The Writings of Annie Besant
Study In Karma
By
Annie Besant
First published 1917
KARMA
From The
Light of
It knows
not wrath nor pardon; utter true
Its
measures mete, its faultless balance weighs;
Times are
as nought, tomorrow it will judge,
Or after
many days.
By this the
slayer’s knife did stab himself;
The unjust
judge hath lost his own defender;
The false
tongue dooms its lie; the creeping thief
And spoiler
rob, to render.
Such is the
Law which moves to righteousness,
Which none
at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart
of it is Love, the end of it
Is Peace
and Consummation sweet. Obey!
AMONG the many illuminating
gifts to the western world, conveyed to it by the medium of the Theosophical
Society, that of the knowledge of karma comes, perhaps, next in importance to
that of reincarnation. It removes human thought and desire from the region of
arbitrary happenings to the realm of law, and thus
places man’s future
under his own control in proportion to the amount of his knowledge.
The main conception of
karma: "As a man soweth, so shall he also reap," is easy to grasp.
But the application of this to daily life in detail, the method of its working
and its far-reaching consequences – these are the difficulties which become
more bewildering to the student as his knowledge increases. The
principles on which any
natural science is based are, for the most part, readily intelligible to people
of fair intelligence and ordinary education; but as the student passes from
principles to practice, from outline to details, he discovers that difficulties
press upon him, and if he would wholly master his subject he finds himself
compelled to become a specialist, and to devote long periods to the unraveling
of the tangles which confront him.
So is it also with this
science of karma; the student cannot remain always in the domain of
generalities; he must study the subdivisions of the primary law, must seek to
apply it in all the circumstances of life, must learn how far it binds and how
freedom becomes
possible. He must learn to see in karma a universal law of nature, and learn
also, as in face of nature as a whole, that conquest of and rule over her can
only be gained by obedience.( "Nature is conquered by obedience".)
FUNDAMENTAL
PRINCIPLES
In order to understand
karma, the student must begin with a clear view of certain fundamental principles,
from the lack of which many remain constantly bewildered, asking endless
questions which cannot find full solution without the
solid laying of this
basis. Therefore, in this study, I begin with these, though many of my readers
will be already familiar with them, through previous statements of others and
of myself.
The fundamental
conception, on which all later right thinking on karma rests, is that it is law
– law eternal, changeless, invariable, inviolable, law which can never be
broken, existing in the nature of things, informed Theosophists say: "You
must not interfere with his karma." But whenever a natural law is working,
you may interfere with
it just so far as you can. You do not hear a person say solemnly: "You
must not interfere with the law of gravitation."
It is understood that
gravitation is one of the conditions with which one has to reckon, and that one
is perfectly at liberty to counteract any inconvenience it may cause by setting
another force against it, by building a buttress to support that which
otherwise would fall to
the ground under the action of gravitation, or in any other way.
When a condition in
nature incommodes us, we use our intelligence to circumvent it, and no one ever
dreams of telling us that we must not "interfere with" or change any
condition which we dislike. We can only interfere when we have knowledge, for
we cannot annihilate any natural force, nor prevent it from
acting. But we can
neutralize, we can turn aside, its action if we have at command another
sufficient force, and while I will never abate for us one jot of its activity,
it can be held up, opposed, circumvented, exactly according to our knowledge of
its nature and working, and the forces at our disposal. Karma is no more
"sacred" than any other natural law; all laws of nature are
expressions of the divine nature, and we live and move within them; but they
are not mandatory; they are forces which set up conditions amid which we live,
and which work in us as well as outside of us; we can manipulate them; we
understand them, and as our intelligence unfolds we become more and more their
masters, until the man becomes superman, and material nature becomes his
servant.
LAWS:
NATURAL AND MAN-MADE
Much confusion has arisen
in this matter, because, in the West, "natural" laws have been
regarded as apart from mental and moral laws, whereas mental and moral laws are
as much part of natural law as the laws of electricity, and all laws are part
of the order of nature. Natural law has been, in many minds, confused
with human law, and the
arbitrariness of human legislation has been imported into the realm of natural
law. Laws affecting physical phenomena have been rescued from this
arbitrariness by science, but the mental and moral worlds are still in the
chaos of lawlessness. Not a divine command, but the immanence of
the divine nature,
conditions our existence, and where prophets have laid down moral laws, these
have been declarations of inevitable sequences in the moral world, known to the
prophet, unknown to his ignorant hearers; because of their ignorance, his
hearers have regarded his declarations as arbitrary commands of a divine
lawgiver, sent through him, instead of as mere statements of fact concerning
the succession of moral phenomena in a region as orderly as the physical.
Law, in the secondary
social sense, is an enactment laid down by an authority regarded as legitimate.
It may be the edict of an autocrat, or the act of a legislative assembly; in
either case the force of the law depends on the recognition of the authority
which makes it. Among the Hindus we find the ideas both of man-made and natural
law. The King, in the conception of the Manu, is an autocrat, and the subject
must obey; but above the King is a Law to which he in his turn must be
obedient, a Law which acts automatically and is in the nature of things. In
spite of his autocracy, he is bound by the supreme Law, which will
crush him if he
disregards it.
Weakness oppressed is
said to be the most fatal enemy of Kings; the tears of the weak sap the
foundation of thrones, and the suffering of the nation destroys the ruler. The
physical and the super-physical worlds interpenetrate each other, and causes
set going in the one bring about results in the other. The King and his Council
in ancient
It seems a pity that one
word should be used for two things so different as natural and artificial laws,
yet they are clearly distinguishable by their characteristics. Artificial laws
are changeable; those who make them can alter them or repeal them. Natural laws
are unchanging; they cannot be altered nor repealed, but lie in the nature of
things. Artificial laws are local, while natural are universal. The law in any
country against robbery may be enforced by any penalty chosen by the
legislator; sometimes the hand is cut off, sometimes the thief is sent to goal,
sometimes he is hanged. Moreover, the infliction of the penalty is dependent on
the discovery of the crime.
A penalty which is
variable and artificial, and which may be escaped, is obviously not causally
related to the crime it punishes. A natural law has no penalty, but one
condition follows invariably on another; if a man steals, his nature becomes
more thievish, the tendency to dishonesty is increased, and the difficulty of
being honest becomes greater; this consequence works in every case, in all
countries; and the knowledge or ignorance of others as to theft makes no
difference in the consequence. A penalty which is local, variable and escapable
is a sign that the law is artificial, and not natural.
A natural law is a
sequence of conditions; such a condition being present, such another condition
will invariably fellow. If you want to bring about condition No.2, you must
find or make condition No.1, and then condition No.2 will follow as an
invariable consequence. These sequences never vary when left to themselves, but
if a new condition is introduced the succeeding condition will be altered. Thus
water runs down a slanting channel in accordance with the force of gravitation,
and if you pour water in at the top, it will invariably run down the slope; but
you can obstruct the flow by putting an obstacle in the way, and then the
resistance which the obstacle opposes to the force of gravitation balances it,
but the force of gravitation remains active and is found in the pressure on the
obstacle. The first condition is called the cause, the resulting condition the
effect, and the same
cause always brings about the same effect, provided no other cause is
introduced; in the latter case, the effect is the resultant of both.
THE LAW OF
LAWS
Karma is natural law in
the full sense of the term; it is Universal Causation, the Law of Cause and
Effect. It may be said to underlie all special laws, all causes and effects. It
is natural law in all its aspects and in all its subdivisions; it is not a
special law, but a universal condition, the one law whereon all other laws
depend, of which all other laws are partial expressions.
The Bhagavad-Gita says
that none who are embodied can escape it – Shining Ones, human beings, animals,
vegetables, minerals, are all evolving within this universal law; even the
LOGOS Himself, embodied in a universe, comes within a larger sweep of this law
of all manifestation. So long as any one is related to
matter, embodied in
matter, so long is he within karmic law. A being may escape from or transcend
one or other of its aspects, but he cannot, while remaining in manifestation,
go outside this law.
THE ETERNAL
NOW
This universal Law of
Causation binds together into one all that happens within a manifestation, for
it is universal interrelation. Interrelation between all that exists – that is
karma. It is therefore coexistent, simultaneous, with the coming into existence
of any special universe. Therefore karma is eternal as the
Universal Self. The interrelation
of everything always is. It never begins; it never ceases to be. "The
unreal has no being; the real never ceases to be."
Nothing exists isolated,
alone, out of relation, and karma is the interrelation of all that exists. It is
manifest during the manifestation of a universe, as regards that universe; it
becomes latent in its dissolution.
In the All everything IS
always; all that has been, all that now is manifest, all that will be, all that
can be, all possibilities as well as all actualities, are ever in being in the
All. That which is outwards, the forth-going, existence, theunfolded, is the
manifested universe. That which IS as really, although inwards, the infolded,
is the unmanifested universe. But the Within, the Unmanifested, is as real as
the Without, the Manifested. The interrelation between beings, in or out of
manifestation, is the eternal karma. As Being never ceases, so karma never
ceases, but always is.
When part of that which
is simultaneous in the All becomes manifested as a universe, the eternal
interrelation becomes successive, and is seen as cause and effect. In the one
Being, the All, everything is linked to everything else, everything is related
to everything else, and in the phenomenal, the manifested universe, these links
and relations are drawn out into successive happenings, causally connected in
the order of their succession in time, i.e., in appearance.
Some students shrink
from a metaphysical view such as this, but unless this idea of eternal Being,
within which all beings ever are, is grasped, the centre cannot be reached. So
long as we think from the circumference, there is always a question behind
every answer, endless beginnings and endings with a "Why?" behind
each beginning. If the student would escape this, he must patiently seek the
centre, and let the concept of All sink into his mind, until it becomes an
ever-present part of his mental equipment, and then the universes on the
circumference become intelligible, and the universal interrelation between all
things, seen from the
simultaneity of the centre, naturally becomes cause and effect in the
successions on the circumference. It has been said that the Eternal (The Hindu
name is Brahman, or more strictly, Nirguna Brahman, the Brahman without
attributes) is an ocean, which throws up universes as waves.
The ocean symbolises
being without form, ever the same. The wave, by virtue of being a part, has
form and attributes. The waves rise and fall; they break into foam, and the
spray of the waves is as worlds in a universe.
Or we may think of a
huge waterfall, like Niagara, where the mass of its torrent is one ere it
falls, and then it divides into innumerable drops, which separately reflect the
light; and the drops are as worlds, and the rainbow they make is the
many-coloured life. But the water is one while the drops are many, and life is
onethough beings are many. God manifest or unmanifest is one and the same,
though different, though showing attributes in manifestation, and attributes in
un-manifestation; the LOGOS and His universe are one, though He is the unity
and the universe the diversity, He is the life and the universe the forms.
