Knowledge of Life One
9. THE LAW
9. THE LAW
1Under this heading, The Laws of Life, the present work and Laurency’s previous works describe the seven fundamental laws of consciousness development, the laws of life (The Philosopher’s Stone, third section), but not the laws of the matter and motion aspects, the “laws of nature”. Under this heading are also brought together all commentaries on the laws of life with discussions of the pertaining problems of life, ideals, the art of living, etc.
2Of the seven laws of life enumerated, three (the laws of development, destiny, and reaping) represent “guidance in man’s life”, energies that make the evolution of consciousness possible. The other four are the laws that man learns to apply himself in order to develop.
3Beside these fundamental laws there is a whole series of laws of life that apply at the different stages of consciousness, laws that the individual learns to discover for himself during his further evolution. Just as the concepts of right are ever more refined as cultural development proceeds until the “golden middle path” becomes a path as sharp as a razor’s edge; and just as what appears as utopias to those at lower stages, to those at higher stages become inescapable necessities, so ever higher laws of life are discovered by those who are consciously walking the path.
4The individual who hastens ahead of development discovers these ever higher laws but also sees that it is meaningless to proclaim his discovery to those at lower stages. The laws will be understood and recognized only when, some time in the future, they have entered into the general consciousness of right. Before that, they will just be the objects of contempt and derision of life-ignorant people who believe they can judge everything. With the onset of democratization, these people have become authorities. Admitted that the humanism we have inherited from the Greeks was just a reflection of what a Platon learnt in the esoteric orders. Yet it was incomparably superior to the present democratic conception of right which is hardly able to tell the difference between the simplest right and wrong any more, and proclaims lies of life to an easily led, helpless mankind.
5The Law is the sum total of all the laws of the matter aspect, motion aspect, and consciousness aspect in the whole cosmos. It should be clear from this that what man can know of the Law is an infinitesimal fraction. By and large, most of what has been said about “karma” is the attempts of ignorance to explain the inexplicable, using logic and a very limited experience. Despite all warnings, they have held orgies of speculation and explanation even in the matter of the Law, so this idiotic tendency seems to be ineradicable.
6The laws of life are universal, not individual, not aiming at individual development only. In the law of freedom is everything that can liberate other people; in the law of unity, everything that can help others to admire and to feel sympathy; in the law of development, everything that can help others to develop; in the law of self, everything that helps others to realize themselves; in the law of activation, everything that can help others to think for themselves. Whatever does not benefit all is a mistake as to the laws of life.
7The laws of life grant us the norms according to which we can discover our own failings and scrutinize our own motives. Anyone who wills for development makes a daily analysis of what he has thought, said, and done in these respects. That is the first step on the path to self-knowledge.
1There are many kinds of laws: basic laws valid for the entire cosmos (laws of nature); laws of involution and evolution; laws for the various worlds and for the various natural kingdoms, especially laws for the lower kingdoms, laws that must be adapted as evolution in the kingdoms reaches the goals of the different developmental stages, which are being shifted as the total evolution reaches ever higher within the planets and the solar system.
2Most generally it can be said that laws are the ways in which energies act. With new combinations of energies there follow new laws. Only those laws (constant relations) are unchangeable that arise by the composition of matter and the action of dynamis in the primordial atoms. The unchangeable basis is always the law of cause and effect without which the cosmos would be chaos and no processes would be possible.
3Laws can be divided into three different categories: laws of nature (governing the matter and motion aspects), laws of life (governing the consciousness aspect), and modificatory laws. The two categories first mentioned are basic and unchangeable laws. The modificatory laws are accomodatory laws for the implementation of the processes of manifestation in various respects, changing as conditions change.
4Laws can be divided according to the three aspects of reality and the different atomic worlds. Thus there are about 150 basic laws in the cosmos. And there are innumerable concomitant laws in each world.
5Besides, there are laws that could be called temporary laws, the necessity of which is the subject of variance of opinion in the government as well as in the hierarchy. In those kingdoms, too, where of course they cannot be omniscient in an absolute sense (which is possible only in the highest cosmic kingdom), they must calculate with probabilities. That absolute objectivity and unerringness which are in the concept of natural law are of course unattainable in the lower cosmic kingdoms. Acquiring perspective consciousness and learning to apply it in real life, people learn to be less lavish with that cherished term, “absolute”, perhaps less careless about that modern catchword, “relative”. Knowledge of reality and life is required in order to make correct statements. Wrong ones daily rain on us all, unaware as we all are of our enormous ignorance. Perhaps we could ask ourselves, “what facts do I have for it?” and learn to apply the rule of “not assuming anything without sufficient grounds”. That would be something.
1Purposiveness in existence is expressed in the laws of life which are manifested in the purposefully acting energies that issue from the highest cosmic kingdom. Law of life is the expression of constantly working energies that transform chaos into a purposeful cosmos. Arbitrariness of any kind would unfailingly counteract this purpose. This purposiveness is made possible through such an application of the knowledge of the modes of action of dynamis in manifestational matter that the energies of manifestation (the action of higher kinds of matter on lower kinds) work constructively and not destructively. Those material energies, which we think work mechanically, are as such already purposive to some extent; they make up the primary application and the basic condition of the more and more purposively directed energies. The energies are further adapted in each lower cosmic kingdom and world, as the matter of each lower material world is composed of more and more primordial atoms. The most comprehensive adaptation is of course made in the solar system, and increasingly as the matter of the physical world is approached.
2Dynamis is a blind force, and such a force cannot act constructively but works chaos. A force that works according to law, the law of cause and effect, is relatively purposive merely because of that.
3The purposive energies that work within the solar system are so adapted that they enable the monads to realize the meaning and goal of life: the monads’ gradual consciousness development and the activation of passive consciousness in ever higher molecular and atomic kinds. The constant relations of the energies necessary for this are what we call laws of life. From this it follows that such laws of life are in many respects different in the different natural kingdoms. There are many such laws as are valid in the fifth kingdom which individuals in the fourth kingdom would be unable to apply, and correspondingly in the ever higher natural kingdoms. (The law universal for all the kingdoms is the fundamental causal law being the condition of all other conformity to law.) As the goal fixed for every kingdom is reached (contact with the consciousness of the next higher kingdom), other laws assert themselves for the same purpose.
4The primordial atomic individual character of the monad remains an inscrutable factor even to the highest cosmic beings, even to the individual himself upon attaining the highest cosmic kingdom. It remains, like cosmic consciousness, something that could be called “absolute subjectivity”. The only existence objective to consciousness is the compositions of primordial atoms into atoms, molecules and material forms. It is because of this fact that there would be no laws of nature without the matter aspect of existence. It is these fundamental laws of existence that put a limit to the subjective omnipotence of the consciousness aspect.
5We do not know whether the composition of primordial atoms in the different cosmoses can be done according to different principles. If such is the case, the consciousness aspect, which is dependent upon the matter aspect for its modes of expression, would manifest itself differently in different cosmoses.
6For activity and further consciousness expansion, self-consciousness is always dependent on its material envelopes with their various kinds of consciousness.
1No laws of nature (laws of matter and motion) or laws of life can ever be “suspended”. Every one of them is absolutely valid in its own atomic world. Every world has its own laws. The laws of the lower worlds enter into the laws of higher worlds as parts of a whole, or more correctly expressed, of a somewhat greater part of the cosmic totality.
2Like all the other laws (the inevitable constant relations of matter and the action of energies through them), so also the law of cause and effect is absolute. (It is never a question of “one” cause, even if it appears so.) Nobody can “suspend” a law or “stand in the way” of a law. But there are laws without number and there are always laws the application of which may change otherwise unavoidable results. The “propulsive force” of the aeroplane does not neutralize the law of gravitation but has a stronger effect than the “gravitational force” of the earth. By artificial means you can prolong the life of the organism. That is an instance of the same thing.
3In esoterics, the law of cycles and the law of rhythm are distinguished. The law of cycles concerns the spiral motion of material energies. The law of rhythm has reference to the movement forth and back within given limits. The law of cycles concerns the energy within given channels. The energies of rhythm move within these given channels. In music, the cycle determines the length of tones, the rhythm the intervals between the tones.
4The law of correspondences, one of the essential laws of life, is on the whole unknown in the West. Goethe understood this law very well, which is clear from his saying: “Everything transient is just a likeness”.
1People see just faults and failings. Everything is very easy according to wiseacreness. Just put it right, and then all is well. It is not like that. What is and happens now is the result of factors in the past the number of which is incomprehensible to ignorance. It is these hidden factors that have been at work. And they remain even when you have remedied the visible defect. The roadbed settles and the rails are displaced. The workers fill in gravel and lay new rails. Soon the roadbed has settled again. The bedding has been washed away once again. The task of the railway engineer is to find the hidden cause. This analogy has been utterly simplified in order to give a hint. In many cases there is no possibility for the normal individual to find the ultimate causes.
2Vegetarians make propaganda for a vegetarian diet. In the future, people will not eat meat. It will be some time yet, however. Vegetarians try to explain why it takes time. They have found quite a number of correct viewpoints, those which are within the reach of wiseacreness (ignorance, prejudice, the force of habit, etc.). However, there are causes that lie much deeper; those which come under the laws of destiny and reaping. For millions of years man has been practically defenceless against wild beasts. The number of human victims has been greater than the wildest imagination may grasp. A wild animal killing a man, a being belonging to a higher kingdom, contracts the guilt of a terrible disturbance of the law of balance. Anyone who knows about the laws of life can without difficulty think these relations out. When the balance between the animal and human kingdoms has been tolerably redressed, men will definitively “lose the taste for meat” with everything that this means in the matter of all viewpoints on the pertaining problems. Parasites of the human organism, which belong to the animal kingdom, will then be susceptible of neutralization.
3There are, despite all the contentions of vegetarians, people who must have meat. This too will come to an end. Also here there is a special balance problem. It may be a matter of bad reaping to be squared against the bad sowing of the animal kingdom. The individual in question may have often fallen victim of beasts.
4People think that superstition of all kinds can be immediately rooted out by enlightenment. Superstition may have caused immense suffering. That must be balanced according to the law of balance. Those who have caused suffering on account of superstition are being hindered from liberating themselves from the superstition until the balance has been redressed. In this too the common responsibility appears. Many superstitions appear ineradicable for a considerable time yet.
5New correct and rational ideas may meet with unreasonable opposition until “time is up” for them to be understood. That is not necessarily due to ignorance, unwillingness to recognize them, individual bad reaping for the “discoverer”, etc. Mankind is hindered from understanding until the mistakes of the corresponding ignorance have been balanced.
6The process of cosmic manifestation follows its natural course, independently of all resistance. Where the various solar systems are concerned, however, the evolutionary authorities must adapt their measures to circumstances the further the process advances, the more individuals reach the human kingdom. This can be due to causes and effects belonging under the law of freedom or the law of self. Both can disturb the balance for the respective globes so that particular measures are necessary. These are manifested in effects according to the law of destiny and the law of reaping.
7Men receive knowledge when “the time has come”. This too is expressive of law. Individually it depends on the individual’s relations to the laws of self, destiny, and reaping. Where all mankind is concerned, there are in addition the factors connected with the law of development. Every “race” has a task allotted to it, a work to perform in the service of universal evolution. If it fails its task, evolution is delayed. Men are able to counteract development to the detriment of the whole and particularly for their clans, who share the responsibility. The gnosticians in this connection used the term “period of grace”. When “the cup is full to the brim” and the clan has proved incorrigible, it is removed to some other globe. Evolution can be delayed but cannot be stopped.
1The meaning of life and the meaning of the incarnation must be distinguished. The meaning of life is the final goal of life: the individual’s actualization of his potential divinity. The meaning of the incarnation is to gain insight and understanding, qualities and abilities by having experiences and working them up.
2Many people complain about their misspent lives. There is no such thing. We all have had experiences. Outsiders may think that many of these experiences were unnecessary. Nobody can judge of that. We are to have the same experiences again and again until we have learnt everything they can teach us. In thousands of incarnations we make the same blunders until we have gained the ability to learn from them.
3Many blunders, seemingly idiotic experiences, are bad reaping. If we are idiotic and spiteful enough to condemn faults in others and so hurt them or inflict suffering on them, then these faults are forced on us. That is the incorruptible justice of life. If we violate the law of freedom, encroach on the rights of others to lead their own lives in peace from our interference, then our own freedom will be curtailed. Moralists can never understand this fact. And yet it is a simple and obvious thing. It is morality that makes us poison life for others and so for ourselves.
4Life need not be the path of mistakes. The fact that we make hardly anything but mistakes is due to general ignorance of life as well as individual bad sowing.
5There is a knowledge of reality and life. But we must acquire the right to that knowledge. It is not for those who are unwilling to learn, not for those who seek power, glory and wealth, not to be egoistically abused for your own self-glory and presumption. But if we seek the truth in order to serve life, then we are given opportunities to study the knowledge of supermen. It is absolutely out of the question that anybody could be overlooked in this respect. It is part of self-deception that nobody intends to abuse the knowledge and everybody at lower stages unfailingly would do so. Thereby they would sow such a bad sowing that hundreds of incarnations of suffering would be their inevitable reaping. It is a blessing that they may lead their lives in ignorance. Knowledge is not for the immature. It is not for man, however, to decide who is immature and who is not. It is our duty to give knowledge to everybody according to their possibilities of understanding.
6The complaint about misspent lives bears testimony to ignorance of life. Besides, what do the fictionalists mean by such talk? Not to have had “success” in life! Not to have won power, wealth, fame? Not to have had success in their undertakings? We must say, however, that the lack of success they complain about in most cases actually is true success for them. Because to have success in foolish strivings and to increase one’s opportunities to abuse favours means to sow bad sowing.
7On the other hand it is correct to say that many people out of ignorance neglect to take up real interests that ennoble emotionality and strengthen mentality, that many people out of indolence and listlessness fail to use the daily opportunities to sow a good sowing; that they imagine the meaning of life to be mere amusement with all manner of trifles, gossip, and nonsense.
8Incarnations of suffering are incarnations of reaping and do not fall under the heading of “misspent” lives. To the suffering, life often appears meaningless. Only in rare cases, however, is there no opportunity of sowing a good sowing or of gaining materials to work up later in the mental world.
9The meaning of life is consciousness development. We are here in order to have experiences and to learn from them.
10We are not here in order to toil and moil or to be lazy and amuse ourselves. We are not here in order to please the wrathful, vindictive, punishing god of the Christians, nor the envious gods of the Greeks. Life is not envious or grudging.
11We are not here in order to bustle about on the roads in cars or flying through the air or to watch all manner of ugly and silly things.
12We are not hear in order to dance or play cards or to kill time with nonsense.
13Life consists of offers to make the most of, opportunities that perhaps never recur.
14Life is an offer! By incarnating we cause a lot of trouble to many people. We need care and attention. We cause worry and anxiety, etc. That is a debt to life – a debt that we square by in our turn bringing children up to lead their lives rationally.
15We are not here to revel in emotions of the marvels of life, to drown in the immensity of the ocean of imagination.
16We are here in order to increase our consciousness capacity, to acquire essential qualities and abilities, to enter into a higher natural kingdom.
17Youth is the age of life ignorance and injudiciousness. Old age is (or should be) the age of worked-up experience of life.
18Life affords us opportunities to develop. And most people do not know “how to make time pass”, so empty, vacuous, meaningless are their lives.
19Most people are dissatisfied with, disappointed in life. They have not “got as they thought, hoped, wanted, desired”. What then do they desire from life: wealth, glory, power, amusements, enjoyments? Not knowledge and insight so that they may understand life and the possibilities of their own lives?
20It looks as if they had set their minds on wandering through life with as little reflection as possible. The fact that mankind has not yet reached the mental stage is best seen in the fact that they find it very nice when they do not need to think.
21It is our duty to be happy. Anyone who is not happy has lost sight of the meaning of life. The whole tendency of the present civilization amounts to making people disharmonious, pessimistic, discontented, and this is a clear warning signal that mankind is on the wrong path. All happy people are good and good people are happy.
22If you practise the art of living then you simplify your situation and reduce your desires.
1People have never heard about laws of life. That is a rather new term for “laws of nature in the world of spirit”. Also the term “law of nature” is relatively new. Many of the laws of life have been formulated in other ways. What people have not realized is their absolute validity. As for example, “To him who gives will be given. What a man sows that shall he reap.” There are many more. “Man will lose whatever he clings to. By renouncing he will win.” Anyone who is able to study past lives finds confirmation of these laws. Men see the sowing but not the reaping and so they know nothing of what they are to reap and accuse life for the fact that they in their new lives know nothing of their sowing.
2It is men who have made and still go on making the three lowest layers of the two lowest worlds hells for themselves and for all other creatures. Then they accuse life.
3Everything that depends on us could possibly be better. But anything that depends on Life cannot be better.
4Trust in life is based on knowledge and understanding of the Law. There are many degrees of it as of everything else.
5The law of destiny considers especially the laws of development and of self, the law of reaping considers especially the laws of freedom and of unity. Both in conjunction determine the individual’s horoscope in incarnations to come.
6God transcendent (the cosmic organization) is no judge. The Christian judging god is an impossibility because any judgement wars with the Law. There are no dictators in higher worlds, only application of the Law in which mistakes and, particularly, arbitrariness are precluded.
7Men, being ignorant of the laws of life, think they are able to rule and govern. And so long the history of the world will be the story of suffering on our planet, that monster not just in our solar system but also in our globe of seven solar systems.
8Mankind, in its ignorance of the Law, has done everything in its might to destroy the rhythm of existence and to disrupt the balance of nature. It may be part of the fatal consequences that mankind must go on with these disturbances in a continual vicious circle.
9Ignorant of life those may be called who do not know of the laws of life.
10The opposite of law is chaos (arbitrariness, lawlessness). What would life be without Law? Chaos. What is mankind without law? Chaos.
11Man is in his full right not to bother about laws of nature and laws of life. Man is in his full right to seize a red hot iron-bar. Whether it is wise to do so is another question.
12The basic error of man’s view of life is egoism, egotism, the self as the centre of his circle of life. The historical religions with their untenable basis for the conception of right (an erroneous world view and life view) by their fictions have prevented people from discovering that life is law. Many people realize the necessity for “adaptation”, but only the wise understand that it is the adaptation to the Law that solves that problem and what is lacking is a knowledge of the Law. Still such a basic thing as the idea of law of life is an unknown idea. When man has procured a knowledge of the laws of life and puts these, instead of his own will, into the centre of his circle, then that problem is theoretically solved.
13Probably, the individual will not succeed in forgetting himself until he has entered into the consciousness of unity and become an essential self. However, anyone who strives to forget himself with everything which that means, liberates himself from much unnecessary suffering, from worry, anxiety and fear. Whatever happens to us is according to the Law and is always the best considering the self’s development and entry into the next higher kingdom. By forgetting himself the individual will reach this kingdom in the most rapid way. Our thoughts of our own selves delay our development. Forgetfulness of ourselves is the supreme art of living.
14The laws of life indicate the conditions of further evolution. Anyone who wants to reach higher must apply the laws. Anyone who does not apply them thereby refrains from acquiring higher abilities. The choice is free.
15Anyone who does not want to apply the Law must take the consequences. Anyone who does not use his freedom rightly will lose it in incarnations to come. Anyone who does not want unity will have everything to go against him. Anyone who does not want to develop will have no opportunities for it but instead a lowered standard (intellectually, culturally, socially etc.).
16Men live so perversely, in such obvious opposition to the laws of life that life must be what they accuse it to be: the law of everything’s vexatiousness. Anyone possessing knowledge of life knows that “this could not have happened me if I did not deserve it” for good or ill. A 45-self said: “I wish I could show you with what precision justice is done in existence, for all in all kingdoms.” If the Law and its absolute balancing did not exist, then the cosmos would be chaos. If life is a hell, then it is the individuals in the four lower natural kingdoms (the monads of repulsive tendency) that have made it a hell. The world’s history is a collection of legends. If it were true, then everybody would know that it is the world’s judgement. As it is written now it can just aggravate disorientation. Only causal selves are able to write the true history. Only causal selves are able to explore the worlds of man (the emotional and mental worlds) and the past of the physical world.
17Man’s mental activity is still on the bottom level. He can by and large just parrot what he has heard, seen, read. More than 99 per cent of the content of his mental consciousness is borrowed material. Everything he knows he has received from others. But that is not all. Everything that civilization has given him (something that he has not yet been taught to realize and so never “reflected” on) is due to his share in the common heritage. Whatever is given him for nothing he regards as his natural “right”. The disadvantages, however, the unpleasant sides, the imperfections incident to this human heritage he imagines that he can disclaim. He may use all the advantages and abuse them in his egoistic inhumanity to the detriment of the common good. But the law is indivisible: if we are all one then we must be jointly and separately responsible. We must all share in the evil as well as the good. We are all jointly responsible for everything that is and happens. We have, in thousands of incarnations at the lower stages of human development, abused most of it. In our enormous ignorance of life we twaddle absurdities. In our miserable self-pity appear our immense self-righteousness, self-excellence, self-importance and all the other grandiosity – at the present stage of mankind’s development.
18If anti-Semites knew that they will be born as Jews in their next incarnation, if those who foment racial hatred knew that they will incarnate into the race they despise and persecute, if the male haters of the female sex knew that they will be women in their next incarnation, if religious fanatics knew that they will be born into all the religions they hate and be equally fanatic in them all, then perhaps they would be able to use the little reason they have got to study the law of cause and effect. Those who sentenced people to be tortured and burnt were to undergo the same experiences themselves. That is why many people have learnt that lesson and nowadays condemn such things. How about a little mental activity? Not just parroting all the nonsense that life ignorance has preached ever since 9564 B.C.
19It is because of this ignorance of reality, life and the laws of life that man in each new incarnation runs the risk of making any mistake whatsoever. Having reached a sufficiently high level, however, he need not make the same mistake twice. That was the only sensible meaning of the slogan: “Once and none is all one.” Once is no habit.
20You see mankind’s total disorientation in philosophy, literature, art and music only when you realize the absolute validity of the law of harmony. Disharmony has a shattering effect and is utilized as a dissolving energy (the special energy of the first department) when matter is to be dissolved.
21Various teachers of salvation use to scatter “divine promises” about. They do not understand that all such promises are made under certain conditions that are usually unknown to the uninitiated. Else they would amount to arbitrariness.
22We must learn to be the law, be manifestations of the law. It must be the law of life, however, the law of unity and not the law of personal arbitrariness. The individual is arbitrariness, more or less so, until he has found the Law and, by applying it one hundred per cent, has become the Law himself and for himself. Men are too ignorant to act the Law, that would be presumption. As long as man is his own law he makes mistakes in all essential respects. It is a case of unwarranted pride to refuse to study the view of others when those individuals have taken their stand under the law of unity. In so doing they have given up the desire to live for themselves and have decided for the life of community.
1With his work, The Laws of Nature in the World of Spirit, Henry Drummond was the first to emphasize the fact that “spiritual life” conforms to law. After him came Annie Besant with her The Laws of the Higher Life. Science had familiarized the public with the idea of law (causal law) and so made it possible for this originally esoteric concept (“everything’s conformity to law”) to be popularized.
2The progress of natural research is characterized by the continuous discovery of laws of nature; and that of (immensely neglected) research into life, by the discovery of laws of life. Also in the scientific conception of natural law there is much in need of revision. The law of attraction cannot be fully understood without the insight that it is a part of the synthesis that could be called the law of attraction and repulsion.
3What makes the esoteric life view superior to other life views is the knowledge of the laws of life and the realization that the Law is the one true basis of the life view. The Law alone is the absolute guarantee against arbitrariness, be it human or “divine”. Also in esoterics the name of law is put on arrangements and temporary directions, which bears witness to the inability, all too common in esoteric writers, to find adequate terms.
4The laws of life clarify to ourselves that our attitude to life and its relations is more or less abortive. The laws of life constitute the basis of our life view. They help us to live by explaining much that we meet with which would otherwise seem incomprehensible, uncharitable, unfair; which makes the life-ignorant accuse life for the state of the world. The laws of life can, however strange it may sound, be a source of comfort when we realize that suffering does not just liberate us from old debts but also (and precisely thereby) opens up new possibilities for our development, clears away many stones that we have put in our way ourselves.
5It is the task of the state to bring the common laws into harmony with the Law.
6Man’s sense of helplessness when seeing his inability to rightly apply the Law is inevitable but disappears when he learns that we gain greater and greater ability to do so through our incarnations, if we remain realizers.
7The knowledge of the laws of life affords us the necessary trust in life. That is no blind faith, which always runs the risk of being subject to doubt, uncertainty, fear, always is afraid of the criticism of ignorance or injudicious propaganda.
8The knowledge of the laws of life is more important for us than the knowledge of reincarnation, which we in any case can do nothing about. Having a knowledge of the laws of life, however, we can learn to live so as not to make our future lives more difficult but instead make them propitious and life-promoting.
9Having a knowledge of the laws of life we shall be able to arrange our future incarnations rationally so that we develop in the best way.
10More and more people reach the insight that the laws of rebirth and reaping are the only rational explanations of the meaning of life. But in so doing they have just got a working hypothesis they can comprehend. Much remains before they are able to understand what these laws imply in individual cases.
11It is necessary to have a knowledge of the Law. The ability to rightly apply the Law, however, does not go with the knowledge of it. That is a thing belonging to the level attained and the experience of life acquired. In all relations of life that rule applies which says that everybody has the right to, and indeed should, go by his own conviction (“conscience”).
12As for judging people and situations, the esoterician must learn to see that many mistakes made by men are instances of bad reaping or are inevitable, being designed to teach them by bitter experience what they did not want to learn in other ways. They can also be the consequences of good motives wrongly applied.
13We can help people to find the right principles. But it is their own business and responsibility to apply them.
1When the validity of the law of rebirth (the law of new and better opportunities) has been clearly seen, this knowledge is a liberating factor. It clarifies that responsibility is inevitable. It also brings about understanding of the past, the meaning of the present and the infinite possibilities of the future.
2Mankind cannot stop the process of development. Individuals can refuse to learn from experience, refuse to use their awakening reason. It is up to them to decide whether they wish to use ten, one hundred or one thousand incarnations to learn what they could learn during their present lives. The mills of life grind slowly. But finally the goal is reached although after innumerable painful incarnations, so completely unnecessary.
3We all have, ever since the barbarian stage, acquired all good and bad qualities, everyone to some or many per cent (“original sin”). According to the Law (law of reaping, law of destiny and law of development), we are born into an environment where certain qualities are particularly cultivated. Many have realized that “if my destiny were different, then I would perhaps have been either a criminal or a minor saint”. The more we try to “be better”, the greater the prospects of being born into families, etc. where just the good qualities are actualized and activated. According to our idiosyncrasies, determined by destiny, our environment influences us more or less in one direction or another.
