The changing world, and lectures to theosophical students. / Fifteen lectures delivered in London during May, June, and July, 1909

by Annie Besant

So, in looking at this consciousness unfolding and these bodies becoming organised, we can trace throughout the purpose of that long unfolding—to make the Spirit master of matter, to enable him to act in every world; and when we catch a glimpse of that great purpose, we realise how perfect is the plan, how complete our triumph will be. First we notice, when we are looking at the lower forms of consciousness in ourselves, that we can understand a certain relation between matter and Spirit which we are told exists all the way up to the highest spiritual world. And so far as investigation has been carried by the students of to-day, they find that relation in each successive world that they enter and finally subdue. It is a relation, then, that runs right through between consciousness and form, between Spirit and matter; it is this: that every change in consciousness has a corresponding vibration in matter, and that every vibration in matter has a corresponding change in consciousness. We are told that that relation is imposed by the Logos Himself in His first shaping of the matter side of His universe; that all the vibrations of which He makes the atoms capable answer one by one to changes in His own consciousness, and that throughout the whole of His universe, in all the mighty realm of spirit-matter that He rules, this correspondence is universally, unchangeably found—for every change in consciousness a corresponding change in vibration, for every change in vibration a corresponding change in consciousness.

Let us see how that would work if anyone whose eyes are a little opened looks at the aura of a person—the lowest part of that aura, if you will, in etheric or astral matter: let us say, astral. You will notice a large number of colours continually flashing through it and changing; and if you examine those colours, every one, as you know from your ordinary study, representing a certain definite vibration in matter—every colour is nothing more than a certain vibration in matter, a vibration with a definite wave-length—if you watch those changing colours in the aura you will find that they are either generated by a state of consciousness or give rise to it. Suppose, for instance, you find a person in a mood of devotion, engaged perhaps in prayer—you can see them by the score in any Christian church. Watch the astral aura of that person, and you will find that the whole of it is vibrating in a way that gives you the colour of blue, blue everywhere predominating, the whole of the aura suffused with that colour. But you will also find, if there is in that congregation a quiet person who was not feeling devotional when he came into that congregation, that gradually his astral body will be affected by the vibrations in the astral bodies near him, and that those vibrations imposed upon him from without will produce a devotional mood within him. You can start it, then, at either end: either the mood producing the appearance, the vibration, or the vibration producing the mood. Take it in another form: have you never felt when you yourself were perfectly good-tempered and some very irritable person came up to you, have you never felt that you yourself were becoming irritable?—not that you had anything to be irritable about, but merely because the other man was, and it needs considerable control, control over the astral body, to prevent the irritation of the person who comes near you from affecting your own previously placid mood. If you have not observed this, keep watch over yourself during the coming week, and you will find how continually you reproduce the emotions of the people with whom you come into contact. What is the mechanism of it? Very simple. That person’s astral body is vibrating in consonance with the emotion he is feeling. Those vibrations of his astral body set up vibrations in your astral body, a perfectly mechanical thing. But because it is your astral body, the matter you have appropriated, those vibrations in it produce in you the corresponding mood of irritation. Hence the common ethical precept given by every great teacher, to return good for evil. That is by a deliberate effort of the consciousness to throw yourself into the mood which is opposite to the evil mood of the person with whom you come into contact. If you do that, then your own mood will overbear in your astral body the vibrations imposed upon it from without, and your astral body will begin to vibrate in correspondence with your own good emotion instead of with the evil emotion imposed from outside. The further result of that, if you be strong enough, will be to correct the bad vibration in the astral body of the man who is near you, and so, by correcting that vibration into harmony with your own, to produce in him your own good emotion, instead of having your emotion controlled by his. That is the ordinary science of the emotions that every aspirant for the higher life is set to practise in his daily life. He is first told the theory, so that he may understand what he is doing, and then he is set to the practise, so that by the practise he may realise the truth of the law that his teacher has explained. Sometimes the ethical teacher only says: “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you.” With the unspiritual hearer the question will very readily arise, “Why should I give love when hatred is given to me?” Only knowledge will enable you to understand the wisdom that underlies this precept of all the great teachers of the past. Speaking in an age when authority was valid, and when people were willing to accept the precept from one whom they recognised as greater than themselves, they only proclaimed the law, and the docile hearer tried to obey. In our own more critical and combative age it is necessary to justify wisdom to a more critical and carping generation, and so the full explanation is given which shows you the scientific truth which underlies the ethical precept.

That runs through the whole of the working of our bodies, the whole of the changes in our consciousness. You can work it out step by step, or you can read the working out which has been made by a thoughtful student,[3] and so you will have a veritable science of the emotions, and you will go out into the world a source of peace, a source of blessing, a source of all good emotions, helping the weaker by your own knowledge and your own strength, and so enabling them to climb more quickly by giving this helping hand out of the knowledge that you have learned.

