CHAPTER X.

HELPING OTHERS BY THOUGHT.

MOST valuable of all the gains made by the worker for thought-power, is the increased ability to help those around him, those weaker ones who have not yet learned to utilise their own powers. With his own mind and heart at peace, he is fitted to help others.

A mere kind thought is helpful in its measure, but the student will wish to do far more than drop a mere crumb to the starving.

Let us take first the case of a man who is under the sway of an evil habit, such as drink, and whom a student wishes to help. He should first ascertain, if possible, at what hours the patient's mind is likely to be unemployed-such as his hour for going to bed. If the man should be asleep, it would be all the better. At such a time, he should sit down alone, and picture the image of his patient as vividly as he can, seated in front of him— picture him clearly and in detail, so that he may

see the image as he would see the man. (This very clear picturing is not essential, although the process is thereby rendered more effective.) Then he should fix his attention on this image, and address to it, with all the concentration of which he is capable, the thoughts, one by one and slowly, which he wishes to impress on his patient's mind. He should present them as clear mental images, just as he would do if laying arguments before him in words. In the case taken, he might place before him vivid pictures of the disease and misery entailed by the drink-habit, the nervous breakdown, the inevitable end. If the patient is asleep, he will be drawn to the person thus thinking of him, and will animate the image of himself that has been formed. Success depends on the concentration and the steadiness of the thought directed to the patient, and just in proportion to the development of the thought-power will be its effect.

Care must be taken in such a case not to try to control, in any way, the patient's will; the effort should be wholly directed towards placing before his mind the ideas which, appealing to his intelligence and emotions, may stimulate him to come to a right judgment and to make an effort to carry it out in action. If an attempt is made to impose on him a particular line of conduct, and the attempt

succeed, even then little has been gained. The mental tendency towards vicious self-indulgence will not be changed by opposing an obstacle in the way of indulging in a particular form of it; checked in one direction it will find another, and a new vice will supplant the old. A man forcibly constrained to temperance by the domination of his will is no more cured of the vice than if he were locked up in prison. Apart from this, no man should try to impose his will on another, even in order to make him do right. Growth is not helped by such external coercion; the intelligence must be convinced, the emotions aroused and purified, else no real gain is made.

If the student wishes to give any other kind of thought-help, he should proceed in the same way, picturing his friend, and clearly presenting the ideas he wishes to convey. A strong wish for his good, sent to him as a general protective agency, will remain about him as a thought-form for a time proportionate to the strength of the thought, and will guard him against evil, acting as a barrier against hostile thoughts, and even warding off physical dangers. A thought of peace and consolation, similarly sent, will soothe and calm the mind, spreading around its object an atmosphere of calm.

The aid which is often rendered to another by prayer is largely of the character described above, the frequent effectiveness of prayer over ordinary good wishes being due to the greater concentration and intensity thrown by the pious believer into his prayer. Similar concentration and intensity would bring about similar results without the use of prayer.

There is, of course, another way in which prayer is sometimes effective: it calls the attention of some superhuman, or evolved human, intelligence to the person for whom it is offered, and direct aid may then be rendered to him by a power surpassing that of the offerer of the prayer.

Perhaps it is as well here to interject the remark that the half-instructed Theosophist should not take alarm, and refrain from giving to a friend any thought-assistance of which he is capable, by the fear lest he should be “interfering with karma.” Let him leave karma to take care of itself, and have no more fear of interfering with it than of interfering with the law of gravitation. If he can help his friend, let him do so fearlessly, confident in the fact that, if he can do so, that help is within his friend's karma, and that he is himself the happy agent of the Law.

HELPING THe So-called Dead.

All that we can do for the living by thought we can do even more easily for those who have gone in front of us through death's gateway, for in their case there is no heavy physical matter to be set vibrating ere the thought can reach the waking consciousness.

After death is passed through the tendency of the man is to turn his attention inwards, and to live in the mind rather than in an external world. The thought-currents that used to rush outwards, seeking the external world through the senseorgans, now find themselves blocked by an emptiness, caused by the disappearance of their instruments. It is as though a man, rushing towards an accustomed bridge over a ravine, suddenly found himself stopped by the bridgeless gulf, the bridge having vanished..

The re-arrangement of the astral body that quickly follows on the loss of the physical body further tends to shut in the mental energies, to prevent their outer expression. The astral matter, if not disturbed by any action of those left behind on earth, forms an enclosing shell instead of a plastic instrument, and the higher and purer the earth-life that has ended, the more complete is the