4At the stages of barbarism and civilization, the law of reaping asserts itself more strongly; at the stages of culture and humanity, however, the law of destiny is more powerful. The esoteric saying, “love brings all earthly karma to an end”, intimates that the essential self is free from the energies of the law of reaping (good as well as bad reaping). Anyone who has entered into unity cannot be harmed by anything.
5Those who have reached the higher developmental stages (the mystic and humanist stages) unconsciously live in harmony with the laws of life, whatever world view and life view they have, whether they know anything of the Law or not. They have acquired most good qualities to high percentages.
6We still know too little of how the factors of the laws of freedom, self, destiny, and reaping modify one another in each particular case to be able to judge events or predict individual results. In that respect the destiny of the individual incarnation is always “a walk in the dark” even for causal selves.
7The law of reaping alone does not teach us. It is when the reaping is adjusted according to the law of destiny that we may understand and learn.
8It is the very meaning of evolution (consciousness development) that everything is subject to the law of change. All views are temporary, are applicable during a certain epoch. Only life ignorance takes them to be permanent. That should teach people not to make views absolute, teach them to see the insufficiency of their knowledge. Fanatics of all kinds have a perverse instinct of life. In the newspapers, diverse writers assert opinions that are already obsolete. The views of the day are superseded by new ones faster than most people seem inclined to realize or concede; this is particularly so in the present age which revolutionizes everything connected with world views and life views. This will go on until the reality ideas, the Platonic ideas, the causal ideas have been accepted as the only rational working hypothesis. We are fast approaching an epoch where everything’s conformity to law will be more clearly seen than ever before. There are risks to this as long as it is not clearly realized what law means. That idea has nothing to do with the conceptions of ignorance and the legislations of arbitrariness. Law is the constant relation in immutable actions of force that bring about incessant changes.
1Life is struggle, conflict. That is an old truism, which means that the truth of it has ceased to have a psychological effect any longer like everything trite. The saying is not an empty phrase, however, but truth. Probably, only an esoterician can understand its true significance. Because that requires a knowledge of reality that mankind still lacks. Life is a continuous struggle between right and wrong, between good and evil, between higher and lower, between the ideology of common sense and idiotizing idiologies. Common sense is the result of the life experience which mankind has gathered during millions of years, a very hard-earned experience the true value of which none but the esoterician can understand. Contrary to the two fundamental intellectual norms of common sense, philosophers never let this be this but must always make it something else and too easily accept any vagary as a reality idea; thus they accept things without sufficient grounds. Philosophers have always been the enemies of common sense.
2Life is struggle, for it is an eternal conflict between those who want to develop and those who fight evolution (consciousness development). Life is struggle, for all life is subject to the law of change and ignorant man is opposed to change if it does not, at least apparently, satisfy his egoism. Life is struggle for all want more than they need and those desires are always satisfied at the expense of others.
3Everything that does not serve evolution counteracts it. That, too, is an insight mankind must win if it does not want to end up in chaos. Striving after power for any other motive than serving evolution thus is a mistake. This insight also includes the understanding that nobody can avoid abusing power who uses power without special permission from a higher kingdom. This principle applies all the way up through all the kingdoms. It is true that each atomic world has its own laws of nature and laws of life. But as the matter aspect in the entire cosmos makes up a continuous and integrated whole, this is also the case with laws of nature and laws of life. Individuals in lower worlds or kingdoms thus always run the risk of making mistakes on account of their ignorance of the laws of the next higher superconscious world and this is why it is necessary to ask permission from those in higher kingdoms. Thus the reason is not anything like self-will in higher kingdoms, and the necessary supervision for the prevention of intentional abuse of power is another matter.
4The problem of good and evil is the problem of conformity to law. As long as there are law-breakers there must (according to the law of cause and effect) also be evil in the world. As long as we make mistakes as to the “laws of health” (hygiene, diet, etc.) there will be disease. You can go on applying this analogy to all conditions.
5Christian Science denies the law of cause and effect, denies imperfection, denies the existence of evil, denies development, denies common sense. It is typical of the total disorientation in life, of the confused thinking and lack of logic of our modern times that such notions have been accepted.
6But then science set a good example, denying what it could have ascertained itself: the possibility of magic, the power of mental energy over physical matter. We should have left that stage behind us.
7The ruling idiologies in religion, philosophy, and science must be destroyed to make room for the esoteric knowledge. This is necessary since those totally mistaken views of reality, life and the Law idiotize mankind and make true understanding impossible. Criticism is obviously, not enough. The new tactic, “you should not criticize, you should not be negative” etc. is a satanic trick to counteract the esoteric knowledge. How can you make people see through perversion when all the authorities of the day sing its praises in all keys? There is a limit to everything. It is not lack of patience. That quality is there, and to excess. But if people refuse to adjust to the new cosmic vibrations, then a catastrophe is inevitable. Those vibrations will shatter everything that hinders the new forces of life from working purposively.
8So criticism is not enough. You must use strong words so that you make people listen, something that can be heard above the noise and din of the satanists. If such things annoy some people, it is their own fault. They want to have their spiritual corns wrapped up into the softest fur.
9Everyone who sees the necessity of fighting lies and hatred, stand up in the name of truth and swear off this cult of lies! The time has come to speak out and act, the time of silence and suffering under the satanist yoke is gone.
10The planetary hierarchy has prepared for this revolution for the past five hundred years. The religious wars during the 17th century, the social revolution during the 18th century, the scientific revolution during the 19th century and the two world wars have prepared for the last blow, the death-blow to lies, hatred, inhumanity, to all that barbarism called culture. Has it not unmasked itself clearly enough?
1Whenever there is any personal interest in our actions, they fall under the laws of destiny and reaping, and we are bound and responsible for the consequences.
2The same is true of all expressions of hatred (repulsion), since it violates the law of unity. Only impersonal love (attraction to life and unity) grants perfect freedom, since no crimes against laws of life are possible thereby.
3What is said here is fundamental and must be clearly recognized if misunderstanding of laws of life is to be avoided.
4We get a wholly different idea of responsibility when we know that our relations to people are causes of future effects. We shall meet again in new lives and sowing will be reaped. We shall meet our friends and “enemies” again. It depends on us whether they can benefit or harm us. Whether we know it or not.
5Some hints have been given as to collective responsibility, but there is much yet to study until it has been clearly understood. So much should be said, however, that this responsibility applies for all group formations, from kingdoms of nature to twos and threes of individuals.
6Therefore, man is responsible for mankind, his race, his nation, his class, his clan, his relatives, his closest family, etc., just to mention the ties of nature. And his responsibility is very real, even though the individual thinks contrarily and cannot grasp the justification for that law. But the individual has in all times derived advantages from collectives of all kinds, even though he has never understood, and so he must share in the disadvantages: in the bad reaping the collective reaps from its bad sowing.
7One example. What makes us kill animals without sowing a bad sowing in that respect is due to the collective responsibility of the animal world for the fact that animals have killed men during millions of years. This has nothing to do with our animal food and is no defence for unsuitable diet.
8We are responsible for all we contact. We affect them either positively through loving understanding or negatively through coldness, a critical attitude, or a repulsive behaviour. Since all our consciousness expressions have their effects, we have either benefited or harmed them, which results in our good or bad sowing.
9We are all accessaries in all mistakes made. That is the law of co-responsibility from which nobody can free himself as a co-partner of the human kingdom. When we have paid our debts to life, to mankind, then we belong to the fifth kingdom. When mankind has acquired common sense, then it will apply the laws of life. That is the only way of making good the evil we have done, avoid new mistakes, and make physical life a paradise.
10Nobody in the whole cosmos is “free from responsibility”, since the meaning of life is consciousness development for all in the cosmos, individually and collectively. All are subject to the laws of unity, development and self-realization. The higher any being has attained, the greater its responsibility and its understanding of this responsibility. Anyone who thinks that he is free from responsibility is the victim of his life ignorance (fictionalism) and egoism (illusionism). Then it is quite another matter that man’s conception of responsibility often is totally abortive. Many people use the word “responsibility” in order to abuse power and to defend all manner of arbitrariness. Instead, this is lack of responsibility and has serious consequences in future lives.
11Every mistake must be atoned for. Anyone who has been cruel will be cruelly treated. Anyone who has succeeded in lying will later on be distrusted when telling the truth. Anyone who judges will be judged. All this is inevitable law.
12Violations of the law brings about suffering, which is the sign indicating that balance is redressed. That is why the great ones will not or cannot help, because that would amount to hindering development.
13We have committed so many misdeeds in the past, that if we literally atoned for them by undergoing the exactly equal amount of suffering, then no development could exist. Because we have killed we need not be killed. There are other ways of obliterating past crimes. When we have become causal selves and are able to study our past incarnations, we shall also be able to ascertain which violations have not been atoned for yet. Then it will be our task to seek out those whom we have outraged and make good in a positive way that fully outweighs the evil we have done to them. Generally, this takes many incarnations. One thing is certain. Whatever misfortunes befall us, they are just bad reaping out of bad sowing.
14The past is not irrevocable. Whatever man has done he can undo. The amends of love can make good reaping out of bad sowing. Mechanical justice works only in case justice cannot be satisfied in any other way.
15“The powers of destiny” (those 43-selves within the various parallel evolutions who concertedly fix the horoscope for the individual) do not consider what the individual “believed”. It does not lessen his responsibility. No church has ever succeeded in procuring any change in that respect. By its presumptuous claims the church incurs debts that the authors of these lies and their successors must stand for some time in the future, in this or in other natural kingdoms. The consequences will be heavy, with necessary amends.
16Believing is either an attempt at throwing responsibility on others or at leading an irresponsible life. Agnosticism, atheism, skepticism are as much belief as is any other kind of dogmatism. According to the Law, it is up to man to accept or reject, and all on his own responsibility. For the mentalist the responsibility is greater, as he has a greater ability of judgement. Either you know or you do not know. Assumptions are made at your own risk. “Believing”, however, is not possible any more at that stage.
17It should be pointed out that you cannot disclaim your own co-responsibility for anything, however many times you “wash your hands”. Any compromise whatever as to right and wrong in respect of the Law is a mistake about the Law (of cause and effect). Praying for “grace” is as meaningless as praying to the fire not to burn while putting your hand into it. It is the dharma of the fire to burn and it cannot do otherwise.
1Everything has its price. When we receive knowledge from the planetary hierarchy we incur a debt that we must pay. That is probably an incomprehensible fact for most people but should cause them to reflect. All the messengers from the planetary hierarchy have paid dearly for their largely failed attempts at conveying to mankind some few fragments of the knowledge of life. That, too, constitutes a debt that must be paid and also has been partially paid in the form of those senseless interpretations by misguiding authorities whom mankind has let itself be guided by, not understanding that we are responsible for our choice of guides. We have been given our reason in order to use it. We have been given a sufficient number of mutually contradictory authorities to be able to make comparisons and so develop our power of judgement however weak it still is in most respects. Omitting to develop this power is apparently still one of the many mistakes in life that people make. Thinking is so troublesome; it is much more comfortable to trust to what others have thought and said. But life is a hard schoolmaster, demanding that we do what we can, however little it be. Life entails responsibility. We have not been allowed to incarnate in order to abuse life and omit to learn what we can learn. One of the many life tasks of human beings (and they increase in numbers as we reach higher stages) is to strive for consciousness development, for that is the meaning of our life in the physical world, the only world giving us this opportunity, since in the emotional and mental worlds in between incarnations we live a mere subjective life determined by the “ideas” we have procured in physical life. In those worlds we learn nothing new beyond the possibilities of reflection we have already acquired. The fact that people believe they have been able to learn something from individuals in the emotional world and have faith in spiritist “messages from the beyond” just testifies to the usual ignorance of life. The facts that the causal self’s emotional envelope is empty of any consciousness content and the essential self’s mental envelope is empty of any content should be sufficient information about the value of the knowledge content of these worlds. Only the causal world affords knowledge, a fact that Platon vainly tried to teach the philosophers who talk nonsense about what Platon meant by the world of ideas.
2Knowledge entails responsibility. If anybody thinks that hylozoics exists in order to be pleasantly enjoyed in a comfortable armchair by the fire, exists in order that the student may feel superior and pride himself of his capacity, despising those who “grasp nothing”, then he is in serious error. Abuse of the knowledge does not in the least need to mean that there will be no new opportunity to study esoterics in the next incarnation. The laws of life are not so simply arranged as stupidity may imagine. There are old initiates who have quite simply lost their capacity for understanding so that no effort whatever makes any difference. Mental molecules cannot simply penetrate into the brain-cells to effectuate any remembrance anew. In that case, the knowledge is not just entirely new, it is quite incomprehensible.
1The esoterician is taught that trust in life and in the law has great significance. Without his understanding it he may utilize the energies of superconsciousness. As soon as he has reached a rational and to him irrevocable decision, his right motive brings in idea-matter-energies that have a guiding significance for his further activity.
2Without trust in Life and without trust in the Law man is the perpetual victim of fear. If you want to use the word “god” instead of “law” and “life”, you may do so. Then it just shows that you lack the esoteric knowledge. Life is the cosmic organization of the gods. Law is the infallible, incorruptible law of eternal justice; a law of nature and a law of life.
3The laws of life contain no promises or false prospects of help from outside or similar unreliabilities. All find on their levels what they need when they apply the insight they have acquired. Nobody need to worry. Nobody who wants the right is on the wrong path. That man is for ever freed from fear and worry who has reached the insight: best as it was, is, will be.
4The Law of Life is no demand. For anyone who makes a mistake it is just absolute equal re-action. The powers of destiny require no absurdities, just the application of informed common sense. Ignorant reason is not common sense, which presupposes knowledge.
5Many people want to have detailed rules so as to know how to act in every situation. But that will not produce any consciousness development, which is possible only through self-initiated consciousness activity. We must stop being robots that just parrot and imitate. It is better to make mistakes than to robotize. We make mistakes anyhow, but if there is loving understanding, then we learn through our mistakes and sow a good sowing, since the motive is the essential thing. But what theologians (and particularly jesuits) have not understood is that these motives can never include the principle of “doing evil so that good may come thereof”.
6By our unchecked habit of absolutifying instead of relativizing we counteract what we must learn: the sense of proportion, a sense that enters into perspective consciousness. Every situation always contains something unique and so requires a special application. Rules like principles may orient us. But they must be applied with discrimination, be modified, suited to each particular case, and that is what loving understanding will help us to do.
7Just as it is meaningless to change your religion when you have grown up in a certain religion, so it is unnecessary to change from one esoteric system to another. The religious systems belong to the emotional stage, and you can become a mystic (in the spheres of attraction) in any one of them. The esoteric mental systems probably satisfy what an individual usually needs. The whole proselytizing and propaganda business testifies to a lack of faith in life. Anyone who needs to change esoteric systems will find his way too, the more easily so as everything is accessible in literature.
8It is the same with “the light in the head” as with innate clairvoyance. They are atavistic phenomena that we are wise in leaving as such. Experiments with “the light” can make the individual blind, and clairvoyance strengthens illusoriness. The wisest thing you can do is not to experiment with things which you have not the requisite facts about. When the time is right, you will be given knowledge of the right method. A lesson that must be thoroughly learned is “to be able to wait”. He can do that who knows the Law, has acquired trust in life and trust in the law. Whatever you shall have you will acquire automatically with the right insight. Everything depends on the right attitude and common sense. Anyone who tries to reach the knowledge in any defiant manner will unfailingly be misled. Swedenborg, Ramakrishna, Steiner and all other self-appointed prophets were to experience that. Superphysical knowledge is a deliberate gift from the planetary hierarchy.
9“Obedience” is a quality as well as an ability. But anyone who has acquired understanding of the Law (the sum total of all laws of nature and laws of life) obeys only what accords with the Law. The more rationally (free of fanaticism and with common sense) he succeeds in doing so, the sooner he will reach the fifth natural kingdom. Under no circumstances will he obey anything that to him obviously conflicts with the Law, no matter if this “authority” is given out to be god almighty. There is no religion higher than truth and there is no god above the Law.
10It is true that no society can endure without obedience to the laws of the community. But such laws must in no single point conflict with the laws of life, particularly not the law of freedom and the law of unity.
11Only the laws of life afford freedom. By obeying the Law man will be free. That is one of the many paradoxes of esoterics.
12The two ideals that show the wanderer the shortest path to the next higher kingdom are called: law and unity.
1“God” (the seven ever higher divine kingdoms) is not omnipotent in the sense that he can suspend or violate the Law. That is a thing which theologians have never understood and cannot understand. The properties which theologians attribute to the deity, namely lawless arbitrariness, would turn the cosmos into chaos.
2The scientific view of laws is in actual fact incomparably more exact. But the emotionalists want a sentimental god who listens to their prayers. Still mankind is too primitive and ignorant to judge the effect of prayer as well as the energy effect of other kinds of consciousness expressions. The more these expressions accord with the Law, the greater their effect. “Love” is (according to a 45-self) the unyielding determination to do what you realize to be best for mankind and do it as if your own life were at stake.
3“Also the manner in which flowers are fertilized evinces all the signs of clear thinking and a thorough knowledge of the laws of nature. Wherever you look you see plants making such use of the laws of nature as surpasses the capacity of the most skilled scientists.”
4If even theologians begin to see that the works of nature are applications of the knowledge of natural laws, then they have taken a great step towards common sense and the insight that the wisdom and power of the godhead are revealed in the application of natural laws and are not the result of divine arbitrariness.
5At any event god does nothing that mankind can do. Everybody must do his job. Such is the law. God does his job and not ours.
6Arbitrariness is lawlessness, typical of the barbaric stage. All children pass through that stage. The sooner you inculcate the necessity of law, the more easily children are able to orient themselves in reality.
7Laws are energies acting constantly in constant relations. The monads become the Law, personify the Law, in as much as they learn to function without friction with the laws inherent in the aspects of life, the constant relations in events. Thus higher kingdoms function as one single will.
8The seven divine kingdoms are simultaneously governments for lower worlds and for the monads in these worlds. They administer the three governmental functions without which life would not be possible. The administrators of the motion aspect are called guardians of the law; those of the consciousness aspect, guides of evolution; and those of the matter aspect, formers of matter. It is the task of the guardians of the law to see to it that the cosmos does not degenerate into chaos.
9You have completely misunderstood the individuals in the planetary hierarchy and planetary government if you believe that the least trace of arbitrariness can be found in them. To them, everything is according to law, and anything conflicting with the Law, as they know it, is unthinkable. The planetary government is legislative in so far as it can purposefully direct constant energies.
10In 44-selves and ever higher selves, the power aspect manifests itself more and more strongly. The higher a self, the more necessary it is that this self totally identifies with the Law, necessary because otherwise dynamis will have an annihilating effect.
1145-selves still have human relations to consider and then have not entered the planetary divine kingdom (worlds 43 and 44).
1The planetary hierarchy has another view of the Law than have men. Different laws are in force in the different kingdoms with the different qualities of the three aspects of reality in the pertaining worlds. That is a problem not directly concerning us. The problem concerning us is that of the Law in the worlds of man and the work of the planetary hierarchy for making men realize how they should apply the Law, a thing they must learn to do some time. The planetary hierarchy wishes to spare mankind unnecessary sufferings which otherwise, or before mankind has learnt what it must be able to do, will never come to an end.
2In the first place, the problem concerns the law of freedom. It is a fundamental law of life and perhaps the law that is the hardest to understand.
3According to the planetary hierarchy, the will is free only when it accords with the Law, when man has learnt to rightly apply the Law. Before that, the freedom of the will comes into conflict with the Law and counteracts the meaning and goal of life, a goal which reason accepts when it has seen that this goal is purposeful and inevitable. Into the concept of freedom men have always put so much arbitrariness that they cannot see that freedom and law are the same thing but conceive of these two as being opposed to each other. From this misapprehension stems the basic conflict in man’s relation to life.
4The law of life is harmony, and the harmony of the individual wills is a necessary condition of the continuance and development of life. In the expression “the will to unity” inheres also “the freedom of the will”, for freedom is possible only when the wills are in harmony, when the wills have seen the inevitability of the Law and the necessity of applying it in the only right way. Violation of the Law entails unfreedom, and therefore right application of the law is the only possibility of enduring freedom.
5Basically, the problem is even deeper. All individuals have an inalienable share in the cosmic total consciousness. Something more is contained in that, however. For consciousness is inseparable from motion, activity, energy, will. In the concept of cosmic total consciousness is also the concept of cosmic will. And this will cannot be divided against itself. Therein is its unity. It also must accord with the Law (the sum total of all laws of nature and laws of life). Therein is its accordance with law. The individual is free as long as he does not violate the Law. Therein is his freedom. In the harmony of wills is the “consummation of the Law”.
6In the law of development there are forces that act purposively towards the goal of life, purposive cosmic forces that work automatically in some respects and in other respects influence the instinct of life to an ever higher degree, for example as the will to live, the will to develop, the will to unity. It is of little significance whether we conceive of these forces as cosmic ideas or as the collective will of higher kingdoms.
7In lower kingdoms these forces attract automatized activities and expressions of adaptation.
8The esoterician can ascertain that the attractive vibrations in individuals at the cultural stage eventually affect essential atoms in the emotional molecular kinds to strive for unity towards essentiality, one of the phenomena that have been symbolized by “god immanent”.
9Evolution is a law of life, no law of nature but a law of consciousness, formulated by the highest (seventh) divine kingdom and, subsequently, by the other six kingdoms, functioning with the same inevitability as a law of nature. Mankind, too, has a possibility of collaborating, in as much as it can increase the tempo. And this mankind does by getting to know the Law and applying it correctly. That is a thing the individual must learn before he may count on attaining the fifth natural kingdom, the first kingdom living exclusively for evolution, methodically, systematically, purposefully. Hitherto men have done little but counteract evolution. But then they have succeeded in making the physical and emotional worlds a hell for themselves and others, although these worlds could be paradises. They counteract their own development and that of others, increase the number of necessary incarnations by tens of thousands and fill their future incarnations with sufferings of all sorts. The day when the majority or the decisive minority resolves to apply the Law, then that “curse” which mankind has laid on itself, the slave-labour for the sustenance of life, will be lifted. That is no fancy, no mere beautiful dream, no utopia, but the inevitable consequence of applying the law. Of course the wise of this world smile at such folly. But suppose they ventured the enterprise as an experiment. There is no harm in trying. The planetary hierarchy guarantees.
1The cosmos has been formed in order that the individuals may have a possibility of acquiring consciousness and final omniscience. This plan is actualized in many different kinds of processes of manifestation, which afford the individuals all the opportunities and possibilities they need for their development. These processes of course must go on according to law and be methodical. This has nothing to do with inexorable destiny as the usual injudiciousness conceives of it.
2All monads are free in the respect that no god in the entire cosmos can forbid anything or judge anybody. The constraint exercised on the individual by energies that act according to laws of nature and laws of life is conditioned by his level of development and exists only in so far as the individual is defenceless against forces of nature, insuperable circumstances. When he has acquired a knowledge of the Law and rightly applies this knowledge, he is free to the extent of his knowledge and ability. Such fictions of ignorance as the doctrines of predestination, determinism, and fatalism are disastrous lies of life warring against reality. Like all other superstition they hamper development and paralyze abilities.
3Absolute freedom is an absurdity. It would mean that we all had the right to kill each other. Freedom without law abolishes itself. The freedom that ignorance shouts about is the right to arbitrariness, self-will, the right to propagate misleading illusions and fictions. Freedom presupposes limits. And these limits of life are laws of nature and laws of life. Only by acquiring a knowledge of these laws and an ability to apply them can we acquire the highest degree of freedom. The more ignorant we are, the less free we are, since we do not know the laws or how we are to apply them. Development entails increased freedom through increased insight, increased knowledge of reality and of the laws of life.
4The law is, first and foremost, freedom. The law is freedom for without freedom there is no development of individual character. Saying this entails some risks, because men have a tendency, acquired over incarnations, to abuse any freedom as well as power. Self-assertion and self-glory seem to be the fundamental qualities in all individuals with a repulsive basic tendency, and they are the majority. As long as there is an inherent tendency to “defy the law”, the result will not be more but less freedom.
5Life is freedom. Without freedom there is no development, which is the meaning of life. Every individual must find his own way of developing. This is impossible without freedom. Life is law. Because without the knowledge of the laws of existence man cannot exist but annihilates his envelopes. It is by assimilating the collected and worked-up experiences of mankind that the individual unsuspectingly avoids making those serious mistakes in life that without this knowledge would be unavoidable. The knowledge of the laws of nature and life makes historical experience somewhat superfluous, since it is these laws that man instinctively discovers through the collective experience.
6Freedom is for those who have acquired “the will to unity” (despite everything) and the will to promote the evolution of all monads, for those who have renounced all “power” for evermore (including the desire to criticize, judge, moralize, and decide for others). Supreme power affords the greatest possible freedom though always within the limits of self-acquired knowledge, insight, and understanding of law. Life-ignorants as well as children are given freedom to the extent that they prove to be able to use it rationally.
7The will is not “free” but determined by motives, by the strongest motive. Increased freedom means increased understanding of a greater number of possibilities to choose, the insight of how to make any motive whatever the strongest.
8Whatever exists has the right of Life to exist unless it denies other living beings the right to exist. Men are no judges in matters of life, only Life is. But ignorance and hatred in nice concert find presumption an easy thing.
9Others may! You must not! And that depends on the laws of destiny and reaping.
10Man is “guided” by his waking consciousness, his unconscious and his circumstances.
11Not everything spontaneous is genial, but spontaneity may provide scope for geniality. Spontaneity is a flow from our unconscious, sub-and superconscious, a manifestation of our freedom which makes us happy.
12Law of life does not just give us duties but also rights. It is our right as well as our duty to be free, free from everything that does not agree with our individual character, our way of looking at things, our capacity for comprehension, understanding, and realization. That is a truth we must take in. We are no slaves to the arbitrary will of any god. The meaning of our life is that we shall actualize our potential godhood. In as much as we strive for this we stand on the firm foundation of the law of freedom. The law of god says that all shall be gods. However, so abysmally ignorant is man that he believes himself able to become a god, he who is still in the fourth natural kingdom of twelve in all, he who has not yet explored and mastered the three lowest atomic worlds of 49 in all.
13The law of freedom affords greater freedom to those who rightly use the freedom they individually have at their disposal in their circumstances of life. Most people abuse this freedom and thereby think they increase their freedom, which is the most serious mistake in life man can make (and which so-called geniuses of the Nietzschean type are preferably fond of making).
14In his boundless ignorance of life man believes that the circumstances of life that curtail his freedom are the work and fault of other men. A big mistake. Men are the blind agents of life, and what we must suffer on their part is our own work, our own abuse of freedom.
1The absolute basis of the law of freedom and the individual’s right to divine inviolability rest on the fact that each primordial atom is a potential godhead. It will some time in the process of manifestation, even though at the end of a practically unlimited number of eons, finally become also an actual godhead. Absolutely, the number of eons must be limited. It is by no means unthinkable that the number may differ between one cosmos and another.