By that fact, then, we have power over matter, we can throw it into the vibrations we desire. We can do more than that: we can shape it into organs of expression for the consciousness that is unfolded within us. Understanding these laws, we begin to realise that by these bodies we may come into touch with the various worlds around us. Let us see, again, the method. When first the spiritual germ descends into matter, gathering round itself the matter that it needs, that matter is like a mere cloud. It is still so in the highest regions for most; it is becoming organised into definite instruments of consciousness in the three lower worlds in all the more advanced members of our present race, to a very large extent in all of you. If you pause for a moment on the physical body, you will see exactly what is meant by the phrase: the organising of the body. You have here now in your physical body a valuable instrument, first for acquiring knowledge of the outer world, and then for acting on that world, carrying out the knowledge you have gained. You have, as you know, in your body two sets of nerves, called sensory and motor: by the sensory you gather knowledge from without; by the motor you act upon the outer world, utilising the knowledge you have gathered to bring about the results that you desire; and your physical body is well organised for its work. By the evolution of the senses, by the gradual growth of the whole nervous system, by the development of your brains, you have largely become master of this densest world, the physical world, to which your body is related. All that is needed further is a comparatively small evolution—the development of the other two senses, the conquest of the realm of ether, that which science is now investigating. So far, then, you have one instrument, the instrument of your waking consciousness. Through that, spirit and soul alike are working, the powers of the soul showing out as far as the density of the matter will permit. Coming into denser matter is very much the same as if you brought a light through thicker and thicker glass. The light would remain the light, but that which would show out through the glass would be less and less according to the opacity of that glass. So with the light of the spirit shining through the soul and the body. Your next work is the organisation of the next finer body of matter, that which I called the subtle. In that your emotions are working, in that your thoughts are working, and to a very large extent your mental and emotional bodies—we call the emotional the astral—are organised at the present time. But here more variety comes in. Some of you will have your astral body so well developed that it is fit for separate working in the intermediate world. Some of you will have it well developed so far as consciousness is concerned, but not so far as the reception of impressions from the outer intermediate world. That is, your consciousness will be working there in that finer matter that has not yet sufficiently organised the astral body to receive impressions from without.

Gradually, as evolution goes on the organisation of the astral body will go on in everybody, but it is possible, as I suggested to you a few Sundays ago, very largely to quicken that evolution, and gradually to make the astral body what it ought to be, as perfect an instrument for contact with the astral world as the physical body is for contact with the physical world. That is, of course, what a very considerable number of people have done, and they are able to act either in or out of the physical body. We will take both cases in a moment. Take the finer part first of the subtle body—the mental body. In most of you that also is fairly organised, but, again, it is organised for working within yourself, but not receiving from the outer mental world all that hereafter it will be able to receive and utilise, and only a few of you, comparatively, would be able to leave the denser and the astral body behind, and live in the heavenly world, in full consciousness, working there as thoroughly as you can work in the physical world.

What signs are there by which you can judge how far the organisation of the astral and the mental bodies is going on, so that if you work to quicken their organisation you will be able partly to judge how far your work is effective? Let us take the working in the body, the physical body, first. As these other higher forms of consciousness begin to become co-ordinated with the physical, and to hand on to it the impressions that they receive, the mental body is becoming highly organised; when the person possessing it is strong in science, physical science, above all in the grasping of principles, in the power of observation, in the ability to draw conclusions from the observations that have been made, organisation is improving. Among the scientific men of our own time that mental body will be very highly developed, chiefly for use in the waking consciousness, very imperfectly as yet for direct reception on the higher planes. The higher development of the astral body will show itself in forms of art and of high emotion, and just in proportion as those are transmissible to the waking consciousness may you realise that the astral body is becoming more definitely organised. When the body of the intellect, the lasting body, part of the spiritual body, is becoming organised, then it is that you find fine metaphysical ability, great philosophical profundity of thought, the highest conceptions of idealistic art, the highest achievements in idealistic literature. Those are the faculties that belong to the beginning of the spiritual body in man, transcending the transitory, beginning to shape the permanent instrument of the Spirit. Where you have great talent, where the mental body is highly organised, where you have the highest genius, there the spiritual body is beginning its organisation. For that highest genius is the flashing down from the organised spiritual body into the lower nature of knowledge which in those regions alone can be gained; and when art and literature become illuminated by the Spirit, then you have the mighty geniuses of history that outlast the passing generations and shine out in the world of thought.

