CHAPTER VI

THE PROBLEM OF DESTINY
We measure life by false standards, by pleasure and pain and not by growth. If life is pleasant we bless destiny, if unpleasant, we curse it, never considering in either case whether we grow through the experiences which come. Destiny is Nature's plan of education; she is not trying to please us, to kill time, to furnish a con- tinual round of pleasure ; she is endeavoring to teach us. That is why we must work, endure hardships, struggle for what we get. Rugged lessons truly, but wonderfully effective in their results, for such teaching as we receive on earth produces strong men and brave women, not weaklings. Even though lives are spent in learning the lessons, they are eventually mastered, for in this world- school there are no failures.
Destiny, however, offers many problems, and the great- est of them all is to find the cause of the fate which brings us to our parents, determines our opportu- nities, gauges our faculties and moulds our lives. To a certain extent this problem was considered in the last chapter, but we must go further, for during the cen- turies three answers have been proposed to explain human destiny. Let us consider these answers in turn.
The first answer is that our lives are moulded at the dictates of some Being who is the Ruler of the universe. At His command all things come or are withheld. We are like puppets moved by an unseen hand across a stage ; we act, but the scenes, the actors, our very char- acters and the events which happen, are all prescribed by Him. If He wills it, we may be exalted in the eyes
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of men; if it is His wish, we may be disgraced and shamed. No exertion can change our destiny ; that rests with Him. We have neither earned the happiness nor deserved the suffering which is our portion, for our destinies are decided on high.
This may be considered to be an exaggerated state- ment of a particular viewpoint, yet this is exactly what is implied in the resigned acceptance of one who mur- murs— as many of us have done after a blow has fallen : 1 ' Thy Will be done. ' ' Yet how hard it is to think that all we see happening around us is due to God's Will. We ask ourselves if it be true that he blinds children, breaks the hearts of strong men, permits people to be sent to prison though innocent of crime, creates a world in which souls fresh from His hands may be born in crip- pled or idiotic bodies and babes may become diseased for the sins of their parents. If we dare not go to the extreme of saying that He does all this, then we are merely avoiding the inevitable outcome of a consistent application of this answer to destiny.
But if God deliberately causes such suffering or even permits it to happen, without justification, to the souls concerned, how can we reverence Him? What purpose is there in it all? We do not know why we came here, we do not know whither we are to go, and during our stay on earth we are unjustly treated. The future is uncertain, without promise, for if He allow destiny to crush our neighbor, may He not permit the same awful fate to visit us? We must submit to every caprice, for destiny cannot be controlled by us but only by Him.
Is this a satisfactory answer to the problem? Em- phatically it is not, and surely it is only accepted blindly by so many, because they refuse even to think about its unreasonableness, believing that no other solution exists, and fearing that if they trust themselves to the stormy sea of doubt, they may be lost.
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According to the second answer to the problem of destiny, life is merely the product of circumstances, the result of chance. There may or may not be a God, but if He does exist, He does not concern Himself very closely with the world He has created, and may there- fore be left out of account so far as destiny is concerned. We may be born in the hovel of a savage, or in the home of refined parents, for there is no choice or law govern- ing birth, and the soul must accept what it receives. Human bodies are born because their parents are swayed by passion. We have done nothing to deserve our birth conditions or environment; in fact, from the viewpoint of this answer to destiny, it is absurd to speak of the events of life which happen to us as expressing any purpose; they merely happen. Luck rules, chance is king.
Assuredly, we can never be certain of results. We may toil for years only to fail in the end, or we may win by a lucky move. All talk of rewards and punish- ments is idle. We are but gamblers spinning the wheel of fortune ; if we pick the right color we succeed, if we make a mistake, we lose. All we can do is to strive to win and then anxiously await the next turn of the wheel, for there is no law, no certainty.
This is surely a tottering foundation upon which to build the structure of a life, and yet it is the unreasoned philosophy of many. Strange how illogical we are some- times, for all the facts which we have gleaned from nature show us thai changeless law rules everything in the realm of science, and that nature utterly repudiates chance. Science is only possible because nature is organ- ized law and chance a figment of the human imagination. Why, then, when it comes to human events and human existence, should we put everything in a compartment and label it "Chance and Disorder," while we are obliged to put all other things in the universe in another
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compartment and label it "Law and Order"? It is illogical and absurd to do so, for surely law must gov- ern all things, human and non-human, great and small.
The third answer to the problem of destiny is that man, an immortal soul, is the moulder and master of his own destiny, because he has started and will start all the forces which mould the circumstances in which he lives. This is the point of view accepted and taught by Theosophy.
It tells us that no one is to blame except ourselves for our birth conditions, our character, our opportunities, our abilities, for all these things are due to the working out of forces we have set going either in this life or in former lives. Thus all existing conditions are due either to the immediate or remote past, because, to use a lumi- nous simile of St. Paul, we are reaping the harvests which have grown from seed we have sown before — "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."
From the seeds of good and bad actions spring the harvests of pleasant and unpleasant physical circum- stances; from the seeds of attentiveness to small oppor- tunities spring the harvests of greater opportunities; from the seeds of good and evil thoughts and desires spring the harvests of good and bad character.
These results are as inevitable as the fall of a stone to earth after it has been thrown into the air. We are what we are because of our past actions, desires and thoughts. There is no favoritism in nature; we must earn what we receive. If this idea is once grasped, then envy and resentment become impossible and we cease useless cursing at fate.
This conception of destiny does not eliminate God from the world; our idea of Him becomes far grander than before. Instead, however, of a world so imper- fectly conceived that He must constantly interfere to set things straight, we realize that the universe, even
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to the slightest detail, is perfect in its working, because guided by exquisitely balanced natural and moral laws. When these laws are transgressed, suffering comes; when they are obeyed, happiness is ours ; because of this it is possible for us to learn right from wrong.