2The law of freedom is the guarantee that the destiny of the individual is not predetermined and refutes the dogma of predestination. Likewise fatalism is a perverse view of life. No god can violate man’s “free” will (which in this very respect is free). Every monad is a potential god and this godhead cannot be violated by anyone knowing the law of freedom.
3The philosopher H. F. Amiel says that “freedom makes us gods, holiness bends our knees”. It is true that we are potential gods (god immanent), but the divine stage we do not attain as men. If we were not potential gods we could not become actual gods. That was the meaning of the originally esoteric saying: “Become what you are.” As human beings we cannot become gods but without our striving to do so our incarnations will miss the mark.
4The planetary hierarchy emphatically asserts that the self is its own authority (the self having self-consciousness in the causal envelope) and, besides, the only authority of a book is that its content agrees with reality. No individual as such is an authority. If any church, government, academy, etc. makes dictatorial claims, then everybody has a right to point out that such claims war against the law of freedom and the law of self-realization.
5Lawful freedom is a condition of the development of individual character. That freedom means freedom from slavery to the authority of others, when such an authority has been forced on us and we have realized that the claims of this power to act as an authority are unwarranted. Any authority is hostile to life which lacks the knowledge of reality and life and the laws of life and tries to force the individual to accept the illusions and fictions of life ignorance. Ever since the planetary hierarchy was banished, the ignorance of life has held sway. A true knowledge of world history during the last twelve thousand years would clarify that human life during this epoch has by and large been nameless suffering. The esoterician maintains that only the planetary hierarchy possesses a knowledge of reality, life, the Law. The ideal state will not be realized until mankind has called the planetary hierarchy back.
6Criticism which is aimed at a person’s own circumstances as a private individual, which thus violates the individual’s right to freedom according to the law of freedom, is not warranted and can never be defended.
7We have no duty whatsoever to inform others about our motives. The wise never do so, for it enhances the possibilities of others to interfere with our life of thought and action.
8Confession as a demand on others is a violation of the law of freedom. The Catholic Church’s demand for confession shows that this church is ignorant of the law of freedom. It is, moreover, ignorant of all the other laws of life.
9The mistake made by all occult societies or schools is that they prescribe to people how they should form their private lives. The law of freedom grants men full freedom in that respect. It is the individual’s private business whether he wants to be a vegetarian, give up smoking and drinking alcohol, etc. On the other hand, it is not our private business how we relate to our fellow human beings. It is better to be an agnostic and eat beef-steak than to interfere with other people’s business, speak ill of others, and hate them. For such things are proof of hypocrisy and a Big Brother attitude.
10When the individual is given the knowledge of reality and life and the laws of life, then he will, himself and to the best of his ability, arrange his private life, which he has a right to keep in peace from other people. When he has acquired perspective consciousness and can begin to plan for becoming an aspirant to discipleship, then he knows better than all moralists together how he is to arrange his life. In any case he is no moralist. He has become needless in all respects, and needlessness is to him the most strived-for condition. The needs of others are not of his concern. Everybody forms his life in his own way. Everybody has his own experiences to be had, and the law of destiny sees to it that he also may learn from them, even if it takes time. The Law is in no hurry. It knows when the right time has come. Sowing is to be reaped and the causal consciousness sees and learns, comprehends and understands. When the fund of experiences is sufficient, then the self has also learnt its lessons and will assimilate what it needs using the intuition it has acquired.
1The old dispute of “man’s free-will” is not settled yet. Mankind is unable to settle it at its present stage of development. The learned constantly occupy themselves with problems which they are unable to solve, being also unable to realize their own incompetence for the task. Their ineradicable tendency to speculate spoils everything. They do not seem to comprehend that it is their very fictions that hinder them from discovering reality.
2“Free-will” presupposes knowledge of the Law and understanding of life. Men’s will is determined by motives of ignorance. It is impossible to speak of “free-will” with regard to a mankind that is disoriented, idiotized, and hypnotized by the black lodge.
3To be able to solve the problem of free-will, we must possess a knowledge of the universal accordance to law there is in life (the Law) as well as of the laws of development and self-realization. Without a knowledge of these three factors, the problem is insoluble.
4The fact that life accords with laws is a prerequisite of purposeful action.
5Hindrances to free choice are ignorance and inability. Inability includes lack of qualities, habits, complexes, lack of will-energy.
6Right choice implies agreement with the Law though not with religious commands, prohibitions, and human inventions of other kinds.
7A choice in agreement with the Law entails various possibilities of free choice.
8A mistake as to the application of the Law entails a limitation of the possibilities of free choice.
9As the possibility of free choice increases, responsibility (the effects of right or wrong choice according to law) also increases.
10Anyone who has acquired the capacity for responsibility is free within the sphere of his knowledge.
11The possibility of free choice increases with each higher natural kingdom, since this higher one implies increased knowledge of the Law and increased ability to apply it.
12Knowledge is knowledge of the Law. The ability to rightly apply knowledge is wisdom.
13We learn through making mistakes. Every failure implies a valuable experience. Every attempt and striving is one step towards the goal.
14Freedom is an ability that must be acquired. No law can be “suspended”. The ability to fly does not suspend gravitational law but implies a knowledge and an application of that law as well as many other laws.
15Law is a constant relation between things: under given conditions a given result follows inevitably.
16“Free will” is a phrase that is false to facts. By it is meant the ability of self-consciousness to choose freely between various kinds of thoughts, feelings, or actions (consciousness expressions in the mental, emotional, and physical world). We live in three different worlds simultaneously. The individual can be relatively free in one world and relatively unfree in the other two.
17Man has no “free will” as long as he is dependent on authority. Self-determination is the first condition of “free will”. Working hypothesis means independent acceptance and therein lies implicitly an acceptance “for the time being”.
18From the beginning, the individual’s possibility of free choice is tremendously limited. It increases along with consciousness development. Esoterically, it is true that there is “a tendency to free will”, expressing itself in the demand for freedom and independence, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, right to self-determination. The will is truly free in the esoteric sense only when it accords with the Law and unity, because then nothing can hinder its realization.
19A will in opposition to life is an arbitrary will. Violation of the law of freedom in the case of the individual or nation, etc., has the result, according to the law of reaping, that freedom is lost. That is, however, something that mankind in its self-importance and almost total life ignorance cannot understand as yet. Evolution is a fundamental law of life. Egoism constitutes an opposition to this law, since the prerequisite of evolution is the unity of life. Only when theologians “have discovered” the Law, have they a right to speak of “the will of god”. Before that their notion of “the will of god” is dictated by their life ignorance.
20“Free will” is an ability that must be acquired to an ever greater extent through all the natural kingdoms up into the highest kingdom.
21The higher a being is, the more pronounced is the individual character, which is the freedom of life. The one essential feature in all is the understanding of the Law and the ability to conform to law. But that has nothing to do with individual character.
22The planetary hierarchy energetically asserts that there is no such thing as an inexorable destiny. Man has the possibility of “free will” by acquiring knowledge of the Law (laws of nature and life) and applying this knowledge. The horoscope vibrations that affect man cannot affect his will, so in that respect man has, theoretically, a “free will”. What may have the effect of force on him is his own good or bad sowing in lives past. However, if man uses the opportunities offered by life to make good the evil he has done, then the otherwise inescapable bad reaping is averted and the debt is settled.
23What in religious literature has been called “divine guidance” is due to telepathic contact either with individuals in the emotional or mental world or with thought forms (elementals) in the same worlds. It does not originate, however, from members of the planetary hierarchy, since these may not influence man’s free will. When the individual has come into contact with his Augoeides, then he may counsel. But that contact presupposes the stage of humanity, service, and obedience to the Law.
1Freedom presupposes accordance with the Law. We are free only to the extent that we act purposefully. Otherwise we meet with resistance, a resistance that causes friction and shows us that the path is not free. The application of law entails freedom.
2The individual’s freedom is a result of development. Freedom is not anything that is but something that must be acquired during the sojourn in the human kingdom; the acquisition of knowledge of the laws in the human worlds and the ability to apply this knowledge. Man becomes free by identifying himself with an attainable ideal, by developing emotional attraction and mental understanding, by applying the law according to his own insight, by fulfilling his duties and willingly reaping old sowing. The laws of life coincide with the purpose of life. “Absolute” freedom is the accordance of the individual will with this purpose.
3The individual is free when he has entered into unity. He then lives without causing friction with others, in full harmony. He applies the law of unity and therefore automatically lives in harmony with the Law, since the law of unity is the sum of all the laws of life that work in self-realization.
4According to the law of freedom, every individual has a right to the freedom (conditioned by his understanding and ability) that he has once acquired and from then on applies according to law. Any mistake as to the law of freedom has the result that his possibility of freedom is curtailed. That curtailment can manifest itself in various respects: envelopes that are unserviceable for consciousness development, uncongenial environment, uncongenial social and cultural conditions. This fact can be ascertained only by studying hundreds of previous incarnations.
5Man is free to reincarnate however many times, thousands of times more than he would need.
6Freedom must be acquired by applying the law with as little friction as possible. In that respect it may be said that “knowledge is power”. Every ability acquired is a “power”, a mastering of a certain area. In this, skill and virtuosity, talent and “genius” can be distinguished. That “will to power”, which Nietzsche thought to be in all beings, is the striving for development, which also implies the acquisition of a certain ability, of ever more abilities.
7There is a deep experience of life behind the words of Goethe:
Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben,
der taglich sie erobern muss.
(Only he deserves freedom and life
who daily must win them.)
8Freedom is nothing that is given to us. From the beginning, we are automatized robots, “the sports of Fortune”, or as Christian theologians express the matter, “the slaves of sin”, or as philosophers state it, the victims of our unfree will. In the three lowest natural kingdoms we discover no freedom. The path to freedom goes through consciousness, self-consciousness, knowledge, the power to apply, the freedom to choose, the knowledge of the Law, the power to apply the Law. It is only by discovering and applying the Law that we gain power to an ever increasing extent. Lawlessness implies abuse of power and results in loss of power and impotence. To be able to definitively ascertain this it must be possible for us to study our previous incarnations. The esoteric axiom, “the world’s history is the world’s tribunal”, will be generally accepted only when the esoteric history is publicized some time in the future. Exoteric history as well as theology, philosophy, and science are subjective imaginative constructions on the basis of far too few facts. They afford no true knowledge of reality. That knowledge we contact only through esoterics.
1Since everything is misinterpreted and distorted, of course this will also be the case with hylozoics, esoterics, the idea of laws of life, etc. The only thing to be said on this is that esoterics is for those who have attained the stage of humanity, have acquired common sense and realize their total ignorance of life, and, above all, do not express opinions on things that go beyond their power of judgement. The law of freedom is freedom and law, not freedom without law, not law without freedom. The law of freedom guarantees the freedom of everybody. Anyone who makes himself a law to others suspends his own freedom.
2Spinoza’s philosophy of necessity, which excludes freedom, is as abortive as Fichte’s philosophy of freedom, which makes a system of arbitrariness. Where the boundary goes between freedom and law will always be a bone of contention at the stage of ignorance. But laws of life as well as laws of nature are (irritatingly enough to people of a certain type) things that people fortunately cannot change, although they of course will try to deny their existence or believe themselves able to “abolish” them.
3Our right to freedom is limited by the equal right of all. There the limit goes. Mankind has not realized even this. And that is the first thing that educators should inculcate. Instead, they go on about all manner of prohibitions that are quite unimportant in the matter of principle. They idiotize the children from the very beginning and then they complain that youngsters behave like idiots. They have forgotten how they themselves, in their youth, through all kinds of painful experience gradually understood inevitable reciprocity, reciprocal consideration.
4Freedom is abused, as is power. From this it follows that the limit to freedom as well as to power goes where abuse, individual or collective, ends. Also knowledge is abused like everything else. But that is another story, even though the pertaining problems most often are connected with those of freedom.
5The esoterician grasps that the limits of freedom as well as of power must be different at different stages of development. For the causal self there are no such limits, which are necessary for the rest of mankind as long as it is found at the stage of upbringing and has not reached the world of Platonic ideas, and so it is because the individual as a causal self has come to know the fundamental laws of life, realized their inevitability, and learnt to apply them correctly.
6That these questions need to be discussed at all is, like most things, eloquent proof of the general cultural level and understanding of life.
7According to the law of freedom everybody has the right to think, feel, say, and do as he thinks fit within the limits of everybody’s equal right to that same inviolable freedom. It has been thought that that formulation is not sufficient, since most people are unable to decide where the limits to their own and other people’s right are and that the limits may appear different to different individuals. Then they forget that it is a matter of a law of life which holds good independently of their ability or inability to see limits. Those who have reached the humanist stage, however, and realize that the laws of life are inescapable (so that violations of them have inevitable consequences), try to apply them in their lives according to their knowledge and ability. Those laws are not impossible to comprehend even for the least intelligent.
8No formulation holds good as long as people cannot tell right from wrong, cannot distinguish the finer (ever finer) degrees of right and wrong (the “razor-edged” middle path). The formulation is quite sufficient for those who just want to do the right, who are not reckless egoists encroaching the right of others. For the latter, however, all formulations are unserviceable and the dividing-line between right and wrong must be carefully given in each particular case; a thing that jurists have sufficient experience of. But the law of freedom is not formulated for barbarians but for those who are able to grasp the laws of life and strive to gain an understanding of them, thus for those at the cultural stage.
9The principle remains firm, they may criticize it however much. Common sense, uprightness, the will to unity sees very clearly where the limit goes. The given formula accords fully with another one: Treat others as you would be treated by them. Superficial criticism has no place in any study of the Law.
1Life-ignorant idealists (all uninitiated “freaks” are such ones) have always worked chaos. They dream beautiful dreams of “freedom”, for instance, not knowing what freedom is and what its conditions are. How do they use freedom? To abuse it in most respects. They dream about “health for everybody”. What would they do with it?
2According to the planetary hierarchy, everything is given to mankind to the extent that we make use of it for our consciousness development and application of the laws of life. When we have learnt our lessons, can purposefully use freedom, health and all the other gifts of life (for everything is a gift even though man must reacquire whatever he once possessed), then we gain freedom and all the other things.
3The planetary hierarchy points out that mankind at its present stage of development cannot understand what “freedom” actually is. Nor can there be any “free will” other than the will that is in agreement with the law, just as the “will of god”, so thoroughly misinterpreted by theologians, is law and cannot be arbitrariness.
4To give a hint to those who begin to understand, it can be said that freedom is freedom from fear, accusing conscience, anguish in life, self-importance, sense of impotence, etc., with unlosable power on the level of development attained. Whoever is a slave of destiny is not free.
5The law of freedom is a fundamental law of life. It says that freedom is gained through law alone. Only by getting to know the laws of life and applying them in the right manner can man become free, the individual can develop, realize his individual character, reach higher kingdoms and finally acquire omniscience and omnipotence. We always identify ourselves with something. We become free from the lower by identifying ourselves with the higher. Man becomes free from dependence on his envelopes of incarnation only by identifying himself with the consciousness of his causal envelope. In our subconscious we are bound by everything we have identified ourselves with during thousands of incarnations. We liberate ourselves from its influence by acquiring the qualities and abilities that enable us to rightly apply the laws of life. We become free by becoming the Law, identifying ourselves with its constants, so that they act automatically.
6Men apprehend the concept of freedom as arbitrariness. There is no arbitrary freedom, for such mistaken freedom always leads to chaos. Lawless freedom means anarchy, the war of all against all. On that basis no society can be built or endure. That may be called the irrational concept of freedom. In as much as mankind has its experiences, also the ways of thinking, the ways of speaking, the ways of acting turn into new habits and to follow these automatically is also called freedom. But that is acquired freedom, even though people cannot see that. Freedom in the rational sense is enduring freedom, and that is possible only by correctly applying the knowledge of the laws of existence you have acquired. Any arbitrariness leads just to chaos and so to the abolishment of freedom. What has hindered this insight is the fact that what people think is knowledge is no knowledge but assumption. There is perhaps one per cent knowledge in it. What authorities call knowledge, when it is not one hundred per cent based on definitively ascertained facts, is arbitrariness. It is from this arbitrariness that mankind must first liberate itself. Authorities may well say that this is the standpoint of science today but that they by no means want to assert that it will not be something different tomorrow. Then we would be spared that idiotic cocksureness, which has been so characteristic of all kinds of professors during some millennia and which still rules public opinion, that backward, dictatorial wiseacreness ridiculing all new knowledge. Most truly new ideas are about a hundred years ahead of scientific opinion. And to see that obscurantism, ridiculing everything new, strutting about as if it had something to offer! A wee bit of modesty would become the representatives of science. They have still not explored more than one per cent of reality.
7Only he has a right to freedom who respects the equal right of all. The fact that it has been possible to regard the right to freedom as a right to arbitrariness, recklessness, testifies to the all too common injudiciousness. Lawlessness makes freedom impossible and leads to a war of all against all.
8Anyone who regards the laws of society as a violation of his own freedom has never realized that the laws are for the injudicious. The humanist needs no laws, since he knows the laws of life and applies that knowledge. Anyone who applies the laws of life can never come into conflict with any rational, universally human social laws. Regrettably, there is no cultured country having such laws as long as incompetence makes laws and incompetence rules.
9“Freedom is the supreme thing for him who well can use it.” That is correct. The barbarian is a vandal, can use freedom only for destruction. (The same thing can be seen in children during a certain transitory phase.) The law of life that has been called the law of freedom grants greater freedom to those who can rightly apply laws of nature and laws of life but limits the freedom of the abuser.
10A higher stage of development entails a greater possibility to rightly use freedom and thereby also a need and a demand for greater freedom. Anyone who has not learnt to rightly use freedom runs a great risk of self-destruction, in any case impedes his own development. The path of freedom is the path of development to culture, humanity, and ideality. The pertaining processes of life make the individual conscious of his individual character, his community, his unity with all and the contribution of individual character to general cultural development. It is a serious mistake to underrate the individual’s work. The most mechanical work is as important as work with ideas. And nobody needs to feel inferior or superfluous or useless. You could comfort those who wish to do “something big” that the day for that will come, too, and that also individuals at higher stages most often are found in humble stations. Exceptionally, they may in some incarnation be given an opportunity to demonstrate their capacity.
11We have a many thousand years experience of how far mankind is from the possibility of understanding the laws of life and, especially, the law of freedom. But since historians twaddle about everything but essentials, they have not presented these experiences, the most important ones for understanding life. Mankind persists in living in a dream-world of its own fancies. History should have been able to clarify that men are unripe for freedom and particularly those who bray most about it. They want freedom in order to come into power and to abuse it in their turn. They want freedom in order to be savages and beasts, to murder, to steal, falsify, and slander. Freedom is a concept that belongs to the stage of culture. Only there the individual knows what responsibility means and that responsibility is necessary as a condition of freedom. Before that, freedom will be the same as arbitrariness and recklessness. That was apparent already at the breakthrough of so-called democracy and has been most clearly illustrated in the so-called “struggle for freedom” of barbarian nations. The examples of the communist countries and the former colonies should cause people to reflect. They do not learn even from what they see and hear. The only thing that “goes in” is that they must have freedom.
12In a rationally governed state the individual has as much freedom as he is able to use in a rational way. There goes the limit to freedom. Regrettably, it will take thousands of years before we have such states.
13The four freedoms, which have been definitively established to apply for all nations that claim to be cultural and not barbarian nations, are:
- Full freedom of thought and expression for everybody.
- Full freedom for everybody to have his own world view and life view.
- Everybody’s right to means of physical existence.
- Everybody’s right to freedom from fear, which means protection against illegal actions and, where nations are concerned, disarmament (protection against war).
14These demands are in full agreement with the Law (the laws of life). They constitute the basic human rights.
15Everybody may judge himself what the world looks like, whether the prevailing conditions agree with these minimal demands.
1The law of freedom includes the principle of tolerance: to allow all people to hold their own views in peace from the criticism of others. Everybody has an absolute right to his own opinion. We have full freedom to hold the most erroneous views on everything. They will be corrected eventually during thousands of incarnations with more or less painful experiences.
2The fact that the individual has a right to his own view of life does not at all mean that his view is objectively correct, that it accords with reality. Since 99 per cent of most people’s opinions are erroneous, it should be realized that nobody has a right to say that his view is the only correct one. Practically everybody is wrong, although of course not in the same degree. The specialist knows immensely more within his sphere than does the layman. But he is not omniscient. The matter can be drastically expressed thus: the sooner man realizes that he is an idiot, the wiser he is.
3It is a difficult thing to be able to help others in the right way. We have no right whatever to blame them or criticize them, like moralists judge them. It is none of our business to “change” them. In order to be able to help, loving understanding is required. Without it we make nothing but mistakes. Having it, we always find ways and means. We all have the same faults although in different degrees. Sometimes we can confess our faults and show how we try to right them. But often the best way is to think lovingly of people and send them the thoughts that could wake them up to discover what may help them.
4The world view is important, enabling us to get a correct view of material reality. However important this view is (above all, as it liberates us from the ruling fictitinalism), it is not as important as the life view which bears on the consciousness aspect. For in this view the “community of souls”, the collective unity of all souls is expressed, ending individual opposition, individual self-assertion, which is the ground of division, conflict, hatred, and thereby also of failure through counteracting evolution. What opinions people hold in everything except this one essential thing, “the will to unity”, the will to community, is of small significance in comparison. We must learn that everybody has a right to his own view, which is conditioned by his level of development and his latent, previously acquired experience of life. The law of freedom guarantees everybody this right to his own view on everything. We must learn to disregard everything that may separate individuals and just regard the unity of life joining us all in the common consciousness.
5In esoterics, there is never a matter of persuading, convincing, forcing a certain view on people, be it the only correct on. You give them a hint. Then they must, according to the law of self-realization, seek and find on their own. If they refuse to do so, then they reject the offers of life on their own responsibility.
6It is immaterial who presented the view. Interest in the person is curiosity. Interest in the view, desire to know whether it is correct or incorrect, is thirst for knowledge. The esoterician has no interest whatsoever in knowing “who said it”. Besides, that is a thing that seldom can be settled. For “there is nothing new under the sun”, and ideas are accepted, are forgotten, and come up again in the course of development, which at the same time is that of the wave (one up, one down, one to, one fro) and that of the spiral.
7The fanatic wants to force his view on other people, which is not permitted. (You are not a fanatic merely because you want to be consistent as to our own way of life.) Any compulsion brings about setbacks sooner or later for everybody in this life or in future ones, because such things war against the fundamental law of freedom.
8It is a big mistake by those who acquire esoteric knowledge to try to convert mystics to the esoteric view if they are content with their view of life. It is the same big mistake as to preach some certain creed and assert that unity cannot be won unless all share that view. That is an impossibility. Every individual has his own view, even though he believe in some common view, for everything in the universe is individual and unique. Unity consists in will to unity, and unity is realized when everybody rightly applies the laws of life. Unity is realized when it is the individual’s own self-acquired ability and independent of a certain fixed view. All views are, taken absolutely, erroneous. They may be taken as valid on a certain level of development but are a hindrance to further development if they are absolutified. And that is one of the grounds of the law of freedom. Anyone who has not acquired understanding of the necessity of tolerance for the continuance and development of life thereby demonstrates a basic defect in his understanding of life. And that defect has been characteristic of adherents of any sort of creed. Typical was a statement of a religious fanatic, that tolerance was incompatible with religious conviction. He told the truth. But he did not suspect how far he was from the knowledge of the Law, from understanding of unity, the most basic law of life.
9There is an essential difference between making propaganda for hylozoics and informing people that such a system exists. The esoterician never makes propaganda for esoterics. He is content with presenting it. Everybody should decide for himself what he thinks about the matter without any kind of influence. The law of freedom has in all times been violated by all fanatics and their intolerance. The esoterician asserts that it is a basic error in life to be tolerant of intolerance, in whatever way and whatever spheres it manifests itself. Freedom of thinking, feeling, saying, and acting within the limits of the equal right of all to that same inviolable freedom is the very prerequisite of individual development.
10They speak about democracy as if it were the same as freedom. That is a mistake. Democracy, such as it has hitherto appeared in all nations, has sufficiently demonstrated intolerance, and has done so to such an extent that one may very well say that there has never existed any true freedom. This holds good of democracy as well. It is so far from being realized that it rather stands out as a utopia, an ideal that is good enough to be used in propaganda and to throw dust in people’s eyes who allow themselves to be blinded by beautiful phrases and do not have judgement enough to see through the old trick of empty promises.
11The president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, talked about “making the world safe for democracy”. That just witnessed to a self-produced blindness, an utterly helpless not to say grotesque naivete in a former professor of history.
1The ideas (the exact knowledge of reality) are in the “world of Platonic ideas”, the causal world. That is why “there is nothing new” under the sun. They are, however, no such ideas as paralyze action, as many mental ideas are. They are energies. And anyone who has experienced a causal idea has got the plan for a new work that he must execute. Otherwise there is a risk that these energies find other outlets.
2Those who ambitiously claim priorities should contemplate the fact that all reality ideas are received from the planetary hierarchy, directly or indirectly. It certainly is not everybody’s lot to discover Platonic ideas, the only true reality ideas. Only he is able to do so who has reached up to perspective thinking (47:5), who is approaching the causal stage with rapid strides. Those at the stage of civilization who “think in the democratic way” either deny the existence of Platonic ideas or believe they are as capable of discovering them as anybody else. They do not suspect the degree of their life ignorance. But they demonstrate it before the “initiated” when trying to impress the injudicious masses.
3The life ignorant shrug their shoulders at ideals, so called utopies, and say with disdain, “what’s the use of them, if you can’t realize them?” Ideals show us the path home, being the milestones of the path. Without ideals we lack a compass to guide us for our journey on the ocean of life. If we are able to see the ideals, see and understand the necessity of ideals, only then shall we be able to realize them. There is a long way to go from seeing an ideal and realizing it. And yet ideals are necessary.
4Ideals belong to the higher emotional stage, the stage of culture, the stage of the mystic. Ideals are ideas scaled down from the mental stage, the humanist stage.
5Ideals change with the levels of development. They lead to higher levels where you get new ideals. Ideals depend on our level of development, our understanding of life, and are superseded by new ideals as understanding increases.
6Ideals may counteract development insofar as they limit our understanding of higher ideals.
7Idealism easily breeds illusions that make us proud, incorrigible, or impractical in our attitude. Ideals have a strange power to blind us. The whole world is full of idealists who fight each other and who do not suspect how foolish it all is.
8Life-ignorant idealism and ideality may cause as much harm as any other kind of ignorance. This kind of ignorance is more dangerous, since it seduces noble people to all manner of foolishness and to indignantly defend other people’s foolishness.
9Idealism is confused with essentiality. Essentiality breaks up idealism. To essential consciousness there are no ideals.
10“Ideas” appear entirely different in the various worlds. They must be transposed, scaled down, from one world to another. Ultimately, mental consciousness makes them comprehensible to intellectuals who in their turn popularize them for general use.
