The creating agency, man, has through the incentives of a coordinating purpose, intent meditation, and creative activity built the thought-form which he is ensouling with his own vitality and directing with his will. The time has come for that thought-form to be sent upon its mission and to carry out the purpose of its being. As we saw in the earlier rule, the form is "driven" from its creator by the power of the expulsive breath. This is a symbolic statement but, at the same time, an experimental fact in the magical work. In the disciple's work, there is often failure owing to his inability to understand both the esoteric and the literal significance of this expulsive breath as he carries forward his meditation work. This expulsive breath is the result of a preceding period of rhythmic breathing, paralleled by concentrated meditation work, then a definite focusing of the attention and the breath, as the purpose of the created form is mentally defined, and finally, the vitalizing of the thought-form, by its creator, and its consequent energizing into independent life and activity.
It is interesting to remember this: If a thought-form is sent forth into the emotional world to gather to itself a body of desire (the impelling force which produces all objectivity) and is immersed in a "condition of the waters" which can best be described as purely selfish, all that occurs is as follows: It is lost, by being drawn into the astral body of the disciple, which is the focal point for all astral energy employed by the disciple. It is swept into a vortex of which the individual astral body is the center and loses its separate existence. The simile of the whirlpool is of value here. The thinker is like a man throwing a toy boat from the shore into a stream of water. If he throws it into a whirlpool, it is sucked in time into the central vortex and so disappears. Many forms, thus constructed by an aspirant in his meditation work are lost and fail in their objective because of the chaotic and whirling state of the aspirant's emotional body. Thus good intentions come to naught; thus good purpose and planned work for the Master fail to materialize because, as the thought-form passes downward on to the plane of desire and emotion, it contacts only the seething waters of fear, of suspicion, of hatred, of vicious or purely physical desire. These being more potent than the little form, drown it, and it passes out of sight and out of existence, and the man becomes conscious of another abortive effort....read more...