The Astral Plane Part 3

[Sidenote: Haunted Localities.]

Apparitions at the spot where some crime was committed are usually thought-forms projected by the criminal, who, whether living or dead, but most especially when dead, is perpetually thinking over again and again the circ.u.mstances of his action; and since these thoughts are naturally specially vivid in his mind on the anniversary of the original crime, it is often only on that occasion that the artificial elementals he creates are strong enough to materialize themselves to ordinary sight--a fact which accounts for the periodicity of some manifestations of this cla.s.s. Another point in reference to such phenomena is, that wherever any tremendous mental disturbance has taken place, wherever overwhelming terror, pain, sorrow, hatred, or indeed any kind of intense pa.s.sion has been felt, an impression of so very marked a character has been made upon the astral light that a person with even the faintest glimmer of psychic faculty cannot but be deeply impressed by it, and it would need but a slight temporary increase of sensibility to enable him to visualize the entire scene--to see the event in all its detail apparently taking place before his eyes--and in such a case he would of course report that the place was haunted, and that he had seen a ghost. Indeed, people who are as yet unable to see psychically under any circ.u.mstances are frequently very unpleasantly impressed when visiting such places as we have mentioned; there are many, for example, who feel uncomfortable when pa.s.sing the site of Tyburn Tree, or cannot stay in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's, though they may not be in the least aware that their discomfort is due to the dreadful impressions in the astral light which surround places and objects redolent of horror and crime, and to the presence of the loathsome astral ent.i.ties which always swarm about such centres.

[Sidenote: Family Ghosts.]

The family ghost, whom we generally find in the stock stories of the supernatural as an appanage of the feudal castle, may be either a thought-form or an unusually vivid impression in the astral light, or again he may really be an earth-bound ancestor still haunting the scenes in which his thoughts and hopes centred during life.

[Sidenote: Bell-ringing, stone-throwing, etc.]

Another cla.s.s of hauntings which take the form of bell-ringing, stone-throwing, or the breaking of crockery, has already been referred to, and is almost invariably the work of elemental forces, either set blindly in motion by the clumsy efforts of an ignorant person trying to attract the attention of his surviving friends, or intentionally employed by some childishly mischievous nature-spirit.

[Sidenote: Fairies.]

The nature-spirits are also responsible for whatever of truth there may be in all the strange fairy stories which are so common in certain parts of the country. Sometimes a temporary accession of clairvoyance, which is by no means uncommon among the inhabitants of lonely mountainous regions, enables some belated wayfarer to watch their joyous gambols; sometimes strange tricks are played upon some terrified victim, and a glamour is cast over him, making him, for example, see houses and people where he knows none really exist. And this is frequently no mere momentary delusion, for a man will sometimes go through quite a long series of imaginary but most striking adventures, and then suddenly find that all his brilliant surroundings have vanished in a moment, leaving him standing in some lonely valley or on some wind-swept plain. On the other hand, it is by no means safe to accept as founded on fact all the popular legends on the subject, for the grossest superst.i.tion is often mingled with the theories of the peasantry about these beings, as was shown by a recent terrible murder case in Ireland.

To the same ent.i.ties must be attributed a large portion of what are called physical phenomena at spiritualistic _seances_--indeed, many a _seance_ has been given entirely by these mischievous creatures; and such a performance might easily include many very striking items, such as the answering of questions and delivery of pretended messages by raps or tilts, the exhibition of "spirit lights," the apport of objects from a distance, the reading of thoughts which were in the mind of any person present, the precipitation of writings or drawings, and even materializations. In fact, the nature-spirits alone, if any of them happened to be disposed to take the trouble, could give a _seance_ equal to the most wonderful of which we read; for though there may be certain phenomena which they would not find it easy to reproduce, their marvellous power of glamour would enable them without difficulty to persuade the entire circle that these phenomena also had duly occurred, unless, indeed, there were present a trained observer who understood their arts and knew how to defeat them. As a general rule, whenever silly tricks or practical jokes are played at a _seance_, we may infer the presence either of low-cla.s.s nature-spirits, or of human beings who were of a sufficiently degraded type to find pleasure in such idiotic performances during life.

