36] but, we must repeat, that is not fatality.

Now to the second point.

Thought, by repetition, gains ever-increasing energy, and when the
forces which thoughts accumulate have become as powerful as those of
the will of the Ego which created them, a final addition of
energy--another thought--alone is needed for the will to be overcome
and the heavier scale of the balance to incline; then the thought is
fatally realised in the action. But so long as dynamic equilibrium has
not been reached, the will remains master, although its power is ever
diminishing, in proportion as the difference in the forces becomes
smaller. When equilibrium is reached, the will is neutralised; it
becomes powerless, and feels that a fall is only a question of
moments, and, with a fresh call of energy, the thought is fatally
realised on the physical plane; the hour of freedom has gone and the
fatal moment arrived. Like some solution that has reached saturation
point, obedient to the last impulse, this thought crystallises into an
act.

Many a criminal thus meets, in a single moment, the fatality he has
created in the course of several incarnations; he no longer sees
anything, his reason disappears; in a condition of mental darkness
his arm is raised, and, impelled by a blind force, he strikes
automatically. "What have I done?" he immediately exclaims in horror.
"What demon is this that has taken possession of me?"

Then only is the crime perpetrated, without there being time for the
will to be consulted, without the "voice of conscience" having been
invited to speak. The whole fatality of automatism is in the deed,
which has been carried through without the man suspecting or being
conscious of it; his physical machine has been the blind instrument of
the force of evil he has himself slowly accumulated throughout the
ages. But let there be no mistake; every time a man, who is tempted,
has time to think, even in fleeting fashion, of the moral value of the
impulse which is driving him onward, he has power to resist; and if he
yields to this impulse, the entire responsibility of this final lapse
is added on to that incurred by past thoughts.

Among the victims of these actions that have become fatal are often to
be found those who are near the stage of initiation, for before being
exposed to the dangers of the bewildering "Path," which bridges the
abyss--the abyss which separates the worlds of unity from the illusory
and transitory regions of