Student: — At a former time you spoke of entities that crowd the spaces about us. Are these all unconscious or otherwise?
Sage. — They are not all unconscious. First, there are the humdrum masses of elementals that move like nerve-currents with every motion of man, beast, or natural elements. Next are classes of those which have a peculiar power and consciousness of their own and not easily reached by any man. Then come the shades of the dead, whether mere floating shells, or animated elementals, or infused with galvanic and extraordinary action by the Brothers of the Shadow. Last, the Brothers of the Shadow, devoid of physical bodies save in rare cases, bad souls living long in that realm and working according to their nature for no other end than evil until they are finally annihilated — they are the lost souls of Kama Loka as distinguished from the "animated corpses" devoid of souls which live and move among men. These Black entities are the Dugpas, the Black Magicians.
Student. — Have they anything to do with the shocks, knocks, bad influences, disintegration of soft material accompanied by noises more or less distinct?
Sage. — Yes, they have. Not always, of course. But where they are actually seen at the time preceding such occurrence, they are the agents.
Student. — Then I am to suppose that if such takes place with me I am the attracting person, the unfortunate channel through which they have come?
Sage. — No, you are thoroughly in error there. You are not such channel in that case. You are in fact the opposite, and the very cause for the temporary defeat of that dark entity. You have mistaken the appearance, the outer manipulation of forces, for the thing itself. If you were their channel, their agent, the cause for their coming and thus making their presence possible, there would be no noise and no explosion. They would then act in and through you for the hurt of others, silently and insidiously. They approach your sphere and attempt to make entry. The strength of your character, of your aspiration, of your life, throws them off, and they are obliged, like rain-clouds, to discharge themselves. The more strong they are, the louder will be their retreating manifestation. For the time they are temporarily destroyed or, rather, put outside the combat, and, like a war vessel have to retire for repairs. In their case this consists in accumulating force for a new attack, there or elsewhere.
Student. — If, then, such loud explosions, with pulverization of wall-plaster and the like, take place, and such an evil entity is seen astrally, it follows that the person near whom it all occurred — if identification due to solitude is possible — was in fact the person who, by reason of inner power and opposition to the evil entity, became the cause for its bursting or temporary defeat?
Sage. — Yes, that is correct. The person is not the cause for the entity's approach, nor its friend, but is the safeguard in fact for those who otherwise would be insidiously affected. Uninformed students are likely to argue the other way, but that will be due to want of correct knowledge. I will describe to you condensedly an actual case. Sitting at rest on a seat, eyes closed, I saw approach one of those evil entities along the astral currents, and looking as a man. His hands like claws reached out to affect me; on his face was a devilish expression. Full of force he moved quickly up. But as I looked at him the confidence I felt and the protection about me acted as an intense shock to him, and he appeared to burst from within, to stagger, fall to pieces, and then disappeared. Just as the disintegration began, a loud noise was caused by the sudden discharge of astral electricity, causing reactions that immediately transmitted themselves into the objects in the room, until, reaching the limit of tension, they created a noise. This is just the phenomenon of thunder, which accompanies discharges in the clouds and is followed by equilibrium.
Student. — Can I carry this explanation into every objective phenomenon, say, then, of spiritualistic rappings?
Sage. — No, not to every case. It holds with many, but specially relates to the conscious entities I was speaking of. Very often the small taps and raps one hears are produced under the law referred to, but without the presence of such an entity. These are the final dissipations of collected energy. That does not always argue a present extraneous and conscious entity. But in so far as these taps are the conclusion of an operation, that is, the thunder from one astral cloud to another, they are dissipations of accumulated force. With this distinction in mind you should not be confused.
Student. — Have not colors a good deal to do with this matter?
Sage. — Yes; but just now we will not go into the question of color except to say that the evil entities referred to often assume a garb of good color, but are not able to hide the darkness that belongs to their nature.