effects. The reason for this is that where one simply acts as a conscious instrument for the universal life to act on another instrument, he himself is not exhausted; but, on the other hand, if by special effort, sometimes called will power, he forces the life of his body into the body of another, he exhausts and depletes his own coil of life and will give temporary benefit only to the other.

Personal magnetism, the power to heal and other psychic powers or faculties, are to be considered as good psychic karma, because they are so much capital to work with. One’s progress and development depends on how they are used. These powers can be used for good or for great harm. One’s motive will determine what results will follow their use. If the motive is good and unselfish, then these powers, even though unwisely applied, will not result in serious harm. But if the motive is for one’s own selfish gain, the results will be harmful to him, whether or not he thinks it possible.

In no case should personal magnetism, or the power to heal, be employed to obtain money, for the thought of money acts as a poison, and as such affects him who uses the power as well as him on whom it is used. The poison of money may act rapidly and with virulence, or it may be slow in its action. Depending on the motive, this poison weakens the psychic or form body so that it is unable to store the life force in its coils, or it increases the desire for money and decreases the ability to make it legitimately, or it will make one the object and dupe of the psychic practices of others. It will poison the practitioner and patient with the spirit of unlawful greed; unlawful because money represents and is controlled by the spirit of the earth which is selfish, whereas the power to heal comes from the spirit of life, which is to give. These are opposites and cannot be joined.

Among the psychic tendencies rampant at present is the tendency to explain all things by what is called the law of vibrations. This name sounds well but means little. Those who speak of the law of vibrations are usually those who understand little about the laws which control vibrations: that is, the occult laws under which the elements combine according to Number. Chemical affinity and vibrations are ruled by the Law of Proportion, a profound knowledge of which is attained only by one who has overcome selfishness attained to harmlessness, and developed a power of understanding which is noticeably absent in those who talk loosely about vibrations. Any fancy or impression which impinges on the sensitive form body of a vibrationist is attributed to vibrations; and so it may be, but so attributing it does not explain. The phrase is used by those who are moved by fancies and emotions and who comfort themselves with the thought that the word “vibrations” will explain their impressions. All such claims or professions are the result of budding psychic faculties which are stunted and set back by a refusal to train and develop them. The karmic result is mental confusion and arrest of mental development.

All psychic faculties and powers come as the result of growth and development of the psychic body in the present or in former lives. These powers and faculties act on the elements and forces of nature, which in turn react on the psychic body of man. By the right use of the psychic powers and faculties, nature and the forms of nature are benefited and improved. By the abuse or wrong use of psychic powers and faculties, nature is injured or retarded in her evolution.

When the psychic faculties are used properly and justly, man controls the elements and forces of nature and nature works gladly according to his bidding, because she knows that a master mind is at work or that one’s motive is good and just and working for harmony and unity. But when one’s motive is wrong, and his psychic powers misapplied or abused, nature inflicts penalties on him, and instead of his controlling the forces and elements of nature, they control him. All of this is his psychic karma which is the result of his own psychic actions.

For each psychic power and faculty of man, there is a corresponding force and element in nature. What in nature is an element, is in man a sense. What is in man a power, is in nature a force.

Where man fails to control the spirit of anger, lust, greed, in his own psychic nature, he will be unable to overcome the like elements in nature. If such a one persists in developing his psychic faculties, then they will be the means by which he will become the slave of the elements and forces of nature, represented by entities invisible to the ordinary eye. These entities will control him through the very faculties which he develops and by which he will become subservient to them, because he is unable to control the vices in himself. This is his psychic karma. He must receive the consequences of his actions, but may in time become freed from their rule by the practice of the corresponding virtues. The first step must be taken by a desire to become freed from it. The next is to put this desire into action. Otherwise he will continue to be dominated by all vices of the physical and the spirits of the passions and vices of the psychic world.