Sometimes people exclaim, when they have only par- tially grasped this conception of destiny: "But why should these merciless laws of destiny make us suffer for things we have forgotten?" As this natural question contains several misconceptions, it will be necessary to analyze it carefully, in order to gain a clear under- standing of what is implied therein.
In the first place, what do we mean by a "law of nature"? Certainly not laws in any sense resembling those turned out each year by hundreds from our legis- lative bodies. A law of nature is merely a condition, an inevitable sequence. If a certain thing is done, such will be the result, and the result never changes. Inevita- bleness is the chief characteristic of natural law. Under the same conditions of atmospheric pressure, heat always causes water to boil at a certain temperature. If it were not for the inevitable character of natural law, science would be impossible, and, because we could never know what to expect, the wheels of industry would cease to move. May not this same inevitableness apply likewise to moral laws? If so, it is obvious, that if in a past life or lives certain causes are started, they must produce their inevitable effects, whether our physical consciousness remembers the causes or not.
We should not forget that the soul always remembers, and when in our brain consciousness we are writhing under a sense of injustice, because of some event which has happened, the soul itself is comparing the present result with its past cause, and is learning a lesson thereby. Physical forgetfulness of the past, therefore, should not logically be able to affect the working of a
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moral law — if we have upset the equilibrium of nature, it must be readjusted.
It is always possible, however, to neutralize a force, by directing against it another force, equal in power and moving in an opposite direction. Thus if we have made mistakes in the past, we can to a considerable extent modify the results, by setting in operation neutralizing forces. If we send out a strong thought of love immedi- ately after we have made the mistake of thinking a thought of hate, we can overcome what otherwise would have been the inevitable effect of the hate. This great possibility of modifying destiny should not be overlooked.
Is it right to speak of any law of nature as merciless ? Do we call gravity merciless, because one day, while walking along a river bank, the soil gave way under our feet, and gravity dragged us to the rocks below? Of course we do not, because we realize that if gravity ceased but for a single instant, there would be a terrific explosion, and this earth would drift off through space as a mere cloud of impalpable dust. Do we call nature cruel, because she produces a diseased condition in our physical bodies, when we become dissipated and lax in our morals ? Then why should we do so, if the result of some similar lack of self-control, for one reason or an- other, does not come at once but is postponed until a future life? Are we not the same souls, and do we not as souls retain full memories of all past lives, which, after all, are only days in our greater soul life ?
Nature is most wise in enabling us physically to for- get the past and start with a clean record. How many a man has wished and prayed for that very boon in this life! Memories are frequently a handicap and even a torment when accompanied by remorse — it is for this reason, among others, that we start afresh each life on earth. Furthermore, full memories of all our past lives would make it possible, to a considerable extent, to
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anticipate the future, because we could pick out the causes which would produce coming events. Now recall to mind some month or year which was filled with much sorrow and difficulty. Would we have had the courage to have faced that period had we known what was com- ing? Our very ignorance of the future was an enor- mous advantage, and because we did not see the events until they were actually upon us, we were victorious over them in the end. Knowledge of the future, at our present stage of evolution, would be a curse and not a help, would be the cause of countless failures, where ignorance of what is to be brings success.
What we do bring with us when we come, however, is the essence of our past experiences in the form of innate faculties and the voice of conscience. Whenever in business an old set of account books is closed and a new set opened, only the balances are brought forward. So when we commence a new incarnation we bring the summation of our past experiences in a form most suited to the needs and emergencies of physical life, hence those qualities of character, those powers to achieve, those inborn faculties, which make one child different from another.
This answer to destiny, often mentioned in theo- sophical literature as Karma, is not fatalistic in the slightest. Fatalism always implies that we are bound on an iron wheel of circumstances from which no effort of our own can free us. Karma, on the contrary, says that while in truth we are bound by what we have done in the past, yet each moment we live we are moulding and modifying the future by the decisions and choices we make. Free-will certainly does not mean that we are free to change the conditions of nature in any way that our whims may dictate, but that we are free to choose what we shall do within those conditions. If each one of us had the power to modify the world according to
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our several fancies, what an inconceivable chaos would result !
One of the conditions of nature is, that when we choose, we must abide by the result of our choice. In this way we learn wisdom. If we decide to jump off a wall, it does not stop our fall for one instant, to wish, when we are halfway down, that we were on top again. If we jump off we must strike bottom — a cause is always followed by its effect. If we are wise we think before we jump.
This conception of destiny, when once understood, results in a philosophy of optimism. Every hardship we experience is an old debt paid and we are glad of it ; instead of complaining or repining we seek eagerly for the lessons each event brings. The friends who gather round us have been our friends before ; the ones we love this life will be with us again many times in the future, for love is a tie so strong that even death cannot break it.
There is no goal too high for us to reach ; if we place our goal on the heights, it may not be reached for many lives, but reach it we shall, for that which we will to do we can do. All that is necessary is to turn every energy in that direction, to think of the goal, to desire it with all our heart, to seize every opportunity to draw nearer to it. If this is done there is no power on earth or in heaven which can prevent us from reaching it.
We may be handicapped, it is true, by foolish mis- takes or contrary efforts we have made in the past, either in this life or in others, but the effects of these mistakes and efforts must in time become exhausted, and equally the new forces we are setting in operation now must produce their inevitable effects. So instead of bewailing our past mistakes, we resolutely set to work, under the inspiration of this philosophy, to mould the future into the likeness of our highest ideals, confident that if we set going each moment the best we know, the future,
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immediate and distant, will be radiant with ever increas- ing happiness and filled with ever growing opportunities. The Good Law may be trusted to the end.
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