[Sidenote: Communicating Ent.i.ties.]

As to the ent.i.ties who may "communicate" at a _seance_, or may obsess and speak through an entranced medium, their name is simply legion; there is hardly a single cla.s.s among all the varied inhabitants of the astral plane from whose ranks they may not be drawn, though after the explanations given it will be readily understood that the chances are very much against their coming from a high one. A manifesting "spirit"

_may_ be exactly what it professes to be, but on the whole the probabilities are that it is nothing of the kind; and for the ordinary sitter there is absolutely no means of distinguishing the true from the false, since the extent to which a being having all the resources of the astral plane at his command can delude a person on the physical plane is so great that no reliance can be placed even on what seems the most convincing proof. If something manifests which announces itself as a man's long-lost brother, he can have no certainty that its claim is a just one; if it tells him of some fact known only to that brother and to himself, he remains unconvinced, for he knows that it might easily have read the information from his own mind, or from his surroundings in the astral light; even if it goes still further and tells him something connected with his brother, of which he himself is unaware, but which he afterwards verifies, he still realizes that even this may have been read from the astral record, or that what he sees before him may be only the shade of his brother, and so possess his memory without in any way being himself. It is not for one moment denied that important communications have sometimes been made at _seances_ by ent.i.ties who in such cases have been precisely what they said they were; all that is claimed is that it is quite impossible for the ordinary person who visits a _seance_ ever to be certain that he is not being cruelly deceived in one or other of half a dozen different ways.

There have been a few cases in which members of the lodge of occultists referred to above as originating the spiritualistic movement have themselves given, through a medium, a series of valuable teachings on deeply interesting subjects, but this has invariably been at strictly private family _seances_, not at public performances for which money has been paid.

[Sidenote: Astral Resources.]

To understand the methods by which a large cla.s.s of physical phenomena are produced, it is necessary to have some comprehension of the various resources mentioned above, which a person functioning on the astral plane finds at his command; and this is a branch of the subject which it is by no means easy to make clear, especially as it is hedged about with certain obviously necessary restrictions. It may perhaps help us if we remember that the astral plane may be regarded as in many ways only an extension of the physical, and the idea that matter may a.s.sume the etheric state (in which, though intangible to us, it is yet purely physical) may serve to show us how the one melts into the other. In fact, in the Hindu conception of Jagrat, or "the waking state," the physical and astral planes are combined, its seven subdivisions corresponding to the four conditions of physical matter, and the three broad divisions of astral matter explained above. With this thought in our minds it is easy to move a step further, and grasp the idea that astral vision, or rather astral perception, may from one point of view be defined as the capability of receiving an enormously increased number of different sets of vibrations. In our physical bodies one small set of slow vibrations is perceptible to us as sound; another small set of much more rapid vibrations affects us as light; and again another set as electric action: but there are immense numbers of intermediate vibrations which produce no result which our physical senses can cognize at all. Now it will readily be seen that if all, or even some only, of these intermediates, with all the complications producible by differences of wave-length, are perceptible on the astral plane, our comprehension of nature might be very greatly increased on that level, and we might be able to acquire much information which is now hidden from us.

[Sidenote: Clairvoyance.]

[Sidenote: Prevision and Second-sight.]

It is admitted that some of these pa.s.s through solid matter with perfect ease, so that this enables us to account scientifically for some of the peculiarities of astral vision, though those minds to which the theory of the fourth dimension commends itself find in it a neater and more complete explanation. It is clear that the mere possession of this astral vision by a being would at once account for his capability to produce many results that seem very wonderful to us--such, for example, as the reading of a pa.s.sage from a closed book; and when we remember, furthermore, that this faculty includes the power of thought-reading to the fullest extent, and also, when combined with the knowledge of the projection of currents in the astral light, that of observing a desired object in almost any part of the world, we see that a good many of the phenomena of clairvoyance are explicable even without rising above this level. Of course true, trained, and absolutely reliable clairvoyance calls into operation an entirely different set of faculties, but as these belong to a higher plane than the astral, they form no part of our present subject. The faculty of accurate prevision, again, appertains altogether to that higher plane, yet flashes or reflections of it frequently show themselves to purely astral sight, more especially among simple-minded people who live under suitable conditions--what is called "second-sight" among the Highlanders of Scotland being a well-known example.