The religions in vogue are those most suited to the psychic instincts and desires of man. Man will be attracted by his psychic instincts to that religion which offers him the latest and best bargains in the psychic world. Those seeking power over the psychic bodies of others, and having a little more knowledge of the psychic nature and forces, will guarantee their religion, as advertised, to fill the wants and desires, and we find that, heretofore, the religion which did a wholesale business on a large plan, was the religion offering the greatest amount of profit with the least expenditure of energy; and the base desire in the psychic man to get something for nothing, to get a heaven when he least deserved it, prompted him to say: “I believe,” and, with a “thank you,” heaven was his. This conclusion could never have been arrived at by a process of reasoning.

In instances of the psychism of camp and revival meetings, the convert is usually brought and kept in a psychic condition before he discovers that he can be saved so easily. This takes place at a prayer meeting or a religious revival where the evangelist is of a magnetic and emotional nature, who stirs up a psychic force and whirl, which acts on the psychic bodies of those present. The new sensation appeals to some of the psychic instincts of those present, and “conversion” follows. Such conversion is the outcome of the psychic karma of the convert, and the results following may be of benefit or harm; depending on the motive which decides his acceptance and action, will be decided the good or bad psychic karma of the future. Aside from the spiritual element which they may stand for, those religions which express the most psychism and magnetism, through their representatives, rites and institutions, attract the greatest number because there is a religious side to man’s psychic nature, and because the psychic senses and magnetic nature of man are aroused, attracted and respond to the magnetic stimuli from a like psychic source.

To uplift humanity religions should not appeal to the selfish instincts in man, they should raise him from the business world of profit and loss to the moral and spiritual worlds, where deeds are done for the sake of right and duty, and not for the fear of punishment or hope of reward.

One who indulges the desires of his psychic nature through religious fervor, or fanaticism as opposed to reason, must pay the price of the indulgence. The price is the awakening to his delusions when the light of reason causes him to see that his ideals are idols. When those psychic idols fall, he reverts to the opposite of his religious fervor or fanaticism and finds himself among the broken idols. This is his psychic karma. The lesson to be learned from it is that true spirituality is not psychism. Psychism is experienced through the psychic body and produces excitement, sensation, neither of which are spiritual. True spirituality is not attended by bursts and spasms of religious fervor; it is serene and superior to the turmoil of the psychic world.

Similar to religious fervor is political enthusiasm, love of a fatherland, of the ruler of one’s country, and of economic institutions. All of this is of the psychic nature and is prompted by the psychic karma of man. In political campaigns or talks of a political nature, people become wildly enthusiastic and engage in heated arguments concerning the party to which they adhere. Men will shout vociferously and argue vehemently over a political issue which neither understands; they will shift in their arguments and accusations with little or no apparent reason; they will adhere to a party even though they know the issues at stake to be wrong; and they will hold tenaciously to the party of their one time choice, often without any apparent reason. A politician can stir his listeners to a state of enthusiasm, or furious opposition. This is done through the psychic influence of the speaker on the psychic body of the listener. The political issues in question and the laws which are enacted or suppressed by politicians, are the psychic karma of the body politic and of the individual. The individual suffers or enjoys the rights and privileges or their opposites as the country as a whole suffers or enjoys, for he as a unit shared in the psychic causes which brought about the results. The most skilled and successful politicians are those who can best reach, agitate and control the psychic nature of man through his appetites, desires, selfishness, and prejudices. A demagogue, in haranguing one audience, appeals to their special interests, and then appeals to the special interests of another audience, which may be opposed to the first. He uses his personal influence, called personal magnetism, which is his psychic nature, to inflame the prejudices of all. His love is for power and the gratification of his own personal ambitions, all of which are of the psychic nature, and so using his own psychic influence he enlists the prejudices of others in his favor by appealing to their own desires and ambitions. In this way, if not by actual bribery, corruption and fraud, politicians are elected to office. When in office they cannot make good their promises to all the selfish interests of those who have elected them and which are often opposed to each other. Then the great majority of the people cry out that they have been fooled; that politics, government, is unjust and corrupt, and they deplore their condition. This is the psychic karma of the people. It is their just return for their own unjust actions. In the individual politician who has fooled them, they have reflected a picture of themselves, magnified or reduced in parts, but nevertheless reflecting their own meanness, duplicity, and selfishness. They get but what they deserve. The one partisan who is apparently outwitted through the duplicity of another, has only that returned to him which he has done or would do to others, his psychic karma. Politicians crawl and scramble and fight to get over the heads of the people and each other and be on top of the heap, while others in turn climb over them. The one at the top will be at the bottom of the heap, and the one at the bottom will, if he keeps working, find himself on the top, and so the heap will keep changing, as the wheel of karma continues to turn, like a den of snakes, each being raised by the force of his own work to the top, but only to be ground down by his own unjust actions as he turns the wheel. Bad government must continue while those who make up the government and support it are themselves bad. The government is their psychic karma. This need not continue forever, but it must continue so long as the people remain blind to the fact that they get what they give individually or as a whole, and that this is what they deserve. These conditions will not be changed and remedied until that which causes and allows the conditions is changed. That which causes and brings about such conditions are the desires of the individual and the collective desire of the people. Only as the desire of the people is changed by the desire of the individual can these psychic political conditions be changed and remedied.