Out of manifestation
karma is latent, for the beings of the manifested are but concepts in the
unmanifested; in manifestation karma is active, for all the parts of a world,
of a system, of a universe, are inter-related. Science declares that no
movement of a part can take place without affecting the whole, and
scientifically all are agreed. The inter-relations are universal, and none can
be broken, for the breaking of one would break the unity of the whole. The
inviolability of natural law rests on its universality, and a breach of law in
any part would mean universal chaos.
SUCCESSION
We have seen that as the
manifestation of a universe implies succession of phenomena, so the universal
inter-relation becomes the sequence of cause and effect. But each effect
becomes in turn a cause, and so on endlessly, the difference between cause and
effect not being one of nature but of relation. The inter-relations which exist
in the thought of the Eternal become the inter-relations between phenomena in
the manifested universe – the portion of the thought put forth as a universe.
Before the manifestation
of any special universe, there will be, in the Eternal, the thought of the
universe which is to be, and its inter-relations. That which exists
simultaneously out of time and space in the Eternal Now, gradually appears in
time and space as successive phenomena.
The moment you conceive
a universe as made up of phenomena, you are obliged to think of these phenomena
successively, one after another; but in the thought of the Eternal they always
are, and the limitation of succession has there no existence.
Even in the lower
worlds, where the measures of time are so different from each other, we catch a
glimpse of the increasing limitations of denser matter. Mozart tells us of a
state of consciousness in which he received a musical composition
as a single impression,
although in his waking consciousness he could only reproduce that single
impression in a succession of notes. Or again, we may look at a picture, and
receive a single mental impression – a landscape, a battle; but an ant,
crawling over that picture, would see no whole, only successive
impressions from the
parts travelled over.
By simile, by analogy,
we may gain some idea of the difference of a universe as it appears to the
LOGOS and as it appears to us. To Him, a single impression, a perfect whole; to
us an immense sequence, slowly unfolding. So what is to Him inter-relation
becomes to us succession. Instead of seeing childhood, youth, old
age as a whole, we see
them successively, day by day, year by year. That which is simultaneous and
universal becomes successive and particular to our small minds, crawling over
the world as the ant over the picture.
Go up a mountain and
look down on a town, and you can see how the houses are related to each other
in blocks, streets, and so on. You realise them as a whole. But when you go
down into the town you must pass from street to street, seeing each separately,
successively. So in karma, we see the relations only one by one, and one after
another, not even realising the successive relations, so limited is our view.
Such similes may often
help us to grasp the invisible things, and may act as crutches to our halting
imagination. And out of all this we lay our foundation stone for our study of
karma. Karma is universal inter-relation, and is seen in any universe as the
Law of Causation, in consequence of the successive appearance of phenomena in
the becoming, or coming forth, of the universe.
CAUSATION
The idea of causation
has been challenged in modern times, Huxley, for instance, contending, in the
Contemporary Review, that we only knew sequence, not causation; he said that if
a ball moved after it was hit by a bat, you should not say that the blow of the
bat caused the movement, but only that it was followed by the movement. This
extreme scepticism came out strongly in some of the great men of the nineteenth
century, a reaction from the ready credulity and many unproved assumptions of
the Middle Ages. The reaction had its use, but is now gradually passing away,
as extremes ever do.
The idea of causation
arises naturally in the human mind, though unprovable by the senses; when a
phenomenon has been invariably followed by another phenomenon for long periods
of time, the two become linked together in our minds, and when one appears, the
mind, by association of ideas, expects the second; thus the fact that night has
been followed by day from time immemorial gives us a firm conviction that the
sun will rise tomorrow as on countless yesterdays.
Succession alone,
however, does not necessarily imply causation; we do not regard day as the
cause of night, nor night as the cause of day, because they invariably succeed
each other. To assert causation, we need more than invariable succession; we
need that the reason shall see that which the senses are unable to discern – a
relation between the two things which brings about the appearance of the second
when the first appears. The succession of day and night is not caused by
either; both are caused by the relation of the earth to the sun; that relation
is a true cause, recognised as such by the reason, and as long as the
relation exists
unchanged, day and night will be its effect. In order to see one thing as the
cause of another, the reason must establish a relation between them which is
sufficient for the production of one by the other; then, and then only,
can we rightly assert
causation. The links between phenomena that are never broken, and that are
recognised by the reason as an active relation, bringing into manifestation the
second phenomenon whenever the first is manifested, we call causation.
They are the shadows of
inter-relations existing in the Eternal,
outside space and time,
and they extend over the life of a universe, wherever the conditions exist for
their manifestation. Causation is an expression of the nature of the LOGOS, an
Emanation of the eternal Reality; wherever there is
interrelation in the
Eternal which demands succession for its manifestation in time, there is
causation.
THE LAWS OF
NATURE
Our next step in our
study is a consideration of the "Laws of Nature". The whole universe
is included within the ideas of succession and causation, but when we come to
what we call the laws of nature, we are unable to say over what area they
extend.
Scientists find
themselves compelled to speak with greater and greater caution as they travel
beyond the limit of actual observation. Causes and effects which are continuous
within the area of our observation may not exist in other regions, or workings
which are here observed as invariable may be interrupted by the irruption of
some cause outside the "known" of our time, though probably not
outside the knowable.
Between 1850 and 1890
there were many positive statements as to the conservation of energy and the
indestructibility of matter. It was said that there existed in the universe a
certain amount of energy, incapable of diminution or of increase; that all
forces were forms of that energy, that the amount of any given force, as heat,
might vary, but not the total amount of energy. As 20 may be made up of 20 units,
or of 10 twos, or of 5 fours, or of 12+8, ) and so on, but the total remains as
20, so with the varying forms and the total amount. With regard to matter,
again, similar statements were made; it was indestructible, and hence remained
ever the same in amount; some, like Ludwig Buchner, declared that the chemical
elements were indestructible, that "an atom of carbon was ever an atom of
carbon," and so on.
On these two ideas
science was built up, and they formed the basis of materialism. But now it is realised
that chemical elements are dissoluble, and that the atom itself may be a swirl
in the ether, or perhaps a mere hole where ether is not. There may be atoms
through which force pours in, others through
which it pours out –
whence? – whither ? May not physical matter become intangible, resolve itself
into ether? May not ether give birth to new matter? All is doubtful where once
certainty reigned. Yet has a universe its "Ring-Pass-Not". Within a
given area only can we speak with certainty of a "law
of nature".
What is a law of nature?
Mr. J.N. Farquhar, in the Contemporary Review for July, 1910, in an article on
Hinduism, declares that if Hindus want to carry out reforms, they must abandon
the idea of karma. As well might he say that if a man wants to fly he must
abandon the idea of an atmosphere. To understand the law of karma is not to
renounce activity, but to know the conditions under which activity is best
carried on. Mr. Farquhar, who has evidently studied modern Hinduism
carefully, has not grasped
the idea of karma as taught in ancient
scripture and in modern
science.
A law of nature is not a
command, but a statement of conditions. This cannot be repeated too often, nor
insisted on too strongly. Nature does not order this thing or the other; she
says: "Here are certain conditions; where these exist, such and such a
result will invariably follow." A law of nature is an invariable
sequence. If you do not
like the result, change the preceding conditions.
Ignorant, you are
helpless, at the mercy of nature’s hurtling forces; wise, you are master, and
her forces serve you obediently. Every law of nature is an enabling, not a
compelling, force, but knowledge is necessary for utilising her powers.
Water boils at 100
degrees C. under normal pressure. This is the condition. You go up a mountain;
pressure diminishes; water boils at 95 degrees. Now water at 95 degrees will
not make good tea. Does Nature then forbid you to have good tea on a
mountain-top? Not at all: under normal pressure water boils at the necessary
temperature for tea-making; you have lost pressure; supply the deficit;
imprison your escaping steam till it adds the necessary pressure, and you can
make your tea with water at 100 degrees. If you want to produce water by the
union of hydrogen and oxygen, you require a certain temperature, and can obtain
it from the electric spark. If you insist on keeping the temperature at zero,
or in substituting nitrogen for hydrogen, you cannot have water.
Nature lays down the
conditions which result in the production of water, and you cannot change them;
she neither supplies nor withholds water; you are free to have it or to go
without it; if you want it, you must bring together the necessary things and
thus make the conditions. Without these, no water. With these,
inevitably water. Are
you bound or free? Free as to making the conditions; bound as to the result,
when once you have made them.
Knowing this, the
scientific man, face to face with a difficulty, does not sit down helplessly;
he finds out the conditions under which he can bring about a result, learns how
to make the conditions, sure that he can rely on the result.
A LESSON OF
THE LAW
This is the great lesson
taught by science to the present generation. Religion has taught it for ages, but
dogmatically rather than rationally. Science proves that knowledge is the
condition of freedom, and that only as man knows can he
compel. The scientific
man observes sequences; over and over again he performs his testing
experiments; he eliminates all that is casual, collateral, irrelevant, and
slowly, surely, discovers what constitutes an invariable causative sequence.
Once sure of his facts, he acts with indubitable assurance, and nature, without
shadow of turning, rewards his rational certainty with success.
Out of this assurance
grows "the sublime patience of the investigator". Luther Burbank, in
California, will sow millions of seeds, select some thousands of plants, pair a
few hundreds, and patiently march to his end; he can trust the laws of nature,
and, if he fails, he knows that the error lies with him, not
with them.
There is a law of nature
that masses of matter tend to move towards the earth. Shall I then say: "I
cannot walk up the stairs; I cannot fly in the air"? Nay, there are other
laws. I pit against the force that holds me on the ground, another force stored
in my muscles, and I raise my body by means of it. A person with
muscles weak from fever
may have to stay on the ground-floor, helpless; but I break no law when I put
forth muscular force, and walk upstairs.
The inviolability of Law
does not bind – it frees. It makes Science possible, and rationalises human
effort. In a lawless universe, effort would be futile, reasons would be useless.
We should be savages, trembling in the grip of forces, strange, incalculable,
terrible. Imagine a chemist in a laboratory where
nitrogen was now inert,
now explosive, where oxygen vivified today and stifled tomorrow! In a lawless
universe we should not dare to move, not knowing what any action might bring
about. We move sagely, surely, because of the inviolability of Law.
KARMA DOES
NOT CRUSH
Now Karma is the great
law of nature, with all that that implies. As we are able to move in the
physical universe with security, knowing its laws, so may we move in the mental
and moral universes with security also, as we learn their laws.
The majority of people,
with regard to their mental and moral defects, are much in the position of a
man who should decline to walk upstairs because of the law of gravitation. They
sit down helplessly, and say: "That is my nature. I cannot help it."