Another fact which must not be forgotten is that any intelligent inhabitant of the astral plane is not only able to perceive these etheric vibrations, but can also--if he has learnt how it is done--adapt them to his own ends or himself set them in motion.

[Sidenote: Astral Forces.]

[Sidenote: Etheric Currents.]

[Sidenote: Etheric Pressure.]

[Sidenote: Latent Energy.]

[Sidenote: Sympathetic Vibration.]

It will be readily understood that superphysical forces and the methods of managing them are not subjects about which much can be written for publication at present, though there is reason to suppose that it may not be very long before at any rate some applications of one or two of them come to be known to the world at large: but it may perhaps be possible, without transgressing the limits of the permissible, to give so much of an idea of them as shall be sufficient to show in outline how certain phenomena are performed. All who have much experience of spiritualistic _seances_ at which physical results are produced must at one time or another have seen evidence of the employment of practically resistless force in, for example, the instantaneous movement of enormous weights, and so on; and if of a scientific turn of mind, they may perhaps have wondered whence this force was obtained, and what was the leverage employed. As usual in connection with astral phenomena, there are several ways in which such work may have been done, but it will be enough for the moment to hint at four. First, there are great etheric currents constantly sweeping over the surface of the earth from pole to pole in volume which makes their power as irresistible as that of the rising tide, and there are methods by which this stupendous force may be safely utilized, though unskilful attempts to control it would be fraught with frightful danger. Secondly, there is what can best be described as an etheric pressure, somewhat corresponding to, though immensely greater than, the atmospheric pressure.

In ordinary life we are as little conscious of one of these pressures as we are of the other, but nevertheless they both exist, and if science were able to exhaust the ether from a given s.p.a.ce, as it can exhaust the air, the one could be proved as readily as the other. The difficulty of doing that lies in the fact that matter in the etheric condition freely inter-penetrates matter in all states below it, so that there is as yet no means within the knowledge of our physicists by which any given body of ether can be isolated from the rest. Practical Occultism, however, teaches how this can be done, and thus the tremendous force of etheric pressure can be brought into play. Thirdly, there is a vast store of potential energy which has become dormant in matter during the involution of the subtle into the gross, and by changing the condition of the matter some of this may be liberated and utilized, somewhat as latent energy in the form of heat may be liberated by a change in the condition of visible matter. Fourthly, many striking results, both great and small, may be produced by an extension of a principle which may be described as that of sympathetic vibration.

Ill.u.s.trations taken from the physical plane seem generally to misrepresent rather than elucidate astral phenomena, because they can never be more than partially applicable; but the recollection of two simple facts of ordinary life may help to make this important branch of our subject clearer, if we are careful not to push the a.n.a.logy further than it will hold good. It is well known that if one of the wires of a harp be made to vibrate vigorously, its movement will call forth sympathetic vibrations in the corresponding strings of any number of harps placed round it, if they are tuned to exactly the same pitch. It is also well known that when a large body of soldiers crosses a suspension bridge it is necessary for them to break step, since the perfect regularity of their ordinary march would set up a vibration in the bridge which would be intensified by every step they took, until the point of resistance of the iron was pa.s.sed, when the whole structure would fly to pieces. With these two a.n.a.logies in our minds (never forgetting that they are only partial ones) it may seem more comprehensible that one who knows exactly at what rate to start his vibrations--knows, so to speak, the keynote of the cla.s.s of matter he wishes to affect--should be able by sounding that keynote to call forth an immense number of sympathetic vibrations. When this is done on the physical plane no additional energy is developed; but on the astral plane there is this difference, that the matter with which we are dealing is far less inert, and so when called into action by these sympathetic vibrations it adds its own living force to the original impulse, which may thus be multiplied many-fold; and then by further rhythmic repet.i.tion of the original impulse, as in the case of the soldiers marching over the bridge, the vibrations may be so intensified that the result is out of all apparent proportion to the cause. Indeed, it may be said that there is scarcely any limit to the conceivable achievements of this force in the hands of a great Adept Who fully comprehends its possibilities; for the very building of the Universe itself was but the result of the vibrations set up by the Spoken Word.

