With thought, with direction from the thinking human being, all substance, all matter, can be recreated and reformed, hopefully for the better.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way with new eyes. So, stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our topic for today is energy follows thought and is about the thought power of men and women of goodwill and how they can create a channel through which spiritual energies can flow to heal and rebuild the troubled world. It is this power, properly used and directed, that can be humanity’s saving force. How does this opening thought relate to our theme today, energy follows thought?
Sarah: One thing I like about it is the suggestion that this power of goodwill can be humanity’s saving force because it suggests that humanity can save itself, that it isn’t up to extraterrestrial or extra planetary forces alone, but we human beings have to be engaged in the process too, as agents of goodwill. I think the idea that energy follows thought relates to that theme directly in the same sense that Christ in the Bible intended, when he said, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” In other words, as we think in our truest, deepest self, what we really think, what our attitudes and our feelings and our motives really are, that’s what makes us who we are, not what we present on the surface. The more scientific equivalent of that is the idea that energy follows thought, which I think scientists are more and more in agreement with. The idea that all matter is alive and active, apparently even the most inert matter, for example, in the mineral kingdom, we know that even that realm is alive and evolving. This idea that energy follows thought implies that with thought, with direction from the thinking human being, all substance, all matter, can be recreated and reformed, hopefully for the better.
Dale: Yes, it’s a rule that most of us apply in our daily life if we’re really thinking types of people. We apply it whether we really understand it or realize that it is a rule.
Sarah: A lot of us aren’t really thinking people, though.
Dale: But when we are really thinking deeply and concentrating on a particular idea or a thought, we’re creating what you call a thought form. The mental energy of the mind is a creative process when we’re creating thought forms and these can either be good or bad depending on the motivation and our intention.
Sarah: I suppose this is behind what is almost like a cliche nowadays, when you hear people talking about an issue or an event or whatever which is really best not developed too far and they say, “don’t go there.” When they’re talking about something that they really don’t want to even think about or imagine, much less bring to reality, they’ll say “don’t go there,” meaning don’t pursue that thought any further. There is this kind of intuitive feeling, don’t you think, that people realize that the more energy you give to a fear or something you dread, the more you might feed it, the more you might foster it.
Dale: Well, that’s exactly right and that’s what so many people do and they don’t realize what they’re doing. I think that they are creating and making the situation worse by ruminating on this fear or this phobia or whatever it is and they’re actually building this thought form even larger than it originally was.
Sarah: I suppose we have to be careful on this point because that realization can make people feel even worse when they’re already afraid or dreading something, and then to have somebody tell them, “you’re just feeding it, you’re going to make it happen,” then that probably makes them feel even worse. Alice Bailey in her Unfinished Autobiography said that there are schools of thought that teach that fear, if it’s indulged in, will materialize that which you fear. She said, “Personally, I don’t believe a word of it because I’ve spent my whole life fearing all kinds of things which have never come to pass and I’m a rather powerful thinker.” And it’s true, if I were able to materialize everything I had feared, I’d be dead eons ago, so I think we have to remember that this idea that energy follows thought probably has most of its power on more subtle subjective levels and over a longer period of time.
Dale: Yes, I think that’s right. I think what’s important is not so much the thought, perhaps, or the words or the ideas but it’s the intent behind the words and the power of that intent. In other words, if one’s intent is to harm some other person by spewing out some kind of poisonous gossip, then that’s a really dangerous process at work. If the intent is really to injure and to harm that person then you’re using thought very destructively.
Sarah: Then of course there is the opposite polarity. You can use this same reality in a very constructive way. You can use thought to redeem, to improve relationships, or whatever.
Dale: Yes, and where there is this poisonous kind of thought and if it’s directed towards someone, then one has to be very careful because there is a boomerang effect that has been discussed in the Bailey writings. If it’s a very powerful thought and it’s a negative thought towards someone else, one has to be careful because the same energy can bounce right back towards you. So, one really has to be careful and what happens is it sets up a wall around yourself and cuts off the flow of any impulses from the soul.
Sarah: And it isolates you. It isolates you further from your fellow men and women. That energy follows thought isn’t something that only occurs in the mind, it also has to do with what we desire. We have to watch the quality and the orientation of our desires. What are our deepest urges? They might not even be something we’re consciously aware of, but they might harbor a really powerful low grade me-first-ism and me above all and you last. You know that kind of drive that compels people to overcome and get ahead of everybody in every way possible. One way I watch this desire at work in myself is every time I get on the subway making a beeline for that last remaining seat. I hate that, you know. I hate the quality it brings out, of I want that seat and I don’t care about anybody else. (laughs) Enough about that.