True, it is the man’s nature, as he has made it in the past, and it is
"his karma".
But by a knowledge of karma he can change his nature, making it other tomorrow
than it is today. He is not in the grip of an inevitable destiny, imposed upon
him from outside; he is in a world of law, full of natural forces
which he can utilise to
bring about the state of things which he desires. Knowledge and will – that is
what he needs.
He must realize that
karma is not a power which crushes, but a statement of conditions out of which
invariable results accrue. So long as he lives carelessly, in a happy-go-lucky
way, so long will he be like a man floating on a stream, stuck by any passing
log, blown aside by any casual breeze, caught in any chance eddy. This spells
failure, misfortune, unhappiness. The law enables him to compass his ends
successfully, and places within his reach forces which he can utilise. He can
modify, change, remake on other lines the nature which is the inevitable
outcome of his previous desires, thoughts, and actions; that future nature is
as inevitable as the present, the result of the conditions which he now deliberately
makes. "Habit is second nature," says the proverb, and thought
creates habits. Where there is Law, no achievement is impossible, and karma is
the guarantee of man’s evolution into mental and moral perfection.
APPLY THIS
LAW
We have now to apply this
law to ordinary human life, to apply principle to practice. It has been the
loss of the intelligible relations between eternal principles and transitory
events that has rendered modern religion so inoperative in common life. A man
will clean up his backyard when he understands the relation between dirt and
disease; but he leaves his mental and moral backyards uncleansed, because he
sees no relation between his mental and moral defects and the various ghastly
after-death experiences with which he is threatened by religions.
Hence he either
disbelieves the threats and goes carelessly on his way, or hopes to escape
consequences by some artificial compact with the authorities. In either case,
he does not cleanse his ways. When he realizes that law is as inviolable in the
mental and moral worlds as in the physical, it may well be hoped that he will
become as reasonable in the former as he already is in the latter.
MAN IN THE
THREE WORLDS
Man, as we know, is
living normally in three worlds, the physical, emotional and mental, is put
into contact with each by a body formed of its type of matter, and acts in each
through the appropriate body. He therefore creates results in each according to
their respective laws and powers, and all these come within
the all-embracing law of
karma. During his daily life in waking consciousness he is creating
"karma," i.e. results, in these three worlds, by action, desire and
thought. While his physical body is asleep, he is creating karma in two worlds
– the emotional and the mental, the amount of karma then created by him
depending on the stage he has reached in evolution.
We may confine ourselves
to these three worlds, for those above them are not inhabited consciously by
the average man; but we should, none the less, remember that we are like trees,
the roots of which are fixed in the higher worlds, and their branches spread in
the three lower worlds in which dwell our mortal
bodies, and in which our
consciousnesses are working.
Laws work within their
own worlds, and must be studied as though their workings were independent; just
as every science studies the laws working within its own department, but does
not forget the wider working of further-reaching conditions, so must man, while
working in the three departments, physical, emotional and mental, remember the
sweep of law which includes them all within its area of activity. In all
departments laws are inviolable and unchangeable, and each brings about its own
full effect, although the final result of their interaction is the effective
force that remains when all balancing of opposing forces has been made. All
that is true of laws in general is true of karma, the great law. Causes being
present, events must follow. But by taking away, or adding causes, events must
be modified.
A person gets drunk; may
he say: "My karma is to get drunk"? He gets drunk because of certain
tendencies existing in himself, the presence of loose companions, and an
environment where drink is sold. Let us suppose that he wishes to conquer his evil
habit; he knows the three conditions that lead him into drunkenness. He may
say: "I am not strong enough to resist my own tendencies in the presence
of drink and the company of loose-livers. I will not go where there is drink,
nor will I associate with men who tempt me to drink."
He changes the
conditions, eliminating two of them, though unable immediately to change the
third, and the new result is that he does not get drunk. He is not
"interfering with karma," but is relying on it; nor is a friend
"interfering with karma," if he persuades him to keep away from boon
companions. There is no karmic command to a man to get drunk, but only the
existence of certain conditions in the midst of which he certainly will get
drunk; there is, it is true, another way of changing the conditions, the
putting forth a strong effort of will; this also introduces a new condition,
which will change the result – by addition instead of elimination.
In the only sense in
which a man can "interfere" with the laws of nature he is perfectly
at liberty to do so, as much as he likes and can. He can inhibit the acting of
one force by bringing another against it; he can overcome gravitation by
muscular effort. In this sense, he may interfere with karma as much as he
likes, and should interfere with it when the results are objectionable. But the
expression is not a happy one, and it is liable to be misunderstood.
The law is: such and
such causes bring about such and such results. The law is unchangeable, but the
play of phenomena is ever-changing. The mightiest cause of all causes is human
will and human reason, and yet this is the cause which is, for the most part,
omitted when people talk of karma. We are causes, because we are the divine
will, one with God in our essential being, although hamperedby ignorance and
working through gross matter, which impedes us until we conquer, by
spiritualising, it. The changelessness of karma is not the changelessness of
effects but of law, and it is this which makes us free. Truly slaves should we
be in a world in which everything went by chance. But according to our
knowledge are our freedom and our safety in a world of law.
In the Middle Ages,
chemists were by no means free to bring about the results they desired, but
they had to accept results as they came, unforeseen and for the most part
undesired, even to their own serious injury. The result of an experiment might
be a useful product, or it might be the reduction of the experimenter into
fragments.
Roger Bacon set going
causes which cost him an eye and a finger, and occasionally stretched him
senseless on the floor of his cell; outside our knowledge we are in peril, and
any cause we set going may wreck us, for we are mostly Roger Bacons in the
mental and moral worlds; inside our knowledge we may move with freedom and
safety, as the well-trained chemist moves today. It is true in all the three
worlds in which we live, that the more we know, the more can we foresee and
control. Because law is inviolable and changeless, therefore knowledge is the
condition of freedom. Let us then study karma, and apply our knowledge to the
guidance of our lives. So many people say: "Oh! how I wish I were
good," and do not use the law to create the causes which result in
goodness; as though a chemist should say: "Oh! how I wish I had
water," without making the conditions
which would produce it.
Again, we must remember
that each force works along its own particular line, and that when a number of
forces impinge on a particular point, the resultant force is the outcome of all
of them. As in our school days we learned how to construct a parallelogram of
forces and thus find the resultant of their
composition; so with
karma may we learn to understand the conflict of forces and their composition
to yield a single resultant. We hear people asking why a good man fails in
business while a bad man succeeds.
But there is no causal
connection between goodness and money-getting. We might at well say: "I am
a very good man; why cannot I fly in the air?" Goodness is not a cause of
flying, nor does it bring in money. Tennyson touched on a great law when, in
his poem on "Wages," he declared that the wages of virtue were not
"dust," nor rest, nor pleasure, but the glory of an active
immortality. "Virtue is its own reward" in the fullest sense of the
words.
If we are truthful, our
reward is that our nature becomes more truthful, and so sequentially with every
virtue. Karmic results can only be of the nature of their causes; they are not
arbitrary, like human rewards.
UNDERSTAND
THE TRUTH
This seems to be
obvious: whence then arises the general instinct that success
in life should accompany
goodness? We can successfully combat an error only when we understand the truth
which lies at the heart of it, gives it its vitality,
and leads to its spread
and its persistence. The truth in this case is that, if
a man puts himself into
accord with the divine law, happiness is the result of
such harmony. The error
is to identify worldly success with happiness, and to
disregard the element of
time. A man going into business determines to be
truthful, and to take no
unfair advantage over others. He sees those who are
untruthful and
unscrupulous going ahead of him; if he is weak, he becomes
discouraged, even, perchance,
imitates them. If he is strong, he says: "I will
work in harmony with the
divine law, no matter what may be the immediate worldly results": inner
peace and happiness are then his, but success does not accrue to him;
nevertheless, in the long run even that may fall to him, for what he loses in
money he gains in confidence, whereas the man who once betrays may at any time
betray again, and none will trust him. In a competitive society, lack of
scrupulousness yields immediate success, whereas in a cooperative society
conscientiousness would "pay".
To give starvation wages
to workers forced by competition to accept them may lead to immediate success
as against business rivals, and the man who gives a decent living wage may find
himself outpaced in the race for wealth; but, in the long run, the latter will
have better work done for him, and in the future will reap the harvest of
happiness whereof he sowed the seed.
We must decide on our
course and accept its results, not looking for money as payment for goodness,
nor seeing injustice when unscrupulous shrewdness reaches that at which it
aimed.
An instructive, if not
very pleasant, Indian story is told of a man who wronged another, and the
injured man cried for redress to the King. When the punishment to be inflicted
on his enemy was given into his hands, he prayed the King to enrich his foe;
asked for the reason of his strange behaviour, he grimly said that wealth and
worldly prosperity would give him greater opportunities for wrongdoing, and would
thus entail on him bitter suffering in the life after death. Often the worst
enemy of virtue is in easy material conditions, and these, which are spoken of
as good karma, are often the reverse in their results. Many who do fairly well
in adversity go astray in prosperity, and become intoxicated with worldly
delights.
Let us now consider how
a man affects his surroundings, or, in scientific phrase, how the organism acts
on its environment.
MAN AND HIS
SURROUNDINGS
Man affects his
surroundings in innumerable ways, which may all be classified into three modes
of self-expression: he affects them by Will, by Thought, by Action.
The developed man is
able to draw his energies together and to fuse them into one, ready to go forth
from him, and to cause action. This concentration of his energies into a single
force, held in suspense within him, in leash ready for outrush, is Will; it is
an interior concentration, one mode of the triple Self-expression. In the
subhuman kingdoms, and in the lower divisions of the
human, the
pleasure-giving and pain-giving objects around the living creature draw out its
energies, and we call these multifarious energies brought out by external
objects its desires, whether of attraction or repulsion.
Only when these are all
drawn in, united and pointed towards a single aim, can we term this single
energy, ready to go forth, the Will. This Will is Self-expression, i.e., it is
directed by the Self; the Self determines the line to be taken, basing its
determination on previous experience. In the subhuman and lower human kingdoms,
desires are an important factor in karma, giving rise to most mixed results; in
the higher human, Will is the most potent karmic cause, and as man transmutes
desires into Will, he "rules his stars".
The mode of
Self-expression called Thought belongs to the aspect of the Self by which he
becomes aware of the outer world, the aspect of Cognition. This obtains
knowledge, and the working of the Self on the knowledge obtained is Thought.
This, again, is an important factor in karma, since it is creative, and as we
know, builds character.
The mode of
Self-expression which directly affects the environment, the energy giving forth
from the Self, is Activity, the action of the Self on the Not-Self.
