PDF version - Geae

By continual actions each being refines or materializes his etheric envelope, the vehicle of the soul, the
instrument which is used for all manifestations, and upon which is molded the physical body at each birth. We
have already seen that our situation in the next plane of existence results from repeated actions which our
thoughts and wills have exercised constantly on the etheric double. Following their nature and object, they
transform it little by little into a subtle and radiant organism open to the highest perceptions, to the most
delicate sensations of space, capable of vibrating harmoniously with elevated spirits. In an inverse sense, they
make it an opaque gross form, chained to the earth by its materiality, or even condemned to lower regions. We
can understand how continual action of the thought and the will, exercised for centuries of existence upon the
etheric body, creates and develops physical tastes as well as our intellectual and moral qualities.
Our tastes for each kind of work, our ability, our dexterity in all things, these are the result of
immeasurable mechanical actions accumulated and registered by the subtle body, and the memory of them is
engraved on the subconscious mind. At rebirth, these abilities are transmitted by a new education to the
external consciousness and material organs. Thus is explained the remarkable and superior ability of many
natural musicians which surprises the world. It is the same with the moral faculties and virtues, and all the
riches the soul acquires in long cycles of time. Genius is an immense effort of the intellectual order, and
holiness has been conquered by secular strife against the passions and inferior attractions.
Every time that we accomplish a good or generous action, or do a work of charity and devotion, or
make a sacrifice, do we not feel a sense of exaltation? Something expands within us, and a flame is kindled
which revivifies the depths of our nature. This is not illusionary; the spirit is radiated by every altruistic
thought, by every act of unselfish love. If these thoughts and acts multiply and increase and accumulate, the
man will find himself transformed at the end of his earthly existence. The soul and its etheric envelope will
have acquired an intense power of radiation. If the thoughts are bad, the acts culpable, then these wrong habits
produce a contraction of the spiritual being, and charge it with gross and dark fluids.
Violence, cruelty, murder, and suicide produce results which return birth after birth on the material
body in the form of nervous maladies, deformity, and madness. Impure lives, drunkenness, debauchery, and
self-indulgence in luxury, produce in future lives weakness and lack of vigor, health, and beauty. The human
being who today is abusing his vital forces by wrong habits is preparing a miserable existence for himself in a
future incarnation. Sometimes the reparation is affected by a long life of suffering, which destroys in him the
causes of evil; again it may be effected in a short, troubled life with a tragic death. A mysterious attraction
sometimes brings together a crowd of people to a given point, that they may expiate in a collective death past
conditions, as in great catastrophes on sea or land. Short lives are often the complement of preceding
existences, where the individual, by his excesses or other abuses, abridged his normal time on earth. But other
causes enter into the death of infants; that is sometimes given as an educating trial for the parents and for the
incarnating spirit. Sometimes it is simply a false entrance on the stage of life from physical causes, or the fault
of adaptation to the etheric fluids. In these cases the incarnation is repeated in the same environment under
more favorable conditions.
* * *
To assure the refining of the moral nature, there is a discipline of the thoughts to establish, and a
hygiene of the soul to follow, as there is a physical hygiene to observe for the maintenance of the health of the
body. We see that the constant action of the thought and will on the etheric body produces absolutely just
results. Each receives the imperishable fruits of his past and present. This fruit is not the effect of outside
causes, but of interior ones: a chain which produces in us pain and joy, effort and success, fault and
chastisement. It is in the intimate secrecy of our thoughts and in the full lights of our actions that we must seek
the efficient cause of our present and future situations.
We are placed according to our merits, in the environment created by our former thoughts and acts. If
we are unhappy, it is because we have not become enlightened enough to play a better role. But our condition
will ameliorate as soon as we know how to awaken in ourselves a disinterested love of justice and truth.
To perfect the being, to unceasingly embellish the inner nature, to augment its value and construct the
edifice of the consciousness - such is the aim of evolution. Each one of us possesses that particular primordial
genius spoken of by the Druids, a realization of special forms of divine thought. God has placed in the depths
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