Robert: Are you saying too that we should be as careful about our thoughts as we are about people coming into our home. I mean, when you think of it, we wouldn’t let anyone just drift into our living room from the outside and yet thoughts come into our head and probably we should screen them, filter them, challenge them because they can stimulate depression, they can stimulate evil doing and as you said, they can also stimulate constructive behaviors too, where we want to change the world for the positive. So, we should screen our thoughts Sarah?
Sarah: Yes, just make them go away. Dismiss them as uninvited insects that fly around the room and don’t berate yourself that you’re an evil person because this bad thought came into your head. We’re all swimming in an atmosphere that has been created by the whole of humanity, so it may not be a thought that you individually have created at all, but when you become aware of it, tell it to go away. It doesn’t belong there.
Robert: Energy Follows Thought is the title of the pamphlet from Triangles. Tell us something about Triangles.
Sarah: Triangles is a service, a type of meditation which is used as a service to humanity and it works with the principle that energy follows thought in this way: groups of three people who agree to link up with each other daily in meditation form a triangle—the three people are the three points of the triangle. They link in thought with each other, not necessarily at the same time, but just a commitment to a daily linking. Then they see their triangle lighted and radiating with spiritual energies of light and goodwill as a part of the whole planetary network of triangles. I think we’ve talked about this in previous programs. For me, a symbol of the triangles network would be the starry sky at night, at the time of the new moon, when the sky is especially black and the stars are so brilliant. That might be one image of the triangles network, of all these lighted triangles intersecting and interconnected with each other and forming a kind of a bowl over the Earth and humanity, a protected aura or shroud, radiating energies of light and goodwill through the triangular links formed by people who are committed to the upliftment of humanity. Then when the person has created this image in their mind, in meditation, they say silently the Great Invocation, which we close each radio program with and by saying the Great Invocation you are invoking spiritual energies of light and love and power to pour into the world and particularly light and goodwill to radiate throughout human consciousness. So, energy follows thought; the energies that are invoked of light and goodwill radiate through human consciousness and gradually uplift, purify, redeem human consciousness.
Dale: Yes. And I think the keywords are uplift and redeem that you mentioned because that is the basic function, I think, of the triangles as a geometric form. One might want to ask why a triangle? Because the triangle, in the writings of Alice Bailey, is said to be the basic geometric form of all manifestation, whether it be the manifestation of a solar system or of a human being.
Sarah: The basic geometric form.
Dale: Yes, and the triangle is symbolized in the human by the two eyes, the left and the right eye and then what they call the third eye or the ajna center eye. It’s these three because with every triangle two of the points represent the two polarities of negative and positive, and then the third point represents the synthesizing point that lifts up and redeems, and that’s where the redemptive nature of the triangles comes in.
Sarah: And coming back to the idea we mentioned earlier that goodwill will be the saving force of humanity, Triangles invokes goodwill into human consciousness.
Dale: Absolutely. And the triangle is also embodied in the Great Invocation, because it’s an invocation for light and love and the energies of the will to good. Those are the three-fold nature of the basic triangle.
Robert: Do you think the realization is growing that essentially people create the world they live in?
Sarah: I think it is becoming more and more of a recognition. I mentioned earlier that people seem to sense that they shouldn’t indulge certain lines of thought or conversation, which I think is more apparent today than a few decades ago. But I think, like most things, it’s a realization that’s still being developed and it isn’t very carefully thought through by a lot of people. I mean, I’ve heard certain new age schools of thought that teach that you make yourself sick by your thoughts or you make yourself well by thinking good thoughts. Well, I know a lot of very good people who have fought terrible illness and I’ve known some not very nice people at all who have been pictures of health. So, I think that’s a bit simplistic. The causes of illness are very complex and probably are karmic, meaning they might be inherited from past lifetimes. I don’t believe ever, ever, in blaming the victim; that’s so easy. But the idea that we do create our reality through the quality of what we desire—that’s certainly something we could all benefit from. It’s said that two emotional qualities especially mobilize all of us: one is selfish desire and one is fear. We could all begin to look in areas of our life to see where those urges are active within us.