11“Ideas rule the world” (Platon). At the present stage of man’s development, mostly fictions and illusions rule. However, the multitude of idiologies demonstrates that the power of critical reflexion has increased, so that you are justified in hoping that people will realize that ideas have a relative justification.
12When people talk about “universal brotherhood”, they generally do so without thinking, so it is a meaningless locution until the individual experiences his community with more and more people, experiences unity in the community, senses those he contacts as being members of one big family, replaces a beautiful theory with a realized ideal.
13It is a sign of a sound instinct of life when the individual at the stage of civilization thinks that the ideals of the Sermon of the Mount are beautiful utopias. They were intended for those at the humanist stage. Each stage of development has its ideals. Ideals that cannot be realized are all too high and so are powerless ideas. They result either in practical failure or in a life of imagination without much reality content.
14There can be just one world view, one true objective conception of the matter and motion aspects of existence. On the other hand there can be many life views, for they correspond to the various developmental stages of mankind, to the individual’s level of development, to his prospect of understanding life. Ideals are different at different stages, for they must not be set higher than the level where the individual is able to realize them with good will and persistent work. Ideals that cannot be realized lack that power of attraction that can make the individual strive for the ideal. As more people understand this fact, it should contribute to increasing tolerance, which otherwise and to any large extent is a quality belonging to the stage of culture. Religions that have not been able to lead people to that insight and understanding of life are phenomena belonging to the stage of civilization, not to the stage of culture.
15Consciousness development is the individual’s own business. Nobody can raise the level of another, which is the result of the number of his incarnations in the human kingdom, the experiences he has had and worked up in these. The meaning of upbringing and education is to help the individual in his new incarnation to remember the knowledge that lies latent in his subconscious and to reacquire his latent abilities or, more correctly expressed, to reconquer his true level of development. When he has reached the limit of his understanding, it will be his own business to learn from his own experience.
1“All men are equal.” They are equal in the respect that everybody has a causal envelope (acquired at the transition from the animal to the human kingdom). This is the envelope that makes them human beings. They are also equal in the respect that all are on their way towards the same goal, the fifth natural kingdom. In order to reach that goal they must within the human kingdom step by step acquire ever more widened consciousness, a series of ever higher consciousness levels. Men are different in the fact that their transition from the animal kingdom did not occur simultaneously but during widely different epochs, which has entailed that those with older causal envelopes have managed to reach higher consciousness levels than those with younger such envelopes. The difference is thus a matter of age. Since all mankind makes up one great family, then it is the duty of the elder brothers to help their younger brothers.
2Each being, each atom, has its individual character. And this fact does away with the thoughtless talk about equality, which is unwarranted even though all were found on the same level of the same developmental stage. Every individual is something quite unique. Every attempt to force individuals into any kind of mould is a violation of the Law of Life.
3There is no “equality”. Some people are healthier, stronger, faster than others. Some have greater capacity for the arts, philosophy, science, religion, business than others. Some have greater “luck” than others. Where is the mathematical justice of mediocrity demanded by the life-ignorant, who want to abolish laws of nature as well as laws of life? Fortunately, however, it is beyond their power to abolish the differences of nature, even though they are foolish enough not to realize even that.
4Classes are the natural order of things in all kingdoms of nature. The planetary hierarchy has clearly stated that all divine kingdoms make up one single autocracy. It is true that all are brothers and have the right to their own view and to express it, but the right to make decisions always lies with the furthest developed individual. He has access to insights conveyed from a continuous series of ever higher kingdoms, if such knowledge and experience would be needed.
5According to the law of life there cannot quite simply be any equality. Every individual is unique, for the long journey he has behind him through the processes of cosmic involvation and evolvation has made him the individuality he is. The individuals of the human kingdom may be found on any one of the 777 developmental levels. During thousands of incarnations they have had individual experiences and developed qualities and abilities in countless respects to highly different percentages.
6However, we all belong to the human kingdom and can demand to be recognized as human beings with everything that implies in the matter of personal integrity.
7We are all responsible for our fellow men, because mankind is a living collectivity. Anyone who desires to reach the fifth natural kingdom sooner than others must first and foremost contribute to raising mankind, and in that case there is no discussion of individuals or levels of development, for everybody has a right to evolution. The higher the level a man has reached, the greater his debt to life, to mankind, the greater his responsibility for others.
8All too many people are intellectual parasites who live on other people’s contribution to civilization and culture. Also in “academies” of all sorts the parasitic system seems to flourish. They live on what others have said and done. There is no need for historians in any sphere, if they do not contribute to increasing our understanding of life. Most data they contribute in their doctoral dissertations are in that respect quite insignificant.
9Those who have realized that all life develops and that every individual is found somewhere on the seemingly endless gamut of development from the mineral stage to the highest divine stage, those also realize that the democratic ideal of equality is an illusion of life ignorance and envy. Whenever an individual has reached a higher level than his environment, he becomes the victim of this envy as it feels its own inferiority. He will admired only if his level is so high that an expression of envy would reveal the speaker as bereft of judgement.
10Democracy in actual fact means: Nobody above me. Everybody views everybody else as his inferior. That is what happens when you preach “equality”.
11People have a mania for making everything absolute. They divide each other into either-or instead of both-and. Your either are an optimist or a pessimist, good or evil, knowing or unknowing, reasonable or foolish. There are no such people. We are all a mixture of everything. Sometimes or in certain respects or under certain conditions we are one thing or the other. During thousands of incarnations ever since the stage of barbarism we have been acquiring all the good and bad human qualities. We have them all at some percentage in our subconscious. What their percentages are we do not know and no other human being either. Which of these good or bad qualities will manifest themselves in any one incarnation depends on physical heredity, upbringing, environment, opportunities of development, etc.
1Life is unity, for all belong ultimately to the whole. All monads make up a unity (like the water-drops of the ocean), since they together make up the cosmic total consciousness of which every individual is a part. The condition to reach higher kingdoms is to become ever more conscious of an ever increasing part of this total consciousness. Anyone who has reached the highest divine kingdom has incorporated this total consciousness with his individual consciousness, has become one with the whole cosmos. The important realization for the disciple is that he will sooner or later have to learn to include all and not exclude anyone. He must apply the principle of not being separative in his consciousness.
2The esoterician is always inclusive, never exclusive. Every monad is a part of the cosmic total consciousness, a part of the whole that can never be lost. To exclude anybody from the universal brotherhood in any natural kingdom is to evince ignorance of life.
3To the law of unity belongs the insight that you get the help from life that life can give you when you live for unity and not for yourself. That is the insight affording trust in life, a thing not granted to anyone who places himself outside. When anyone steps out of this community in order to be “sufficient unto himself”, then he has become the enemy of community and so the enemy of life. The community demanded of those who have withdrawn from the community of life is the worst enemy of life.
4The esoterician always notices in an individual whether his motto is will to unity or will to power, and that is the dividing-line between “white” and “black”. It is characteristic of self-appraisal that very few people realize this. And only the elite seek unity, the others seek their own greatness (which makes them so ridiculously small).
5“We are all one.” “Life is a unity.” Such expressions are meaningless without a more exact explanation. All have an unlosable share in the cosmic total consciousness, the common consciousness, whether they know it or not. That is one side of the matter. Another side, however, is that we do not have a greater share in the common consciousness than the one we are conscious of, a participation that increases gradually until we have reached omniscience in the cosmos. It begins with our acquisition of telepathic common consciousness with a small group, then with more groups until we share consciousness with all the members of a department, of a world, with the entire planetary hierarchy, etc. We do not share consciousness with all in the essential world merely because we have acquired 46-consciousness, but only when we possess 46-world consciousness. It is all a gradual process in which self-consciousness incorporates with itself more and more units of individual self-consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds, until we have acquired 46-atom consciousness and thereby 46-world consciousness.
6Even when the self has attained the highest divine kingdom and the highest world in the cosmos, the self senses its relative insignificance in the innumerable mass of individuals who have, as he has, reached their final goal. The greatness of the self is in that it is one with all. The self owes everything to unity.
7Abiding happiness is possible only through participation in universal harmony where every individual plays his instrument in the cosmic orchestra.
8Consciousness development is the meaning of life, and its condition is brotherhood. All exist in order to help each other, all in lower and higher kingdoms. The fact that this has not been understood demonstrates mankind’s stage of development.
9Collective consciousness is something that has been but little considered hitherto. But the individual must learn to work with this consciousness in order to acquire telepathy and continuity of consciousness. “The will to unity” is the strongest power in man’s life and the one that “develops” him in the most rapid way.
10Mankind is a collective. The talk about the unity of everything is no empty talk. Those who want to be saved should discover the collective and work for the salvation of the collective. Those who forget their own salvation for that of others demonstrate that they are fit to work for evolution and get opportunities to do it. That is the simple secret of discipleship and the entrance into a higher kingdom.
11We always belong to a “group”: nation, family, circle of friends, colleagues, audience, etc. These make up visible groups in the physical world. We belong to many kinds of groups in the emotional, mental, causal worlds. Loneliness is an illusion and should not be confused with physical isolation. The esoterician has to learn to identify with all kinds of groups as an exercise preparatory to his acquisition of the consciousness of unity.
12The path to universal brotherhood goes through the significance of the group. This gradually increases our understanding of the significance of the community and our desire to enter into ever larger groups. This also widens the understanding of the concepts of right and wrong by making us ask ourselves: Will this action of mine benefit or harm the group, strengthen the community?
1Higher kingdoms work concertedly for the cosmic evolution, the goal of which is the omniscience and omnipotence of all monads. The kingdom of man is that kingdom of ignorance which counteracts this evolution. But then it looks like it does in a mankind where everybody makes mistakes as to all the laws of life.
2More and more people reach the insight that individual egoism does not pay. But they are still blind to the fact that the law also applies to group, class, and national egoism. Those who have acquired perspective consciousness can ascertain this. If the history of the world described past events truthfully, then mankind would have seen this long ago. But men do not understand even what is happening in the present.
3Humanity is the dharma of mankind. And humanity is humanism, is universal brotherhood, is community, is unity. How long will it be before mankind gains this insight?
4It is hard to put up with the thought that also esotericians will be reborn, most of them in families idiotized by the ruling idiologies, have to pass through the various developmental stages (the stages of barbarism, civilization, and culture) to reach anew, perhaps, that level of the humanist stage which is their true one. If there is anything that illustrates the esoteric axiom of the brotherhood of all mankind and the common responsibility of all for all, then it should be this fact. Only when all possess the esoteric knowledge is there a guarantee against idiotization.
5In actual fact, two kingdoms – the animal and the human kingdoms – meet when the human monad incarnates into an organism. Mankind has not yet reached the stage of development where we are able to raise the consciousness level of the animal kingdom so that animals can causalize collectively. When we shall be able to do this, then we shall collectively enter into the next higher kingdom.
6In order to do this, however, it is required that men have understood the universal brotherhood of all life and that, according to the law of unity, all are collectively responsible for all. This is a lesson that the monads developing on our planet need to learn. Organisms are by no means necessary in order to have experience in the vegetable and animal kingdoms and in the lowest molecular kinds. On other planets also the lowest envelope (49:5-7) for vegetables, animals, and men is an aggregate envelope. Atoms in the mineral kingdom have consciousness that in the future will be activated in aggregates. Monads having a repulsive basic tendency, such as it manifests itself in parasitism and predatory life of all kinds, apparently need special experiences. There is a transfer of monads between planets. But only the planetary government knows according to which principles this is done. The statements made in theosophical literature on this score have proved to be assumptions.
7It may seem strange that it is easier for devas, who represent the matter aspect, to see that all life is one than it is for human beings, who represent the consciousness aspect. This is so because mankind consists of monads having a repulsive basic instinct. That is the factor making it impossible to understand unity. That is the factor appearing in parasitism (ever since the vegetable kingdom) culminating in the human kingdom. What is wealth, glory, and power but parasitism? And what is parasitism but ever more reckless egotism and egoism? Evolution is possible only if monads work together instead of exploiting each other, which results in a war of all against all. The whole cosmos is one universal total consciousness, which would be annihilated if the parts were divided against each other. The only way of reaching the inmost unity, where the whole cosmos is experienced as your own consciousness, is to let yourself be absorbed by unity more and more, enter into unity. And that is possible only if you forget yourself, forget your ridiculous insignificance and all your other ridiculousnesses and live just to serve evolution. Christos tried to make that idea comprehensible by his simple formulation saying that he is the greatest who is the servant of all. (Such expressions are of course misunderstood when they are absolutified and this very thing is understood only when you have learnt to serve in the right way! That is not the same as to yield to the demands of egoists.)
8The will to unity, the striving for unity, is, as Christos forcefully maintained, the essential thing and what makes us progress most quickly. It appears in the physical as well as in the emotional and the mental. At the present stage of mankind’s development, loving understanding is incomparably more important than unity in views. Whatever view we hold, it is something that continually changes as our experience of life increases, and it may be regarded as unimportant in comparison to our relations to people. We do not help others by our intellect but by understanding. It is sympathy that all people need, even though they do not know it. That also makes our own life incomparably richer. “To him who gives will be given.” And nowhere does this appear more clearly than in the matter of sympathy.
9People must learn to find each other, to disregard the variety of views and conceptions. The unifying bond is the welfare of mankind, the welfare of all. Those who do not wish to participate in that work lack that will to unity which pulls down the walls that men have built between themselves. There can never be any peace until men have learnt not to encroach on the equal right of all to the same inviolable freedom. The right to the freedom granted by the Law is the condition of peace, the condition of unity.
10At present, the most important thing is to fight hatred (repulsion) in all its innumerable manifestations, to teach people to live in peace with each other, to counteract gossip which always turns into slander and strengthens repulsion, and to teach people to look on each other as fellow wanderers on the path, the same path that all must walk with all its mistakes that all must make in order to learn. We are envelopes for our self, and these envelopes are soon exchanged for new ones. To make life more difficult for others is to make it more difficult for ourselves in life after life. If you can see the limitation of another with all the difficult problems he has to wrestle with, then you want to do whatever you can to help his self in its life struggle. In so doing you also help others and have the most valuable experiences you can have yourself, which also makes you progress most swiftly.
11We are all one in our common striving towards the final goal. This is the striving that is the truly essential work. Everybody has his physical, emotional, and mental needs according to the experience he has acquired. Only ignorance blames others for their needs of experience. Only ignorance tries to force his view of life on others. Everybody has to acquire by himself all the prerequisites of insight and understanding and the ability to apply the laws of life. When men have seen this, they will let everybody keep his own world view and life view corresponding to his level of development. All this is so simple that the simplest mind should be able to grasp the meaning of life.
12Unity is always the one essential thing. The word “love” has always been abused and misunderstood. “Divine love” was expounded as the love of god towards men. Of course the word “unity” can also be misrepresented and will surely be so when the satanists take charge of it. “The will to unity” is not enough in itself but only along with the realization of unity. And it must be unity according to the Law and not as a result of a compromise, to say nothing of the unity which the tyrant forces on people.
13In the matter of the Law there is no compromise. That does not mean, however, that you are “a slave to the Law”. To be inflexible on this single point (in the matter of obvious right and wrong) does not at all mean fanaticism, rigidity, one-sidedness, a one-track mind, stubbornness.
14Whatever mankind unites to achieve will be achieved. Emotional will is, at the present developmental stage of mankind, the strongest power, and unity makes it irresistible, works “miracles”. Regrettably, it is most often outer force and emergency that can rouse this emotion. When this outer pressure is dropped, the old antagonisms that have always caused division easily reappear.
15Abiding unity is obtained only if the essential will to unity can be roused. And this requires insight of the meaning of life, an insight that regrettably is still absent in the majority of mankind.
1The attraction of the higher emotional stage manifests itself in the spontaneous impersonal affection, in the desire to help others to the extent you can and in ways that really benefit, in helping others to help themselves. Everybody has his problems and the desire to help discovers by daily exercise and experience more and more of the difficulties everybody is harassed with. The sincerity of our striving for unity, our will to unity, appears above all in our sense of personal responsibility for everybody. The more we grow into unity, the more the domain of this personal responsibility expands, so that it does not include only our family and friends but also our tasks, our nation, and mankind. The knowledge of the laws of life puts an end to the talk about the insignificance of the individual. It is not for us to decide whether our contribution “is of any use”. The most insignificant part of a machinery has a function to perform. We are all cogs in the machinery of evolution. You could even say that a man’s greatness is in his sense of responsibility for everything that is and happens. Lack of the sense of responsibility is the sign of life ignorance.
2Like the cosmic total consciousness, the common collective consciousness of all is the primary factor and the condition of existence, so the individual is important only as being a part of the whole, a part of unity. When the individual can see this and realizes that insight, then he is ready for the fifth natural kingdom. An isolated individual who has broken away from unity has no possibility of development, will never reach the common goal of us all, omniscience of everybody in which also omnipotence inheres.
3The stage of the mystic above all implies acquisition of the qualities of attraction. For the animals, acquisition of devotion is the highest stage, being the intermediate stage before their transition to the human kingdom. For man, the stage of the mystic forebodes transition from the emotional to the mental stage. Man has a need of loving somebody other than himself. He creates a god (or takes over the ideas of others), doubly valuable since it liberates him from fear (anguish before life). At the mental stage this need falls away and is superseded by trust in law, later also by trust in self and trust in life when he has got a knowledge of life. Then he sees the togetherness (“brotherhood”) of all life, and that he must direct his emotions towards men and all life instead of towards god. Without this attraction in crescendo (since it embraces more and more individuals), the stage of unity will not be reached. The fictitious concept of god is replaced by reality concepts: the planetary hierarchy and the planetary government (thus no concepts of personality).
4It is in the very nature of unity that everything in the matter of judging is absolutely precluded. The fact that theologians ever since the time of Atlantis have presented “the godhead” as a judge demonstrates of what “spirit” they are “children”. The distortions made by the father of the church, Eusebios, demonstrate how thoroughly unreliable are the scriptures of the New Testament. Anyone who has a knowledge of the Law can sort out the lies himself. That work requires no study of theology, that parody of common sense.
1All make up a unity (are co-partners in the cosmic total consciousness), all are brothers. But this does not mean that all are at the same stage of development. Development consists of a seemingly endless series of developmental levels. The democratic demand of “equality” wars with the law of life.
2Even if we are at different stages of development, we are all on the path, whether we know it or not, all in the same kingdom. If the distance is measured in the number of molecular kinds and kinds of consciousness between the lowest and the highest stage, we see that it is by no means so great that we are able to help each other in various respects and also to understand each other in many respects. And that is the insight we must apply in our view of mankind, if we will have any prospects of reaching the next higher kingdom, where nobody compares stages but everybody just wants to help everybody, wherever he stands. By helping others we acquire the essential qualities that enable us to enter into the world of unity.
3According to the law of unity, those on higher levels have to help those on lower levels. We all need help. Anyone who does not want to help has no “right” to receive help.
4Often it is difficult to decide how to act, to understand rightly, to make the right decisions. Most important of all is to eliminate selfishness and to become independent of one’s own likes and dislikes and consideration of one’s own happiness. Whenever “self” enters into the matter it distorts everything. “Self” in this connection refers to the various envelope consciousnesses, the self’s dependence on their character and the self’s experiences gathered in them. As a human being, the self is largely an idiot in life. Only in unity is there a possibility of rational orientation.
5It is not a matter of “I am going to help”. There is somebody who needs help through me. And that is an essential difference. I am the instrument. Whenever self enters into the matter it spoils everything, more or less so, and grows more and more important and so less and less useful. So fine is self-deception that you may think you are important because you are an instrument. In unity there is no “self”. Self destroys unity, separates from unity. It is this impersonal self that man has such difficulty in acquiring.
6Skill in action is always needed, skill in emotional reaction is necessary. Loving people is the condition to help them. But that love binds neither them nor yourself. Only the man who is free can truly love. Of course the word “love” has been idiotized like all other words so that people soon will not know what words mean. “Love” and “goodness” originally had the same meaning. But nowadays only causal selves understand those words.
7In respect of research, life is a never-ending series of problems of reality through all the higher worlds and kingdoms in nature. It is characteristic that the pertaining problems cannot be solved theoretically but only practically. It is true that you must get to know the facts of existence. But in addition understanding is required and you gain that only by living the life. It is in life that you find the solution, see the solution, not through pondering and speculation. The solution is spontaneous, like a revelation, when you live in unity and for unity. That is the meaning of the ancient saying “love solves all problems”. That is why essential consciousness (46) is called “love and wisdom”, the two being inseparable. There can be no wisdom without love, only prudence.
8Service is a difficult art. It is very difficult to serve in the right way. By serving others you can do more evil than good. You shall not serve evil, and you may do that by serving without discrimination. The important thing is not to satisfy egoism, not to allow yourself to be exploited, not to “bolster up vice”, not to yield to claims.
9There are many sayings in the Gospels attributed to Christos which he never uttered, at any event not with that formulation. He cannot have said, “Give to anyone who begs you”. Then you would be defenceless against unreasonable demands and soon be plundered. He has absolutely not said, “resist not evil”. We have a duty to resist evil. Else we abandon life to the power of evil.
1Languages are short of words, and so ever more words are given ever more meanings. It would be a worthy task to enlarge the general vocabulary with new words for new facts.
2A misused word is “love”, which can mean anything from the most fleeting sympathy to absolute unity with all life. People also love food. You should learn to see that what people mean by “love” is a very cheap thing. They are too primitive to be able to love, too primitive to have had experienced what people of higher stages put into the word.
3We cannot love all equally much. We love our friends more than strangers or enemies. There are degrees of everything. Anyone who says he loves all equally much lacks self-knowledge in that instance, unless he means: all equally little.
4The maxims of wisdom become just beautiful saws unless they are woven into complexes that are strong enough to determine action. Christians can hear about love every Sunday for fifty years without being affected the least. It is not enough to hear and believe.
5By experiencing unity with some individual or group we learn to transfer this faculty of attraction to more and more until it is extended to everyone we meet.
6You cannot meditate without possessing love, and you cannot develop love to perfection without meditation.
7We need something to admire and to love. Seek the star everywhere, and eventually everything will be nothing but sunshine. Manifoldness is absorbed into unity. By worshipping one we learn to worship more and more. By worshipping we become one with all. By worshipping all we become masters of all.
8We must have feelings, strong feeling of attractive power. Else we cannot develop, cannot ennoble, raise our emotional vibrations. Only those who are able to love can be loved in their turn. Only those who are able to accept love are able to love.
9We know that the Great Ones love us. It is not difficult to love Them back.
10Love is unity, community, the affinity of souls, solidarity, admiration, affection, sympathy.
11“Tenderness, sympathy, and self-sacrifice are the consummation of love.”
12Love of god is devotion to everything higher.
13Love is the community of souls and abides forever. Nothing can separate those who love in order to serve. There is in the entire universe no separation whatsoever between those who live for unity. To the primordial atom (monad), the universe is a “point”.
14Without love everything else is nothing! So great is love and so insignificant is everything else in comparison.
15The eyes of love are not blind. But they see in another way. That vision must be acquired.
16Love thinks no evil. Love is the consummation of the law. Suspicion influences people to commit crimes. Suspicion works as “satanic temptations”. Crime often is the result of other people’s evil thoughts. Suspicion is very bad sowing, which yields bad reaping.
1Mme de Stael’s winged words, “to understand all is to forgive all”, have been criticized by many. It all depends on what you mean by understanding and forgiving.
2Those who have taken their stand under the law of unity have nothing to forgive. All hatred directed towards them affects unity with special consequences.
3To forgive is to forget. It is not enough to merely desist from retaliation, grudge, or hatred.
4As long as there is the least desire of “vengeance”, “retaliation” if only by spreading gossip, the individual has not reached the stage of culture, let him then be an expert on esoteric theory.
5A statement by a 45-self: “It is not by the intellect you teach others to understand but by love and understanding.”
6According to esoterics, the vitalization of the heart centre (necessary in order to become a causal self) brings about “love” as well as intuition.
1How different would not marriages be if the contracting parties had some knowledge of mankind’s various stages of development and understood that by human love is meant physical, emotional, and mental attraction? The ancients expressed that understanding in the wisdom saying: “Birds of a feather flock together”. Children grown up under similar social and cultural conditions have the best prospects of understanding each other. The better possibilities man and wife have of understanding everything in their life together, the better prospects of a happy marriage they have. The greater the differences between them in world view and life view, in their outlook on all human problems, the greater is the risk of disharmony in marriage. How many have understood that ancient experience of life? Modern marriages bear witness, like almost everything else, to the democracy of our times with its total disorientation.
2We should not marry for egoistic reasons but in order to serve, to help one another to live in harmony and with the least possible friction.
3There is a prospect for a happy marriage where both parties complement each other in emotional and mental respects. If, in addition, they have the same interests, possibilities of understanding each other, work for the same goal, then there is a prospect for an “ideal marriage”.
4The difference between falling in love and true love is seen in the fact that a love affair always passes, but true love always abides.
5The solution of the problem of sex lies in the woman, in her demand on the man that he, when joining her in marriage, be a virgin like herself. Exemptions should be granted. But the principle should be proclaimed and maintained.
1The entire consciousness development presents a continuous opposition between lower and higher kinds of consciousness. A lower kind views a higher kind as something opposed to it. However, that opposition does not exist for those in the higher in relation to the lower, but this lower enters into the higher.
2There are in all 49 ever higher atomic worlds, and all of them are filled with beings at different developmental stages in the five natural kingdoms and the seven divine kingdoms. Nobody will reach the fifth natural kingdom who has not entered into unity and lives in order to serve. For all individuals in all higher kingdoms live in order to fulfil necessary functions in the great process of manifestation. In all kingdoms, the individuals are given the assistance they must have to be able to reach the next higher kingdom. They receive no help, however, with anything that they themselves or their collective would be able to acquire, for that would conflict with the law of self-realization.
3The truth, or the knowledge of reality, is the final goal of evolution when we have all reached the highest divine kingdom. We are given just so much of it as we need to reach higher, the next higher level, the next higher developmental stage, the next higher kingdom. The rest is beyond our power of comprehension.
4The goal of development is “absolute” individual character, perfect harmony, the unity and happiness of everybody.
5The basic law in the matter and motion aspects is the law of cause and effect. The basic law in the consciousness aspect is the law of attraction (“love”), also called the law of development. It manifests itself in matter as “magnetism”. The law of attraction expresses itself throughout all the worlds in such a manner that a higher world has an attractive effect on a lower world, that life in lower kingdoms constantly, automatically, imperceptibly, unconsciously is affected by life in higher kingdoms. Symbolically, this law has been compared to the sun’s action on vegetable life (calling the plant out of the earth and making it reach out towards the sun). Its unconscious attractive power has the effect that it cannot come into conflict with either the law of freedom or the law of self-realization. In man’s life it can become a dominant power in so far as the individual pays attention to it, follows its attraction and decides to assimilate it in his work for self-realization. After that, his development will go on in a constant crescendo.