What signs may we find other than those of the organisation of these bodies through which the larger consciousness will work? Genius is the highest of all, save that which I spoke of as the manifestation of the Christ, the Wisdom Spirit in man. But if we leave those loftiest manifestations of the larger consciousness alone, what signs may we find amongst ourselves of the growing organisation of those higher bodies and the unfolding of the larger consciousness? There are very many signs to-day of the organising of the astral body, and it is in the lack of discriminating these from genius that we find a great absence in power in the new psychology. You find the organisation of the astral body showing itself forth in the power to receive impressions directly from the astral plane, and the power to translate them into the waking consciousness. In the body those first signs are seen in telepathy where it is well developed, where people are able to communicate with one another without the ordinary physical means of communication, and that is not so very infrequent a thing among the more thoughtful of our own time. That is a power you can develop, if you like, by definite and regular practice; only remember that all development of power means regular practice and patient and reiterated experiment. One finds, for the most part, that after a few weeks or months of practice people are apt to drop the whole thing if they have not in that time gained startling results. That is not the way that powers grow. The law is sure, that if you choose to concentrate your mind so as to make a clear image, that will be reproduced in astral matter. Then by an effort of the self-determined will you can send that astral thought-form to whomsoever you choose; and if you practise that day after day, week after week, nay, even month after month and year after year, you will find that you will ultimately develop the power of sending thought clearly and definitely, so that you will be able to communicate with the absent as surely, as certainly as any physical-plane communication can be sure and certain. Practice along these lines can do you nothing but good. It increases the power of the will, it increases the concentration of thought; but remember that without concentrated thought and fairly strong will you are bound to have a very long practice before you will have results tangible in the outer world. The person who cannot keep his mind steady for a couple of minutes at a time, the person who cannot concentrate definitely on one thought, such a person certainly cannot transfer that which he is unable to create; and for a very considerable time people will have to practise by creating the thought-image before they will have anything to be definitely sent to another. But that is one of the means of organising the astral and the mental body as an instrument of the larger consciousness. Some people, of course, have it by nature, as you say, but what does that mean? Only that they have practised it in previous life. No one gets anything for nothing from nature. On the other hand, nature is a good paymaster, and pays the exact wages that we have earned, never withholding anything. If you can do it easily, it is because you have done it before; if you find it difficult, it is because you are beginning that definite kind of work. But no one obtains it without labour, no one can develop it without long and continued practice. But there is one form in which the astral body shows its organisation when you are out of the dense body and not in it, in the form of dream. Whenever you go to sleep you leave your dense body behind. Some dreams belong only to the brain; it is because people do not distinguish dream from dream that so much foolish ridicule is sometimes cast on the dream-state altogether. It is perfectly true that there are dreams which grow out of conditions of the physical body, where a little change in the circulation, a momentary block in some vessel of the brain, will cause a dream, incoherent, senseless, without meaning or illumination. That is the physical dream; it may be caused by any disturbance of the body—indigestion, a hundred other things. The dream that shows that the astral body is becoming organised is a dream in which some definite knowledge is conveyed, in which some definite warning is given, in which something is added to you that you had not before, or in which you come into contact with someone who has passed out of the physical conditions through the gateway of death, and whom you may meet in the astral world when you yourself have temporarily dropped the dense body. Those dreams are coherent, rational, sometimes illuminative. Remember how many dreams have now been put on record in which a man has gained in the dream-state knowledge that he had not in the waking state. How often that knowledge gained in the dream-state has enabled him in the waking state to cover over some gap that he was before unable to bridge. You will find in Myers’ book on Human Personality some of these dreams given, although not very definitely explained, and if you find in your experience that those are becoming more frequent, then you may be sure that your astral body is becoming a vehicle of consciousness, an instrument by which consciousness can work in the other world. It is true that in some dreams, especially of warning, the thought may be thrown into your mind from without when you have not found it out for yourself, but have been informed of it by another. Such a warning may come through, given you by some friend, some helper, someone whom you love, who may have passed onwards, and so has the advantage of the astral vision. But in all those cases there comes into the waking consciousness something from the larger, and as you perfect the astral body all those come more and more within your control. As it becomes organised there is less and less need to leave it in order to exercise its powers. You will find yourself seeing, hearing, while the physical senses are active, while the consciousness is working normally, the waking consciousness in the brain; so that slowly and gradually you will unify the physical and the astral bodies and live in the two worlds continuously at one and the same time, finding those worlds intermingling and interworking; and so you will gain that much of the larger consciousness which belongs to the expression of the soul through the subtle astral body.

