Epidemics
Astral light
H. P. Blavatsky wrote:
How often have powerful clairvoyants and adepts in mesmerism described the epidemics and illnesses as their lucid vision saw them in the astral light. They affirm that the “electric waves” were in violent perturbation, and that they discerned a direct relation between this ethereal disturbance and the mental or physical epidemic then raging.[1]
The Astral Light has been defined by her as, "The invisible region that surrounds our globe . . . corresponding . . . to the Linga Sharira or the Astral Double in man. A subtle Essence visible only to a clairvoyant eye." She adds:
Eliphas Lévi calls the astral light the great serpent, the dragon, from which radiates on humanity every evil influence. This is so, but why not add that the astral light gives out nothing but what it has received; that it is the great terrestrial crucible in which the vile emanations of the earth (Moral and Physical) upon which the astral light is fed, are all converted into this subtlest essence, and radiated back intensified, thus becoming epidemics — Moral, Psychic and Physical.[2]
Thought-forms and elementals
Annie Besant identified the "emanations" feeding the astral light with thought-forms produced by human activity:
When men generate a large number of malignant thought-forms of a destructive character, and when these congregate in huge masses on the astral plane, their energy may be, and is, precipitated on the physical plane, stirring up wars, revolutions, and social disturbances and upheavals of every kind, falling as collective karma on their progenitors and effecting widespread ruin. . . . Epidemics of crime and disease, cycles of accidents, have a similar explanation.[3]
The thought-forms produce by human activity are frequently seized and strengthened by Elementals, as explained by Mahatma K.H. in his first letter to A. O. Hume:
Every thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world and becomes an active entity by associating itself . . . with an elemental; that is to say with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence, a creature of the mind's begetting, for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus, a good thought is perpetuated as an active beneficent power; an evil one as a maleficent demon.[4]
Thought-forms ensouled by elementals can aggregate on the astral plane (astral light) to form a collective entity which will send it influence on the physical plane. In Annie Besant's words:
When a man sends out a thought-form, it not only keeps up a magnetic link with him, but is drawn towards other thought-forms of a similar type, and these congregating together on the astral plane form a good or evil force, as the case may be, embodied in a kind of collective entity. . . . When this collective entity, as I have called it, is made up of thought-forms of a destructive type, the elementals ensouling these act as a disruptive energy and they often work much havoc on the physical plane. A vortex of disintegrating energies, they are the fruitful sources of " accidents", of natural convulsions, of storms, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods.[5]
Our attitude
Modern science has discovered that fear, anxiety and other negative emotions can weaken the immune system of people, thus making them more susceptible to illness. However the negative effect of emotions such as fear has also an occult effect at the level of the etheric and astral bodies. C. W. Leadbeater wrote:
The man who has no fear of contagious disease is less likely to be infected by it than the man who is always in terror of it. Any clairvoyant who watched the conditions produced both in the astral body and in the etheric part of the physical vehicle by nervousness and fear will easily understand why this should be, and will see the immunity of the fearless man is explicable on purely scientific grounds.[6]
Annie Besant explained that emotions, being forces on the astral plane, can affect the spreading of disease during epidemics:
Diseases spread, and the thoughts of fear which follow their progress act directly as strengthened of the power of the disease; magnetic disturbances are set up and propagated, and react on the magnetic spheres of people within the affected area.[7]
The lessons Theosophy teaches are important ones, Man is his brother's keeper, and the only permanent protection against plagues and calamities lies in the purification of the thought-plane. It is a simple problem of cause and effect. If every man purifies his own thought-sphere, the astral light will eventually be cleansed.[8]
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Notes
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 278.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary (Krotona, CA: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 38.
- ↑ Annie Besant, Karma, (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1905), 75.
- ↑ Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence Appendix I (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 472.
- ↑ Annie Besant, Karma, (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1905), 20-21.
- ↑ Charles Webster Leadbeater, Some Glimpses of Occultism, (Chicago: The Rajput Press, 1909), 224.
- ↑ Annie Besant, The Ancient Wisdom, (Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1998), 63.
- ↑ P. M. Johns, "Epidemics from a Theosophical Standpoint," The Theosophist XIV:4 (January, 1893), 226.