At this point I may as well be honest with you and tell you that all of this will not fall into place the very first time you do it. I have had people tell me that they tried fifty times or more before they started getting results. Anything worth doing is worth doing repeatedly. But the cloud can be formed, and has been formed hundreds of times by the Wise.
Now the biggest problem that you will have is not producing the cloud, but recognizing that you are producing the cloud. Sometimes you will be concentrating and you will see what appears to be heat waves, radiating from the spot where you are staring. If you see this,
congratulations! That is not it!
It is what H. Spencer Lewis described as a faint discolouration of the atmosphere, nothing more. If you are using a white background, the cloud will appear to be a very, very faint blue stain that almost cannot be seen at all. The one thing that will tell you for certain when you are getting results is that anything on the other side of the cloud will be blotted out.
bed recovering from influenza, and using the ceiling of my bedroom for a backdrop. I was wondering silently how much longer I should have to work to get success with this phenomenon, when I suddenly noticed that a very slight indentation in the ceiling where I was staring could no longer be seen. This indentation was quite visible before — you tend to notice such things after staring at them for some time — and when I looked more closely, I noticed that there was a very subtle blue haze between the ceiling and my eyes. If I looked away from the target area, I could see the ceiling quite clearly. If I looked where this blue haze was forming, I could see nothing. However, if I had looked for the cloud itself, I would never have noticed it. It was almost invisible.
When you think you are getting results, it is time for step five — building the cloud. There are several different ways in which this may be accomplished. You will recall that the Buddhist nun mentioned by Madame Blavatsky in chapter two 'began to draw together, by large handfuls as it were, invisible material from the surrounding atmosphere'. Some people do have excellent results using their hands in this
experiment, and there is a technique that is widely used by Western secret orders based on this principle.
The idea is to start with your hands separated by a foot and a half or so, then bring them together, at the same time holding in mind the thought that you are compressing the astral material in the space between them. You are not to gather anything, precisely. The motion that you will make is rather like that of a man playing an accordion. You bring your hands together, then drawn them apart, then bring them together again. This technique was once used by members of the Inner Peace Movement, and a woman connected with that movement told me that she could see balls of light forming in the space between her hands when she did this experiment. Some people get excellent results using this method. As for myself, I get nothing whatever.
A method which works better for me is based on will power and eye movement, and does not involve the hands in any way at all. After you have seen the cloud begin to form, look away from it, allow the energy to collect in another region of space, and after a moment or two, bring your eyes gradually toward the centre, where
the main cloud is forming, at the same time willing that the energy in other parts of the room will move in and join with the energy already in the cloud. You may glance up above the cloud, then bring your eyes down, willing that the energy above the cloud be added to the energy of the cloud itself, then do the same thing by glancing below the cloud, then to either side of it. Remember as you do this that your willing is not to involve eye strain in any way. The willing must be entirely mental. The eyes must remain passive if you are to see what you are doing.
You may find it helpful to mix this technique with step number two, and start the building-up process at the same time you start the concentration that allows the cloud to collect in the first place. In other words, rather than concentrate until you see something visible beginning to collect you might want to alternate between step one and five,
concentrating for a few moments, then building up the cloud for a few moments, and then returning to your concentration. This helps relieve the tedium that often accompanies occult experiments, and can produce some excellent results.
Step Six
After you have produced the cloud successfully, you will discover that it has a natural tendency to disperse to the four corners of your room. This is according to the laws of thermodynamics, and if you allow it to happen, eventually the energy in the cloud will become evenly distributed
throughout the surrounding space. This dispersing action takes the form of a spin, and must be countered by another spin of opposite type if the cloud is to be of any use to you.
The dispersing spin takes place in a clockwise direction, and you must counter it by willing that the cloud spin in an anti-clockwise
direction. Once it starts to do this, rather than becoming larger and thinner, it will become smaller and more dense. Therefore, you may need to
alternate this step with step five, causing a anti-clockwise spin, then building up more energy into the cloud as it shrinks.
indeed. This is one of the secrets of materialization, and I have been told of an AMORC Grand Master who has completely blotted out the light of a 150 watt bulb in private demonstrations using this method. The
Frenchman A. Secour has compared this process with the formation of
nebulae in outer space. Astronomers contend that galaxies, including our
own, are formed in this way, with gigantic clouds spinning and condensing until they gradually form suns and planets.