Exactly on the same lines with the heavenly worlds, the mental world, your evolution will go on, and for this there is one condition regarding the consciousness, there is one condition regarding the instrument for the unfolding of consciousness—regular and steady meditation. There is no other way. If you find anybody telling you that by any physical means you can really unfold your consciousness, tell them that they do not realise what they are talking about. You can start a little astral consciousness on the lowest parts of the astral world by causing vibrations in matter in the physical that affect the astral, and so bring about a change in consciousness in that lowest part of the astral world, but you can go no further. I have seen in India men who, by the use of difficult physical means that none of you would care to use—for they bring about the gradual spoiling of the physical body—I have known them able to leave the physical body and live for the time being in the astral, but in that astral body they were unconscious, not conscious; they were not coming into touch with the astral world, nor using the larger consciousness at all. They had only forced themselves into that world in the astral body where it was not organised enough for the reception of impressions, nor the consciousness unfolded to understand them, and they had injured the physical brain and rendered that practically useless for physical utility; so that they had lost both worlds instead of gaining the higher that they sought. When one has seen that happen in India one realises that those methods are not methods that it is desirable to spread in the West; and it is along that line that so many of those pseudo-occult books are going which come to us from America, promising that if we follow those practices we shall be able to get the better of other people in business transactions, and hypnotise them for our own advantage and our own gain. Wherever you find that the method of working and that the object aimed at, be sure that you are dealing with a form of unfolding and of evolution that can only injure; it cannot really serve. The worst of it is that those forms tend to atrophy the parts of the brain that you want to bring things through after a higher consciousness is active and the higher body is organised. By this means you injure the brain, and with the brain the connecting link between this world and the next, so that you injure yourself along that line as well as along the other, and make yourself incapable, until you have a new body, of that higher unfolding at which you aim. There you have the danger of people picking up fragments of an ancient science of the East, without realising all the protection with which in the East that science is surrounded; and if even there one finds occasionally such cases as I have mentioned, of the ruined physical frame and the undeveloped astral body, then how much more dangerous it is when given to people of different physical heredity, without the conditions which in the East are ever imposed! Meditation, then, is the one safe way of unfolding the consciousness, and thus organising the vehicle; and the other condition is purity of thought, purity of desire, purity of physical life. That is the matter side of the training. Your thoughts must be pure, otherwise your mental body will be unfit for higher development; your desires must be pure, or your astral body will not be fit for that unfolding at which you aim; your physical body must be pure, otherwise when the developed mental and astral pour down their power on the physical, the physical will be unable to answer, and you will have hysteria instead of the wider consciousness you seek.

Those, roughly, then, are the conditions: meditation for the consciousness, purity for the evolution of the instrument. If you are willing to accept those conditions, then the path of the higher evolution opens before you, and according to your courage, your perseverance, and your ability will be the rapidity with which you can tread that path. The object before you should be the helping of others, the gaining of these powers in order that you may be more useful, not in order that you may be greater than your fellow-men. Of the purity of your motive there is only one test: are you using the powers you have now for the helping of your race? If you are not, then no profession that you will use the higher powers for good will be effective in bringing you help in their unfolding. I have met many a man, many a woman, who is anxious to be an invisible helper—that is, a worker on the astral plane—but I do not always find that those people are visible helpers as far as their present powers go. And I do not understand why people should want to go about in astral slums when they keep carefully away from the physical slums which are already within their reach. So far as you can go by your own power you have the right to go, but if you ask for help from those more highly developed—from the great Teachers of the race—then you have to bring in your hands the proof—and that proof is life, and not words—that as you are using well the talent you have you deserve to be helped in the gaining of others. There is the underlying meaning of those strange words ascribed to the Christ, that he who has much, to him shall be given. Those who have used well that which they have, those alone have claim to be helped in gaining more; for by their life they have shown that they do the best with what they possess, and that is the guarantee that with more they will utilise that also for the race. And so in the old rules of discipleship it was said that when the disciple came to the Teacher he must bring with him in his hands the fuel for the fire; it was the fire of sacrifice, and the fuel was everything that the pupil possessed in mind, body, and estate; and he brought that in his hands as offering to the Teacher, and then alone was he accepted by the one who knew. And so in these days also that higher evolution, quickened by the power of the great Ones, can only be opened up to those who bring in their hands the fuel for the fire of sacrifice; you must be willing to give up everything you have, and own nothing, material or immaterial; you must hold everything you have and everything you are at the service of the great One from whom you ask the gift of knowledge. When that is brought the gift is never refused; when that door is thus knocked at it never remains closed. True it is that the gateway is narrow; true it is, now as of old, “Strait is the gate, narrow is the way, and few there be that find it.” But the fewness does not depend on the grudging of the Teacher—it depends on the want of self-surrender by the disciple. Bring all you have and all you are, lay it at the feet of the Master of the Wisdom; He will open the gateway, He will guide you along the path. But dream not that words are heard in that high atmosphere where the Master lives and breathes: only high thoughts can reach Him, only noble acts can speak the thoughts you have conceived; for voice there is the life that is lived, and only the life that speaks of sacrifice can claim the teaching at His hands.