6“The law of development says that there are forces which act in various ways towards the final goal of life” (KR 1.41.10). These forces include the magnetic attraction of higher atomic kinds on lower ones. The same is true of the molecular kinds. Innumerable other forces hinder the force of attraction from asserting itself immediately. Otherwise this power would, among other things, suspend the law of self-realization. It is, however, the underlying energy which in the course of the eons finally must triumph. Nothing can in the long run stop evolution.
7The process of development is a purposeful process. In this purposiveness or finality, however, there is nothing of what of old has been put into the concepts of fatalism and predestination. This process goes on according to cosmic ideas (the energies of collective beings). It is a process in which man may collaborate, if he wants to. If he does not want to, then he loses a chance, an offer. But nobody can force him to accept it. If he has acquired those very qualities and abilities which are needed in order for him to contribute in a certain situation or conjunction of events, and sees his chance, then it may appear as “predestination”. But appearances are deceptive.
8“Whatever must happen, happens.” If by “must” you mean the necessity of the process, then the thesis is correct. But there is no necessity in the individual plan for the process. It may be successful or it may fail. Only what is unavoidable for final realization is absolute. Everything else is conditional. The planetary hierarchy must constantly change its plans, since these are dependent on man’s free will and since according to the law of freedom the use of force is precluded. The work of the “agencies of destiny” is a continual planning and replanning, since men miss the “opportunities of life”. The process of life is necessary but no point of time is. Depending on the efficiency of the instruments, the process may take one hundred years or one hundred thousand years. The plan will be realized. This does not imply, however, that anything is determined as to when and how.
9Life is indestructible because the primordial atoms are indestructible. And the individual is a primordial atom (a monad). You cannot escape life, however unbearable it may seem to you. You can destroy your organism, but not your other envelopes. You cannot avoid reincarnation. When you – a primordial atom – have once been introduced into the cosmos then there is no alternative but to follow along with involution down into the densest matter and then work your way up to the highest world. Many people do what they can to delay their own consciousness development up to the highest world. But that just means that they choose the path of suffering. For suffering arises by the refusal to apply the laws of consciousness development.
10The law of self-realization is in actual fact a law consequential upon the law of development. It is true that the individual must do everything in his power to do and as if there were no help to be given. But if he does so, then his purposiveness will be awarded in the fact that the propulsive as well as attractive energies of the law of development automatically reinforce his own contribution. This meeting of energies is indispensable, as his own powers would be insufficient. In this connection it should be observed, however, that the law of development is the manifestation of a collective energy and that the additional power granted to the individual depends on his attitude to the collective. Anyone who wants development just for himself may not count on this assistance. According as the individual lives for others, however, his own development is furthered so that he will be capable of making an increasingly greater contribution.
11The law of development is a fact. But this fact can be verified only by a study of man’s incarnations. Thus it is beyond the possibilities of science to ascertain it. And the same is true of all the laws of life. Only when researchers have acquired causal objective consciousness (have become causal selves) do they possess the prerequisites of ascertaining the validity of the law of development.
12The idea of development, however, has definitively entered into the history of ideas and become an indispensable part of mankind’s stock of reality ideas.
13Of course this idea has (as all the others) been maltreated by acute and profound historians and philosophers. The result has been a belief in progress which has proved to rest on all too fictitious grounds.
14Since evolution is a cyclical process of building-up and phasing-out in an endless series of zodiacal epochs of 2500 years each and since research has very small chances of following this process, it is to be understood that the facts that have been presented in support of the belief in progress must be insufficient. Esoterics remains for mankind little more than a working hypothesis. We can just ascertain that its statements amount to mutually non-contradictory, definitively valid explanations of previously inexplicably facts. Science can never present any stronger proofs by its ephemeral hypotheses.
15Philosophical pessimism is evidence of life ignorance. Anyone who knows that all monads are immortal, that life means development of the monads, that all will reach the final goal of life, that everything happens according to incorruptible Law, he cannot possibly be a pessimist.
16However, there is a sanguinism which, being ignorant of the laws of the growth of life, believes that you can reform things according to all manner of theories, not understanding the fact that all human theories always prove untenable.
1The lower the stage of development, the more experiences of similar kinds are required for comprehension and understanding. That is why development at the stage of barbarism takes such an enormously long time.
2When the individual has acquired the general fund of experience of life necessary to comprehension, specialization begins. In life upon life he is to work up constantly new areas of life until a certain general dawning understanding of life makes itself felt. And this is repeated at each stage of development. When the individual has reached the stages of culture and humanity, there is a gradual development of the sense of reality, the interest in human aspects, the understanding of the meaning of life and the means of reaching the goal.
3The monad–individual–self, which is always enclosed in the causal envelope, is during incarnation found in that lesser part of the causal envelope which incarnates and embraces the new envelopes of incarnation. When the self’s consciousness awakens in the physical world, the self is from the beginning totally ignorant and disoriented. During childhood and adolescence the self must, by the aid of its latent abilities and predispositions, activate consciousness in its new envelopes. It is almost like starting from scratch. By contacting other individuals and their learning, the self learns to conceive and understand and tries to orient itself in its new world. What the self has no opportunity to contact remains latent. The abilities which the self has no opportunity to practise remain latent.
4During childhood and adolescence man runs through mankind’s general consciousness development from the stage of barbarism up. How long the time he uses to reattain the level he has previously reached depends on a multitude of factors: the brain he has inherited, his environment, upbringing, opportunities to contact that which can awaken whatever slumbers in his subconscious. There are people who never reach their old level, others who reach it in their old age. If life runs normally, then he should have covered the stage of barbarism at 14 years, the stage of civilization at 21 years, the stage of culture at 28, to be able to begin where he left off at 35 years, provided that the self previously reached up to causal contact. The higher level the self has managed to reach, the faster the individual runs through these stages. The example given refers to man at the higher levels of the cultural stage or at the humanist stage. In case a contact has been achieved with the causal consciousness in previous incarnations, then this is usually re-established in the age between 35 and 42 years. That contact entails a critical examination of inoculated illusions and fictions, leading either to skepticism or to a striving to acquire real knowledge. Skepticism because the self realizes that the traditional views on the superphysical are absurd and that the new brain lacks a knowledge of the requisite facts. In physical life the individual is dependent on his brain. In each new incarnation he must acquire his old knowledge anew.
5It is the purpose of culture to provide the knowledge that mankind has acquired. If the individual has an opportunity to study and so profit by the treasures of culture, his power of reflection increases, and by remembrance anew of the knowledge lying latent in his subconscious his understanding for ever more things increases continually until he has reattained his true level. Then the real difficulties begin: to acquire a greater understanding than that provided by his latency. Generally, it is only when the individual is about 35 years old that his critical reason starts to make a new examination of the things he has accepted hitherto and scrutinizes the bases of the system of thought he has acquired. The individual has unconsciously accepted his very understanding of the thing studied as a proof of its correctness. New ideas that are not contained in the system demand consideration. That often entails a crisis, a revolution in his way of looking at things, which leads to his formulation of a new system.
6However, if the individual has become so anchored in a dogmatic system of emotional thinking that this makes it impossible for him to be influenced by new ideas, then it never occurs to him that he could examine the tenability of the old system and so he remains on the mental level he has attained. That does not hinder a further ennoblement of his emotionality, especially if his circumstances promote that.
7When, some time in the future, esoteric schools and universities are established, where the individual from the very beginning is given the requisite facts for comprehending reality, the process of development of course can be accelerated. Then he does not need to devote many years to the work for liberation from inoculated illusions and fictions.
8You must be quite ignorant of life not to be able to distinguish the normal, rapidly transient juvenile idealism (in the age of 18–25 years) in those on the higher civilizational levels, from the permanent idealism found in those on cultural levels. Juvenile idealism has its foundation partly in emotional revolt, partly in mental narrowness (the belief that everything can be easily changed).
9Intolerance is an infallible evidence of the fact that the individual in question has not yet reached the stage of culture. That criterion should be the starting-point when judging any phenomena of life, also in the spheres of religion, philosophy, and science. This should have been clearly recognized in the matter of religion. If religion is the life view of love, then intolerance is the diametrical opposite of true religion. Historically, religion has been the idiology of ignorance, a theological fictionalism. The religion of certain individuals has been something else; that is a fact willingly acknowledged. In their case, however, theology has rather been a hindrance.
10During his childhood and adolescence, the individual is taught the illusion and fiction systems that are generally prevalent in his nation and his time. He is seldom aware of the fact that all these systems are just temporary and never definitive. All these systems change until the world of Platonic ideas becomes accessible to him and he is able to ascertain himself the three aspects of reality in all their relations in the worlds of man and through intercourse with the individuals of the fifth kingdom acquire knowledge of the cosmic organization and the basic facts that are valid for all the cosmic worlds. The “cosmic knowledge” there is in the planetary hierarchy has been conveyed insofar as this knowledge can be made comprehensible to the individuals of the sixth and fifth kingdoms. Understanding is facilitated by the fact that existence as far as possible is organized according to the principle of analogy: “as below, so above”.
11On the whole it is impossible to liberate people from their views once acquired. Unless they have been inoculated with the old illusions in childhood, new generations can gradually assimilate new ideas so that a slow change of views can be ascertained. But the old views have a strange power. They live on in the old literature and wield their suggestive power. History does not only orient us about the past. It also gives new life to the scotched fictions.
1What historians and archaeologists call the history of the world scarcely reaches further into the past than five or six millennia. They are not just ignorant of the facts that the Atlantean root-race is about twelve million years old and the Aryan root-race about one hundred thousand years old, but these facts are also incomprehensible to them as yet. It will certainly be long before they realize that the Muse of History is a story-teller and no stickler for the truth. Their history of the world is a collection of old wives’ tales, cock and bull stories and narratives for the mature youth. The fact that rulers in times past hired historians to glorify their and their nations’ stupidities and brutalities does not increase the content of truth. These lies live on mostly in the gossip of anecdotes. And if anybody objected, they defended the thing by saying that if it was not true it was nevertheless well put or, as Voltaire said, if it was not true it was in any case better than truth.
2The history of the activation of consciousness during the barbarian stage of mankind, before there was any kind of civilization in Lemuria or Atlantis, can be passed over, since historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and antiquarians of other kinds are not in a position to judge the pertaining facts, which partially explains their negative attitude. Ethnologists will be continually misled by fragments of ancient behavioural patterns still remaining. Their attempts at explaining “animism”, for example, remain imaginative constructions of ignorance. Of course they are also quite unable to explain the manifestations of soul to be seen in causalized anthropoid apes (soul = causal envelope).
3Only esoteric history may afford the requisite facts about the genesis and development of the races during the 21 million years that there have existed male and female human beings on our planet. Without esoteric knowledge, biology and physiology will never be able to explain the processes of development and degeneration of organic life.
4The idea of world history as a series of world ages has long been part and parcel of Indian philosophy, which Westerners are recommended to study closely as a suitable preparation to esoteric studies.
5They have thought the world ages to be “the various social and cultural phases whose genesis, efflorescence, decay and succession make up the form and content of human evolution”. In so doing they have reduced multiples of 432,000 years to the small epochs of historians.
6Without esoteric knowledge it is impossible to distinguish the different root-races, sub-races, branch-races, not least on account of the mixture of races constantly going on.
7It is also premature to talk about culture to a mankind that has not reached the stage of culture, since the true explanation of the idea of culture has not yet been presented. Those civilizations and cultures on our planet which existed once but are now long annihilated were not the merits of the present mankind but of clans brought here from other globes. They always made up a caste of their own and built temples where they taught their descendants the secret knowledge of reality. If the idea of culture is conceived as “cultivation”, then its essential content is lost. You must be able to distinguish between physical, emotional, and mental culture, stages of civilization and culture.
8How much sociologists understand of the factors that have determined the formation of races and “cultures” is clear from the statement that “the division to be seen in developmental history has created the various races, nationalities, and cultures”.
9If true culture is to arise then there must be a division of work effected in the community, so that those who have the necessary qualities and abilities to prepare and maintain cultures may give their undivided attention to the pertaining tasks. In historical times, the small elite of the humanist stage have been able to be pioneers of cultural onsets, which withered as rapidly as they flowered. They could make such contributions since they were able to cultivate their latent talents as hobbies in their spare-time. But this is impossible for those on somewhat lower levels.
10That elite who in Lemuria and Atlantis built civilizations for the people and cultures for those at higher stages of development and were the teachers and political leaders of mankind have long since passed to the next higher natural kingdom. They are now members of that planetary hierarchy which supervises the consciousness development of mankind, what religious people call “divine guidance in human life”.
11This development has not proceeded undisturbedly but has been constantly interrupted – effects of causes that mankind has itself initiated. This fact is a partial explanation for the missing links that archaeologists vainly try to find.
12The collective being who supervises human development has no easy problems to solve. Their work is smashed by an ignorant, misguided mankind, by the repulsive forces that systematically try to stop development and by the collective being of the law of reaping who must restore balance. Constantly new plans must be kept in reserve to meet all contingencies.
13All participate in the process of development by their activity or passivity, in a positive or negative way. In so doing nobody escapes his share in responsibility and participation in destiny. Many comfort themselves in their ignorance by thinking that “god does everything”. He does not. “He” does what “he” has to. And men have certainly to do their share or take the consequences. There are no loopholes in laws of nature and laws of life.
14The collective being under the law of destiny who supervises the destinies of human individuals in consideration of their development, collaborates very closely with the collective being who stipulates men’s reaping according to their sowing and portions it out for each particular incarnation.
15It can be ascertained that there are often brief periods of brilliance, when culture rises rapidly, followed by even swifter decline. The determining factor here is the sowing and reaping of the nation as a collective. Individuals play significant roles, of course, but on the whole it is the developmental levels of the incarnating clans that decide.
16In order to learn something essential from history you must obviously be able to follow the sowing and reaping of the branch-races through millennia. It does not seem possible to learn even such a relatively easy lesson as the one which historians could draw from the experiences of the democracies known in history. (Nothing should be expected from politicians, who never see any further than the misunderstood current problems.)
17Human egoism being insatiable it is not strange that the nations have thoroughly failed in their historical missions of making the contributions to consciousness development intended for them.
18Development means, in respect of the matter aspect, the attainment of ever higher molecular kinds; in respect of the consciousness aspect, the attainment of the pertaining ever higher kinds of consciousness with the ensuing possibility to understand ever more; in respect of the motion aspect, ever more purposefully working energy. Then it depends on genetical heredity and the quality of the etheric envelope which of these various possibilities (consciousness or energy or both) are able to manifest themselves in the individual. Of course, it is impossible for psychologists at the present stage of mankind’s development to ascertain differences in level or understand these realities. The usual consequence of this is that they reject such a “baroque theory”. Whatever they fail to understand must be wrong.
19In esoterics, “psychic” refers to emotionality and mentality, whereas “spiritual” bears on causal and essential consciousness. Alongside of the psychic development of the masses goes the spiritual development of the more developed people in so far as the general tendency to division found in them is superseded by loving understanding. They have not as yet realized their social responsibility according to the law of development through mutual help. “Responsibility” indicates the conditions of further development and collective good sowing and reaping. Besides, it should be pointed out that the effects of the law of reaping are not limited to the individual but extend into the collective in the least predictable ways. The thoughts of the individual can affect thousands of people in all parts of the world.
20The civilizational individual with his poor emotional life, without the powers of admiration, affection and sympathy, pursues the illusions of power, glory, and wealth as if they were the meaning of life. In life upon life he rolls the stone of Sisyphos to coveted heights, always to find his hopes of enduring happiness dashed. Gradually, through thousands of incarnations, there is gathered in his subconscious that fund of experience which makes it easier for him to see that these illusions are meaningless, since they cannot give him what he in his heart of hearts is seeking, something that cannot be taken away from us, something that makes us richer personalities, something that fills us with joy and happiness never to be lost.
21Those who have acquired the ability to study their own and other people’s past lives and are able to follow the development of individuals during many series of incarnations, testify to the following facts: that the self’s working up of its experiences from physical life between incarnations eventually in new lives effects a change of instinctive direction towards higher goals; that the law of destiny and the law of reaping guide the individual to ever-increasing understanding of the essentials of life, increasing understanding of the facts that benefit and welfare are inseparable from justice and uprightness, that salvation consists in forgetfulness of egoistic strivings, that evil is mistakes as to the Law, that what we took to be evil proved to be for our own good, that everything we meet with is necessary experience, lesson, test, hardening, liberation, and pay of an old debt.
22In respect of consciousness the emotional and mental worlds are “intermediary” worlds, interesting phenomena with their emotional illusoriness and mental fictitiousness, both excluding objectivity. Imagination has full scope, shaping matter as it wishes and letting ignorance play dictator or god. Thus these two worlds are the worlds of deception. That is a truth which thinking people should have no difficulty in realizing when studying the physical effect in world history.
23In these two worlds the fools may romp for eons until they have seen that they are meaningless in respect of reality and development; learnt that arbitrariness creates chaos, that lawfulness is a necessary condition of a cosmos, that law is the basis of everything, the basis that makes method and system possible; won the insight that the discovery and application of the laws of life by common sense is a condition of consciousness development.
24Man creates and adores what he has created, becomes the slave of his products, the victim of the illusions and fictions he has decided to regard as his soul and his god.
25If the two worlds lack an intrinsic value in material respect, they nevertheless are of significance in that they teach the individual, be it after eons of painful experiences, to realize the necessity of law and unity.
1It is so much easier to be inactive than active, negative than positive, that it is not strange that the apostles of pessimism so easily gain a hearing People with their repulsive basic attitude (their latent, easily activated hatred) feel their kinship with the diabolical. That clarifies what general stage of development mankind is at. Shall we never get quit of barbarism? It is typical that such a false, life-hostile, life-perverse outlook as Nietzsche’s in his Birth of Tragedy was hailed with enthusiasm, especially by poets!!
2Human egoism counteracts and so delays development. The doctrine of reincarnation should clarify to men how shortsighted their life-blind egoism actually is. Those who strive for power, glory, wealth, and succeed in achieving these goals, as a rule have sown a bad sowing for their future incarnations. For success in one incarnation they have counteracted themselves for a whole series of incarnations to come. You could call that life-blindness. Anyone who lives in order to serve evolution and mankind not just develops faster but also gets ever more and greater opportunities to do so in his future lives.
3Human life, at the present developmental stage of mankind, is so full of possibilities of suffering for everybody, that an individual who has acquired common sense realizes the wisdom of living in order to remove the causes of suffering for the future. Add to this the fact that he is the happiest who is able to forget himself and thereby all the conflicts there are in his subconscious.
4Those who have found “the truth” are very willing to help other people to have it as well. But without a knowledge of the various stages of development their attempts at “saving” other people will easily fail. The presentation must be adapted to the possibilities there are of comprehending, understanding, and realizing. In individual cases it may appear that there is a possibility of understanding where you expected it least. But on the whole the rule holds true that only those are ripe for the knowledge who long for “the truth” and are willing to receive it. Without this longing there will be a sowing in unsuitable soil. When knowledge is forced on the unwilling there will often be a bad sowing both for the receiver and the giver who carries the responsibility for the perverse result.
5According to the law everybody must himself seek, find, and realize. The best help consists in helping everybody where he is to reach the clarity he seeks, his solution of his own problems. To give knowledge which the receiver cannot use is not to help him but rather to confuse him. We approach the goal step by step and there is no patent solution good for all.
6It is important to state that the individual does not need to acknowledge his past. In denying his past, having reached a higher level, he is no more the same man. It was the great merit of the so-called forgiveness of sins that it freed man from the burden of his past. It is the fatal hostility to life in the moralists and in the entire moralist way of looking at things that the individual is constantly judged anew for what should be forgotten. That is the satanists’ method of counteracting development, ascension: constantly burden people anew with the errors of the past. It must be clearly stated that moralism is satanism. Until men have realized this the satanists will triumph ever and anew.
7So rooted is this entire moralist perversion of life that individuals who have prematurely (before being causal selves) come into contact with their past incarnations have sometimes become nervous wrecks and so unfit for life in that incarnation. The triumph of satanism.
8Of course there are kind people at the stages of barbarism and civilization. But only at the stage of culture does man begin his conscious striving to become good.
9The necessary emotional and mental qualities the individual must acquire are abilities that breed energy and demonstrate the nature of these material energies.
10Anyone who trusts his instinct and does what he can to realize unity develops the necessary abilities automatically.
11In the course of development, the individual makes his own religion for his emotional needs and his own philosophy for his mental needs.
12Causal intuition affords us reality ideas and no fictions.
13Individual development is a continuous identification with ever higher kinds of consciousness carried by ever higher material vibrations.
14Qualities and abilities exist in order to ensure continuous identification with the consciousness of ever higher worlds.
15Men live in their illusions and fictions until they have grasped the meaning and goal of life.
16The child grows out of the infant stage with its toys. But adults remain on the level they have reached and wish to keep its toys.
17If wishes and desires make man unhappy, then it depends on the fact that they belong on a lower level than his true one. It is desires that make him unhappy.
18When the individual feels grateful for the possibility of desisting from a desire, then he is ripe for this “sacrifice” of his toys.
19Evolution consists of a series of consciousness levels: in leaving the lower for the higher when you have learnt the lessons of your level.
1“Like attracts like.” The circle of self-chosen friends is one of many signs of the level of development. It is true that we cannot with certainty determine the individual stage and level (the laws of destiny and reaping make this impossible), but many concordant signs afford at least some probability.
2We attract such individuals as correspond to our most dominant quality during various phases of our life. A humanist, who had to grow up in an unsuitable environment but after passing the stages of barbarism, civilization, and culture finally reaches his true level, may observe how different the people were whom he knew during these different periods. This insight has also the effect that he does not stubbornly cling to people he has once known when he has ascertained their levels. It would just arouse old debasing vibrations to a new life.
3To raise a man to your own level of development is possible only if the person in question has reached that level in a previous life. To elicit his understanding of your own higher level is possible only if he is very close to your level and makes serious efforts to understand. In contrast, it is relatively easy to be dragged down to the lower level of another, especially if personal attraction contributes. There are such cases where the individual of a higher level lost all his interest in the things belonging to that level. Understanding was buried for that incarnation.
1The description of the stages of human development presented hitherto will relatively soon be complemented with new facts that afford another perspective.
2The reason for this is that all the natural kingdoms develop, unconsciously or consciously, and reach higher levels, thus not just the superhuman kingdoms but also the four lowest ones. All life is not just change but development as well, even though the power to survey millions of years is necessary to ascertain this. Everything is both collective and individual. The entire existence consists of monads having both collective and individual consciousness. This collective consciousness, which is obtained through amalgamation of the primordial atomic consciousnesses, is of innumerable kinds from the cosmic total consciousness down to physical mineral consciousness, innumerable also in its endless combinations of groups within all material kinds, in all natural kingdoms. “Where two or three are gathered”, be it atoms, molecules, men, etc., the result is a temporary or relatively permanent collective consciousness. Our planet makes up a collective consciousness, and the individual occupying its centre is its “god”, until he hands over that function to another individual. Primitive comprehension of course idiotizes such a reality, and so we have got all those superstitions and deities of all kinds that worship of stones, trees, human beings, and all manner of imaginary forms.
3When an avatar incarnates, this entails an enormous increase of the attractive vibrations that unconsciously affect everybody. They cannot explain why they “without reason” feel so glad, “uplifted”, kindly disposed to everybody. Individual characters of attractive tendency have their own powers reinforced for a rapid career and often succeed in definitively attaining the stage of culture. People who have till then been unreceptive to any kind of influence begin to long and to seek. When the avatar, after a period of about fifty years, returns to his own world, the remaining vibrations gradually ebb away. But those who have been able to profit by them and have used their time for striving and study have taken giant strides upward.
4According to D.K., Christos–Maitreya has set up an unbeaten world record. In about 20 million years he has in his consciousness development from the stage of barbarism reached the highest kind of omniscience and omnipotence possible within the solar system (at the verge of cosmic consciousness). The first condition for this was that he did not “fail” in one single incarnation but realized the purpose of them all. How such an achievement is possible we do not know. We may of course guess, if we know that we guess and do not assume and believe (as they do in philosophy and science). His monad must have had unique opportunities of consciousness development in the lower natural kingdoms. That his basic tendency has been attraction stands to reason.
1The law of self includes everything that belongs to practical activity, the art of living, and to realization.
2Knowledge of the other laws of life is necessary to true understanding of life, of course, but application falls within the sphere of self-realization.
3The law of self-realization is an imperturbable, inescapable law that is valid for all beings in all worlds and all kingdoms from the fourth kingdom up. In the three lowest kingdoms, consciousness development proceeds in group-souls, automatically through the acquisition of experience during eons. However, as soon as the self has started to function (the monad has acquired self-consciousness), it must by itself acquire all the qualities and abilities necessary to further consciousness development, by itself acquire self-consciousness in ever higher kinds of passive consciousness in ever higher kinds of matter.
4The law of self-realization makes it clear that man’s consciousness development depends on himself, however many incarnations this must take. The greatest obstacles to this are his emotional illusions and mental fictions, his totally false ideas of reality and life, which all cause him to misjudge himself and his possibilities, fail to see the meaning of his incarnation, and on the whole to make nothing but mistakes.
5“Whatever happens to man” is the result of causes in lives past and of new causes in his present life. His own emotional desires and feelings do not change the “course of destiny”. Will is the will to unity, and when it shows in action it can strengthen much. To pray to god that he do what we could do or should be able to do has but little effect. New causes become new factors, but those causes are the individual’s own efforts.
6The problems of life the self is wrestling with the self must some time solve, however many incarnations it will take, except of course those problems which can be included among illusions and fictions, for those problems dissolve when you receive the right facts about existence.
7It is wrong, however, to speak about the problems of the “soul” (the causal consciousness). The self in the fourth natural kingdom can know nothing about that. Man, ignorant of life, uses words without experience of the reality they originally referred to. This includes all superphysical realities.
8The individual, beginning the work for his conscious self-realization, has to overcome difficulties or resistance to his striving. Some of them should be enumerated here: illusions and fictions he has been fed during childhood and adolescence, the idiosyncrasies of his environment, public opinion, the resistance of all who do not understand, his own uncertainty and insecurity, his unwillingness or inability to change his habits, personal considerations, unconscious tendencies and complexes.
9You do not reach any higher levels just by being nice. People call that being good!
10Self-realization requires knowledge, trust in self, self-determination, and will. The individual is what he has become through his thoughts, emotions, words, and deeds in lives past. He will in the future become what he thinks, feels, etc., in the present. When the subjective working up of the contents of objective sense agrees with material reality, then the self has liberated itself from fictions.
11Self-realization is done at the stages of culture, humanity, and ideality (the last two stages corresponding to “approaching the path” and “walking the path”). There are different stages of self-realization corresponding to the three higher stages of human evolution.
