Thought-Forms

by C.W. Leadbeater, Annie Besant, Charles W. Leadbeater

Book Overview

What do ideas look like? This clairvoyant view of the shape, color, and atmospheric effect of mental energy includes black-and-white drawings and color plates to convey a graphic representation of the power of thought.

Prominent Theosophists Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater were pioneers in asserting that thoughts are, indeed, things. Originally released in 1901, Thought-Forms is a seminal work on what thoughts look like. It had an...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0835600084
• ISBN13: 9780835600088
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Quest Books (IL)
• Length: 103 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The books illustrations are not in color in this edition that I received

How disappointing The books illustrations are not in color in this edition that I received

Great book for thought awareness

Everyday we have many thoughts. This books shows you how mindful we should be of our thought forms. It can help one have a brighter mind.

Don’t bother

A book solely about important color combinations printed in grainy black and white? Why bother? Text resembles a cheap newspaper between a nice cover. I did not receive the book cover I chose in the catalog but assume the text is the same. A waste of money.

don't purchase for kindle

great book. Although it was written many decades ago the information is relevant and fresh. If you purchase it for a kindle, none of the illustrations are downloaded which makes it impossible to read.

Written with keen intellect about the power of thought!

This small but significant tome clearly outlines that you are what you think about. That thoughts are energy forms and each time you think a thought you generate a certain type of frequency that follows the universal tenet of the Law of Attraction. A wonderful wise book we all should read.

One of the best books I own

If you're into symbolism, intuition, and exploring the human condition -- Thought Forms just might blow your mind. I can't guarantee it for you, but with my life experience the author's depiction of how clairvoyants see our thoughts and spirits acting seems very true. Probably the best book I own on the occult, believe it or not, the statements made with images are profound. If you have any tendency towards being a mystic this book will give you a charge, the content will connect.

The Protean World of Thought Formation

There are a number of methods that we can use to clarify and describe something elusive. In my own work I combine phenomenology (which slowly and carefully works through the ways in which something shows itself) and transcendental arguments (which move from what is observed toward what may or must be presupposed to explain what is observed). Using these two methods together can produce a (hopefully) powerful strategy for bringing the more hidden or esoteric realm into the less hidden realm of common discourse and description. Even though they did not use this technical methodological language (especially since phenomenology was just being born in 1901), Besant and Leadbeater were certainly using the same dual approach. That is, in probing into the human aura and the thought forms that emerge within and through it, they carefully describe the data that clairvoyants almost universally report. Since both authors were themselves gifted in this area, they were in a position to evaluate what others had said about those phenomena that reside outside of the immediate boundaries of the human body. The transcendental strategy comes into play when they argue that the world must be set up as a series of more and more refined fields of energy that condense themselves in order to become relevant to the physical orders. Simply put, phenomenology describes what appears in clairvoyant seeing, while the transcendental argument tells us what the world must be like in order to explain just how thought forms got to be the way they are. Three traits emerge from the phenomenological description. Thought forms manifest: (1) color, (2) form, and, (3) variations in definiteness of outline. The correlation of color with mood and even quality of thought is well known in the literature. The form of the thought is correlated with its intention, while the outline is related to the thought's intensity of focus. For Besant and Leadbeater, thoughts are causal agents in the world of so-called physical matter and can act to alter the brain states that are mistakenly taken to be their source. The aura-entwined thought form is causally prior to the later brain state activity (to which it is often reduced). The social aspects of thought form activity are given their proper role and are sometimes manifest pathologically in what Wilhelm Reich called the "emotional plague." It is this plague ridden thought form that lies behind such phenomena as fascism and group psychosis. Of great value are the many color renditions of thought forms and their emotional correlaries. Each thought contains an emotion and vice versa. Musicians will be especially interested in the color plates that depict the energetic effects (pictured as manifesting themselves high above a church wherein the music was played on an organ) of the thought forms of the music of Mendelssohn, Gounod, and Wagner. Needless to say, the music of Wagner's Overture to "The Meistersingers" has the most powerful expression of the three

The most complete explanation of the root of theosophy.

This is the book for those individuals who have ever wondered why they and those close to them utter words and phrases at the same time or know what the other person is thinking before it is said. My analogy after reading the book is that we all trade thoughts much like a radio station. We recieve what we are programmed to or what we are in range of. I reccommend that this study be revitalized for the benefit of our future!