[Sidenote: Mantras.]

The cla.s.s of mantras or spells which produce their result not by controlling some elemental, but merely by the repet.i.tion of certain sounds, also depend for their efficacy upon this action of sympathetic vibration.

[Sidenote: Disintegration.]

The phenomenon of disintegration also may be brought about by the action of extremely rapid vibrations, which overcome the cohesion of the molecules of the object operated upon. A still higher rate of vibrations of a somewhat different type will separate these molecules into their const.i.tuent atoms. A body reduced by these means to the etheric condition can be moved by an astral current from one place to another with very great rapidity; and the moment that the force which has been exerted to put it into that condition is withdrawn it will be forced by the etheric pressure to resume its original form. It is in this way that objects are sometimes brought almost instantaneously from great distances at spiritualistic _seances_, and it is obvious that when disintegrated they could be pa.s.sed with perfect ease through any solid substance, such, for example, as the wall of a house or the side of a locked box, so that what is commonly called "the pa.s.sage of matter through matter" is seen, when properly understood, to be as simple as the pa.s.sage of water through a sieve, or of a gas through a liquid in some chemical experiment.

[Sidenote: Materialization.]

Since it is possible by an alteration of vibrations to change matter from the solid to the etheric condition, it will be comprehended that it is also possible to reverse the process and to bring etheric matter into the solid state. As the one process explains the phenomenon of disintegration, so does the other that of materialization; and just as in the former case a continued effort of will is necessary to prevent the object from resuming its original form, so in exactly the same way in the latter phenomenon a continued effort is necessary to prevent the materialized matter from relapsing into the etheric condition. In the materializations seen at an ordinary _seance_, such matter as may be required is borrowed as far as possible from the medium's etheric double--an operation which is prejudicial to his health, and also undesirable in various other ways; and this explains the fact that the materialized form is usually strictly confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the medium, and is subject to an attraction which is constantly drawing it back to the body from which it came, so that if kept away from the medium too long the figure collapses, and the matter which composed it, returning to the etheric condition, rushes back instantly to its source.

[Sidenote: Why Darkness is required.]

[Sidenote: Spirit Photographs.]

The reason why the beings directing a _seance_ find it easier to operate in darkness or in very subdued light will now be manifest, since their power would usually be insufficient to hold together a materialized form or even a "spirit hand" for more than a very few seconds amidst the intense vibrations set up by brilliant light. The _habitues_ of _seances_ will no doubt have noticed that materializations are of three kinds:--First, those which are tangible but not visible; second, those which are visible but not tangible; and third, those which are both visible and tangible. To the first kind, which is much the most common, belong the invisible spirit hands which so frequently stroke the faces of the sitters or carry small objects about the room, and the vocal organs from which the "direct voice"

proceeds. In this case, an order of matter is being used which can neither reflect nor obstruct light, but which is capable under certain conditions of setting up vibrations in the atmosphere which affect us as sound. A variation of this cla.s.s is that kind of partial materialization which, though incapable of reflecting any light that we can see, is yet able to affect some of the ultra-violet rays, and can therefore make a more or less definite impression upon the camera, and so provide us with what are known as "spirit photographs". When there is not sufficient power available to produce a perfect materialization we sometimes get the vaporous-looking form which const.i.tutes our second cla.s.s, and in such a case the "spirits" usually warn their sitters that the forms which appear must not be touched.

In the rarer case of a full materialization there is sufficient power to hold together, at least for a few moments, a form which can be both seen and touched.

When an Adept or pupil finds it necessary for any purpose to materialize his Mayavirupa or his astral body, he does not draw upon either his own etheric double or any one else's, since he has been taught how to extract the matter which he requires directly from the astral light or even from the akasha.

[Sidenote: Reduplication.]

Another phenomenon closely connected with this part of the subject is that of reduplication, which is produced by simply forming in the astral light a perfect mental image of the object to be copied, and then gathering about that mould the necessary physical matter. Of course for this purpose it is necessary that every particle, interior as well as exterior, of the object to be duplicated should be held accurately in view simultaneously, and consequently the phenomenon is one which requires considerable power of concentration to perform.