The power of concentrating
all energies into one is Will; the power of becoming aware of an external world
is Cognition; the power of affecting that outside world is Activity. This
action is inevitably followed by a reaction from the outside world – karma. The
inner cause of the reaction is Will; the nature of
the reaction is due to
Cognition; the immediate provoker of the reaction is Activity. These spin the
three threads of the karmic rope.
THE THREE
FATES
"God created man in
His own image," says a Hebrew Scripture, and the Trinities of the great
religions are the symbols of the three aspects of the divine consciousness,
reflected in the triplicity of the human. The first Logos of the Theosophist,
the Mahadeva of the Hindu, the Father of the Christians, has Will
as predominant, and
shows forth the power of sovereignty, the Law by which the universe is built.
The Second Logos, Vishnu, the Son, is Wisdom, that all-sustaining and
all-pervading power by which the universe is preserved. The Third Logos,
Brahma, the Holy Spirit, is the Agent, the creative power by which
the universe is brought
into manifestation. There is nothing in divine or human consciousness which
does not find itself within one or other of these modes of Self-expression.
Again, matter has three
fundamental qualities responsive severally to these modes of consciousness, and
without these it could no more be manifested than Consciousness could express
itself without its modes. It has inertia (tamas), the very foundation of all, the
stability necessary to existence, the quality
which answers to Will.
It has mobility (rajas), the capacity to be moved, answering to Activity. It
has rhythm (sattva), the equaliser of movement (without which movement would be
chaotic, destructive), answering to Cognition.
The Yoga system,
considering all from the standpoint of consciousness, names this rhythmic
quality "cognisability," that which makes that matter should be known
by Spirit.
All that is in our
consciousness, affecting the environment, and all the environment affected by
our consciousness, make up our world. The interrelation between our
consciousness and our environment is our karma. By these three modes of
consciousness we spin our individual karma, the universal interrelation between
Self and Not-Self being specialized by us into this individual interrelation As
we rise above separateness, the individual again becomes the universal
interrelation, but this universal interrelation cannot be transcended while
manifestation endures. This specializing of the universal, and the later
universalizing of the special make up of the "world’s eternal ways" –
the Path of Forthgoing to gather experience, the Path of Return, bringing the
sheaves of experience home; this is the Great Wheel of Evolution, so relentless
when seen from the standpoint of Matter, so beauteous when seen from the
standpoint of Spirit. "Life is not a cry, but a song."
THE PAIR OF
TRIPLETS
Thus we have three
factors in spirit for the creation of Karma, and three corresponding qualities
in matter, and we must study these in order to make our Karma that which we
would have it be. We may study them in any order, but for many reasons it is
convenient to take the cognitive factor first, because in that lies the power
of knowledge and of choice. We can change our desires by the use of thought, we
cannot change our thoughts, though we may colour them, by desire; so, in the
final analysis action is set in motion by thought.
In the earliest stages
of savagery as with the newly born infant action is caused by attractions and
repulsions. But almost immediately memory comes in, the memory of an
attraction, with the wish to re-experience it; the memory of a repulsion, with
the wish to avoid it. A thing has given pleasure, it is remembered, i.e.,
thought about, it is desired, action to grasp it follows. The three cannot
really be separated, for there is no action which is not preceded by thought
and desire, and which does not again set them going, after it is performed.
Action is the outer sign of the invisible thought and desire, and in its very
accomplishment gives birth to a fresh thought and desire. The three form a
circle, perpetually retraced.
THOUGHT,
THE BUILDER
Now thought works on
matter; every change in consciousness is answered by a vibration in matter, and
a similar change, however often repeated, brings about a similar vibration.
This vibration is strongest in the matter nearest to you, and the matter
nearest to you is your own mental body. If you repeat a thought, it repeats the
corresponding vibration, and, as when matter has vibrated in a particular way
once it is easier for it to vibrate in that same way again than to vibrate in a
new way, the more often you repeat a thought the more ready the vibrationary
response. Presently, after much repetition, a tendency will be set up in the
matter of your mental body, automatically to repeat the vibration on its own
account; when it does this – since the vibration in matter and the thought in
consciousness are inseparably linked – the thought appears in the mind without
any previous activity on the part of consciousness.
Hence when you have
thought over a thing – a virtue, an emotion, a wish – and have deliberately
come to the conclusion that it is a desirable thing to have that virtue, to
feel that emotion, to be moved by that wish, you quietly set to work to create
a habit of thought.
You think deliberately
of it every morning for a few minutes, and soon you find that it arises
spontaneously in the mind (by the aforesaid automatic activity of matter). You
persist in your thought-creation until you have formed a strong habit of
thought, a habit which can only be changed by an equally prolonged process of
thinking in the opposite direction. Even against the opposition of the will,
the thought recurs to the mind – as many have found when they are unable to
sleep in consequence of the involuntary recurrence of a harassing
thought.
If you have thus
established the habit, say, of honesty, you will act honestly automatically;
and if some strong gust of desire sweeps you into dishonesty on some occasion,
the honest habit will torment you as it would never torment a habitual thief.
You have created the habit of honesty; the thief has no such habit; hence you
suffer mentally when the habit is broken, and the thief suffers not at all.
Persistence in strengthening such a mental habit until it is stronger than any
force which can be brought to bear upon it makes the reliable man; he literally
cannot lie, cannot steal; he has built himself an impregnable
virtue.
By thought, then, you
can build any habit you choose to build. There is no virtue which you cannot
create by thought. The forces of nature work with you, for you understand how
to use them, and they become your servants.
If you love your
husband, your wife, your child, you find that this emotion of love causes
happiness in those who feel it. If you spread the love outwards to others, an
increase of happiness results. You, seeing this and wishful for the happiness
of all, deliberately begin to think love to others, in an ever wider
and wider circle, until
the love-attitude is your normal attitude towards all you meet. You have
created the love-habit, and have generalized an emotion into a virtue, for a
virtue is only a good emotion made general and permanent (See Bhagavan Das’ The
Science of Emotions)
Everything is under law;
you cannot obtain mental ability or moral virtue by sitting still and doing
nothing. You can obtain both by strenuous and persevering thinking. You can
build your mental and moral nature by thinking, for "man is created by
thought; what he thinks upon, that he becomes; therefore
think" on that
which you aspire to be, and inevitably it shall be yours. Thus shall you become
a mental and moral athlete, and your character shall grow rapidly; you made in
the past the character with which you were born; you are making now the
character with which you will die, and will return. This is
karma. Every one is born
with a character, and the character is the most important part of karma. The
Musalman says that "a man is born with his destiny tied round his
neck". For a man’s destiny depends chiefly on his character. A strong
character can overcome the most unfavourable circumstances, and overclimb the most
difficult obstacles. A weak character is buffeted by circumstances, and fails
before the most trivial obstacles.
PRACTICAL
MEDITATION
The whole theory of
meditation is built upon these laws of thought; formeditation is only
deliberate and persevering thought, aimed at a specific object, and hence is a
potent karmic cause. By using knowledge and thought to modify character, you
can bring about very quickly a desired result. If you were born a coward, you
can think yourself brave; if you were born dishonest, you can think yourself
honest: if you were born untruthful, you can think yourself truthful. Have
confidence in yourself and in the law.
There is another point
we must not forget. Concrete thought finds its natural realisation in action,
and if you do not act out a thought, then by reaction you weaken the thought.
Strenuous action along the line of the thinking must follow the thought,
otherwise progress will be slow.
Realise, then, that
while you cannot now help the character with which you were born, while it is a
fact which must profoundly influence your present destiny, marking out your
line of activity in this life, yet you can, by thought and by action based
thereon, change your inborn character, eliminate its weaknesses,
eradicate its faults,
strengthen its good qualities, enlarge its capacities. You are born with a
given character, but you can change it. Knowledge is offered to you as to the
means of changing, and each must put that knowledge into practice
for himself.
WILL AND
DESIRE
Desire and Activity
remain to be considered. Will is the energy prompting to action, and while it
is attracted and repelled by outside objects, we call it desire, the lower
aspect of Will, as thought is the lower aspect of Cognition.
If a man, confronted by
a pleasure-giving object, grasps it without thought, he is moved by desire; if
he holds himself back, saying: "I must not enjoy it now, because I have a
duty to perform," he is moved by Will. When the energy of the
Self is controlled and
guided by right reason, it is Will: when it rushes out unbridled, drawn hither
and thither by attractive objects, it is Desire.
Desire arises in us
spontaneously; we like one thing, we dislike another, and our likes and
dislikes are involuntary; are not under the control of the Will nor of the
reason. We may make up reasons for them when we wish to justify them, but they
are elemental, non-rational, precedent of thought. None the less may they be
brought under control, and changed – though not directly.
Consider physical taste;
an olive, preserved in brine, is offered to a child, and is generally rejected
with disgust. But it is a fashionable thing to like olives, and your people
persevere in eating them, determined to like them, and presently they are fond
of them. They have changed their disliking to liking. How is the change of
taste brought about? By the action of Will, directed by the mind.
THE MASTERY
OF DESIRE
We can change desires by
thought. The desire nature with which we are born is good, bad, or indifferent,
and it follows its own way in early childhood. Presently we examine it, and
mark some desires as useful, others as useless or even noxious. We then form a
mental image of the desire nature which would be
useful and noble, and we
deliberately set to work to create it by thought-power.
There are some physical
desires which we see will bring about disease if left uncontrolled: eating too
much, because of the gratification of the palate; drinking alcoholic liquors,
because they exhilarate and vivify; yielding to the pleasures of sex. We see in
the persons of others that these cause obesity, shaken nerves, premature
exhaustion.
We determine not to
yield to them; we bridle the horses of the senses with the bits and reins of
the mind, and deliberately hold them in, although they struggle; if they are
very refractory
we call up the image of
the glutton, the drunkard, the worn-out profligate, and so create a repulsion
for the causes which made them what they are. And so with all other desires.
Deliberately choose out and encourage those which lead to refining and
elevating pleasures, and reject those which result in coarseness of body and of
mind.
There will be failures
in your resistance, but in spite of failures, persevere. At first, you will
yield to the desire, and only remember too late that you had resolved to
abstain; persevere. Presently the desire and the memory of the good resolution
will arise together, and there will be a period of struggle – your Kurukshetra
– and you will sometimes succeed and sometimes fail; persevere.
Then successes will
multiply, and failures be few; persevere. Then desire dies, and you watch
beside its tomb, lest it should only be entranced, and revive. Finally you have
done with that form of desire for ever. You have worked with the law and have
conquered.
TWO OTHER
POINTS
Students are sometimes
troubled because in their dreams they yield to a vice which down here they have
conquered, or feel the stirring of a desire which they thought long slain.
