Karma

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophical Publishing House

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this is included in the statement that these thoughtforms people the current which reacts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. To some extent it must affect almost everyone, though the more sensitive the organization the greater the effect. Elementals have a tendency to be attracted towards others of a similar kind-aggregating together in classes, being, in a sense, gregarious on their own account-and 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. To these aggregations of similar thought-forms are due the characteristics, often strongly marked, of family, local and national opinion; they form a kind of astral atmosphere through which everything is seen, and which colours that to which the gaze is directed, and they react on the desire bodies of the persons included in the group concerned, setting up in them responsive vibrations. Such family, local or national karmic surroundings largely modify the individual's activity, and limit to a very great extent his power of expressing the capacities he may possess. Suppose an