Section 5

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of Karma equal, though past finding out save for those whose eyes have been opened.
Congenital defects result from a defective etheric double, and are life -long penalties for serious rebel- lions against law, or for injuries inflicted upon others. All such arise from the working of the Lords of Kar- ma, and are the physical manifestation of the deformi- ties necessitated by the errors of the Ego, by his ex- cesses and defects, in the mould of the etheric double made by Them. So again from Their just adminis- tration of the Law come the inwrought tendency to reproduce a family disease, the suitable configuration of the etheric double, and the direction of it to a family in which a given disease is hereditary, and which affords the "continuous plasm" suitable to the development of the appropriate germs.
The development of artistic faculties — to take an- pther type of qualities — will be answered by the Lords of Karma by the provision of a mould for the etheric double after which a delicate nervous system can be physically built, and often by the guiding of it to a family in whose members the special faculty developed by the Ego has found expression, some- times for many generations. For the expression of such a faculty as that of music, for instance, a pecu- liar physical body is needed, a delicacy of physical ear and of physical touch, and to such delicacy an appropriat-e physical heredity would be most con- ducive.
The rendering of service to man collectively, as
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b}^ some noble book or speech, the spreading of ele- vating ideas by pen or tongue, is again a claim upon the Law, scrupulously discharged by its mighty Agents. Such help given comes back as help bestowed on the giver, as mental and spiritual assistance which is his by right.
We thus may grasp the broad principles of karmic working, the respective parts played by the Lords of Karma and by the Ego itself in the destiny of the individual. The Ego supplies all the materials, but the materials are used by the Lords or by the Ego respectively according to their nature : the latter builds up the character, gradually evolves itself; the former build the mould that limits, choose the en- vironment, and generally adapt and adjust, in order that the Good Law ma}" find its unerring expression despite the clashing wills of men.
Facing Karmic Results.
Sometimes people feel, on first recognizing the existence of Karma, that if all be the working out of Law they are but helpless slaves of Destiny. Ere considering liow the Law may be utilized for the con- trol of Destiny, let us study for a few moments a typical case, and see how Necessity and Freewill — to use the accepted terms — are both at work and at work in harmony.
A man comes into the world with certain inborn
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mental faculties, let us say of an average type, with a passional nature that shows definite characteristics, some good, some bad; with an etheric double and physical body fairly well-formed and healthy, but of no specially splendid character. These are his limita- tions, clearly marked out for him, and he finds him- self when he reaches manhood with this mental, pas- sional, astral, physical ''stock-in-hand," and he has to do the best he can with it. There are many mental conceptions which his powers do not permit him to grasp ; there are temptations to which his passional nature yields, though he strives against them; there are triumphs of physical strength and skill that he cannot achieve ; in fact, he finds that he can no more think as a genius thinks than he can be beautiful as an Apollo. He is within a limiting ring and cannot pass out of it, long as he may for liberty. Moreover, he cannot avoid troubles of many kinds; they strike him, and he can only bear his pain ; he cannot escape from it. Now these things are so. The man is limited by his past thoughts, by his wasted opportunities, by his mistaken choices, by his foolish yieldings; he is bound by his forgotten desires, enchained by his er- rors of an earlier day. And yet he is not bound, the Real Man. He who made the past that imprisons his present can work within the prison house and create a future of liberty. Nay, let him know that he him- self is free, and the fetters will crumble away from his limbs, and according to the measure of his know- ledge will be the illusoriness of his bonds. But for the
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ordinaiy inaii to whom the knowledge will come as a spark^ not as a flame, the first step towards freedom will be to accept his limitations as self-made and pro- ceed to enlarge them. True, he cannot think as a genius thinks just yet, but he can think to the very best of his ability, and by-and-by lie will become a genius; he can make power for the future, and he will. True, he cannot get rid of his passional follies in a moment, but he can fight against them, and when he has failed he can fight on, certain that presently he will conquer. True, he has astral and physical weaknesses and uglinesses, but as his thoughts grow strong and pure and beautiful, and his work benefi- cent, he is ensuring for himself more perfect forms in days to come. He is always himself, the free Soul, in the midst of his prison-house, and he can hew down the walls he himself builded. He has no gaoler save himself ; he can will his freedom, and in willing it he will achieve.
A trouble meets him; he is bereaved of a friend, he commits a serious fault. Be it so; he sinned as thinker in the past, he suffers as actor in the present. But his friend is not lost; he will hold him fast by love and in the future he will find him again ; mean- while there are others round him to whom he can give the services he would have showered on his be- loved, and he will not again neglect the duties that are his and so sow seed for similar loss in future lives. He has committed an open wrong and suffers its penalty, but he thought it in the past else could he
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not have wrought it now; he will patiently endure the penalt}^ he purchased by his thought, and will so think today that his morrows shall be free from shame. Into what was darkness has come a ray of light, and the light is singing to him:
Ho! ye who suffer! know
Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels.