Persons unable to reduce the matter required directly from the astral light have sometimes borrowed it from the material of the original article, which in this case would be correspondingly reduced in weight.

[Sidenote: Precipitation.]

We read a good deal in Theosophical literature about the precipitation of letters or pictures. This result, like everything else, may be obtained in several ways. An Adept wishing to communicate with some one might place a sheet of paper before him, form an image of the writing which he wished to appear upon it, and draw from the astral light the matter wherewith to objectify that image; or if he preferred to do so it would be equally easy for him to produce the same result upon a sheet of paper lying before his correspondent, whatever might be the distance between them. A third method which, since it saves time, is much more frequently adopted, is to impress the whole substance of the letter on the mind of some pupil, and leave him to do the mechanical work of precipitation. That pupil would then take his sheet of paper, and, imagining he saw the letter written thereon in his Master's hand, would proceed to objectify the writing as before described. If he found it difficult to perform simultaneously the two operations of drawing his material from the astral light and precipitating the writing on the paper, he might have either ordinary ink or a small quant.i.ty of coloured powder on the table beside him, which, being already physical matter, could be drawn upon more readily.

It is of course obvious that the possession of this power would be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous person, since it is just as easy to imitate one man's handwriting as another's, and it would be impossible to detect by any ordinary means a forgery committed in this manner. A pupil definitely connected with any Master has always an infallible test by which he knows whether any message really emanates from that Master or not, but for others the proof of its origin must always lie solely in the contents of the letter and the spirit breathing through it, as the handwriting, however cleverly imitated, is of absolutely no value as evidence.

As to speed, a pupil new to the work of precipitation would probably be able to image only a few words at a time, and would, therefore, get on hardly more rapidly than if he wrote his letter in the ordinary way, but a more experienced individual who could visualize a whole page or perhaps the entire letter at once would get through his work with greater facility. It is in this manner that quite long letters are sometimes produced in a few seconds at a _seance_.

When a picture has to be precipitated the method is precisely the same, except that here it is absolutely necessary that the entire scene should he visualized at once, and if many colours are required there is of course the additional complication of manufacturing them, keeping them separate, and reproducing accurately the exact tints of the scene to be represented. Evidently there is scope here for the exercise of the artistic faculty, and it must not be supposed that every inhabitant of the astral plane could by this method produce an equally good picture; a man who had been a great artist in life, and had therefore learnt how to see and what to look for, would certainly be very much more successful than the ordinary person if he attempted precipitation when on the astral plane after death.

[Sidenote: Slate-writing.]

The slate-writing, for the production of which under test conditions some of the greatest mediums have been so famous, is sometimes produced by precipitation, though more frequently the fragment of pencil enclosed between the slates is guided by a spirit hand, of which only just the tiny points sufficient to grasp it are materialized.

[Sidenote: Levitation.]

An occurrence which occasionally takes place at _seances_, and more frequently among eastern Yogis, is what is called levitation--that is, the floating of a human body in the air. No doubt when this takes place in the case of a medium, he is often simply upborne by "spirit hands," but there is another and more scientific method of accomplishing this feat which is always used in the East, and occasionally here also. Occult science is acquainted with a means of neutralizing or even entirely reversing the attraction of gravity, and it is obvious that by the judicious use of this power all the phenomena of levitation may be easily produced. It was no doubt by a knowledge of this secret that some of the air-ships of ancient India and Atlantis were raised from the earth and made light enough to be readily moved and directed; and not improbably the same acquaintance with nature's finer forces greatly facilitated the labours of those who raised the enormous blocks of stone sometimes used in cyclopean architecture, or in the building of the Pyramids and Stonehenge.

[Sidenote: Spirit Lights.]

With the knowledge of the forces of nature which the resources of the astral plane place at the command its inhabitants the production of what are called "spirit lights" is a very easy matter, whether they be of the mildly phosph.o.r.escent or the dazzling electrical variety, or those curious dancing globules of light into which a certain cla.s.s of fire elementals so readily transform themselves. Since all light consists simply of vibrations of the ether, it is obvious that any one who knows how to set up these vibrations can readily produce any kind of light that he wishes.