Dwellers on the Threshold

Dwellers on the Threshold

Of these there are many kinds. First, elementals. They try to bar

the astral plane against man. And naturally so, because they are

concerned with the building up of the lower kingdoms, these

elementals of form, the Rupa Devas; and to them man is a really

hateful creature, because of his destructive properties. That is

why they dislike him so much. He spoils their work wherever he

goes, tramples down vegetable things, and kills animals, so that

the whole of that great kingdom of nature hates the name of man.

They band themselves together to stop the one who is just taking

his first conscious steps on the astral plane, and try to

frighten him, for they fear that he is bringing destructiveness

into the new world. They cannot do anything, if you do not mind

them. When that rush of elemental force comes against the man

entering on the astral plane, he must remain quiet, indifferent,

taking up the position: "I am a higher product of evolution than

you are; you can do nothing to me. I am your friend, not your

enemy, Peace!" If he be strong enough to take up that position,

the great wave of elemental force will roll aside and let him

through. The seemingly causeless fears which some feel at night

are largely due to this hostility. You are, at night, more

sensitive to the astral plane than during the day, and the

dislike of the beings on the plane for man is felt more strongly.

But when the elementals find you are not destructive, not an

embodiment of ruin, they become as friendly to you as they were

before hostile. That is the first form of the dweller on the

threshold. Here again the importance of pure and rhythmic food

comes in; because if you use meat and alcohol, you attract the

lower elementals of the plane, those that take pleasure in the

scent of blood and spirits, and they will inevitably prevent your

seeing and understanding things clearly. They will surge round

you, impress their thoughts upon you, force their impressions on

your astral body, so that you may have a kind of shell of

objectionable hangers-on to your aura, who will much obstruct you

in your efforts to see and hear correctly. That is the chief

reason why every one who is teaching Yoga on the right-hand path

absolutely forbids indulgence in meat and alcohol.

The second form of the dweller on the threshold is the thought

forms of our own past. Those forms, growing out of the evil of

lives that lie behind us, thought forms of wickedness of all

kinds, those face us when we first come into touch with the

astral plane, really belonging to us, but appearing as outside

forms, as objects; and they try to scare back their creator. You

can only conquer them by sternly repudiating them: "You are no

longer mine; you belong to my past, and not to my present. I will

give you none of my life." Thus you will gradually exhaust and

finally annihilate them. This is perhaps one of the most painful

difficulties that one has to face in treading the astral plane in

consciousness for the first time. Of course, where a person has

in any way been mixed up with objectionable thought forms of the

stronger kind, such as those brought about by practicing black

magic, there this particular form of the dweller will be much

stronger and more dangerous, and often desperate is the struggle

between the neophyte and these dwellers from his past backed up

by the masters of the black side.

Now we come to one of the most terrible forms of the dwellers on

the threshold. Suppose a case in which a man during the past has

steadily identified himself with the lower part of his nature and

has gone against the higher, paralysing himself, using higher

powers for lower purposes, degrading his mind to be the mere

slave of his lower desires. A curious change takes place in him.

The life which belongs to the Ego in him is taken up by the

physical body, and assimilated with the lower lives of which the

body is composed. Instead of serving the purposes of the Spirit,

it is dragged away for tile purposes of the lower, and becomes

part of the animal life belonging to the lower bodies, so that

the Ego and his higher bodies are weakened, and the animal life

of the lower is strengthened. Now under those conditions, the Ego

will sometimes become so disgusted with his vehicles that when

death relieves him of the physical body he will cast the others

quite aside. And even sometimes during physical life he will

leave the desecrated temple. Now after death, in these cases, the

man generally reincarnates very quickly; for, having torn himself

away from his astral and mental bodies, he has no bodies with

which to live in the astral and mental worlds, and he must

quickly form new ones and come again to rebirth here. Under these

conditions the old astral and mental bodies are not disintegrated

when the new mental and astral bodies are formed and born into

the world, and the affinity between the old and new, both having

had the same owner, the same tenant, asserts itself, and the

highly vitalised old astral and mental bodies will attach

themselves to the new astral and mental bodies, and become the

most terrible form of the dweller on the threshold.

These are the various forms which the dweller may assume, and all

are spoken of in books dealing with these particular subjects,

though I do not know that you will find anywhere in a single book

a definite classification like the above. In addition to these

there are, of course, the direct attacks of the Dark Brothers,

taking up various forms and aspects, and the most common form

they will take is the form of some virtue which is a little bit

in excess in the yogi. The yogi is not attacked through his

vices, but through his virtues; for a virtue in excess becomes a

vice. It is the extremes which are ever the vices; the golden

mean is the virtue. And thus, virtues become tempters in the

difficult regions of the astral and mental worlds, and are

utilised by the Brothers of the Shadow in order to entrap the

unwary.

I am not here speaking of the four ordinary ordeals of the astral

plane: the ordeals by earth, water, fire and air. Those are mere

trifles, hardly worth considering when speaking of these more

serious difficulties. Of course, you have to learn that you are

entirely master of astral matter, that earth cannot crush you,

nor water drown you, etc. Those are, so to speak, very easy

lessons. Those who belong to a Masonic body will recognise these

ordeals as parts of the language they are familiar with in their

Masonic ritual.

There is one other danger also. You may injure yourself by

repercussion. If on the astral plane you are threatened with

danger which belongs to the physical, but are unwise enough to

think it can injure you, it will injure your physical body. You

may get a wound, or a bruise, and so on, out of astral

experiences. I once made a fool of myself in this way. I was in a

ship going down and, as I was busy there, I saw that the mast of

the ship was going to fall and, in a moment's forgetfulness,

thought: "That mast will fall on me" that momentary thought had

its result, for when I came back to the body in the morning, I

had a large physical bruise where the mast fell. That is a

frequent phenomenon until you have corrected the fault of the

mind, which thinks instinctively the things which it is

accustomed to think down here.

One protection you can make for yourself as you become more

sensitive. Be rigorously truthful in thought, in word, in deed.

Every thought, every desire, takes form in the higher world. If

you are careless of truth here, you are creating a whole host of

terrifying and deluding forms. Think truth, speak truth, live

truth, and then you shall be free from the illusions of the

astral world.