12Self-realization is long-term work also after you have begun to strive for it consciously and try to apply the laws of life rationally.
13The law of self-realization is an iron law, the expression of a scientific process in the esoteric sense. To this also belong such things as life ignorance regards as uninteresting, tiring drudgery, the fulfilling of one’s daily trivial duties. The next step is where the individual understands and performs his life-task, realizes the meaning of his incarnation.
14The law of self implies that the individual must himself do everything in his power to do. There is no escaping, for upon the attempt to do so life will painfully turn its lessons. All meticulous application of the laws of life has its compensation, however. Virtue has its reward. For such people are the very ones that the planetary hierarchy needs and wants. They are given greater and greater tasks and so opportunities to acquire qualities and abilities on higher levels than would otherwise be possible. To be so noticed and taken care of is something of a fabulous opportunity.
15According to the law of self-realization, all individuals in all kingdoms must themselves acquire all the necessary qualities and abilities. The individuals are given the knowledge which they cannot acquire in their own kingdom: where human beings are concerned, this means superphysical knowledge, for whereas men can acquire clairvoyance (emotional objective consciousness), they cannot explore emotional matter. Nor can you become a disciple until you have acquired consciousness in 48:2 and 47:5 and decided to live in order to serve evolution. You are not given knowledge in order to use it for your own good, least of all to feel superior and important and to despise others. The secret of discipleship is that you acquire knowledge yourself just by solving all the problems you are faced with in helping. By helping, you gain an ever increasing understanding of the common consciousness and so you unnoticedly approach essentiality. Regrettably, disappointments await those who too early believe they are intuitive. Poul Bjerre’s definition: “Living intuitively is living with a full understanding of the significance of whatever happens” is esoterically correct. In order to do this, however, you must have acquired essential consciousness and, before that, become a causal self. And perhaps what best characterizes a causal self is common sense. This includes the ability to see your own limitations. That is not always so easy when perspective consciousness constantly opens up new, undreamt-of expanses, like emotional attraction “embraces the whole world”.
16The development of man depends partly on how much he understands the importance of energy, partly on how he is able to use energies in the right way. When he has mastered the hylozoic mental system, acquired the basic knowledge of reality and so has gained a clear view of existence, its meaning and goal, it will be his task, according to the law of self-realization, to proceed on his own path by trial and error, using the energies purposefully. The individual can be compared to the technician in a laboratory who by making experiments acquires the necessary knowledge. He learns by making mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable and instructive. Anyone who cannot appreciate the great significance of mistakes has not understood the law of self-realization. The important thing in this is that the individual did as best he could. Even if a failure may have its deplorable consequences, yet this is outweighed by the contribution of his good will and good motive, affording him deeper insight and understanding. What to outsiders may appear as a failure, even as a “misspent life”, may prove to be the incarnation that was of the greatest significance for that individual’s development. It is to be observed in this that the individual at the same time may have experienced such effects of the law of reaping (old bad reaping) as have brought his life-endurance near the breaking-point. If mankind were not so totally ignorant of life as it still is with its religions, philosophies, and sciences, it would long ago have realized the idiocy (that’s right!) of morally judging man. Moreover, passing moral judgements is a mistake as to the law of freedom and the law of unity. This, however, we do not demand that they understand. But we have a right to demand (not common sense, far from it, but) a wee bit of ordinary sense.
17Perhaps you think that it is an immense waste with talents who could make incomparably greater contributions to human evolution, if when growing up they would have been given the esoteric knowledge from the very beginning, instead of being idiotized by the fictionalism ruling in all domains, so that they have to lose about forty years before they have become so mentalized that they are able to see through fictitiousness and free themselves from the fallacies inoculated into them. It is part of the law of self-realization, however, that the individual must seek and find the truth himself. All knowledge must be self-acquired. All knowledge given to you is a loan for the time being. When that knowledge has once been incorporated with the subconscious it is lost to waking consciousness. Whatever by our own work we have so incorporated with our subconscious that it spontaneously makes itself felt, only that is definitively our own. Then, too, we can choose not to become idiotized and can say to ourselves, “it cannot be like they say it is”. You cannot say anything as long as you do not have the requisite facts. It remains to experiment, using your subconscious “instinct”, until you have made the discovery according to the law of self-realization. The first lesson the aspirant has to learn is that only now is there a possibility for him to learn the alphabet.
18It is a big mistake by the aspirant to believe that the razor-edged path he is walking is “the path of light”. Then he would not learn his lessons. With light, everything is easy, too easy. Rather it can be said that he seldom sees anything but the next step, if so much.
19Mankind develops, not in a straight ascending line but in a slowly rising spiral with many deep dives. That depends on the law of self-realization. All must acquire everything themselves. The knowledge given to one is a loan for one or several incarnations, for a civilizational epoch, a zodiacal epoch. The law of development is a fundamental law of life. Mankind, however, cannot judge the matter, since it cannot acquire the historic perspective over millions of years. Only causal selves can do that.
20According to the planetary hierarchy, it will take about ten million years until 60 per cent of mankind have acquired full causal consciousness.
21There are no “intervals” in the continuity between the various worlds with their apparently quite different kinds of matter, energy, and consciousness. But it takes incessant, patient work to acquire higher kinds of consciousness, because the transition is so imperceptible that you cannot see how it is done, a procedure that happens automatically when once you fulfil the conditions. You have not yet acquired the powers needed to follow the processes going on in your superconscious, and so you must experiment. Anyone who is possessed of common sense observes the rules elaborated by those who have gone before rather than to believe that he is able to do it better at random. It is this understanding of life that theologians in their ignorance have called “faith”, an attitude that of course has degenerated into blind belief in all manner of superstition. Abuse of authority brings about contempt for authority, which has harmful consequences for the true insight into life, until those who have real knowledge demonstrate their understanding and restore confidence in “higher knowledge”.
22During his education, the true seeker assimilates the collected experience of mankind such as it finds expression in the best oriented intellectual leaders of his times. He does not stop there, however. He realizes that nobody has reached the limit of the possible exploration of reality. He tries all paths and finally finds his own. Pursuing this path he acquires self-reliance and self-determination, the courage to stand alone, the courage to say and do what needs to be said and done. It is a razor-edged path. Many people have missed it by leaving a word unsaid, an action undone, by trying to escape from difficulties or disharmonious circumstances, by leaving such problems unsolved as must be solved.
23“In order to understand much you must have strayed deep into the thorns... The warning examples do not help you; you must nearly become such an example yourself before you see it clearly.” This expresses the essential difference between theory and practice in matters of life. Anyone who does not know things from his own experience has not much use of the mere theory on how to manage problems of life. That understanding is part of the basic view underlying self-realization.
24The risk of such statements is that the life-ignorant may misunderstand them as recommending them to experiment recklessly with their own and other people’s lives in order to have the necessary experiences of life. Generally, everything esoteric is misunderstood by the immature. Esoterics is not intended for others than those at the cultural and humanist stages, rare and exceptional people in our times.
25We are by nature divine and we shall some time become omniscient gods. We strive towards this goal, and the powers in our superconscious which we have not yet begun using will make this realization possible. We develop in the most rapid way if we keep considering what we shall become, the goal we all shall reach. Every act of striving is worthwhile. Every new idea adds a new power, for ideas are developmental factors charged with force. Those who wait until they will get power become less and less able to use the power when they get it. But anyone who lets his action prove that he is serious in his desire to reach higher, finds that everything is immensely easier than the inert can grasp.
26There are those who wait until they see the path they are to walk, and they must wait. Life is an adventure and everyone who wants to go forward must be animated by a courage akin to that of the pioneer in exploration.
27There are those who wait until they know the right path, those who must always be able to distinguish true from false, and they must wait. As long as we are seekers, we seek for what is right and true. This search, which is a necessary condition of realization, continues on each new higher level.
28Anyone who wants to go forward and up must prove in action that his intention is serious. Anyone who must always put off his decision until tomorrow will never be ready. There must not be any obstacles, and there are none for him who has made up his mind.
29We often act automatically, without thinking. Even then, however, our action is the result of a previous thought, a thought complex already existing. This thought may lie as far back as in a previous incarnation. Then it becomes a thought forced on the individual by the elemental of reaping.
30See to it that good thoughts as soon as possible result in action. Mere good decisions, dreams of future exploits that will probably never be achieved, are turned into increasingly difficult obstacles.
31A suspicion is always a mistake. If it is justified, it impels the individual to action. If it is groundless, it poisons the environment and tempts it to suspect.
32Anyone who wills for self-realization and accelerates his development will sooner or later be attacked by the black ones.
33In The Laws of Manu it is rightly said: “One good action is better than a thousand good thoughts, and those who fulfil their duties are better than the learned who preach them.”
34“Everyone is the architect of his own fortune.” This winged word is a translation into metaphor of an esoteric axiom. If a man is not, then he has to try in life upon life, until he succeeds. For he will succeed. The law is called self-realization. Man shall learn to stand on his own feet, know what he should do and not do and take the consequences of his own thoughts, words and deeds. Life is what we make it: a happy or an unhappy life. If, in its seemingly incurable ignorance of life, mankind will not see this, yet that does not change an immutable law.
35Stupidity, however, believes itself able to make laws for life. Well, everybody is the master of his wisdom. And wiseacreness always believes it is right. That is a disease which most often takes a long series of painful operations (incarnations) to cure.
1From the material point of view, self-realization consists in raising the vibrations of all the individual’s envelopes (the organism, etheric, emotional, and mental envelope), and from the consciousness point of view, in experiencing reality and life and working up this experience, which brings about insight and understanding. In doing this you not just activate a higher molecular kind but also conquer its consciousness. This manifests itself as a change in your being. The greatest radical changes occur when the self moves out of the personality (the triad envelope) to the causal being (centres in the greater causal envelope) and from there to the second triad. Every ascent to a higher level, to ever higher levels, brings about a change of the soul’s direction, a liberation from the lower, an overcoming of something that has been hindering the insight and understanding of some higher good.
2When the self has acquired the ability to control the organism through the etheric envelope, there comes another period, the most difficult and most important in the self’s development. This is when the self learns to control emotional consciousness so that the attractive energies dominate. Thereupon the self will learn to control also the attractive emotional energies by the aid of its reason. Emotionality must not be neglected. It has necessary functions. Firstly it is the driving force, and secondly its constructive imagination is needed both for physical planning and for the contact with the essential world. Emotional consciousness is superfluous only when the self has become a causal self. After the self has mastered the emotional, it will become sovereign in the mental, so that the mental controls the emotional and the self acquires the higher mental powers, perspective thinking (47:5) and system thinking (47:4, a kind of lower intuition).
3When the individual has learnt to control the consciousness in his envelopes of incarnation (his so-called lower self), there comes an incarnation in which he wants to control his environment and his circumstances. If his development proceeds normally, his attention will subsequently be directed towards “new areas to conquer” and he strives to become a causal self, to acquire full causal consciousness and to take over the management of the causal envelope.
4It has not yet been clarified what incarnation means for the individual. He is endowed with envelopes, which contain tendencies acquired in previous incarnations. These envelopes have their own consciousness, which is affected by external vibrations. To a great extent (how much depends on its level of development) the self accepts the illusions and fictions it has been fed during the years of childhood and adolescence, and in most people they will be ineradicable for that incarnation. When the individual has reached the point where the envelopes have been woven together so as to make up one single envelope in respect of consciousness (the physical controlled by the emotional, and the emotional consciousness by the mental), the result is “a personality”, which (whatever it thinks) is “the master of its own wisdom”. This personality is always, albeit unconsciously, in opposition to Augoeides. And so it is even if the individual has acquired esoteric knowledge. Rather it is precisely then that the opposition becomes increasingly manifest. It is the individual–the self that has the knowledge and must use it itself. However much he knows, however intelligent he is, however wise in his own eyes, he nevertheless is not a causal self yet but constantly runs the risk of making mistakes and also does so to an extent that would astonish him if he could see it with the eyes of Augoeides. The essential difference from former times is his motive, intention, his changed attitude. But that is not enough. Augoeides knows. The self does not know. He must gain Augoeides’ vision. Until he has done so, the opposition between the self and Augoeides will not cease. That is the opposition which is abolished in discipleship. It is no secret for reason but for the self. It has its basis in the opposition of me and you. How it is solved through acquisition of the twelve essential qualities will remain the individual’s own secret for ever. “Thou art this.” Me and you are one, are one another with our self-identity preserved.
5People judge an individual by what he says and does, having no idea of what it depends on. To some extent even at the stage of humanity, and much more at lower stages, the self in its triad envelope (the incarnating part of the causal envelope) is the victim of the activity of its envelopes, which are then determined by vibrations from without. Only at the stage of ideality has the self gained the full control of its envelopes. The “external” vibrations (in the emotional as well as in the mental world) come partly from the planetary hierarchy, partly from the black lodge, partly from all people (found at the various stages of development). If these vibrations are stronger than the self’s own vibrations, then the individual is influenced by them to say and do such things as he otherwise would not say and do (which probably most people have experienced). Especially in “passive” states, the individual may easily be caught off guard by the tricks of his envelopes. It is for this and other reasons that the disciple must learn to control his consciousness and to constantly guard the consciousness content of his envelopes, so that the effect of intrusive vibrations can be neutralized at once. The self will completely succeed in this only when his own energies are stronger than the energies coming from without. And attacks from the black lodge can be warded off only if the self is in constant contact with its Augoeides, whose energies are then at the self’s disposal.
6In this connection the problem of “divine guidance in human life” could perhaps be understood in some respects. The planetary hierarchy supervises mankind at large, not individually. It sends out its vibrations which can be received by those who are tuned in to the right wavelength. As for the rest, the intention is that the individual learns to live the life, however many incarnations this may take. In life upon life he learns by his failures how to avoid them. The individual’s development depends on how he has instinctively apprehended the law of self-realization. The current theological, moral, psychological theories on the pertaining problems must be misleading, as they reckon with just one life and not with the unlimited number of incarnations. Only when knowing about reincarnation is it possible to understand the law of self-realization. Praying for help is evidence of life ignorance. It is the meaning of man’s life that he shall become sovereign. And he will become so only by mastering his problems.
7The esoteric saying, “Before a man can walk the path, he must have become the path himself,” means that the man, by acquiring the qualities and abilities (all such ones consisting of molecules or atoms with their respective kinds of consciousness and energy), builds his ladder to higher regions and worlds also in material respect. In his envelopes, lower molecular kinds are successively replaced by higher ones, until the envelopes finally consist of nothing but atoms. Then the envelopes can be dispensed with and, as need arises, be formed automatically anew. This requires sovereignty in the atomic kind.
8The bridge, which the disciple must build between the first triad mental molecule and the second triad mental atom, goes through the centres of the causal envelopes. These are three in number and are called in turn the centres of intelligence, unity, and law-application. These terms have been chosen in the intention to intimate what kinds of energies are concerned: energies that afford knowledge, abolish the opposition of me and you (“thou art this”), and make it possible to realize the Law (with a sense of liberation every time you can liberate yourself from something you have hitherto considered indispensable).
9Be it carefully noted that you do not become free by prematurely throwing away something of that which is still more or less necessary at lower stages, necessary in order to live, learn etc. You achieve nothing by mere renunciation. It is not a matter of self-denial or “sacrifice”. What is said here can only be understood by anyone who has acquired causal intuition. It is mentioned for the sake of completeness and in order to make it easier to understand incipient intuition.
1Level of development and theoretical knowledge of reality need not agree. The level appears in understanding and the possibility of realization. Comprehension indicates the level of education during the incarnation. “Uneducated” people on higher levels thus understand more than the most “educated” on lower levels.
2The power to know and the power to realize, turn knowledge into real life, are two different abilities. Life-ignorant moralists (moralists are ignorant of life) believe it is enough to preach and condemn. They achieve the opposite of the result intended or, at best, just the external, deceptive appearances.
3According to the law of self-realization, understanding is a condition of “revelation” and not a consequence. Having this insight (based on your experience) you also see through the error of the theological notion of “revelation”.
4To understand the meaning of life (development towards omniscience and omnipotence) is one thing. But to understand the significance of the various worlds in the great wholeness of life is something quite different. That understanding is a condition of the right use of the possibilities existing.
5Esoterically, “will” means the power to realize, which presupposes insight and understanding as well as sufficient experience. For the individual self, the law of self-realization means the realization of his own insights; and for the individual as a member of a collective self, it means the common realization in which the self has so identified himself with the plan that the “perception of self” has vanished. The identity of the self, however, cannot be lost.
6The esoterician is made to have experiences that quickly reduce his presumption. He is made to learn the difference between comprehension and understanding and is given opportunities to study the different stages of development. Having become an essential self he learns to observe also the levels of development and how the subtle boundaries are sufficient to make up hindrances to individuals on a certain level against fully understanding those on the next higher level. The different degrees in the esoteric knowledge orders indicated the different potentialities of understanding (the latent experience of life) and therefore of realization.
7“Rapid development” is just the regaining of a level previously attained. Everything truly new in respect of knowledge and wisdom requires painstaking work and effort. Also at the stage of civilization, each level of development may require the experience and work of some hundred incarnations. When the new level has been conquered, whatever can be reaped of sowing remaining from the previous level must be reaped.
8In order to become an esoterician it is not enough to study esoterics. Most esoteric students remain exoterists, despite everything. They have so identified themselves with old ways of looking at things and habits of thought that these remain ineradicable in the spontaneous mental, emotional, and physical life originating from the subconscious. In theory everything may be thoroughly thought over. But in practice everything remains the same. It is eternally the same old story, the same philosophical (psychological) problems ever since Sokrates, the same theological problems ever since Eusebios got hold of Paul’s letters and rehashed them. Very, very few people change radically. The power of mentality is weak. And emotional ecstasy soon passes off. The vibrational pressure of the surrounding world is too strong. And the individual remains as he is.
9Those change who possess “the new” latently, are able to reattain their former level, regain old qualities and abilities.
10Anyone who is unable to change his view or standpoint has concluded his development and is held prisoner by his own fictions and illusions.
11We constantly change, since we develop. One thing must never change, however. In all trials throughout our wandering in the desert, when enthusiasm has gone down and everything tends to become the same again, then we must hold to the vision. Anyone who makes progress in his self-realization does so not just for himself but for everybody in unity.
12Nobody will miss the goal who never gives up, who never stops aspiring. If he does not reach it in this life, then he will do so in his next life, which is the next day of a long life.
1There lies in the monad itself (as in all nature) a dim striving, which with the stability of natural law directs the urge to develop towards something like an unknown goal, this being the first manifestation of the cosmic total consciousness. Slowly through the different natural kingdoms, this demand of nature tries to make itself felt as a desire of self-assertion (“will to power”, desire to “understand”), finally to find that the expansion of the self is an embrace of the cosmos, not a concentration on an infinitesimal atomic particle. When the self ceases being a physical, an emotional, or a mental, etc., self, it will become an ever higher self with ever greater wisdom and power. The monad becomes an ever larger self by liberating itself from its lower selves throughout all the cosmic worlds. And the only way to do so is to “forget yourself”, forget who you are, forget your comical insignificance, so that by serving the whole you gain the right to become the whole. Reaching that insight you lose the capacity for self-glory and self-importance. And you become humbly grateful before the prospect of being allowed to join in the evolutionary work of higher kingdoms.
2There is a great difference between the first self and the second self in how they relate to themselves as well as to the external world. The first self is sufficient to itself. It wants to have power for itself with everything that means as to dominance over nature and human beings. Everything is seen in relation to its own self. Whatever does not serve its purposes is something hostile that should rather be destroyed. This attitude has consequences, which the self, blinded by illusoriness and fictitiousness, either does not see or cannot do anything about. The self shuts itself up in its own prison, is a slave to everything on which it nevertheless must depend for its existence or welfare. It lives in a world of fear, since it knows that all the other selves share the same attitude. It lives in a world where everybody is everybody’s enemy. In its life ignorance the self constantly acts against the laws of life and must impotently experience the effects of the causes it has set in motion. Finally it realizes that there is only one way out of this circle and that is to liberate itself from everything, cease living for itself, free itself from the fetters that it has tied for itself. There is only one way to freedom, and that is to live for serving life. The self has always wanted to be god and finds that the only way of becoming god is to become one with all the other gods. It can do so only by participating in the great cosmic evolution the goal of which is the realized unity of everybody with full sovereignty in the cosmos and frictionless application of all the laws of life with which everybody must comply. The first self, being ignorant of the Law, believes itself able to defy the Law, to find that it becomes the victim of this defiance, the victim of the effects it has caused. That is the insight it has gained as a second self after having realized, through contact with others, that it was the victim of its own life ignorance.
3The whole cosmos is a unity of consciousness, and this is “the cosmic love” or “the community of all souls”. To be able to reach the fifth natural kingdom, man must have acquired common consciousness and enter as an active part into a unit. The group is the primary unit, the individual is not. There must not be any possibility of opposition. While preserving the individuality which he acquired in the human kingdom and which he will never lose, the individual will become a larger self with all the other selves. This is done step by step through entering into ever larger groups.
4The essential insight to learn from this fact is that whatever we do to separate people from each other, inciting envy, division, strife, is the most serious mistake in life. That is the reason why gossip, rumour-mongering, etc., which is the most interesting thing people know, is turned into a very bad sowing for those who start the malicious talk and for those who spread it. They also cut off their connection with the worlds of unity.
5The first test in self-realization is whether we benefit others. We so easily hinder others instead of helping them.
6The second test is whether we serve unity by what we do.
7To strive for individual salvation is selfishness and leads astray. Only he who has entered into unity, into the collective consciousness, has reached the fifth natural kingdom. And the conditions of this are to have realized, at the humanist stage (if not before), your unity with mankind, with the human collective, and become absorbed in the work for human evolution. Quit worrying about your own salvation and live for that of others, then others will take care of you. Such is the Law. So it has been misinterpreted, distorted, idiotized, satanized.
8To the life-ignorant, consciousness development appears to imply a series of “renunciations”. In order to reach the higher, you must eliminate the lower before you are able to reach up into the higher. Before the self is able to become a causal self, it must liberate itself from the consciousness content of its lower envelopes with everything that means as to reality and life. That is “the dark night of the soul”. It is a sacrifice just as long as we do not perceive that higher but throw away, as it were, our lives to no avail. The individual feels abandoned by all and everybody, bereft of all the light and happiness he has acquired. That may seem surmountable when you read about it for then you still have everything. Experiencing it, however, is quite a different thing. Theoretical knowledge is not reality; only ignorance confuses these two totally different things. Mankind has not yet understood what self-realization means, because it lives in its illusions and fictions. What remains when the individual is deprived of these without having access to anything else? Courage, knowledge, and trust in life are required for the ability to “sacrifice” everything that appears to be life, everything that you hold dear. Once you have made the sacrifice without any ulterior motive, you will retrieve everything you have loved, but moved up into a higher world, a world of unselfishness. That is a test we must pass in order to experience reality. If you have not experienced isolation, you will not grasp community.
1There are many strange conceptions people have formed of god’s will. The Christians pray to god that he should do everything. It is true that the whole cosmos is the work of monads who have attained the seven highest cosmic worlds (1–7), and certainly the energies and consciousness needed by life pour down through all the worlds. But ignorance does not know that the cosmos exists in order to afford the monads opportunities to acquire consciousness and, as their final goal, omniscience. The monads receive everything they need from higher kingdoms. But it is their business to assimilate through their own work whatever life grants to them. The organism digests food but we must supply the organism with food. Ideas are given to us for nothing. But we must assimilate the ideas through our own work. We are given everything we need for our development. But this development is the result of self-initiated consciousness activity according to the laws of self-realization and self-activation.
2Since the meaning of life is the consciousness development of all monads, the central motive of all individuals in the worlds of higher kingdoms is to serve this purpose. For anyone who has understood this, all those conceptions fall away which people have formed of the “will of god” during millions of years and which religious emotional imagination has constructed in the longing need of religious activity. It would be an easy task to fill entire libraries with all the literature that during millennia has been produced on these subjects.
3At the present stage of mankind’s development, emotionality is the dynamic force that realizes what reason comprehends to be purposeful. Emotion is the driving force. Many people comprehend what ought to be done but let the matter rest there, since they do not “turn on” the driving force of emotion. The intelligentsia is largely content with passively receiving the knowledge without applying it in life. The fault is with our present system of education, which neglects the culture of emotional activity. The mystics remain dreamers. They are content with being absorbed in devotion and expend their energy in imaginative excesses, not understanding that the energy of attraction must find expression in physical life. Self-realization shows in action. God does not need any prayers. He needs workers who execute his purposes in the physical world. Knowledge that is not used rightly is misused. Knowledge entails opportunities of service, and anyone who does not use his possibilities has no prospects of getting any offers in the future. It is a “grace” to be able to serve.
4Not merely preaching the message of peace but also living the peace they preach.
5The worker in the vineyard allows others to enjoy the harvest and the honour of its quality. For him it is enough that the harvest is the best.
6You strive to become strong, able, wise, glad, happy, to develop, etc. in order that the world be such. You are carried or you carry, you press down or you lift up.
7You may serve life in many ways, mainly by fulfilling your duty.
8It is a mistake to neglect exoteric duties for esoteric ones, lower duties for self-assumed higher ones. On the other hand, the individual is wise in not assuming new duties that encroach on his work for self-realization.
9Just as you cannot be an expert in all spheres, cannot perform all kinds of work, so you cannot be “perfect” in all respects. The main thing is that the work you do contribute, be it professional work or “spare time work” for “the welfare of all” is done as best you can. Perfectionism of any kind is a waste of time.
10Adaptation to people or to circumstances increases our fitness for life and our capacity for service. This need not in the least imply that you compromise, just that you give up self-assertion.
11In the matter of service, being the esoterician’s path to the insights and abilities of higher worlds, the rule applies saying that you serve with your best abilities and not by doing such things as others could do equally well if not better. Too great emphasis has been laid on material help, which as a rule is no help at all. The only true help is the aid to self-help. Other kinds of help mostly equal bolstering up vice, rather promote the welfare receiver attitude, laziness, dissatisfaction, diffidence, and lack of enterprise. You do not help others by being a hindrance to yourself.
12We help others with their problems by analysing the matter with them until the problems solve themselves in the uncertain people.
13You may hear that, since service is a condition of consciousness development, it is in the egoistic interest of the individual to be able to serve. Those who so presume have no idea of what service means. Very often it is of such a nature that, if there is anything of egoism left in the individual, “he cannot stand it” but gives up.
14Of course there are “idealists” also at the stages of civilization and culture. However, they lack that foundation of the knowledge of reality which guarantees the constancy and irrefutability of the pertaining ideas. Life-ignorant “juvenile idealism”, which soon volatilizes, is a sufficient illustration of that fact. Unshakable ideality belongs to the stage of ideality in the world of Platonic ideas. It is true of all ideas, however, that at lower stages the individual does not have the latent fund of life experience necessary to realize ideals belonging to a higher stage of development.