The Law that seemed to be fetters has become wings, and by it he can rise to regions of which without it he could only dream.
Building the Future.
The crowds of Souls drift onwards along the slug- gish current of Time. As the earth rolls, it carries them with it ; as globe succeeds globe, they too pass on. But the AVisdom Religion is anew proclaimed to the world that all who choose may cease to drift, and may learn to outstrip the slow evolution of the worlds.
The student, when he grasps something of the meaning of the Law, of its absolute certainty, of its unerring exactitude, begins to take himself in hand and actively to superintend his own evolution. He scrutinizes his own character, and then proceeds to manipulate it, deliberately practicing mental and moral qualities, enlarging capacities, strengthening weaknesses, supplying deficiencies, removing excres- cences. Knowing that he becomes that on which he
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meditates, he deliberately and regularly meditates on a noble ideal, for he understands why the great Christ- ian Initiate Paul bade his disciples ''think on" the things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Daily he will meditate on his ideal; daily he will strive to live it ; and he will do this per- sistently and calmly, "without haste, without rest," for he knows that he is building on a sure foundation, on the rock of the Eternal Law. He appeals to the Law; he takes refuge in the Law; for such a man failure exists not; there is no power in heaven or in earth that can bar his way. During earth-life he gathers his experiences, utilizing all that comes in his way; during Devachan he assimilates them and plans out his future buildings.
Herein lies the value of a true theory of life, even while the theory rests on the testimony of others and not on individual knowledge. When a man accepts and partially understands the working of Karma, he can at once begin this building of character, setting each stone with deliberate care, knowing that he is building for Eternity. There is no longer hasty run- ning up and pulling down, working on one plan to- day, on ■ another tomorrow, on none at all the day after; but there is a drafting of a well thought-out scheme of character, as it were, and then the building according to the scheme, for the Soul becomes an architect as well as a builder, and wastes no more y time in abortive beginnings. Hence the speed with which the later stages of evolution are accomplished.
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the striking, almost incredible advances, made by the strong Soul in its manhood.
Moulding Karma.
The man who has set himself deliberately to build the future will realize, as his knowledge increases, that he can do more than mould his own character, thus making his future destiny. He begins to under- stand that he is at the center of things in a very real sense, a living, active, self-determining Being, and that he can act upon circumstances as well as upon himself. He has long been accustoming himself to follow the great ethical laws, laid down for the guid- ance of humanity by the Divine Teachers Who have been born from age to age, and he now grasps the fact that these laws are based on fundamental princi- ples in Nature, and that morality is science applied to conduct. He sees that in his daily life he can neutralize the ill results that would follow from some ill deed, by bringing to bear upon the same point a corresponding force for good. A man sends against him an evil thought ; he might meet it with another of its own kind, and then the two thought-forms, run- ning together like two drops of water, would be re- inforced, ^rengthened each by each; but this one against whom the evil thought is flying is a knower of Karma, and he meets the malignant form with the force of compassion and shatters it; the broken form can no longer be ensouled with elemental life : the life
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melts back to its own, the form disintegrates ; its power for evil is thus destroyed by compassion, and "hatred ceases by love." Delusive forms of falsehood go forth into the astral world; the man of knowledge sends against them forms of truth; purity breaks up foulness and charity selfish greed. As knowledge in- creases, this action becomes direct and purposive, the thought is aimed with definite intent, winged with potent will. Thus evil Karma' is checked in its very inception, and naught is left to make a Karmic tie between the one who shot a shaft of injury and the one who burned it up by pardon. The Divine Teach- ers who spake as men having authority on the duty of overcoming evil with good, based Their precepts on Their knowledge of the law; Their followers, who obey without fully seeing the scientific foundation of the precept, lessen the heavy Karma that would be generated if they answered hate with hate. But men of knowledge deliberately destroy the evil forms, un- derstanding the facts on which the teaching of the Masters has ever been based, and sterilizing the seed of evil, they prevent a future harvest of pain.
At a stage which is comparatively advanced in comparison with that of the slowly drifting, average humanity, a man will not only build his own char- acter and work with deliberate intent on the thought- forms that come in his way, but he will begin to see the past and thus more accurately to guage the pres- ent, tracing Karmic causes onwards to their effects. He becomes able to modify the future by consciously
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setting forces to work, designed to interact with others already in motion. Knowledge enables him to utilize law with the same certainty with which scientists utilize it in every department of Nature.
