making of the universe: effects of desires

2/02/18

“The second great class of energies is composed of our desires – our outgoings after objects that attract us in the external world; as a mental element always enters into these in man, we may extend the term “mental images” to include them, although they express themselves chiefly in astral matter.

These in their action on their progenitor mold and form his body of desire, or astral body, shape his fate when he passes into Kamaloka after death, and determine the nature of his astral body in his next rebirth.

When the desires are bestial, drunken, cruel, unclean, they are the fruitful causes of congenital diseases, of weak and diseased brains, giving rise to epilepsy, catalepsy, and nervous diseases of all kinds, of physical malformations and deformities, and, in extreme cases, of monstrosities.

Bestial appetites of an abnormal kind and intensity may set up links in the astral world which for a time chain the Egos, clothed in astral bodies shaped by these appetites, to the astral bodies of animals to which these appetites properly belong, thus delaying their reincarnation;

where this fate is escaped, the bestially shaped astral body will sometimes impress its characteristics on the forming physical body of the babe during antenatal life, and produce the semihuman horrors that are occasionally born.”

 

Annie Besant