1Ignorance, a wrong conception (fiction) or a wrong attitude (illusion) are at the bottom of all suffering.
2Suffering for the most part depends on a wrong attitude. Suffering will continue until the inner causes have been eliminated. Then the outer causes disappear, as they have done their service and are inefficient.
3Those unteachable ones who defy life choose to learn only through suffering.
4Happiness and suffering are partly reaping, but ninety per cent are our own doing, effects of our own will already in this life.
5Certainly there is suffering enough in the world: the physical suffering that goes with all organic life, the emotional suffering caused by the vibrations of hatred, the mental suffering that follows as mankind is idiotized by fictions given out as truths.
6Emotional suffering can be controlled. But that requires the will to do so. Refuse to heed painful thoughts. Refuse to sense envy, hurt vanity, fear. Refuse mental worry.
7The Buddha indicated four grounds and causes of suffering: ignorance of the Law and inability to apply the Law; desire or fear of something; inability to live in mentality; inability to observe the following eight rules of wisdom: right knowledge; right thought; right choice; right action; right livelihood, that is not to cause suffering or loss to anybody; right striving; right remembrance; right control of attention.
8Life is happiness in the higher emotional world, is joy in the mental world, and bliss in the essential world. From this we can conclude from whence the vibrations come that we indulge in. Vibrations from the lower emotional world make us unhappy, cause depression, anguish, worry or other negative states.
9The condition of indestructible happiness is the realization that all life makes up an indissoluble unity, the great cosmic common consciousness. Before mankind has acquired this realization, individuals will be able to hate and in so doing destroy the basis of happiness. Everything that makes this realization difficult or impossible altogether is part of what the planetary hierarchy calls “the great illusion”.
10Happiness makes life easy to live for ourselves and those around us. Everything that is in harmony with the Law makes us happy.
11Happiness develops you, of course not the habitual thoughtlessness people call happiness but the deep permanent happiness man experiences when he forgets his miserable self.
12Those who experience an incarnation of happiness often use their opportunities to become ever more egoistic, insatiable, and self-blind.
13The demand for happiness for yourself may well be called egoism, as long as life is suffering for most people. Of course the individual has a right to the happiness that life may afford him. Happiness is an individual concept, and the conception of what affords one happiness changes with each new stage of development. At the stage of ideality, happiness consists in living for others and forgetting your own piteous sorrows and worries.
1Self-knowledge is a much-abused word. It should be replaced with the word self-blindness. Man does not know himself and has no possibility to do so, for he never comes to know his real self. Complete self-knowledge is absolutely impossible in the human kingdom. What man is able to perceive, the self-knowledge he acquires in his dealings with other people, is of the most superficial kind and does not deserve the name. The same is true of the attempts made by psychologists and psychiatrists to understand human nature. The results psychoanalysts arrive at are misleading, not to say deplorable. The same can be said of the theologian teaching of man’s absolute sinfulness. Man has dispositions of all good and bad qualities. That is what esotericians can say. It should be seen that in social intercourse (at the present stage of mankind’s development) the bad qualities are more easily actualized than the good ones.
2Esoterically, there is no self-knowledge. Man never knows himself for he is a thousand times more than he suspects. His subconscious as well as his superconscious are inaccessible, except the most superficial layers. You have not explored the ocean merely because you are a fisherman, or explored the universe because you are an astronomer. Men need to reach the insight that they are totally ignorant of life in spite of their big learning. They should learn from Sokrates.
3Anyone who bears witness of oneself always gives false testimony, since nobody knows himself, his latent qualities and abilities. In self-analysis, we do not reach beyond our everyday experiences, and they belong to waking consciousness and so to the superficial layers. Man is almost totally, 99 per cent, unaware of himself, of the various super-and subconsciousnesses of his different envelopes.
4Real man is latent man, not the manifest man that people see. Everything that is acquired during the many different incarnations sinks down into the subconscious and turns latent, enters into that fund of experiences, qualities, and abilities which is the man proper. Of him we know practically nothing. Once you have seen this clearly, you look upon the individual in a quite different way than before. We judge the individual by appearances, and we assess ourselves by what successes and failures we have had during a short earthly life. To this, however, contribute many factors that we are ignorant of as well. Some of these factors have been demonstrated for us by esoterics, though still very incompletely, far from as being the laws of life they are, the energies they are, energies we cannot apply in the right manner. In order to be able to grasp even the most basic things, you must have a knowledge of man’s different envelopes, the various molecular kinds in the envelopes and their respective kinds of consciousness. Moreover, a knowledge is required of which departmental consciousnesses and energies make themselves felt in the individual’s five envelopes (the causal, the triadal, the mental, the emotional, and the etheric envelopes) and the heritage of the organism from the animal and human kingdoms. (The organism is a borrowing from a monad evolution other than that going through triads, one of the preparatory evolutions that precede the definitive triadal evolution.)
5It is quite natural that the individual would very much like to know his stage of development. However, that is a question beset with great difficulties at the stage of hatred that mankind generally is presently found at. As long as there is such a total lack of understanding of esoterics, as long as there is no instinct for superphysical reality (which nevertheless makes up 99 per cent of total reality), as long as such phenomena as Marxism and Bolshevism are possible, as long as people can believe that the oracular dictum “Know thyself” presupposed such a possibility, so long you can safely maintain that the question has been raised too early.
6“He reaches furthest who does not know where he is standing or whither he is going,” is an old word of wisdom that belongs here. If some guidelines for assessment would be given, then they would be abused as all other knowledge. Every fool would place himself highest and put the majority lowest.
7Generally, individuals at the humanist stage are regarded by others and also regard themselves as belonging on some one of the lower civilizational levels. If they have not got any opportunity to make a contribution, the feel like non-entities.
8Some general facts for a possible prevention of all too grotesque mistakes should therefore be needed.
9You may be what people call a “mental genius” even at the stage of civilization. Clairvoyance occurs most frequently at the stage of barbarism. Malicious joy is an unfailing indication of the lowest emotionality, subhumanity.
10Anyone who is able to hate (fear, revenge, despise, join in the common gossip) has not reached the stage of culture. The very few who have reached the stage of humanity quite understand everything ideal, are able to rightly judge all cultural expressions, strive to realize universal brotherhood with all that this implies and without any sentimentality, fanaticism or self-defeating exaggerations, and profess that religion which has been common to all wise men in all ages: the religion of wisdom and love adhering to no creed. One character trait is “harmlessness”. Those who think that is too little should make the attempt to practise it one single day in thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds. It would not harm them and would perhaps teach them something about their own level.
11We shall learn of our level when we become accepted as disciples of the planetary hierarchy. At the same time we shall be informed of the departments of all our envelopes.
12We are encouraged, as soon as we have decided to enter the fifth natural kingdom in the shortest possible time, to regard ourselves “as if” we had reached the verge of this kingdom and try to live “as if” we were there. That is a psychological factor of great importance, reinforcing the energies. Despair paralyses, and the passive attitude cannot utilize the necessary and available energies.
13Wiseacreness, always displaying its acuity by cavilling at words, wonders why there is a talk about “self-realization” when at the same time you are told that you have not got any self-knowledge. The one thing should be the condition of the other, should it not? The answer is that self-realization is a law of life. And the strange thing with those laws is that they act automatically. Anyone who purposefully works to acquire more knowledge, insight, understanding and to realize universal brotherhood (or at least goodwill towards all), will realize the meaning of existence and thereby also self-knowledge, which consists of the knowledge that all are one. The first condition of true self-knowledge is the experience of god immanent.
14The “know thyself” of the Delphic oracle meant: “become conscious of thy potential divineness”. In order to so become man must “forget himself”. That is one of the many paradoxes of esoterics.
15Self-blindness is the inability to see many of your faults and failings, the big ones in particular.
16Self-deception is to imagine, among other things, that you possess certain qualities, whereas you have scarcely begun to understand what those qualities are about.
17We assess ourselves by our good intentions, which are seldom realized, and others by the results of their good intentions. If we did possess some self-knowledge, we would recognize our falsity.
18You can never make a man recognize his mistakes in life as long as self-deception puts obstacles in the way. And it is quite out of the question that any outsider could force the self-blind to see. Any such attempt would just enhance self-deception. Everybody must make the discovery himself.
19If you want to be able to help people, you must not be blind to their faults and failings. Because it is with these that they need help. It is these that force our sympathy, since they make up obstacles to self-realization. He is not a good friend who shuts his eyes to the faults of another and thereby counteracts always necessary self-criticism. And you cannot help anyone who cannot bear to hear of his own faults. Anyone who wants to develop is always grateful for any reminder, unless it is the outcome of hatred, for then it is always warped in some respect. But even then it may be useful and provide an occasion of self-examination.
20A 45-self says that “esotericians often do not dare to judge their fellow human beings out of fear of thereby criticizing them in an unfriendly spirit. But we must all learn to see the individual’s failings and merits, vices and virtues, smallness and greatness, and this the more we love them.” R. L. Stevenson says that “we admire our friends for their greatness but love them for their faults.” Many people thought that strange but he saw it right. Probably only those are able to do so who approach the stage of ideality and who realize the inevitability of the different stages of development. It is of course trying when the people surrounding you are on much lower levels. Yet: the lesson must be learnt if we are to acquire the sense for reality and will not henceforth fall victims to all manner of emotional illusions and mental fictions.
21The esoterician distinguishes between outer and inner loneliness. He may have many friends around him and be totally alone in his inner being, since none of them has reached his developmental stage and thus cannot possibly understand him. Only those are able to do so who have reached the same level. You must also learn to see that all understanding is relative. We do not know ourselves as causal beings, do not know our subconscious nor our superconscious.
1We have in past lives at the lower stages acquired all the bad qualities. They exist in the subconscious and can be easily resuscitated. The good qualities are in comparison fewer and weaker.
2Most qualities we develop at lower stages are negative qualities belonging to the repulsive tendency. Then little by little they are superseded by positive qualities as the individual develops a sense of reality and understanding of life. These negative qualities make up the greater part of our nature. Anyone who wills for self-realization must work to change his nature, not to uphold it.
3Many a reader wonders about the expression “has had all bad qualities”. Regrettably, our very planet is the “slop-pail” of the solar system. Monads of repulsive tendency have been transferred here from other planets and also solar systems, such hateful types as have caused trouble in planets with individuals of attractive tendency. “All bad qualities” are precisely the qualities of hatred, and all too many people have acquired such ones more than 50 per cent. It will take many incarnations before those qualities have been supplanted by good ones.
4You do not possess a quality or an ability until you have developed it more than 50 per cent of its highest capacity. People stare at the five per cent they have acquired and believe they are finished. Having 50 per cent you have struck the balance between noble and ignoble qualities, not more.
5There is a constant struggle within the so-called pairs of opposites, since the positive energy there is in everything has an attractive effect on the negative energy. The pairs of opposites are found in everything. They actually are the opposition existing between everything higher and lower. The opposition that is the most important for the disciple is that between the three higher and four lower kinds of matter in his envelopes. The three higher ones are in contact with Augoeides; the four lower ones with the triad envelope. This is one of the causes of the tussle between Augoeides and the self at the stages of culture and humanity: the self-assertion of the self and Augoeides’ demand for obedience to the law.
6The path of self-realization throughout the cosmos is a continuous identification with something higher and elimination of something lower. In this process it is to be noted that it is the elimination that automatically brings about an intuitive understanding of the new and makes it possible to realize it. The four “virtues” that the disciple must acquire are discrimination; freedom from desires, fear and worry (calm, “divine indifference”); self-discipline; a serving attitude. By practising these “virtues” he will automatically discard the lower (hindrances to consciousness development).
7The Buddha’s “noble middle path” through the “pairs of opposites” develops these four virtues. There is a constant choosing between good and evil, truth and lie, love and hatred, etc. The more carefully the choice is done, the more subtle the pairs of opposites discovered, until the path becomes the so-called razor-edged path. Thus, for instance, the choice between right and wrong becomes the choice between right and wrong speech, right and wrong silence, etc. Eventually more and more pairs of opposites are discovered, finally pairs of opposites in almost everything: right and wrong understanding, right and wrong indifference, etc. So there are certainly opportunities to develop the power of judgement in your daily work.
8In respect of life there is often a yawning abyss between knowledge and ability. There are many kinds of abilities. The abilities that are the most important for the esoterician are those that make it possible for him to acquire good qualities.
9Character is what is actualized of the latent art of living possessed by the self. It has not much to do with the destiny of the personality, even though it so appears sometimes.
10The esoteric concepts of virtue and vice are reality concepts and no fictions. Vice holds sway when the self is the slave of its envelopes. Virtue ensues when the energies of the self are stronger than those of the envelopes, and the self rules. So easily otherwise unsolvable problems are solved with esoteric knowledge.
11Noble qualities are the qualities of attraction and unity.
12To appreciate good qualities you must yourself possess them.
13“The word ‘gentleman’ refers to inner qualities: what is meant is a freedom from crudity and brutality, a calm, mild frame of mind without any loss of manliness. If the outer politeness is not matched by this inner purity, then the character is not finished.”
14The ideal is always higher than the individual’s level. Otherwise it would not be an ideal. Many people are content with the ideals they have a chance of reaching. Others put their ideals so high that they are beyond the possibility of realization. Then they must also be prepared that the moralists will attack them for not living as they teach. Victimized in particular are teachers of ideals. For man, these ideals are the twelve essential qualities that only essential selves have acquired. Maliciously triumphant, moralists, those exponents of hypocrisy, accuse the individual of not being able to live as he teaches.
15Many attempts have been made to enumerate the twelve essential qualities, which the causal self must acquire in order to become an essential self. But usually, only general human qualities have been presented. It is certain, however, that all the highest qualities there are in man enter into these twelve. They include uprightness, sincerity, steadfastness, good will, loyalty, etc. It deserves to be mentioned that loyalty concerns all the individual’s relations to all and everyone.
16You will acquire essential qualities by not taking anything tragically, being happy despite everything, forgetting yourself, controlling emotionality by mentality, acquiring invulnerability, learning “to will, to dare, to know, to be silent”, acquiring ever higher perspectives on everything, understanding relations, developing your sense of proportion.
17The ability to be silent has nothing to do with injudicious reticence. If silence is turned into a complex, then the reaction will be gossipiness.
18Anyone who has acquired “divine indifference” (in outer and inner respects) to whatever happens to him is not just a “stoic” but has also won that peace of mind which the Christian gets through the illusion of “the forgiveness of sins”. He is indifferent even to his own past (according to the law to be reaped in the future, whatever shape it will take). He is liberated from fear and worry.
19With our own imaginings we open the door to the furies of fear.
20Fear and worry poison the emotional envelope and devitalize the etheric envelope. They are also contagious as their vibrations influence the environment. They upset the balance and obscure the power of judgement.
21In his rugged language, Luther called “diffidence, despair, and despondency grave temptations and vices”. At any event they are illusions that are difficult to control.
22Trying circumstances develop indifference, patience, perseverance, the determination to win, and several other qualities.
23All the adversities of life were received by the wise, noble stoic as inevitable necessities. The esoterician knows that everything is intended for the best possible. The art of achieving the quickest development is to take these things in the right way.
24To warrior types it appears necessary to attack lies and hatred in the world with all lawful means. They find stoicism too passive. It is content to endure men’s ignorance and hatred. It cultivates a quality, however, that man must acquire at any cost, namely invulnerability, the quality of being immune to all attacks in all respects. Even Georg Brandes, to whom passivity was an abomination, made “perseverando” (endurance in spite of everything) his motto. This is the very quality that stoicism teaches the individual how to acquire. At the present stage of mankind’s development it makes up a first and essential condition. Only the invulnerable man can dare to stand out as a pioneer.
25Anyone who can hurt us has power over us.
26Humility is thorough insight into the fact that man has a tremendously limited possibility of knowledge and ability beyond physical reality, the lowest of 49 cosmic realities. Through countless bitter experiences in a series of incarnations the aspirant learns to see how little he understands and is able to do, until every trace of vanity and pride has been eliminated. The difference between the newly causalized man and the man at the verge of essentialization is not greater than that they are both human beings.
27Humility is the insight of the fact that even the elite is ignorant and incapable, that we human beings cannot possibly acquire knowledge on our own about reality or purposefully apply the knowledge given to us by the planetary hierarchy. Humility considers what remains to be explored and achieved. Infantile pride just considers its own self-importance.
28Humility is well compatible with the insight of one’s own competence but precludes self-importance, conceit, pride.
29The ancients spoke much of hubris and nemesis, “pride goes before a fall”. There is sometimes a quick reaping where cause and effect can be ascertained. And pride manages conspicuously often to invite that.
30The upright man is impersonal, impartial, just, incorruptible. Without uprightness gossip, slander, and the cult of lies hold sway.
31You must possess courage in order to challenge public opinion.
32Harmlessness includes right speech and right action.
33The good man is strong, not weak, indulgent, cowardly.
34Love without wisdom causes more evil than good.
35Heartiness brings us closer to unity.
36The basis of tolerance is the understanding that everybody has his own path to walk, can find it and walk it only by himself; and the understanding of the law of good. The belief of another is his path to the goal. Tolerance includes respect of the convictions of others, however erroneous they may appear to us. (Of course we have a right to present in a discussion our own view on the matter, if we can do so without aggression.)
37Envy is one of the worst vices of mankind. A book ought to be written on the effects of envy in history, how envy has stunted the life of the nations, hindered competence to assert itself and poisoned social life.
38Hurt vanity, imagined wrongs, irremediable misunderstandings, offended stupidity must be revenged by people at the two lowest stages of development. This is turned into a bad sowing that will some time ripen into reaping. And people call that life!
39Fault-finding is inflamed egotism.
40To become “like little children” is to acquire the direct simplicity and to live spontaneously without thinking of effects or false dignity.
41Joy of the right kind has a strongly vitalizing effect. This may be a truism. Its immense importance has not yet been clearly seen, however, which must be regretted.
42Smiling kindness disarms everybody and is like a sun-ray on a cloudy day. Joy is an elixir of life, vitalizes, makes life easier and richer.
43Culture is produced at the higher emotional stage where man’s ideal is the saint who has acquired the qualities of attraction and discarded those of repulsion.
44Since a correct definition of culture has not yet been found, it is understandable that by culture they have meant education: an all-round orientation in so-called cultural phenomena, literature, the arts, and music. Such education belongs at the stage of civilization.
45At a public discussion in Uppsala, Sweden, in the beginning of the century, professor Rudin told that the most “educated” person he had ever met was an old woman in the countryside who never had any opportunity to get an education. He of course meant a “wise” person. One more contribution to the confusion of ideas.
46Wisdom is acquired by striving to understand, by sympathizing with all living beings, by sincerity, humility, and the desire to serve. Thereby the finest human qualities are acquired. They are not acquired by learning by heart what is said in books, which is praised as education and a mark of culture. The capacity for judgement thus trained is a very simple ability of inference: it agrees or does not agree with what I have learned (what I believe I know).
47Wisdom is knowledge acquired through experience. Book-learning may be valuable, if it increases our prospects of having experiences. It may enhance understanding, thought only if it serves to awaken latent experience. You can learn from the experiences of another if you have these experiences latently yourself. You cannot learn from the experiences of another, if they are above your own level and outside your own past experience. Platon saw that the wise man may become the most skilful in everything he takes an interest in and has an opportunity to reacquire, just because he has these very abilities latently, having acquired them in previous incarnations.
48“Intellectuality” is a synthesis of reason and instinct. When psychologists understand that, they will be able to explain a multitude of cultural phenomena.
49“Responsibility” is a much-abused word, which clarifies the fact that people have a very vague conception of what the word means in respect of life (in connection with the laws of life). Still they do not suspect that the sense of responsibility is one of the most important qualities where the laws of reaping, destiny, and development are concerned, to say nothing of the law of unity. Responsibility is the nucleus of one of the twelve essential qualities, the firmness that transforms the individual into law, into a keeper of the Law.
50Lack of responsibility is akin to treachery, unreliability, faithlessness, disloyalty, and makes the individual unfit for life both to “god” and men. Faithfulness in small things means a very good sowing for the next incarnation and explains many surprising phenomena in social life.
51By being sincere we acquire reliability, guilelessness, firmness and we counteract self-deception.
52You should never confide in anyone who does not show respect for other people’s confidence. Gossip belongs at the stage of civilization.
53By lying we deprive ourselves of the possibility to distinguish, in many respects, between true and false, genuine and spurious; we destroy a resonance organ for the perception of vibrational consonance or dissonance, emotional harmony. Moreover, we always in some respect deceive ourselves and strengthen self-delusion, self-blindness, and the illusoriness of everything. This, of course, quite apart from the fact that we sow even more bad sowing by the harm we possibly do to others by deceiving them.
54The art of being silent is an ability that the esoterician must acquire. One of the many reasons for being silent is that by talking you strengthen thought so that it later on haunts your subconscious. If this thought is a brain-wave and so has no correspondence in reality, then you have strengthened the very illusoriness and fictitiousness from which we are to liberate ourselves. We increase this unnecessary work by our thoughtless prattle. Moreover, it is turned into bad reaping if what we say concerns our fellow human beings. What we say is seldom true, still more seldom good or helpful.
55Anyone who has not acquired the art of being silent, of thinking about what he says and to whom he is talking, has no chance of becoming an “initiate”. What often happens when you cannot keep silent, Goethe has masterfully clarified in his Faust: “The few who somewhat of these things have known, Who their full hearts unguardedly reveal’d, Nor thoughts, nor feelings from the mob conceal’d, Have died on crosses, or in flames been thrown.”
56It is the same today, figuratively speaking. And mob is found in all social classes, including in the very highest ones.
1The two fundaments of the law of self-realization are trust in life and trust in self, trust in the Law and trust in man’s possibility to acquire the ability to rightly apply the Law. The esoteric knowledge of reality and life liberates us from the theological superstition of divine arbitrariness as well as theoretical subjectivism, which deprives man of his faith in the one true apprehension of reality afforded by common sense (generally valid sense).
2Esoterically, trust is man’s most important quality, trust in its three forms: trust in life, trust in self, trust in law.
3The planetary hierarchy asserts that man, in order to be able to develop efficiently, must acquire trust in life, trust in self, and trust in law. Due to various factors the individual finds any one of these kinds of trust more difficult than the two others.
4Trust in life is trust in the great cosmic organization, which guarantees the consciousness development of all individuals in all forms of nature in all kingdoms. The entire cosmos is actually one continuous developmental process for every atom in the cosmos.
5Hope is no mad sanguinism but knowledge of the law and certainty that good will overcome some time. Anyone who gives up makes a mistake. There are no hopeless cases, just hopeless people. Hope is staying power that never yields.
6Trust in self is trust in the self’s potential godhead, its unlosable share in the cosmic total consciousness. It is the task of the self to acquire an ever increasing conscious share in the cosmic total consciousness. It is by having experiences, by working up experiences, and by making experiments that man develops. There is no cause for worry that time will not suffice: the number of incarnations the individual may use for his development is unlimited.
7Trust in self and self-determination are essential qualities, which at lower stages are confused with self-assertion and forwardness. Quite the reverse, the latter qualities are hindrances to the development of trust in self.
8Trust in self is based on experience, knowledge of facts, and power of judgement. Forwardness believes itself competent without knowing. You certainly get far using just your energy, but you will need a good share of “luck in life” (good reaping) if you are not to suffer setbacks sooner or later.
9Trust in self is a quality that everybody must acquire sooner or later. The first prerequisite for a justified trust in your own judgement is that you have mastered hylozoics, the Pythagorean system of knowledge, of all “occult systems” the only exact one. It is typical of the democratic wiseacreness ruling that the majority feel they do not need to learn more than a few esoteric facts before they criticize their teacher, knowing anything better than he. As soon as the teacher notices such a tendency it only remains for him to withdraw, for “the case” is obviously hopeless.
10Also our modern psychologists seem to be paralysed by the catchwords of life ignorance, self-assertion, and self-importance a la Nietzsche, Max Stirner, and other confused minds. They obviously do not see through the emptiness of such phrases as “be sufficient to yourself”. The least reflection demonstrates that the boaster is infantile at the verge of imbecility.
11Trust in law is trust in the immutable laws of nature (the mechanical laws of the matter and motion aspects) and laws of life (the final laws of the consciousness aspect). They constitute a guarantee of absolute justice in developmental respect and a guarantee against any kind of divine arbitrariness (if some such ever would be conceivable, which it obviously is to life-ignorant theologians).
12Anyone who works for consciousness development (for that of other people and thereby for his own) must, according to the law of development, develop, even if there are no ascertainable results. There is much going on and being prepared under the cover of the subconscious. People are eager to see results. The esoterician trusts in the Law and does not demand to see results. This absolute trust in the Law is a necessary quality without which development is obstructed. Trust in life is trust in law (“trust in god”). Uncertainty has the effect that energies are paralysed, lose their efficiency, their dynamism (“the power of faith”).
13The planetary hierarchy asserts that “not one sparrow shall fall to the ground without the will of god”, the coaction of the Law. And the Law, in this respect the laws of life, sees to the weal of all monads. People think that such statements refer to the monad’s envelopes, which is precisely the “great illusion”.
14The esoterician must learn not to expect anything, whether from life, from people, or from circumstances, and that he does not exist for himself. That is the path of self-realization, which affords trust in law and trust in self. In some life we shall be made to pass through tests that will clarify that we have learned that lesson. The esoterician exists for unity, for community, for everybody. That is the path to the world of unity.
15Esoterics is a mental system and must be comprehended mentally. When emotion takes charge of the pertaining ideas, they become emotionalized; the knowledge of the laws of life becomes an impelling emotional element that easily warps the man’s attitude to life. Thus, for instance, the law of self-realization is an explanation of reincarnation: in life upon life we are given opportunities to have experiences in order to learn from them, to acquire qualities and abilities. The law says that everything is our own work and that we must walk the way ourselves; nobody else can walk it for us. Emotion, however, senses the law as a demand, which has the result that the man starts dabbling consciously in what should occur in the unconscious and also occurs in the unconscious when we lead our lives purposively. The law presupposes trust in Life: that our circumstances of life are supposed to teach us something, and that by doing the best we can we unconsciously acquire what Life intended by our incarnation. We are all too ignorant of life to decide for ourselves what is best for us or to decide for others what is best for them. And, above all, emotion cannot show the way except in very trivial matters.
16The law of unity, the law of freedom, and the law of activation are the three laws that men can understand and apply. The other laws of life clarify what happens to us and explain why; they increase our understanding of life. And once again: esoterics is for seekers, and they have reached the stage of the mystic. It is for those who, if the esoteric knowledge orders had still been functioning, would have been initiated. Esoterics is not for everybody. It has been degraded and idiotized by the unworthy.
1Life ignorance takes freedom as arbitrariness. But since the cosmos is a whole of laws of nature and laws of life, freedom as a permanent state can only imply a faultless application of the knowledge of the Law. A freedom that neutralizes itself is an illusion.
