The Power of Thought
According to Spiritism, thought has power, it has consequences. How is this possible? In the book, In the Domain of Mediumship (Life in the Spirit World), inspired by Andre Luiz, psychographed by Francisco C. Xavier, there are some explanations.
As we attempt to modify our behavior to improve our status, we must first learn to change our habits at the base; which is our thoughts, for we think first before any action and if we are able to create new habits, our battle is halfway won. Therefore, we must understand that indeed, our thoughts do have power.
Ever since we were children, we have been fascinated by the power of thought. Who, as a child, hadn’t been worried that their thought caused, or could have triggered a bad action, whether it was in moments of anger against your parents, your dog, or another object of scorn? As we grew up, we learned to dismiss this idea, only primitive peoples still believed in the “evil eye” and other forms of spells. Although, for many of us, we still retained a belief in the power of positive thinking. This belief was more rooted in fashioning ourselves to achieve as opposed to guiding external events according to our desires. We also hoped for some of the latter, but never counted on it.
Accepting Spiritism radically changes this paradigm. We are told we do radiate our mental energies. In fact, we should be careful in what we think, because our thoughts do indeed have consequences.
How do we know all of this?
Thoughts are Mental Telegrams
Be careful of our thoughts. They leave our minds and can draw in unwanted guests. Andre Luiz gives an example of this, in his book, Workers of the Life Eternal, where during a funeral; a group of people were talking about the deceased. One man started to reveal that the deceased knew of a man who committed murder, but never revealed the name, due to the high position of the murderer. Andre Luiz describes what happened next:
“At that moment, a horrendous figure followed by others no less monstrous, appeared unexpectedly. The figure approached the thoughtless commentator, and upon hearing his last words, shook him, crying out;
‘I’m the murderer! What do you want from me? Why have you called me? Are you a judge?’
The narrator was unable to see what I could, but his body was shaken by an involuntary shudder, which drew muffled laughter from all those present.”
Examples, such as this one, are a constant theme in literature inspired by Andre Luiz. Our thoughts are radio waves, indiscriminately radiated in all directions. You never know what person or spirit will tune at what time. Additionally, do we completely understand the effect of our thoughts? When we think badly of someone, are we increasing that person’s chance of failure? Training our minds to regulate our often chaotic thought ramblings must be one of the primary reasons we are obligated to live through numerous reincarnations.
How does Our Thoughts Transmit?
In the book, In the Domain of Mediumship, Andre Luiz is investigating different types of mediumship. In one case, where a medium’s (Raul) ability is amplified by the presence of a spirit, Clementino, Andre could detect the great increase in power in the medium’s body. Andre’s mentor catches his thoughts and supplies the answer:
“Brother Clementino’s mental forces acted upon the psyche of Raul, as electricity acts upon an electric bulb. Pressing upon the solar plexus, it rises toward the neuro-cerebral system, much like electricity from a power plant reaches a bulb, expanding through the incandescent filaments to produce light.”
Hence, while our minds are a mini generator, our capacity can be amplified, by external forces, or by a combination of minds focusing together, as in prayer. This phenomenon has been detected by a group started at Princeton University. A team of researchers have place random number generators around the world. With the assumption that the number would always be random. They wanted to detect if events which caught the attention of the world, or in just some local places where the random number generators were located, could be modified by our collective mental energies. The effort is called The Global Consciousness Project.
The method to detect the power of our mental energies is to compare the expected results of a wide spectrum of random number generators, which should have a relatively smooth pattern of random numbers spread across the world, to the actual results during an event. There are many such events described in their web pages. The most startling is the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Here is their commentary and graph:
“The graph of data from the formal prediction for September 11 shows a fluctuating deviation throughout the moments of the five major events, during which ever-increasing numbers of people around the world are hearing the news and watching in stunned disbelief. Times of the major events are marked by boxes on the line of zero deviation. The uncertain fluctuation of the EGG data continues for almost half an hour after the fall of the second WTC tower. Then, at about 11:00, the cumulative deviation takes on a strong trend that continues through the aftermath period and ultimately exceeds the significance criterion. There were 37 eggs reporting on September 11, and over the 4 hours and 10 minutes of the prediction period, their accumulated Chisquare was 15332 on 15000 degrees of freedom. The final probability for the formal hypothesis test was 0.028, which is equivalent to an odds ratio of 35 to one against chance.”
As one can see, as the event unfolded, the effect of our collective mental energies grew. Does this provide absolute proof? No, but it is an interesting assessment by a group that has no connection to Spiritism. A study that provides a hint that academia is interested in measuring our mental energy. These types of research are just beginning, who knows what else will be discovered in the future.
Back to Andre Luiz, he is interested in the analogy of our thoughts and the light bulb. He wishes to know how the energy of the light bulb is related to our mental forces. His instructor quickly perceived his thoughts and explained the relationship:
“The bulb, in whose interior the light is produced, disperses the photons which are elements of nature that vibrate in physical movements particular to them. Our soul, in whose intimate ambient the radiating idea is processed, projects the condensed spiritual elements into various mental forces. The world acts one upon the other through the radiation they emit, and the souls influence one another via the mental agents they produce.”
Hence, our mind does send out energy, not photons, but another form, of which our science has not yet explained. The normal functioning of our body supplies the power, derived from our food intake, to allow our brains the electrical and chemical power for our neurons to trigger to internally form and emanate our thoughts. Andre takes this logic and extrapolates to its logical conclusion.
“Just as we on Earth have an understanding of the chemistry of dense matter by cataloguing its atomic units, we can also study the make-up of the mind. Cruel thoughts, rebellion, sadness, love, comprehension, hope and happiness have individual weights and make the soul more dense or subtle. In addition, we can define it magnetic qualities. Each mental wavelength possesses its specific coefficients of energy expressed in silent concentration, speech or written word.”
If this statement is true, that by analyzing the wavelengths radiating from our minds, we are able to ascertain the general thoughts of a person, this explains how spirits are able to mentally read our minds. More worryingly, at some time in the future, a machine to read minds would be possible.
Hence, our thoughts result in real manifestations of power. They affect us and others around us, even into the spirit world, from the highest to the lowest regions. Andre Luiz sums up the importance of our minds.
“We are victims or beneficiaries of our own thoughts according to the mental energies that we project. Thus, we enslave ourselves by our own erroneous thoughts or liberate ourselves toward progress, according to our decisions and activities, in harmony or disharmony with the eternal laws.”
And, remember, that as we modify our thoughts, we modify our perispirit, either elevating or falling in the quality of our contemplations, which following the Law of Affinity, whereby like attracts like, we are determining the level in which we will exist in the spirit realm. Reason enough to begin the long road to exercise our mental discipline.
Learn more about the Spirit realm, read my book 51 Disclosures from Spiritism – The 3rd Revelation.