Knowledge will destroy the trouble. In a dream, a man is in his astral body,
and a stirring of desire, too weak to cause physical matter to vibrate, will
cause a vibration in astral matter; let the dreamer resist, as he soon will if
he determines to do so, and the desire will cease.
Further, he should
remember that there will be left for some time in the astral body effete
matter, which was formerly used when the desire arose, but which is now, from
disuse, in process of disintegration. This may be temporarily vivified by a
passing desire-form and thus caused to vibrate artificially. This may happen to
a man when he is either sleeping or waking.
It is but the artificial
movement of a corpse. Let him repudiate it: " Thou are not from me. Get
thee gone." And the vibration will be stilled.
The warrior who is
battling with desire must not let his mind dwell on the objects which arouse
desire. Again, thought is creative. Thought will awaken desire, and stir it
into vigorous activity. Of the man who abstained from action but enjoyed in
thought, Shri Krishna sternly said: "That deluded man is called a
hypocrite."
Nourished by thought,
desires cannot die. They will but become stronger by physical repression when
fed by thought. It is better not to fight desire, but rather to evade it. If it
arises, turn the mind to something else, to a book, a game, to anything which
is at once pure and attractive. By fighting it, the mind dwells on it, and thus
feeds and strengthens it. If you know that the desire is likely to arise, have
ready something to which to turn at once. So shall it be starved out, having no
nourishment of either act or thought.
Never let us forget that
objects are desirable because of the immanence of God. "There is nothing
moving or unmoving that can exist bereft of Me." At a certain stage of
evolution, the attraction to them makes for progress. Only later on, are they
superseded. The child plays with a doll; it is well; it draws out the germinal
mother-love. But a grown woman playing with a doll would be pitiable.
Objects of desire draw
out emotions which aid in development, and stimulate exertion. They cease to be
useful when we have grown beyond them, and in ceasing to be useful they become
mischievous.
The bearing of all this
on karma is self-evident. Since by desire we create opportunities and attract
within our reach the objects of desire, our desires now map out our
opportunities and our possessions hereafter. By harbouring none but pure
desires, and wishing for naught that cannot be used in service, we ensure a
future of opportunities for helping our fellows, and of possessions which shall
be consecrated to the Master’s work.
THE THIRD
THREAD
We have now to consider
how karma works in relation to activity, the third aspect of the Self. Our
activities – the ways in which we affect the outer world of matter – spin the
third thread of our karma, and in many respects this is the least important.
Our thoughts and our desires so soon as they flow outwards, by
producing vibrations in
the mental and astral matter surrounding us, or by creating specific
thought-forms and desire-forms, become activities, are our action on the outer
worlds of life and form, of consciousness and bodies. The moment they speed
outwards they affect other things and other people, they are the action, or the
reaction as the case may be, of the organism on the environment.
The reaction of our
thoughts on ourselves, as we have seen, is the building of character and of
faculty; the reaction of our desires on ourselves is the gaining of opportunities
and objects and of power; the reaction of our activities on ourselves is our
environment, the conditions and circumstances, the friends and enemies, that
surround us. The nearest circumstance, the expression of part of our past
activities, is our physical body; this is shaped for us by an elemental
specially created for the task; our body is nature’s answer to such part of the
sum of our past activities as can be expressed in a single material form, and
"nature" is here the Lords of Karma, the mighty Angels of Judgment,
the Recorders of the Past. Two parts of karma we bring with us – our
thought-nature and our desire-nature, the germinal tendencies we have created
in our age-long past; the third part of karma we are born into; that which
limits our Self-expression and constrains us; our past action on the external
world reacts upon us as the sum of our limitations – our environment, including
our physical body.
It is probable that a
close study of past activities and present environment would result in a
knowledge of details that at present we do not possess. We read in Buddhist and
Hindu Scriptures a mass of details on this subject, probably drawn from
meticulous careful observation. At present, we modern
students can only affirm
a few broad facts. Extreme cruelty inflicted on the helpless – on heretics, on
children, on animals – reacts on inquisitors, on brutal parents and teachers,
on vivisectors, as physical deformity, more or less revolting and extreme,
according to the nature and extent of the cruelty.
PERFECT
JUSTICE
From the physical agony
inflicted results physical agony endured, for karma is the restoration of the
equilibrium disturbed. Motive, in this region, does not mitigate, any more than
the pain of a burn is mitigated because the injury has
been sustained in saving
a child from the fire. Where a good motive existed, however intellectually
misdirected – as the saving of souls from the torture of hell, in the case of
the inquisitor, or the saving of bodies from the torture of disease, in the
case of the vivisector – it has its full result in the region of the character.
Hence we may find a person born deformed, with a gentle and
patient character,
showing that in a past life he strove to see the right and did the wrong. The
Angels of Judgment are utterly just, and the golden thread of completely
misdirected love may gleam beside the black thread woven by cruelty; none the
less will the black thread draw to the doer of cruelty a misshapen body.
On the other hand, where
lust of power and indifference to the pain of others have mingled their baleful
influences with the infliction of cruelty, there will be found also a mental
and emotional twist; a historical case is that of Marat, who, instead of
expiating the cruelty of the past, intensified it by new cruelty in the very
life in which he was reaping the harvest of previous evil.
Hereditary and
congenital diseases, again, are the reaction from past misdeeds. The drunkard
of a previous life will be born into a family in which drunkenness has left
diseases of the nerves – epilepsy and the like. The profligate will be born
into a family tainted with diseases which spring from sexual vice. A "bad
heredity" is the reaction from wrong activities in the past.
Often the man who is
reaping these sad harvests shows in his moral nature that he has purged himself
from the evil, though the physical harvesting remains. A steadfast patience, a
sweet enduring content, tell that the evil lies behind, that victory has been
gained, though the wounds sustained in the conflict smart and sting. So may a
soldier, sorely maimed in a fierce battle remain mutilated for the rest of his
physical life, and yet not regret with any keenness the anguish and the loss
which mark that he has gloriously discharged his duty to his Flag. And these
warriors who have conquered in a greater battle need not lament too bitterly
over the weakness or deformity of a body which tells of a strife which is past,
but may wear patiently the badge of a struggle with an evil they have overcome,
knowing that in another life no scar of that struggle shall remain.
OUR
ENVIRONMENT
The nation and the
family into which a man is born give him the field suitable for the development
of faculties he needs, or for the exercise of faculties he has gained, which
are required for the helping of others at that place and time.
Sometimes a strenuous
life passed in the company of superiors, which has stimulated latent powers and
quickened the growth of germinal faculties, is followed by one of ease amid
ordinary people, in order to test the reality of the strength acquired and the
solidity of the apparent conquest over self.
Sometimes, when an ego
has definitely gained certain mental faculties and has secured them as part of
his mental equipment by sufficient practice, he will be born into surroundings
where these are useless, and confronted by tasks of a most uncongenial nature.
A man ignorant of karma
will fret and fume, will perform grudgingly his distasteful duties, and will
think regretfully of his "wasted talents, while that fool Jones is in a
place which he is not fit to fill"; he does not realise that Jones has to
learn a lesson which he himself has already mastered, and that he himself would
not be evolving further by repeating over again that which he has already done.
In a similar situation,
the knower of karma will quietly study his surroundings, will realise that he
would gain nothing by doing that which it would be easy for him to do – i.e.,
that which he has already done well in the past – and will address himself
contentedly to the uncongenial work, seeking to understand what it has to teach
him, and resolutely settling himself to learn the new lesson.
OUR KITH
AND KIN
So also with an ego who
finds himself entangled with family responsibilities and duties, when he would
fain spring forward to answer a call for helpers in a larger work. If ignorant
of karma, he will fret against his bonds, or even break them, and thus ensure
their return to the future. The knower of karma will see
in these duties the
reactions from his own past activities, and will patiently accept and discharge
them; he knows that when they are fully paid, they will drop away from him and
leave him free, and that meanwhile they have some lessons to teach him which it
is incumbent upon him to learn; he will seek to see those lessons and to learn
them, sure that the powers they evoke will make him a more efficient helper
when he is free to answer to the call to which his whole nature is thrilling in
response.
Again, the knower of
karma will seek to establish in his nation and his family, conditions which
will attract to each egos of an advanced and noble type. He will see to it that
his household arrangements, its scrupulous cleanliness, its hygienic
conditions, its harmony, good feeling, and loving-kindness, the purity
of its mental and moral
atmosphere, shall form a magnet of attraction, drawing towards it and into
relationship with it egos of a high level, whether they be seeking embodiment –
if young parents are members of the household – or be already in bodies, coming
into the family as future husbands and wives, friends,
or dependents. So far as
his power extends, he will help in forming similar conditions in his town, his
province, his country. He knows that egos must be born amid surroundings
suitable for them, and that, therefore, by providing good surroundings he will
attract egos of desirable type.
OUR NATION
With regard to national
environment, the knower of karma must carefully study the national conditions
into which he is born, in order to see whether he is born therein chiefly to
develop qualities in which he is deficient, or chiefly to help his nation by
qualities well developed in himself. In times of transition, many egos may be
born into a nation, with qualities of the type of required in the new
conditions into which that nation is passing. Thus, in America, which will
presently develop the beginnings of a Commonwealth in which cooperation shall
replace competition, there have been born a number of egos of vast organising
ability, of highly developed will power, and keen commercial intelligence; they
have created Trusts, organisations of industry built with consummate ability,
manifesting the economical advantages of doing away with competition, of
controlling production and supply, of meeting, but not over-meeting, demand.
They have thus opened
the way to cooperative production and distribution, and prepared for a happier
future. Soon will be born the egos who will see in the securing of the comfort
of the nation a greater stimulus than personal gain, and they will complete the
transition process; the one set have gathered into a head the forces of
individualism; the other set will bend these forces to the common good.
Thus is environment
governed by karma, and by a knowledge of law the desired environment may be
created. If it grips us when once called into being, it is none the less ours
to decide what that being shall be. Our power over that future environment is
now in our hands, for its creator is the activities of the present.
THE LIGHT
FOR A GOOD MAN
Here is the light for a
good man who finds himself surrounded by unhappy conditions. He has made his character,
and he has also made his circumstances.
His good thoughts and
desires have made him what he is; the misdirection of them has created the
environment through which he suffers. Let him, then, not be satisfied with
being good, but see to it also that his influence on all around him is
beneficial. Then shall it react on him as good environment. For instance: a
mother is very unselfish, and she spoils her son by yielding, at her own cost,
to all his whims, aiding him not at all to overcome his own selfish
inclinations, fostering the lower nature, starving the higher. The son grows up
selfish, uncontrolled, the slave of his own whims and desires. He causes
unhappiness in the home, perchance brings upon it debt and disgrace. This
reaction is the environment she created by her unwisdom, and she must bear the
distresses it brings upon her.
