The Power of Thought

Dion Fortune

Esoteric science is regarded by many of its devotees as a form of mental gymnastics. The application of its broad basic truths to everyday life has been but little developed. Knowing as we do the reality of unseen forms of existence, understanding as we do the cosmic laws, it is amazing how little use we make of our knowledge in relation to our daily lives in the world. For ten occultists who are struggling for the higher illumination, you will hardly find one who
is applying to his daily life that which he already knows.

The New Thought movement is really empirical occultism. Its students have found out by experience what the esotericist knows as theory. The difference between the followers of the
sister sciences is that the esotericist grasps the principles involved in relation to the macrocosm as a whole, but makes no use of them in relation to the microcosm of his own personality; whereas the student of New Thought has but little realisation of these truths in their scientific and philosophical aspect, but puts them to good use in daily life. Could we
combine the two standpoints and methods, we should have a very potent weapon added to the armoury for combatting evil and suffering and hastening the advent of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The wise man is willing to learn from anyone who can teach him; it is the fool who persistently shuts his eyes to the obvious. The mental worker gets his results. Why should we not study his methods in the light of our knowledge of the laws of the super-physical planes of existence and the forces operating on those planes?

The wise man is willing to learn from anyone who can teach him; it is the fool who persistently
shuts his eyes to the obvious.

The student of New Thought disciplines his mind; he does not permit it to dwell in imagination on that which is proven to be poisonous to it. He is told, and soon proves for himself, that the mind is as capable of training as an intelligent dog, to put the comparison no higher. He therefore disciplines and trains it so that it may work for the purposes of his higher self instead of wandering off at the bidding of emotional impulse and doing many things that his better judgement would not wish to sanction.

He knows that a feeling is not inoperative because it is denied expression. He knows that an unspoken thought is as potent an influence as a spoken or written word. Therefore, he first forbids his mind to think undesirable thoughts and then bids it definitely to think desirable ones. In this way he sets in motion forces which operate to bring about that which he has planned.

Let us translate this process into the language of esoteric science and see how it relates to the laws with which our researches have made us familiar.

It is obviously an application of the powers of the thought-form. We know that astral substance is capable of being built into a distinct form by the visual imagination, and that that form will persist for a shorter or longer period according to the clarity and tenacity with which it is visualised. If this thought-form be ensouled by emotion, it becomes a distinct entity upon its own account, endowed with a dim, reflected life, and capable of considerable intelligence and persistence along the line of its own nature, but along no other.

We are ceaselessly creating these projections of our own life, these children of our imaginations, there is nothing occult or abnormal in the process; it is going on all the time, only we do not realise it. We give off thought-forms from our minds as normally as we give off carbon dioxide from our lungs.

These thought-forms can be good, beautiful, and true, forming a helpful thought-atmosphere about us, which not only influences those who come within its sphere, but also profoundly influences ourselves. “Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone”, it is this statement of the consequences of the power of the thought-aura which every human being surrounds himself with. Whatever feelings we allow to develop, react on us and reinforce their own vibrations. We can surround ourselves with an aura of depression by giving way to melancholy thoughts. It is for this reason that a “change of air” is recommended after a period of grief. It is not the change of air alone which does us good, but the change of thought-atmosphere, for we get out of the rooms soaked with sorrow. A change to a house across the road would be nearly as beneficial, and even a change to another room in the same house would not be without its effect.

We are ceaselessly creating these projections of our own life…

This thought-atmosphere is a very real thing, as the following incident will show. A friend of mine who was a student of dramatic art was receiving some extra coaching in elocution. She came for her usual lesson, but had to wait while an examination in elocution for a diploma was being finished. As soon as the last student had been disposed of, her teacher summoned her to go on the stage and begin her lesson. She was an experienced reciter, a pupil-teacher, in fact, and the lesson was of no special importance to her, but as soon as she took her stand upon the spot just vacated by the unfortunate examinees, she was seized with such panic that she could hardly speak.

This unexpected experience of stage fright alarmed her, and she asked my opinion as to its cause. It was not difficult to elucidate. I reminded her that she had taken her stand on the exact spot where some twenty nervous girls had stood and shuddered on after the other. She had walked into the thought-atmosphere of nervousness they had left behind, and it had infected her.

This experience reveals a very important psychic fact. It shows the power of thought to infect a place. This being so does it not follow that thought must be just as powerful to bless as to curse? If we put this same absorbed concentration into our gratitude and joy and contentment that we put into our anxieties and resentments, our rooms would be flooded with spiritual sunshine.

If we are careful to guard the atmosphere of the rooms we inhabit, they can become for us sanctuaries wherein the soul is bathed in peace and restored to health. It all depends on ourselves. If we give way to evil thoughts therein we make our rooms sloughs of despond which sink us into deeper darkness whenever we enter.

We must determine to choose our thoughts, instead of allowing them to run riot. We must guard our mental atmosphere as carefully as we guard our houses. If we persist in allowing evil ideas or depressing thoughts to fill our minds, if we dwell upon them with a morbid selfindulgence, we must not be surprised if they infect our mental atmosphere so that we long to ‘get away from ourselves’ and other people shun us. We can, if we choose, deliberately build about ourselves an atmosphere of joy and peace and love which will cause us to be welcome wherever we may go. We can make in our rooms an atmosphere that will rest and soothe every weary soul that enters therein. We can, in short, bless or curse by our thoughts.

1 The New Thought movement is a philosophical movement which developed in the USA in the 19th century, following the teachings of Phineas Quimby. The concept of New Thought (sometimes known as “Higher Thought”) promotes the ideas that Infinite Intelligence, or God, is everywhere, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and “right thinking” has a healing effect.