When the people discountenance politicians whom they know to be dishonest, or to promise to stand for those things which are known to be wrong, the dishonest politicians will disappear from office, because they can no longer influence the people who demand honesty and right. The people cry out that they are unjustly treated, that they are defrauded of their rights and privileges, when they are only receiving the psychic karma which they justly deserve. The man in office who attempts to enforce the law, to punish business criminals and to act for the good of the people, is quite frequently put out of office because he does not appeal to the interests of the few, and is neglected by the majority who are either indifferent to the issue or else are enlisted to oppose him by the few whose selfish interests are attacked. The political reformer who offers amelioration for present unjust existing conditions is doomed to disappointment, even though he may act with good motive, because he is attempting to reform or remodel forms and physical conditions while he allows the causes which bring about these effects and conditions to continue to exist. To change the present existing conditions, to change the politics and customs of a people, it must be made clear to the people that politics, customs and existing conditions, are but the expression of the collective desires of the individuals concerned. If their desires are immoral, selfish and unjust, their politics, their institutions, customs and public life will be so too.

When in the course of time people bind themselves together for special interests, then their united thought takes a form, the form is energized and actuated by the desire which they entertain, and so gradually is brought into existence the party spirit which is the spirit of modern politics. The party or political spirit is not a mere phrase or figure of speech, it is a fact. The party spirit or spirit of politics is a definite psychic entity. It represents the psychic karma of a large or small party. So, from local party spirit the spirit of state and national politics is made up. The spirit of patriotism is the presiding entity of a nation, of a continent. Similarly there are spirits of definite classes like those of the professions with their prejudices and privileges. During prenatal development, politics and patriotism just as a religion of a future pronouncedly religious person and the class spirit of lawyers and professional men are impressed on the astral body of the foetus, and this patriotic or political, religious or class impression is the psychic karma of the individual, which is the result of his desires and inclinations and ambitions in a previous life. It is his psychic karma and gives the tendency to his life which so decides his entering politics, civil, military, or naval life, the professions, his ambition and position.

The love of country, party, class, are of a psychic nature. The more strongly impressed by the psychic entity which rules a nation, country, church or class, the stronger will be the love of party or country, church or class. This adherence has its good and bad sides. It is wrong for one to allow these spirits to influence him to act against the principle of right. The principle of right is not restricted to a person, individual, nation, church, or class. It applies to all. When one’s national prejudice is aroused, one should ascertain whether the principle involved is right, and, if so, to support it; if not, to discountenance it even though he may be ridiculed or called disloyal by the more prejudiced of his fellows. When one stands for the right, against the prejudice of the personality, be it of an individual or of a nation, to that degree he overcomes the sporadic tendency and growth of his psychic body and partakes of the universe; to that extent he stems the torrent of psychic prejudice, and rebukes the evil in the spirit of patriotism. And so it is with the class, professional, church and other spirits.