A selfish man may, on
the other hand, create for himself in the future an environment regarded as
fortunate by the world. With the hope of gaining a title, he builds a hospital
and equips it fully; many sufferers therein find relief, many sick unto death
have their last moments soothed, many children are lovingly nursed back into
health. The reaction from all this will be easy and pleasant surroundings for
himself; he will reap the harvest of the physical good which he has sown. But
his selfishness will also sow according to its kind, and mentally and morally
he will reap that harvest also, a harvest of disappointment and of pain.
KNOWLEDGE
OF LAW
The knowledge of karma
will not only enable a man to build, as he wills, his own future, but it will
also enable him to understand the workings of karmic law in the cases of
others, and thus more effectively to help them. Only by knowledge of law can we
move fearlessly and usefully in worlds where law is inviolable,
and, secure ourselves,
enable others to reach a similar security.
In the physical world
the supremacy of law is universally admitted, and the man who disregards
"natural law" is regarded not as a criminal but as a fool. Equal is
the folly, and more far-reaching, of disregarding "natural law" in
the worlds above the physical, and of imagining that, while law in the physical
world is omnipresent, the mental and moral worlds are lawless and disorderly. In
those worlds, as in the physical, law is inviolable and omnipresent, and of all
is it true:
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind
exceeding Small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness
Grinds He all.
We have seen that our
present is the outcome of our past, that by thought we have built our
character, by desires our
opportunities of
satisfying them, by actions our environment. Let us now consider how far we can
modify in the present these results of our past, how far we are compelled, how
far we are free.
THE
OPPOSING SCHOOLS
In the thought of the
outer world, quite apart from the ideas of reincarnation and karma, there has
been much opposing opinion. Robert Owen and his school regarded man as the
creation of circumstances, ignoring heredity, that faint
scientific reflection of
karma; they considered that by changing the environment the man could be
changed, most effectively if the child were taken ere he had formed bad habits;
a child taken out of evil surroundings and placed amid good ones would grow
into a good man. The failure of Robert Owen’s social experiment showed that his
theory did not contain all the truth. Others, realising the force of heredity,
almost ignored environment; "Nature," said Ludwig Buchner, "is
stronger than nurture." In both these extreme views there is truth.
Inasmuch as the child
brings with him the nature built in his past, but dons the garment of a new
mentality and a new emotional nature, in which his self-created faculties and
qualities exist indeed, but as germs, not as fully developed powers, these
germs may be nourished into rapid growth or atrophied by lack of nourishment,
and this is wrought by the influence of the environment for good or ill.
Moreover, the child puts on also the garment of a new physical body, with its
own physical heredity, designed for the expression of some of the powers he
brings with him, and this can be largely affected by his environment, and
developed healthily or unhealthily. These facts were on the side of RobertOwen’s
theory, and they explain the successes gained by such philanthropic
institutions as Dr. Barnardo’s Homes, wherein germs of good are cultured and
germs of evil are starved out. But the congenital criminal, and beings of that
ilk, none may redeem in a single life, and these, of various grades, are the
nonsuccesses of the
benevolent rescuer.
Equally true is it, as
the opposite school affirmed, that inborn character is a force with which every
educationalist must reckon; he cannot create faculties which are not there; he
cannot wholly eradicate evil tendencies which, below the surface, throw out
roots, seeking appropriate nourishment; some nourishment
reaches them from the
thought-atmosphere around, from the evil desire-forms which arise from the evil
in ) others, forms of thoughts and desires which float in the air around, and
cannot wholly be shut out – save by occult means, unknown to the ordinary
educationalist.
THE MORE
MODERN VIEW
The more modern scientific
view that organism and environment act and react upon each other, each
modifying the other, and that from the modifications new actions and reactions
arise, and so on perpetually, takes in that which is true in each of the
earlier views; it only needs to be expanded by the recognition of
an enduring
consciousness passing from life to life bringing its past with it,
ever-growing, ever-evolving, and with its growth and evolution becoming an ever
more and more potent factor in the direction and control of its future destiny.
Thus we reach the
Theosophic standpoint; we cannot now help that which we have brought with us,
nor can we help the environment into which we have been thrown; but we can
modify both, and the more we know, the more effectively can we modify.
SELF-EXAMINATION
The first step is
deliberately to examine what we may call our "stock in trade" ; our
inborn faculties and qualities, good and bad, our powers and our weaknesses,
our present opportunities, our actual environment. Our character is that which
is most rapidly modifiable, and on this we should set to work,
selecting the qualities
which it is desirable to strengthen, the weaknesses which form our most
pressing dangers. We take them one by one, and use our thought-power in the way
before described, remembering always that we must never think of the weakness,
but of its corresponding power. We think that which we desire to be, and
gradually, inevitably, we become it. The law cannot fail; we have only to work
with it in order to succeed.
The desire-nature is
similarly modified by thought, and we create the thought-forms of the
opportunities we need; alert to see and to grasp a suitable opportunity, our
will also fixes itself on the forms our thought creates, and thus draws them
within reach, literally making and then grasping the opportunities which the
karma of the past does not present to us.
Hardest of all to change
is our environment, for here we are dealing with the densest form of matter,
that on which our thought-force is least potent. Here our freedom is very
restricted, for we are at our weakest and the past is at its strongest. Yet are
we not wholly helpless, for here, either by struggling or by
yielding, we can conquer
in the end. Such undesirable part of our surroundings as we can change by
strenuous effort, we promptly set to work to change; that which we cannot thus
change, we accept, and set ourselves to learn whatever it has to teach. When we
have learnt its lesson, it will drop away from us, like an
outworn garment. We have
an undesirable family; well, these are the egos we have drawn around us by our
past; we fulfill every obligation cheerfully and patiently, honourably paying
our debts; we acquire patience through the annoyances they inflict on us,
fortitude through their daily irritations, forgiveness through their wrongs. We
use them as a sculptor uses his tools, to chip off our excrescences and to
smooth and polish away our roughnesses.
When their usefulness to
us is over, they will be removed by circumstances, carried off elsewhere. And
so with other parts of our environment, which, on the surface, are distressful;
like a skillful sailor, who trims his sails to a wind he cannot change and thus
forces it to carry him on his way, we use the
circumstances we cannot
alter by adapting ourselves to them in such a fashion that they are compelled
to help us.
Thus we are partly
compelled and partly free. We must work amid and with the conditions which we
have created, but we are free within them to work upon them.
We ourselves, eternal
Spirits, are inherently free, but we can only work in and through the
thought-nature, the desire-nature, and the physical nature, which we have
created; these are our materials and our tools, and we can have none other till
we make these anew.
OUT OF THE
PAST
Another point of great
importance to remember is that the karma of the past is of very mixed
character; we have not to breast a single current, the totality of the past,
but a stream made up of currents running in various directions, some
opposing us, some
helping us; the effective force we have to face, the resultant left when all
these opposition have neutralized each other, may be one which it is by no means
beyond our present power to overcome. Face to face with a piece of evil karma
from the past, we should ever grapple with it, striving to overcome it,
remembering that it embodies only a part of our past, and that
other parts of that same
past are with us, strengthening and invigorating us for the contest. The
present effort, added to those forces from the past, may be, often is, just
enough to overcome the opposition.
Or, again, an
opportunity presents itself, and we hesitate to take advantage of it, fearing
that our resources are inadequate to discharge the responsibilities it brings;
but it would not be there unless our karma had brought it to us, the fruit of a
past desire; let us seize it, bravely and tenaciously, and we shall find that
the very effort has awakened latent powers slumbering within us,
unknown to us, and
needing a stimulus from outside to arouse them into activity. So many of our
powers, created by effort in the past, are on the verge of expression, and only
need opportunity to flower into action.
We should always aim at
a little more than we think we can do – not at a thing wholly beyond our
present powers, but at that which seems to be just out of reach. As we work to
achieve it, all the karmic force acquired in the past comes to our aid to
strengthen us. The fact that we can nearly do a thing means that
we have worked for it in
the past, and the accumulated strength of those past efforts is within us. That
we can do a little means the power of doing more; and even if we fail, the
power put forth to the utmost passes into the reservoir of our forces, and the
failure of today means the victory of tomorrow
When circumstances are
adverse, the same thing holds good; we may have reached the point where one
more effort means success. Therefore did Bhishma counsel effort under all
conditions, and utter the encouraging phrase; "Exertion is greater than
destiny." The result of many past exertions is embodied in our karma, and
the present exertion added to them may make our force adequate for the
achievement of our aim.
There are cases where
the force of the karma of the past is so strong that no effort of the present
can suffice to overbear it. Yet should effort be made, since few know when one
of these cases is upon them, and, at the worst, the effort made diminishes that
karmic force for the future. A chemist often labours for years to discover a
force, or an arrangement of matter, which will enable
him to achieve a result
at which he is aiming. He is often thwarted, but he does not acknowledge
himself defeated. He cannot change the chemical elements; he cannot change the
laws of chemical combination; he accepts these ungrudgingly,
and there lies "the
sublime patience of the investigator". But the knowledge of the
investigator, ever increasing by virtue of his patient experiments, at last
touches the point where it enables him to bring about the desired result.
Precisely the same
spirit should be acquired by the student of karma; he should accept the
inevitable without complaint, but untiredly seek the methods whereby his aim
may be secured, sure that his only limitation is his ignorance, and that
perfect knowledge must mean perfect power.
OLD
FRIENDSHIPS
Another fact of the
greatest importance is that we are brought by karma in touch with people whom
we have known in the past, to some of whom we owe debts, some of whom owe debts
to us. No man treads his long pilgrimage alone, and the egos to whom he is
linked by many ties in a common past come from all parts of the world to surround
him in the present. We have known some one in the past who has gone ahead of us
in evolution; perchance we then did him some service, and a karmic tie was
formed. In the present, that tie draws us within the orbit of his activity, and
we receive from outside us a new impulse of force, a power, not our own,
impelling us to listen and to obey.
Many of such helpful
karmic links have we seen within the Theosophical Society.
Long, long ago, He who
is the Master K.H. was taken prisoner in a battle with an Egyptian army, and
was generously befriended and sheltered by an Egyptian of high rank. Thousands
of years later, help is needed for the nascent Theosophical Society, and the
Master, looking over
sees His old friend of
the Egyptian and other lives, now Mr. A.P. Sinnett, editing the leading
Anglo-Indian newspaper, The Pioneer. Mr. Sinnett goes, as usual, to Simla; Mme Blavatsky
goes up thither, to form the link; Mr. Sinnett is drawn within the immediate
influence of the Master, receives instruction from
Him, and becomes the
author of The Occult World and of Esoteric Buddhism, carrying to thousands the
message of Theosophy. Such rights we win by help given in the past, the right
to help in higher ways and with further reaching effects, while we ourselves
are also helped by the tightening of ancient links of friendship won by
service, royally recompensed by that priceless gift of knowledge, gained by one
and shed abroad for many.