Let us pause for a moment to consider the laws of motion. A body has been set in motion, and is moving along a definite line: if another force be brought to bear upon it, differing in direction from the one that gave it its initial impulse, the body will move along another line — a line compounded of the two impulses ; no energy will be lost, but part of the force which gave the initial impulse will be used up in partially counteracting the new, and the resultant direction along which the body will move will be that neither of the first force nor of the second, but of the interplay of the two. A physicist can calculate ex- actly at what angle he must strike a moving body in order to cause it to move in a desired direction, and although the body itself may be beyond his imme- diate reach, he can send after it a force of calculated velocity to strike it at a definite angle, thus deflecting it from its previous course, and impelling it along a n(»w line. In this there is no violation of law, no interference with law : only the utilization of law by knowledge, the bending of natural forces to accom- plish the purpose of the human will. If we apply this principle to the moulding of Karma, we shall readily see — apart from the fact that law is inviolable — that there is no "interference with Karma," when we modifv its action bv knowledge.' We are using Kar-
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mic force to affect Karmic results, and once more we conquer Nature hy obedience.
Let us now suppose that the advanced student, "iancing backwards over the past, sees lines of past Karma converging to a point of action of an unde- sirable kind ; he can introduce a new force among these converging energies, and so modify the event, which must be the resultant of all the forces concerned in its generation and ripening. For such action he requires knowledge, not only the power to see the past and to trace the lines which connect it with the present, but also to calculate exactly the influence that the force he introduces will exercise as modify- ing the resultant, and further the effects that will flow from this resultant considered as cause. In this way he may lessen or destro}^ the results of evil wrought by himself in the past, by the good forces he pours forth into his Karmic stream; he cannot undo the past, he cannot destroy it, but so far as its effects are still in the future he can modify them or reverse them, by the new forces he brings to bear as causes taking part in their production. In all this he is merely utilizing the law, and he works with the certaint}^ of the scientist, who balances one force against another and, unable to destroy a unit of energy, can yet make a body move as he will by a calculation of angles and of movements. Similarly Karma may be accelerated or delayed, and thus again will \^ldergo modification by the action of the sur- roundings amid which it is worked out.
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Let us put the same thing again a little differently, for the conception is an important and a fruitful one. As knowledge grows, it becomes easier and easier to get rid of the Karma of the past. Inasmuch as causes which are working out to their accomplishment, all come within the sight of the Soul which is approach- ing its liberation, as it looks back over past lives, as it glances down the vista of centuries along which it has been slowly climbing, it is able to see there the way in which its bonds were made, the causes which it set in motion ; it is able to see how many of those causes have worked themselves out and are exhausted, how many of those causes are still working them- selves out. It is able not only to look backwards but also to look forwards and see the effects these causes will produce; so that, glancing in front, the effects that will be produced are seen, and glancing behind, the causes that will bring about these effects are also visible. There is no difficulty in the supposition that just as you find in ordinary physical nature, that knowledge of certain laws enable us to predict a re- sult, and to see the law that brings that result about, so we can transfer this idea on to a higher plane, and can imagine a condition of the developed soul, in which it is able to see the Karmic causes that it has set going behind it, and also the Karmic effects through which it has to work in the future.
With such a knowledge of causes, and a vision of their working out, it is possible to introduce fresh causes to neutralize these effects, and by utilizing the
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law, and by relying absolutely on its unchanging and unvarying character, and by careful calculation of the forces set going, to make the effects in the future those which we desire. That is a mere matter of cal- culation. Suppose vibrations of hatred have been set going in the past, we can deliberately set to work to quench these vibrations, and to prevent their work- ing out into the present and future, by setting up against them vibrations of love. Just in the same way as we can take a wave of sound, and then a second wave, and setting the two going one slightly after the other, so that the vibrations of the denser part of the one shall correspond to the rarer part of the other, and thus out of sounds we can make silence by inter- ference, so in the higher regions it is possible by love and hate vibrations, used by knowledge and controlled by will, to bring Karmic causes to an ending and so to reach equilibrium, which is another word for liber- ation. That knowledge is beyond the reach of the enormous majority. What the majority can do is this, if they choose to utilize the Science of the Soul. They may take the evidence of experts on this subject, they may take the moral precepts of the great religious Teachers of the world, and by obedience to these pre- cepts— to which their intuition responds although they may not understand the method of their work- ing— they may effect in the doing that which also may be effected by distinct and deliberate know- ledge. So devotion and obedience to a Teacher may work towards liberation as knowledge might otherwise do.