Dale: Yes, I think most of us are saved from ourselves because of the lack of power of our thought.
Sarah: And thank goodness for that! (laughter)
Dale: I think we’re safe from our own lack of potency because thought generates energy commensurate with the potency of the thinking and the quality of what we’re thinking at the time.
Sarah: Probably what we’re doing more than thinking is feeling.
Dale: Yes. We mistake the two and think that it’s thinking when it really isn’t. It’s just the emotional feeling nature. I was thinking of the phrase in the Bible by Saint Paul that said, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” and that is very much along the lines of energy follows thought because one can literally transform yourself by the renewing of your mental processes and by building better quality thought forms in your life. Just building thought forms based on goodwill and right relationships with the people around you and in your environment will have a real transforming effect, not only on you but the people that you encounter during the day.
Sarah: There’s another saying that one man thinking truth can transform his environment. I don’t know who said that but that to me is a really powerful realization. Say you’re in a work situation where you really feel that the company or the organization is not working on the level that it should be. Rather than going after your coworkers in a personal confrontational way, try transforming and uplifting the objectives of the group or the company by the power of truth, by the power of an enlightened point of view and an enlightened case for change. It’s a little hard to explain this without a specific example, but it really does work if you dwell on the level of reality and not on the level of personal confrontation; most reasonable people of goodwill—which is most of humanity—will respond accordingly. When they are backed into a corner they engage in self defence just like we all do but when they are left free to accept or reject a new idea and it’s an idea that’s presented clearly and it’s on the level of reality, is true and at the same time a higher, more inclusive, more principled recognition, chances are they will acknowledge it and accept it. So, you can transform your environment by thinking truth and presenting it to others.
Dale: Yes, and another piece of advice given in the Bailey books is a way to counteract a lie, or when someone is gossiping about you or is apparently attacking you verbally and directing negative energy towards you. One way is to devitalize it by love and break it in pieces by the power of a counter thought form of peace and harmony and use, as it says in the books, a gentle stream of wise transmuting love. That’s pretty hard to do sometimes.
Sarah: That would take a series of radio programs to get to the bottom of that. (laughter)
Dale: I think that’s what the Buddha did. He demonstrated that.
Sarah: It’s what Christ did when he turned the other cheek, but we don’t begin to understand that.
Dale: Right. When someone attacked the Buddha, that’s what he did. He poured out more love on the person because the person was divided in himself. There was a big gap in his consciousness and love was poured in to fill that gap. I suppose there is a truth with that, but it takes someone very aware and with a very powerful ability to counteract that force.
Robert: When the realization that energy follows thought is combined with training and meditation, what happens?
Sarah: Well, it’s said that energy follows thought is a basic principle of Raja yoga and we’ve talked about Raja Yoga before: that’s the system of meditation which uses the mind. It means literally the kingly science of the mind. It’s a kind of meditation that we work with in our work through the Arcane school and Triangles: that energy follows thought is based on the principle that the mind is the organizer and the distributor of energy. And when the mind is trained in meditation it can mobilize and direct energies of light, love and power into the thought waves that permeate the world, thought waves from which we all draw our ideas. We are all swimming in a sea of thought waves as well as of emotional currents, and we can contribute to the irradiating of the atmosphere for all people to think more clearly by ourselves working in meditation to radiate light and goodwill into human consciousness. It isn’t manipulative, it isn’t telling someone what to think. It’s simply working on a level of consciousness where we are all free to come and go and building into that level of consciousness more light, more love, more purpose.
Dale: And that power is generated much more strongly when we work in meditation with a group. Group meditation is like the cable on the suspension bridge. It’s not one cable, it’s a strand of hundreds of small cables and that’s the basis behind the power of group meditation. It can generate a tremendous amount of power, much more power than any individual. That’s the great effectiveness of the Triangles work because it’s a group network— all over the world—of people working with light and love.
Sarah: There’s another aspect or a counterpart to meditation. In our training, we’re taught to meditate early in the morning, and in the evening before you go to bed we’re trained to conduct an evening review where you look back on the events of the day and you try to go backwards tracing events back to their causes. Gradually you begin to recognize how you use energy and force because you see the same things happening over and over again and you begin to correct. So that’s also a technique for working with thought.
Robert: That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
(#085)