WE GROW BY
GIVING
In truth, in this world
of law, where action and reaction are equal, all help which is given comes back
to the giver, as a ball thrown against a wall bounds back to the hand of the thrower.
That which we give returns to us; hence, even for a selfish reason, it is well
to give, and to give abundantly. "Cast thy
bread upon the waters,
and thou shalt find it after many days,"
To give, even from a
selfish motive, is good, for it leads to an interchange of worthy human
feelings, by which both giver and receiver grow and expand, so that the Divine
within each has opportunity of larger expression. Even though the gift, at
first, be a matter of
calculation – "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord: and
look, what he layeth out, it shall be paid him again" – yet gradually the
love evoked shall make future giving spontaneous and unselfish, and thus karmic
links of love shall bind ego to ego in the long series of human lives.
All personal links,
whether of love or hate, grow out of the past, and in each life we strengthen
the ties that bind us to our friends and ensure our return together in the
lives that lie in front. Thus do we build up a true family, outside all ties of
blood, and return to earth over and over again to knit closer the ancient
bonds.
COLLECTIVE
KARMA
Before completing this
imperfect study we must consider what is termed Collective Karma, the complex
into which are woven the results of the collective thoughts, desires and
activities of groups, whether large or small. The principles at work are the
same, but the factors are far more numerous, and this multiplicity immensely
increases the difficulty of understanding the effects.
The idea of considering
a group as a larger individual is not alien from modern science, and such
larger individuals generate karma along lines similar to those which we have
been studying. A family, a nation, a sub-race, a race, are all but larger
individuals, each having a past behind it, the creator of its present, each
with a future ahead of it, now in course of creation. An ego coming into such a
larger individual must share in its general karma; his own special karma has
brought him into it, and must be worked out within it, the larger karma often
offering conditions which enable the smaller to act.
FAMILY
KARMA
Let us consider the
collective karma of a family. The family has a thought-atmosphere of its own,
into the colouring of which enter family traditions and customs, family ways of
regarding the external world, family pride in the past, a strong sense of
family honour. All the thought-forms of a member of the family will be
influenced by these conditions, built up perhaps through hundreds of years, and
shaping, moulding, colouring, all the thoughts, desires and activities of the
individual newly born into it.
Tendencies in him that
conflict with family traditions will be suppressed, all unconsciously to him;
the things "a fellow cannot do" will have for him no attraction; he
will be lifted above various temptations, and the seeds of evil which such
temptations might have
vivified in him will quietly atrophy away.
The collective karma of
the family will provide him with opportunities for distinction, open out
avenues of usefulness, bring him advantages in the struggle for life, and
ensure his success. How has he come into conditions so favourable? It may be by a personal tie with
some one already there, a service rendered in a previous life, a bond of
affection, an unexhausted relationship.
This avails to draw him
into the circle, and he then profits by the various karmic results which belong
to the family in virtue of its collective past, of the courage, ability,
usefulness of some of its members, that have left an inheritance of social
consideration as a family heirloom.
Where the family karma
is bad the individual born into it suffers, as in the former case he profits,
and the collective karma hinders, as in the former instance it promoted, his
welfare.
In both cases the
individual will usually have built up in himself characteristics which demand
for their full exercise the environment provided by the family. But a very
strong personal tie, or unusual service, might, without this, draw a man into a
family wherein was his beneficiary, and so give him an opportunity which,
generally, he has not deserved, but had won by this special act of his past.
NATIONAL
KARMA
Let us think on the
collective karma of a nation. Face to face with this, the individual is comparatively
helpless, for nothing he can do can free him from this, and he must trim his
sails to it as best he may. Even a Master can but slightly modify national
karma, or change the national atmosphere.
The rise and fall of
nations are brought about by collective karma. Acts of national righteousness
or of national criminality, led up to by noble or base thinking, largely
directed by national ideals, bring about national ascent or national descent.
The actions of the Spanish Inquisition, the driving of the Jews and of the
Moors out of
conquests of
Seismic changes –
earthquakes, volcanoes, floods – or national catastrophes like famine and
plague, all are cases of collective karma, brought about by great streams of
thoughts and actions of a collective rather than an individual character.
As with a family, so
with a nation to a much greater degree, will there be an atmosphere created by
the nation’s past; and national traditions, customs, viewpoints, will exercise
a vast influence on the minds of all who dwell within the nation. Few
individuals can free themselves wholly from these influences,
and consider a question
affecting the nation without any bias, or see it from a standpoint other than
that of their own people. Hence largely arise international quarrels and
suspicions, mistaken views, and distorted opinions of the motives of another
nation.
Many a war has broken
out in consequence of the differences in the thought-atmospheres surrounding
the prospective combatants, and these difficulties are multiplied when the
nations spring from different racial stocks, as, say, the Italians and the
Turks. All the knower of karma can do, in these cases, is to realise the fact
that his opinions and views are largely the product of the larger individuality
of his nation, and to check this bias as much as he can, giving full weight to
the views obtained from the standpoint of the antagonistic nation.
When a man finds himself
in the grip of a national karma which he cannot resist – say that he is a
member of a conquered nation – he should calmly study the causes which have led
to the national subjugation, and should set to work to remedy them,
endeavouring to influence public opinion along lines which will
eradicate these causes.
There was an article
published in East and West – Mr. Malabari’s paper – some time ago on the
national karma of
national karma of India
was that it should be conquered – obviously true, else the conquest of India
would not have taken place – and that it should therefore accept its lot of
service, and not try to change any of the existing conditions – as obviously
wrong. The knower of karma would say: The Indians were not the original
possessors of this country; they came down from Central Asia, conquering the
land, subduing its then peoples, and reducing them to servitude; during
thousands of years they conquered and ruled, and they generated a national
karma. They trod down the conquered tribes, and made them slaves,
oppressing them and
taking advantage of them. The bad karma thus made brought down upon them in
turn many invaders. Greeks, Mughals, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English – they
all came, and fought, and conquered, and possessed. Still the lesson of karma
has not been learned, though the millions of the untouchables are a standing
proof of the wrongs inflicted upon them.
Now the Indians ask for
a share in the government of their own country, and they are hampered by this
bad national karma. Let them, then, while asking for the growth of freedom for
themselves, atone to these untouchables by giving them social freedom and
lifting them in the social scale. A national effort must remove this national
evil, and do away with a continuing cause of national weakness. India must
redeem the wrong she has done, and cleanse her hands from oppression; so shall
she change her national karma, and build the foundation of freedom.
Karma will work for
freedom and not against it, when the karma generated by oppression is changed
into the karma made by uplifting and respecting. Public feeling can be changed,
and every man who speaks graciously and kindly to an inferior is helping to
change it. Meanwhile all whose own individual karma has brought them into the nation
should recognise facts as they are, but should set to work to change those that
are undesirable. National karma may be changed, like individual karma, but as
the causes are of longer continuance, so must be the effects, and the new
causes introduced can only slowly modify the results
outgrowing from the
past.
NATIONAL
DISASTERS
The karma which brings
about seismic catastrophes and other national disasters includes in its sweep vast
numbers of individuals whose special karma contains sudden death, disease, or
prolonged physical suffering. It is interesting and
instructive to notice
the way in which people who have not such karmic liabilities are called away
from the scene of a great catastrophe, while others are hurried into it; when
an earthquake slays a number of people there will be cases of "miraculous
escape" – one called away by a telegram, by urgent
business, etc. – and of
equally miraculous tossing of victims into the place in time for their slaying.
If such calling away proved to be impossible, then some special arrangement at
the moment guarded from death, a beam, keeping off falling stones, or the like.
When a natural
catastrophe is impending, people with appropriate individual karma are gathered
together in the place, as in the flood at
The local catastrophe is
used to work off particular karmas. Or a carriage taking a man to the station
is stopped in a street block, and he misses the train. He is angry, but the
train is wrecked and he is saved. It is not that the block was there in order
to stop him, but that the block was utilised for the purpose. At
Sometimes an ego has a
debt of sudden death to pay, but it has not been included in the debts to be
discharged during the present incarnation; but his presence in some accident
brought about by a collective karma offers the opportunity of discharging the
debt "out of due time". The ego prefers to seize the opportunity and
to get rid of the karma, and his body is struck away with the rest.
HOW THE EGO
SELECTS
Individual
characteristics developed in one life may bring their owner in another life
into a nation which offers peculiar facilities for their exercise. Thus a man
who had developed a strong concrete mind, apt for commerce, say, in the vaishya
(merchant) caste in
general benefit the
stores accumulated as personal possessions.
Thus the old ideal will
be planted in the midst of a new civilisation, and will spread abroad through
another people.
A colonizing nation,
like
These have a karmic
claim against
The debt due to them by
the summary closing of their previous existences should be paid by education
and training, thus quickening their evolution and lifting them out of their
natural savagery.
THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION
The collective
selfishness and indifference of the well-to-do towards the poor and miserable,
leaving them to fester in overcrowded slums, among degrading and evil-provoking
surroundings, bring down upon themselves social troubles, labour unrest,
threatening combinations. Carried to excess in
Taught by Theosophy to
see the workings of karmic law in the history of nations as well as in that of
individuals, we should be forces making for national welfare and prosperity.
The strongest karmic cause is the power of thought, and this is as true for nations
as for individuals.
A NOBLE
NATIONAL IDEAL
To hold up a noble
national ideal is to set going the most powerful karmic force, for into such an
ideal the thoughts of many are ever flowing, and it becomes stronger by the
daily influx. Public opinion continually changes under the flow of its
influences, and reproduces that which is constantly held up for its admiration.
The thought-force accumulates until it becomes irresistible and lifts the whole
nation upwards to a higher level.
The knowers of karma can
work deliberately and consciously, sure of their ground, sure of their methods,
relying on the Good Law. Thus they become conscious cooperators with the Divine
Will which works in evolution, and are filled with a deep peace and an unending
joy.
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By
H P Blavatsky
Is the Desire to Live Selfish?
Ancient Magic in Modern Science
Precepts Compiled by H P Blavatsky
Obras Por H P Blavatsky
En Espanol
Articles about the Life of H P Blavatsky
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General pages about Wales,
Welsh History
and The History of Theosophy
in Wales
Wales is a
Principality within the United Kingdom
and has an eastern
border with England.
The land area is
just over 8,000 square miles.
Snowdon in North
Wales is the highest mountain at 3,650 feet.
The coastline is
almost 750 miles long.