The psychic karma of a nation determines the government of the nation. The government which exercises unselfish paternal care for its patriots and people will be continued and remain intact, because of the love which the people will have for it. So a government which cares for and pensions its soldiers, enacts laws which require the pensioning or providing for those who have grown old in the service of the government, or supports institutions which protect its citizens and which enacts and enforces laws for the protection of its people from foreign and internal enemies, is the kind of a government the people have desired. Its karma will be that it will be united and long-lived and be a weapon for good among other nations. A government which exploits its citizens for the benefit of a few individuals, which is careless of its wards, soldiers and public officers, which does not look after the health and welfare of all, will be comparatively short-lived and traitors will be the cause of its downfall. Some of its own people will betray it to others, just as it has betrayed its own.

Each of the details of which our lives are made up, the community in which we are brought up, the country of our birth, the race to which we belong, all are the result of what we individually and collectively have desired and done in the past.

Our habits and fashions and customs are part of our psychic karma. The different phases of the habits, fashions and customs of an individual or people, depend: first, on the tendencies and elements transferred by an ego to the astral body in course of development before birth; second, on the training and education which is the psychic karma of that individual. Peculiar habits and mannerisms are the reflex action of like peculiar thoughts and desires. However trifling a habit may seem, it is the outcome of one’s thought acting with his desire and expressed in action.

The fashions which appear and change and reappear are caused by the effort of thought to give expression through form to the different phases of emotion and desires of a people. So we have extremes in fashion, from a clinging gown to a balloon-like dress, from flowing folds to a tight-fitting garment. The headwear varies from a close-fitting cap to a structure of immense proportions. A style can no more remain permanently in fashion than there can be a permanent emotion. Sentiments and emotions are subject to change, and the change of sentiment and emotion must be expressed.

Passion, anger and lust belong to the strictly animal side of the psychic nature of man. They are the animal in his uncontrolled nature which may express the impetuous violence of irritable youth or age, impotent because of its frequency and waste of power, or the dogged tenacity to satisfy hatred and revenge. All such uses of psychic force inevitably react on the actor as the force returns on that which gives it birth, in a long or short period according to the manner in which it is generated, the manner in which it is received by those to whom it is directed and the nature of its circuit. Constant craving for any thing stimulates the mind to procure the object in a legitimate manner or at any cost, so that the craving accumulates force and becomes so strong as to be violent. Then the object is seized irrespective of conditions or penalties. The secret vices which seem to be coincident with growth in the life of an individual are the same vices which he had welcomed in the past and which cyclically come again to control or be controlled.

Laziness is a psychic pest which seizes on a sluggish temperament and will overcome the mind unless it is thrown off and mastered by action.

One who seeks or is led into gambling, desires not only the money, which, will-o-the-wisp-like, leads him on, but it is the psychic effect that he delights in as well. Be the gambling with dice or cards, or betting on races, or speculating in stocks, it is all of a psychic nature. One who plays horses, stocks or cards, will be played by these in turn. His sensation will be varied by gain and loss, exultation and disappointment, but the result must eventually be the same: he will be intoxicated and deluded with the idea of getting something for nothing, and he will be taught the lesson, eventually, that we cannot get something for nothing; that willingly or unwillingly, in ignorance or with knowledge, all that we get we must pay for. It is immoral and base to try and get something for nothing, because that something which we would get is not nothing; it must come from somewhere and somebody, and if we take something from another it means a loss to him, and according to the law of karma we may be assured that if we take or receive that which belongs to another, we must return it or its value to him. If we refuse to return it, the very force of circumstances governed by karma, the just law, will compel us to return it. What the gambler wins today he loses tomorrow, and win or lose he is not satisfied. Winning or losing will goad him on to win again, and so deluded he turns the treadmill continually till the gambler sees that gambling is a delusion and attempts to escape. The love of the game led him to give it thought, which he put into action, and the energy of his thought and action has bound him to gambling from which he cannot readily get away. He must go on until he learns his lesson fully and then the energy and thought which he had given to the game must be returned into the field of true work. If this is done, circumstances will, though unnoticed, yet surely change the conditions and lead him into that field, though it cannot be done at once. The thought is first put out, desire follows it and the conditions are changed and the gambler finds himself in the new field of endeavor.