The population of Wales as at the 2001 census is 2,946,200.
Nature is infinite in space and
time -- boundless and eternal, unfathomable and ineffable. The all-pervading
essence of infinite nature can be called space, consciousness, life, substance,
force, energy, divinity -- all of which are fundamentally one.
2) The finite and the infinite
Nature is a unity in
diversity, one in essence, manifold in form. The infinite whole is composed of
an infinite number of finite wholes -- the relatively stable and autonomous
things (natural systems or artefacts) that we observe around us. Every natural
system is not only a conscious, living, substantial entity, but is
consciousness-life-substance, of a particular range of density and form.
Infinite nature is an abstraction, not an entity; it therefore does not act or
change and has no attributes. The finite, concrete systems of which it is
composed, on the other hand, move and change, act and interact, and possess
attributes. They are composite, inhomogeneous, and ultimately transient.
3)
Vibration/worlds within worlds
The one essence manifests not
only in infinitely varied forms, and on infinitely varied scales, but also in
infinitely varying degrees of spirituality and substantiality, comprising an
infinite spectrum of vibration or density. There is therefore an endless series
of interpenetrating, interacting worlds within worlds, systems within systems.
The energy-substances of
higher planes or subplanes (a plane being a particular range of vibration) are
relatively more homogeneous and less differentiated than those of lower planes
or subplanes.
Just as boundless space is
comprised of endless finite units of space, so eternal duration is comprised of
endless finite units of time. Space is the infinite totality of worlds within
worlds, but appears predominantly empty because only a tiny fraction of the
energy-substances composing it are perceptible and tangible to an entity at any
particular moment. Time is a concept we use to quantify the rate at which
events occur; it is a function of
change and motion, and
presupposes a succession of cause and effect. Every entity is extended in space
and changes 'in time'.
All change (of position,
substance, or form) is the result of causes; there is no such thing as absolute
chance. Nothing can happen for no reason at all for nothing exists in
isolation; everything is part of an intricate web of causal interconnections and
interactions. The keynote of nature is harmony: every action is automatically
followed by an equal and opposite reaction, which sooner or later rebounds upon
the originator of the initial act. Thus, all our thoughts and deeds will
eventually bring us 'fortune' or 'misfortune' according to the degree to which
they were harmonious or disharmonious. In the long term, perfect justice
prevails in nature.
Because nature is
fundamentally one, and the same basic habits and structural, geometric, and
evolutionary principles apply throughout, there are correspondences between
microcosm and macrocosm. The principle of analogy -- as above, so below -- is a
vital tool in our efforts to understand reality.
All finite systems and their
attributes are relative. For any entity, energy-substances vibrating within the
same range of frequencies as its outer body are 'physical' matter, and finer
grades of substance are what we call energy, force, thought, desire, mind,
spirit, consciousness, but these are just as material to entities on the
corresponding planes as our physical world is to us. Distance and time units
are also relative: an atom is a solar system on its own scale, reembodying perhaps
millions of times in what for us is one second, and our whole galaxy may be a
molecule in some supercosmic entity, for which a million of our years is just a
second. The range of scale is infinite: matter-consciousness is both infinitely
divisible and infinitely aggregative.
All natural systems consist
of smaller systems and form part of larger systems. Hierarchies extend both
'horizontally' (on the same plane) and 'vertically' or inwardly (to higher and
lower planes). On the horizontal level, subatomic particles form atoms, which
combine into molecules, which arrange themselves into cells, which form tissues
and organs, which form part of organisms, which form part of ecosystems, which
form part of planets, solar systems, galaxies, etc. The constitution of worlds
and of the organisms that inhabit them form 'vertical' hierarchies, and can be
divided into several interpenetrating layers or elements, from physical-astral
to psychomental to spiritual-divine, each of which can be further divided.
The human constitution can be
divided up in several different ways: e.g. into a trinity of body, soul, and
spirit; or into 7 'principles' -- a lower quaternary consisting of physical
body, astral model-body, life-energy, and lower thoughts and desires, and an
upper triad consisting of higher mind (reincarnating ego), spiritual intuition,
and inner god. A planet or star can be regarded as a 'chain' of 12 globes, existing
on 7 planes, each globe comprising several subplanes.
The highest part of every
multilevelled organism or hierarchy is its spiritual summit or 'absolute',
meaning a collective entity or 'deity' which is relatively perfected in
relation to the hierarchy in question. But the most 'spiritual' pole of one
hierarchy is the most 'material' pole of the next, superior hierarchy, just as
the lowest pole of one hierarchy is the highest pole of the one below.
Each level of a hierarchical
system exercises a formative and organizing influence on the lower levels
(through the patterns and prototypes stored up from past cycles of activity),
while the lower levels in turn react upon the higher. A system is therefore
formed and organized mainly from within outwards, from the inner levels of its
constitution, which are relatively more enduring and developed than the outer
levels. This inner guidance is sometimes active and selfconscious, as in our
acts of free will (constrained, however, by karmic tendencies from the past),
and sometimes it is automatic and passive, giving rise to our own automatic
bodily functions and habitual and instinctual behavior, and to the orderly,
lawlike operations of nature in general. The 'laws' of nature are therefore the
habits of the various grades of conscious entities that compose reality,
ranging from higher intelligences (collectively
forming the universal mind) to elemental nature-forces.
10) Consciousness and its vehicles
The core of every entity --
whether atom, human, planet, or star -- is a monad, a unit of consciousness-life-substance,
which acts through a series of more material vehicles or bodies. The monad or
self in which the consciousness of a particular organism is focused is animated
by higher monads and expresses itself through a series of lesser monads, each
of which is the nucleus of one of the lower vehicles of the entity in question.
The following monads can be distinguished: the divine or galactic monad, the
spiritual or solar monad, the higher human or planetary-chain monad, the lower
human or globe monad, and the animal, vital-astral, and physical monads. At our
present stage of evolution, we are essentially the lower human monad, and our
task is to raise our consciousness from the animal-human to the spiritual-human
level of it.
Evolution means the
unfolding, the bringing into active manifestation, of latent powers and
faculties 'involved' in a previous cycle of evolution. It is the building of
ever fitter vehicles for the expression of the mental and spiritual powers of
the monad. The more sophisticated the lower vehicles of an entity, the greater
their ability to express the powers locked up in the higher levels of its
constitution. Thus all things are alive and conscious, but the degree of
manifest life and consciousness is extremely varied.
Evolution results from the
interplay of inner impulses and environmental stimuli. Ever building on and
modifying the patterns of the past, nature is infinitely creative.
12) Cyclic evolution/re-embodiment
Cyclic evolution is a
fundamental habit of nature. A period of evolutionary activity is followed by a
period of rest. All natural systems evolve through re-embodiment. Entities are
born from a seed or nucleus remaining from the previous evolutionary cycle of
the monad, develop to maturity, grow old, and pass away, only to re-embody in a
new form after a period of rest. Each new embodiment is the product of past
karma and present choices.
Nothing comes from nothing:
matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but only transformed.
Everything evolves from preexisting material. The growth of the body of an
organism is initiated on inner planes, and involves the transformation of higher
energy-substances into lower, more material ones, together with the attraction
of matter from the environment.
When an organism has
exhausted the store of vital energy with which it is born, the coordinating
force of the indwelling monad is withdrawn, and the organism 'dies', i.e. falls
apart as a unit, and its constituent components go their separate ways. The
lower vehicles decompose on their respective subplanes, while, in the case of
humans, the reincarnating ego enters a dreamlike state of rest and assimilates
the experiences of the previous incarnation. When the time comes for the next
embodiment, the reincarnating ego clothes itself in many of the same atoms of
different grades that it had used previously, bearing the appropriate karmic
impress. The same basic processes of birth, death,
and rebirth apply to all entities, from atoms to humans to stars.
14)
Evolution and involution of worlds
Worlds or spheres, such as
planets and stars, are composed of, and provide the field for the evolution of,
10 kingdoms -- 3 elemental kingdoms, mineral, plant, animal, and human
kingdoms, and 3 spiritual kingdoms. The impulse for a new manifestation of a
world issues from its spiritual summit or hierarch, from which emanate a series
of steadily denser globes or planes; the One expands into the many. During the
first half of the evolutionary cycle (the arc of descent) the energy-substances
of each plane materialize or condense, while during the second half (the arc of
ascent) the trend is towards dematerialization or etherealization, as globes
and entities are reabsorbed into the spiritual hierarch for a period of nirvanic
rest. The descending arc is characterized by the evolution of matter and
involution of spirit, while the ascending arc is characterized by the evolution
of spirit and involution of matter.
In each grand cycle of
evolution, comprising many planetary embodiments, a monad begins as an
unselfconsciousness god-spark, embodies in every kingdom of nature for the
purpose of gaining experience and unfolding its inherent faculties, and ends
the cycle as a self conscious god. Elementals ('baby monads') have no free
choice, but automatically act in harmony with one another and the rest of
nature. In each successive kingdom differentiation and individuality increase,
and reach their peak in the human kingdom with the attainment of
selfconsciousness and a large measure of free will.
In the human kingdom in
particular, self-directed evolution comes into its own. There is no superior
power granting privileges or handing out favours; we evolve according to our
karmic merits and demerits. As we progress through the spiritual kingdoms we
become increasingly at one again with nature, and willingly 'sacrifice' our
circumscribed selfconscious freedoms (especially the freedom to 'do our own
thing') in order to work in peace and harmony with the greater whole of which
we form an integral part. The highest gods of one hierarchy or world-system
begin as elementals in the next. The matter of any plane is composed of
aggregated, crystallized monads in their nirvanic sleep, and the spiritual and
divine entities embodied as planets and stars are the electrons and atomic
nuclei -- the material building blocks -- of worlds on even larger scales.
Evolution is without beginning and without end, an endless adventure through
the fields of infinitude, in which there are always new worlds of experience in
which to become selfconscious masters of life.
There is no absolute
separateness in nature. All things are made of the same essence, have the same
spiritual-divine potential, and are interlinked by magnetic ties of sympathy.
It is impossible to realize our full potential, unless we recognize the
spiritual unity of all living beings and make universal brotherhood the keynote
of our lives.
Hey Look! Theosophy in
Cardiff
Cardiff Theosophical Society
in Wales
Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 – 1DL
_________________
Wales Picture Gallery
The
Great Orme
Llandudno
Promenade
Great
Orme Tramway
New
Radnor
Blaenavon
Ironworks
Llandrindod
Wells
Cardiff Theosophical Society
in Wales
Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 – 1DL
Presteign
Railway
Caerwent Roman Ruins
Denbigh
Nefyn
Penisarwaen
Cardiff Theosophical Society in
Wales
Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 – 1DL