Drunkenness is one of the worst and most dangerous of the psychic forces that man has to contend against. Beginning in the early stages of human development, it increases with the development of man and fights desperately to kill out individual volition. Man responds to its action because it stimulates the activity of the mind and magnifies sensation; finally it kills out all the finer sentiments, all moral influences and the humanity of man, and leaves him when he is a burnt-out cinder.

Gloom or depression is the result of giving way and brooding over unsatisfied desires. By thus brooding, the gloom becomes more frequent and deeper in periodical recurrence. Continued brooding brings despondency. Gloom is an indistinct and undefined feeling, which is hatched into more tangible and definite despondency.

Malice results from the giving way to anger, jealousy, hatred and revengefulness, and is the active design to injure another. A bearer of malice is an enemy to humanity and pits himself against the principle of justice. A malicious person has as his karma an unhappy atmosphere in which he lives, and boils and fumes until it and he are purified by the thoughts of forbearance, generosity, justice and love.

Gloom, despondency, despair, malice and other such affections are the karmic psychic results of satiated yet unsatisfied desires. One who desires with little thought is consumed by these vices which find vent in periodical and often impotent explosions, or, if he be mild-tempered, by a constant protest against the fates. One who is more thoughtful and uses his mind, gives more definite and pointed expressions in speech and actions. He sees all things as in a gray mist. The flowers, the birds, the trees, the laughter of friends, and even the stars, may all show happiness; but that appears to him as only a stage leading to ultimate black doom, which he sees as the end of all effort. He becomes a pessimist.

Pessimism is the inevitable result of all attempts to use thought as the means for the gratification of desire. Pessimism is fully developed when the psychic body is satiated and the mind sees the futility of all effort to obtain happiness through desire.

Pessimism may be overcome by refusing to entertain thoughts of gloom, despondency and malice, and by a pondering on the opposites: cheerfulness, hopefulness, generosity and liberality. Pessimism is overcome when such thoughts are desired. Pessimism is altogether driven out when one is able to feel himself in the hearts of others and others in his own heart. By endeavoring to feel the relationship of all beings, he discovers that all things are not running on to ultimate doom, but that there is a bright and glorious future for every living soul. With this thought, he becomes an optimist; not an optimist of the gushy, explosive, sentimental kind who insists that everything is lovely and there is nothing else but good, but an optimist who looks into the heart of things, sees the dark side, but also the bright, and knows from the principles involved that all things are tending to ultimate good. Such is an optimist of the intelligent kind. The karma of the gushy optimist is that he will become by reaction a pessimist, because he does not understand, and therefore cannot hold his position when he comes to the downward cycle of his emotional nature.

An understanding of the psychic nature, and a practical use of psychic power is the beginning of occultism. Occultism deals with the laws and forces of the unseen side of human nature. This begins with the psychic body of nature, of man and the world. Occultism extends to the mental and the spiritual world. When one is able to meet and work out his psychic karma and to control the desires and outbursts of his psychic nature, and will at the same time control and train his mind, he will with an aspiration for the higher life begin to see behind the screen of physical life. To understand the causes of appearances, to separate the real from the false, to act according to the laws which control nature; and so acting and complying with the law, he will work according to the light of his knowledge and come into a knowledge of his higher mind, that is in accordance with the plan in the Universal Mind.

(फेरि जारी राखौंला)