2Freedom is a result of evolution: increased knowledge of the Law and increased ability to use the knowledge rightly.
3Since consciousness is one, “the one cosmic total consciousness in which every individual has an unlosable share”, this implies that all must make up unity and that only in unity, concord, harmony, etc., can the Law be applied rightly. Perhaps it is understood what the ancients intended by the symbolic expression “love is the law of life”.
4When Christos for the multitude formulated the law as “thou shalt love, etc...” and as a “command”, then it was because they could not possibly grasp the Law in another manner.
5For the initiated the Law is most simply expressed as the law of cause and effect. Along with that insight also follows a greater ability to apply the Law in the right manner. “Love” is unity and has nothing to do with sentimentality. Love is will to the good, the true, the right.
6The fact that mankind increasingly refuses to obey the theological coercive dictate “thou shalt” and demands motivation is a sign of an incipient instinctive understanding of “the law of self”.
7Some people are always cocksure, however life-ignorant they are. Others are always uncertain, however right they are.
8Self-determination as a demand easily turns into self-deception.
9A disciple has a right (or a duty) never to answer personal questions. Many people are annoyed at such an answer as “I cannot (will not, must not) answer that” or at receiving no answer at all. This need not at all imply any boasting or indirect acknowledgement of disciple status. The aspirant will not be accepted if he has not practised “as if” he were a disciple. An aspirant having common sense applies everything he can and wants out of his own free will, without any sense of compulsion, without conceited belief in prospects of success, without need of praise or recognition, without fanaticism and expectation, without thought of good reaping, without desire of enjoying the fruit of his own work. Self-determination includes total independence of the opinions and estimation of others. As a rule it is rather that he, like the Greek orator, asks himself: “They applaud, what wrong did I now say?”
1Vulnerability is in most people a complex from childhood, founded and fomented through older as well as younger people’s habit of teasing, scoffing, deriding, etc. Anyone who is particularly vulnerable ends up at the bottom of the pecking-order. Nothing delights primitive people more than the power to inflict suffering. You deprive them of that power through invulnerability.
2Vulnerability is a failing, a serious disadvantage in human intercourse. Invulnerability is the first duty common sense enjoins on yourself, is one of the necessary qualities of the real man. You must clearly recognize the senselessness of being vulnerable, of granting the representatives of malicious ingenuity the power to destroy your balance and peace of mind. Vulnerability is in most people a complex, an effect of the illusions and delusions attached to the concept of honour. You feel outraged when others demonstrate their disrespect and irreverence. You do not realize that marks of courtesy, honour, and reverence, as paid by most people, are counterfeit money to which the wise attach no importance for themselves, just for others. You only need to hear everything said of others in their absence to see that, in reality, everybody disdains everybody else. People are especially ingenious in finding motives for contempt, which the ruling, idiotizing morality strengthens still more. We are almost tempted to say that morality is indispensable because it offers motives for contempt.
3Honour is a fiction complex that probably is deeply rooted in vanity and vulnerability. Honour is in many cases just a mask for readiness to take offence, touchiness, irritability in conjunction with pride.
4“Anyone who can suffer is able to dare.” Or anyone who is invulnerable. To be unconventional, to break with prejudice and dogmas of all kinds is for the vulnerable to choose the path of suffering. People feel “injured to the core” that somebody does not accept their fictions. You often meet with this comical emotional thinking in all kinds of leading figures of society.
5Only subhumans inflict suffering on living creatures.
6Invulnerability presupposes physical as well as emotional and mental courage. Not daring to doubt, whatever fiction it may be, is mental cowardice and hinders self-determination. Putting up with and following the conventions of moral fictionalism against your own better judgement is proof of emotional cowardice. Some people overrate their own strength and then yield under the pressure of mass hatred and arrogance in all its expressions. But anyone who can smile quietly at the mass madness and does not turn bitter, can walk his own way. However, he should never indulge in expectations of any kind. For people remain incorrigible. The sacrifices the martyrs made were possibly of immense significance to themselves. On the masses sacrifices were always wasted.
7The Stoics taught always to be prepared for any kind of trouble, not to be disturbed by it, not to worry about it, not to fight it and always to keep one’s balance through indifference. “Taking it as a trial” was their trick of life. “Non-resistance” (not putting up a resistance in your consciousness, not reacting, criticizing, being annoyed, indignant, etc.) saves energy to an unsuspected degree, affords you a superior level, and is generally the wisest tactics. Trying to fight stupidity and hatred is like beheading the hydra – which symbolized the active hatred of public opinion. An old warrior who had gone through a great deal had as his drastic motto of life: “Don’t give a damn for how it feels.”
8Anyone who is invulnerable will never be depressed through other people’s malice and evil designs, which concern them and the law of reaping alone. To take offence is a failing. To take to heart the tactlessnesses and insolences of other people is to hurt oneself. Anyone who wishes to hurt belongs to the majority of harmers and gloaters and is found on such a low level of development that everything he thinks, feels, says or does falls below the line of the human. It is as insignificant as the dog’s barking at the moon. And the fact that the masses participate in the barking just confirms its insignificance. What other people set about in the intention of degrading you must meet with your complete indifference. Their judgements and assessments are sufficient proofs of their inability to judge and assess.
9If you care about the prejudice and injudiciousness, false values, and inhuman attitudes of the populace, the masses, the world, you will never attain to self-reliance and self-determination. If you want to develop, you will always be in conscious or unconscious opposition to the world and must be unmoved by the judgement of the world. If you want to become invulnerable you must trust to your own judgement, become independent and indifferent to other people’s opinions of yourself. It is not the least important what opinions and valuations the world holds. They have always been wrong and will always be wrong.
10The intention to hurt is impotent if you do not pay attention to it. If you are vulnerable, then it depends on your own attitude and indicates a failing, emotionally as well as mentally. Being invulnerable is your right, to some extent your duty, and always a great merit. Invulnerability is the first step on the path to superman. Insults as well as vulgarities of all other sorts must become so completely insignificant to you that you do not even notice them, never give them a moment’s attention. To pay regard to such things is to give power to these impressions. The same is true of everything belonging to memory. Right remembrance, the ability to forget everything that should be forgotten, is necessary to invulnerability. Suffering is emotional. It can be swept out of consciousness instantly by an act of will. Our imagination, however, can strengthen suffering to the unbearable. Any painful consciousness content disappears whenever attention and memory refuse to have anything to do with it. Being vulnerable directly or indirectly through your own complexes is perhaps the most difficult state, but like all kinds of vulnerability this is a weakness that has to be overcome. Less affected still is anyone who has acquired objective consciousness. He can observe processes going on in his consciousness as if they did not concern him. Then the feeling of weakness does not imply weakness, since his consciousness is not determined by weakness. Identification with weakness adds to impotence. In the ignorant, waking consciousness counteracts the unconscious and deprives the man of calm, serenity, power. Experience the feeling of power, will, indifference instead! All outbursts break down and hinder the concentration of power. Only he is unhappy who takes it tragically, with self-pity, and who allows himself to feel unhappy.
11You will not become invulnerable through hardness but through self-reliance; self-determination; calm, unperturbed and noble indifference; and humour. In a more profound sense, vulnerability is fear, fear of what others will think and say. Invulnerability is courage and gives you courage.
12Man will hardly become totally invulnerable until he has learnt to sweep away emotional vibrations with mental vibrations. Many people have unconsciously learnt to use their mentality to overcome suffering, depression, anguish, remorse, the fear of god and other kinds of fear.
13Very difficult circumstances of life have the direct purpose to teach man to appreciate, use, and cultivate his mental powers and to overcome the power of emotions through the power of thought.
14The ability to forget yourself and your sufferings is hard to acquire. Anyone who has learnt that art, however, has learnt to live for others and has solved the problems of his brief existence.
15A master of esoterics once wrote: The first requisite in even a simple fakir is that he should have trained himself to remain as indifferent to emotional suffering as to physical pain.
16As the Spartans showed, this requires no higher development. Men are the helpless victims of the content of their waking consciousness. Anyone who has learnt the art of determining and using that content, thinks and feels whatever he wants and neither thinks nor feels whatever he does not want.
1We develop by having experiences and learning from them. We largely make nothing but mistakes, since we lack the knowledge of reality, life and the laws of life, lack the ability to realize our ideals. The fact that we do not make the same mistakes as those on lower levels, is due to the fact that we have made the mistakes that belong to those levels and that we learnt from those mistakes. We learn by experience and only by experience, however much we believe and assert the opposite. Whatever does not enter into our latent experience we can never rightly understand, never rightly use. If we learn from the experiences of others, this just shows that we have once had those experiences ourselves. We all may in new lives make almost any mistake whatever. If we have definitively had the experience, however, then we will not make the same mistake once more. That was the insight at the bottom of the old saw: “once is no habit” (which those who lack that insight do not grasp).
2We learn by making mistakes, by gradually discarding all illusions and fictions. Mistakes are unavoidable and they need not, indeed should not, be any matter for grief, for it is by making them that we develop. One incarnation is like one day in a very long life. There are no “misspent lives”, for those lessons are the most thorough ones and teach us the most. The teacher supervising our lives deplores that we generally take our mistakes in the wrong way rather than realize their true import. He wishes that we do not take it the tragic way if we must live a tragic life. Life is always development and we often learn more by reaping bad sowing.
3How slowly most people learn from experience is best seen in the fact that individuals largely remain on the levels they have attained for some hundred incarnations. Anyone who truly learns does one level per incarnation.
4There is no misspent life, even though it may seem so. Sometimes a life so called can mean a definitive breakthrough, the final reaping of old bad sowing, missed opportunities which we now have learnt we must seize the next time, etc.
5The mistakes we make in life are not due to mere ignorance. Many of them are due to the fact that we lack those qualities which would have hindered us from making the mistakes. Our mistakes are due to either ignorance or impotence and show us, above all, what qualities we lack or have not acquired to such a high percentage that they have become efficient enough for solving our problems of life. The degree of difficulty of these problems is not higher than that we should be able to solve them, if we made the decision and efforts. What is lacking in us is the will to do it, and this is what determines our future lives.
6By and large the mistakes we make do not harm us as much as our successes, provided of course that we recognize our mistakes and learn from them. The satisfaction we feel when successful is a sign of existing egocentricity, that treacherous illusoriness which makes us blind to the fact that we, being first selves, are comically insignificant.
7A fault (a negative quality) that we realize to be hostile to life is already half overcome, a virtue (a positive quality) that we appreciate may become an ever stronger factor.
8We usually throw the blame on others. However, the mistakes we make by wrongly judging the qualities and abilities of others, by overestimating the judgement of others, by following the advice of others, by letting ourselves by influenced by others, etc., are our mistakes.
9The question is not at all how others behave toward us. The question is how we behave toward them in turn. Those who hold that they have a right to retaliate tit for tat, evil for evil, forget that in so doing they themselves make the mistake of being evil and also that they sow a bad sowing for themselves and very often a worse sowing than the original offender did. It is as common as it is stupid to try to defend one’s mistakes by invoking the offences of others.
1We daily miss opportunities to serve life. In our self-absorption we are blind to the possibilities of sowing a good sowing that life daily offers us. It is by seizing these small, unnoticeable, seemingly insignificant opportunities that we shall be able to discover or accept the great opportunities that most people unsuspectingly let pass them by. Through small, insignificant services, acts of kindness, we could be like sun-rays in an irksome existence, make life infinitely easier, cosier, and happier for everybody. By speaking well of everybody and trying to find the merits in everybody we hinder opportunities of expressing hatred. What a rich life has the man led of whom it may be said that the world was better as long as he lived in it!
2Missed opportunities never come back. They are as many wasted chances of enriching our lives on Earth to come. Every opportunity is an offer and may be a test. It is the small, seemingly insignificant things that are the important matters in life. Those who complain that they “never got a chance” have missed the countless small opportunities.
3“He who gives will receive.” That is a law of life. And the more lavishly we give our kindness and consideration, the richer will our lives be. In what manner we get back what we give is of minor importance. The only thing that Life promises is that Life pays back all its debts to us, to put it materialistically.
4Once in a while Life offers us an opportunity to gain knowledge. Many people miss such an opportunity, since for some reason (usually the prejudice of some authority) they think it worthless. However, you are always wise to examine the matter yourself. Knowledge is more important than assumption or belief. If the result of your examination is negative, then you know and do not believe. And that attitude will give you quite a different capacity.
5Of course many opportunities are missed on account of ignorance or inability. Those who come into contact with the esoteric knowledge but do not even take the trouble to examine its correctness make a mistake that they will not have the opportunity to make again in many lives.
6The chapter on missed opportunities also contains many mistakes made out of laziness, egoism, or self-sufficiency. Esoterics is nothing you take to as a diversion when it suits you. Knowledge is a favour, an offer by Life which you are free to refuse. But then you should not complain about lack of chances. Most people are in the situation that they have forfeited their “rights to knowledge” precisely because they have let the days of grace slip by. The parable of those who were invited but excused themselves alleging diverse engagements refers precisely to those who miss the opportunities offered by Life. They will experience how right was the king when saying: “None of those who were invited will sup with me.” Those who put “material things” first will have it as they like it. They are the exact opposites of those who know how to take the occasion by the forelock. That is the attitude needed to avail oneself of opportunity.
7It is a fatal mistake to turn your back on esoterics once you have realized that it is correct. You will not have the opportunity to do so twice in the same eon.
8Anyone who has received the offer of Life to learn from those who possess knowledge should very carefully avail himself of it. Missed opportunities to learn are common mistakes, it is true, but are not therefore without consequences. There are thousands who long in vain after missing their chances. Jeshu’s parable of those who had been invited but pleaded more important business is fully applicable here.
1The art of living includes the ability to apply the laws of life in the best way. We learn that through countless experiences in life upon life. We are able to assimilate the life experiences of others inasmuch as they agree with the understanding of life we have acquired. On lower levels we learn chiefly through painful experiences. We may all make any blunder whatsoever, but only the life-ignorant make the same mistakes over again in the same life.
2The art of living includes the ability to rightly use the opportunities and offers of life. By seizing the small ones we shall more easily recognize the bigger ones.
3The art of living includes trust in the Law; the realizations that the self is invulnerable, that everything is divine, therefore that the natural is divine, that it is our duty to be happy, that desire is insatiable and impossible to gratify, that desire makes us unhappy, that emotional fear, worry, distrust, and doubt paralyse and darken our lives.
4The art of living includes unconcern, and that is a condition of “happiness” (calm, harmony with yourself, balance, moderation). Resignation or fatalism is a negative state. Trust in the laws of life, however, affords a positive certainty as to the fact that the situation is inevitable just temporarily and that, whatever happens, it all will end in the best possible way for this incarnation.
5The art of living consists in applying the laws of life without friction. Of these laws the law of unity is the most important. If that law is applied all the other things will follow suit. It is true that we are here in order to develop by striving. The thought of their own development is for many people the essential thing. But for those who have not reached a higher stage of development, this is an instance of a subtle kind of egoism. Only when realizing that service is the quickest way to develop will they grasp what is meant by the “unity of life”. Personality is egoistic. Only when the self has become centred in essentiality will selfishness be annihilated. “The trick of life” is to forget yourself and live for an ideal. Then the thought of your development will be of minor importance. Man walks his own way. But if, so doing, his thought of his own self and its development is made the “ideal”, then his way will lead him astray. Just the man who forgets himself will never go astray. Even his mistakes will then prove to lead him to the centre, the focus of life, which is unity.
6We need not rise to some “overself” to reach “heights”. In our emotional consciousness we have all the resources of attaining unity. Anyone who has really acquired the attractive tendency to unity and realizes unity by means of these powers, will reach heights in life which to the normal individual are endowed with diverse attributes of divinity. To most people, however, this seems too simple and too troublesome! It is easier to imagine about everything beyond all reality in the illusory existence of the emotional or mental world.
7As long as the individual is seeking something for himself, for his own development – be it however divine – he has not understood the essentials. It is not a matter of receiving or becoming, but of giving and just of giving. He who gives will receive. Whatever you strive after for yourself will be hindrances on the path. There is a paradox for reason in self-realization. The individual is striving, seeking, etc., in order to develop. When this is his main purpose, however, he misses the essentials. When the individual does all this for some other cause than his own – in order the better to serve Life in his individual manner – then he has grasped the “trick” of the art of living.
8The artist in life may be happy without any such things as most people deem necessary to happiness: health, power, esteem, riches, family, position, etc. He knows that it is our ideas, not our conditions, that make us unhappy.
9Happiness is largely a matter of the will. Every attempt to become a sun-ray to others brings about its own reward.
10To the stage of civilization belong many illusions, for instance the one saying that man increases his happiness by increasing his desires. The opposite is true. The words of the Buddha that “all the gold of the earth does not suffice for the desires of one single man” expresses the insight that there is no limit to egoism and its demands for ever more, if physical desires become the most important ones.
11The physicalist finds the meaning of life in the satisfaction of physical needs, the emotionalist in that of emotional needs, and the mentalist in the satisfaction of mental needs. Only when you have understood that the meaning of life is development beyond the normal kinds of consciousness will you be ready for discipleship.
12The purpose of enjoyment is to afford necessary rest, relaxation, change. Beyond that, enjoyment is a waste of time, and time is the thing most prized by those who have seen the meaning of life.
13As long as people imagine that physical life is the only form of life, as long as they are bent on physical acquisition and value physical things most, feel that physical enjoyments are the only or the chief ones, so long will egoism reign supreme and so long there must be shortage in the world. The value of an object is determined in a competition between those who “fight” for possessing it, which fact is a typical example of the illusoriness of value and the imbecility of people. To the esoterician, all physical possessions are extra burdens. He tries in all manners to simplify his physical life, procures just what is necessary and reduces his needs to a minimum. If all thought and acted thus, then the problem of the global economy would be solved, a solution precluded by the craze for possessions.
14Just as there is a physical craze for possessions, which collects such things as do not promote consciousness development, so there is a mental craze for possessions, which collects learning that just grows into an unnecessary burden and does not help man to lead a purposeful life, does not serve self-realization.
15In our times, three emotional “types” are clearly distinguishable. The individuals of the first type are seized with the craze for possessions, must acquire and possess everything and imagine that this is necessary. They strive for “an easy way of life”, comfort. In social intercourse, emotionality determines their views and judgements. They are hypnotized by what they believe to be right and true, by their “ideals”, not suspecting the fact that they just parrot ephemeral authorities, being unable to see through illusoriness. Their religion is a “desire religion” and should moreover be able to liberate them from fear and worry.
16In people of the second type, being more mental, mental fictitiousness is added with everything which that implies such as uncertainty and ambivalence.
17People of the third emotional type refrain from everything “unnecessary”, try to simplify their lives and are just interested in things belonging to the meaning of life. They rapidly liberate themselves from everything emotional and approach the humanist stage.
18Those who acquire the craze for possessions will become poor. Those who acquire the freedom from desires will never be wanting. That is a law consequential on the law of reaping. As always, life ignorance believes that all such sayings refer to the same incarnation, the usual injudiciousness.
19Anyone who has acquired mental interests has solved his spare time problem; indeed, he never finds enough time. From this follows automatically freedom from physical desires. Then you do not wish to waste your time on “unnecessaries”. Your mental interests wield such a power over attention that everything else becomes unessential.
20If nobody demanded more for himself than he would need for a purposeful physical life, for all reasonable needs, then there would be abundance for all. In actual fact, with that principle ruling, all physical problems would be solved automatically. And this according to the Law, which people have never realized and never understood, although they should have done so. The exhortation “take no thought for the morrow” was no light-minded, irresponsible saying by a religious fanatic, but a formulation of a collective law, a law of reciprocity that is valid not just in one and the same natural kingdom but also between kingdoms. If mankind serves consciousness development, then the planetary hierarchy will see to it that men are given what they need, have their problems solved.
21“If men carried the concept of brotherhood with all its implications into the life and work of every day, into all intercourse whether between the capitalist and the labourer, the politician and the people, between nation and nation, or between race and race, there would emerge that peace on earth which nothing could upset or overturn. So simple a rule, and yet utterly beyond the mental grasp of the majority.” (D.K.)
22Anyone who forgets himself, forgets his own sorrows and worries.
23It is better to fail than never to try.
24It is meaningless to grieve for mistakes made. They were part of experiences of life still necessary.
25The theoretical knowledge we receive through others (the school, literature, etc.) may be very valuable. But it does not teach us how to live. It is through our own experience we acquire wisdom of life. And this wisdom is largely “mistakes”. We learn by making mistakes. That insight has not yet become general. Instead, moralists judge others for their failed experiments and poison our common life with their hatred.
26People embitter life for themselves by their idiotic attitude. Montaigne is right in saying that people are tortured by the views they hold of things, not by the things themselves. Marcus Aurelius gives good advice when saying that if something torments you, then it is not the thing itself but your idea of it, and that you can reject at once. According to Schopenhauer, it is not so much a question of what happens to an individual as of how he feels about it.
27The slave and cripple Epiktetos could be happy under the most adverse circumstances, since he could himself determine what thoughts and feelings he would cherish.
28Everything depends on our thoughts. As we think, so are we and so we become. With our thoughts we build our future lives. Our thoughts make us happy or unhappy, make life light or dark, easy or difficult, make us victors or defeated.
29Our mistaken way of taking the small vexations of life makes it all unbearable.
30Difficulties are there to be overcome, not to be escaped. They are the opportunities of life to learn, to acquire qualities and abilities, to pass necessary tests and hardenings.
31By doing willingly and gladly whatever must be done we learn more than in any other way.
32Everything happening to us is either redress, reaping, lesson, help, hardening, or means of liberation and often all this at the same time.
33We use our incarnation in the right manner when we learn all it can teach us and learn what we learn as efficiently as a specialist. It is all a matter of thoroughness. It is true that certain incarnations just afford us a possibility of general orientation, general survey. However, they are introductions to series of incarnations in which we work up the various experience areas we have surveyed.
34To the esoterician, truth and reality are normative factors. It is true that he distinguishes between possibility, probability, and reality. However, he neither believes nor assumes; he knows or he knows not. He knows that accidents happen, but he does not imagine such possibilities, because they engender fear of the unknown and counteract trust in life. A possibility is neither truth nor reality. If people saw the truth of this, they would spare themselves unnecessary fears by which so many people poison the present.
35By living positively in the present, not in the past nor the future, we learn the most, we develop most rapidly, we forget ourselves most easily.
36By severing the ties of life, not being able to wait until they dissolve by themselves, we refuse to learn from life and generally sow a bad sowing.
37“Never antagonize” and “non-resistance” are two rational principles that have an invigorating effect.
38The disciple, excusing himself: “I had to tell them off for their laziness and carelessness.”
39The teacher: “And you have found that it is of any use?”
40Many self-realizers are anti-conventional people. They think conventions are the mask and cloak of hypocrisy. Taking this attitude, however, they forget that the ignorant go by appearances, that dignity helps these people to believe in something and acts as an example or model.
41The following well-tested sayings are hereby presented to those who understand that “he who obeys good advice is wise”: Trust the Law. The monad is invulnerable. Mistakes are necessary lessons. Everybody will some time reach the goal. What is natural is divine. It is our duty to be happy. See everything from the bright side. Fear and worry are the enemies of happiness. All will be well in the end. There are no hopeless cases, just hopeless people. Simplicity and spontaneity is the genius of life.
42Everything past was part of necessary experiences. Everything is the best under given conditions. Everything will be as well as it can be. The cosmos consists of nothing but monads. It is not the fault of life that monads in the human kingdom make life a hell for each other. “Best as it is, was, will be” witnesses to a real insight into life.
43Never give up! Never leave your hold! Keep your chin up however often you fail!
44Take it easy, and everything will be all right. Rush jobs are scamped work. All great work must be given time to ripen.
45“Remember but the happy hours.” That presupposes the art of forgetting, an art that everybody must some time acquire. Right remembrance is one of the conditions of happiness.
46“Be not afraid of loneliness. The soul that cannot stand alone has naught to give.” (D.K.)
47“Do not look back. The esoterician must be able to free himself from the burden of the past.” The Christian, in whom they have succeeded in instilling the belief that it is possible to “sin against god”, takes recourse in the theological illusion that he has been given the “forgiveness of sins”. But according to the law of self-realization, everybody must “save himself”.
1The name of our way is Self-Realization. It means to ennoble our envelopes, refine our vibrations, give up our egotism and self-assertion, strive for attraction and unity, live in order to serve life. Then we are given all necessary knowledge for nothing. That knowledge is kept in custody by beings in higher worlds and cannot be withheld from those who live for unity.
2This is a hard thing: to overcome tendencies acquired during eons, habits and ways of looking at things rooted during incarnations, life-perversions and superstitions without number. The sooner we begin, the more one-pointed our purposiveness, the sooner we reach the goal.
3Anyone who wills for the goal wills for the means and tries by himself, without external influence, to apply the knowledge of the laws of life. Any other “obedience” does not exist in esoterics, which should be emphasized in view of the abuse of authority occurring in occult, so-called esoteric, societies.
4It is not the business of another to force self-realization or the striving for development. It is as impossible as to force love.
5Anyone who does not will for self-realization may have it as he likes it: following along in the slow jog-trot through eons. But he should not then complain if a hopeless dragging along in the desert of this life with its empty pursuit of all chimaeras, illusions, and mirages finally turns into disgust and a sense of void. It is not the fault of life. It is our own fault. So many people are embittered by the apparent injustice of life and complain they never got any chance. They will not see nor cannot take the offers of life.
6Everybody must find his own way himself. Nobody else can indicate it. We must walk it ourselves through self-acquired knowledge of the laws of life and try to rightly apply this knowledge.
7Every individual is for himself and absolutely the way, the truth, and the life. The condition for this is that he never identifies himself with any of his envelopes, not even the highest he can descry.
8The way is the spiritual life.
9The way of man is the way leading from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from the lower to the higher. The life eternal is always here and now, the final goal will always be reached some time and everything will be, as in the fairy tale, well in the end.
1The law of destiny indicates what forces influence the individual with regard to necessary experiences. This does not in the least mean that man learns from these experiences. “Destiny” cannot encroach on the free choice of the individual. The planetary hierarchy asserts with all vigour that “mankind determines its own destiny itself”. The law of reaping sees to it that man will take the consequences of his choice.
2Destiny is a result of partly the forces working purposefully towards the goal of evolution, partly the contribution of free will, partly the repercussions of the law of reaping.
3The law of destiny pays particular regard to the developmental stage of the individual. The law of reaping works mechanically. Sowing must be reaped. When and how this is done, however, is largely determined by the law of destiny, which determines more and more the higher the stage of development.
4The law places man where he is to stand, where he can best serve. The difficulties man meets with in life are his own work and the results of his own attitude to life, his own consciousness expressions. He has no reason to pity or justify himself.
5Life is an offer of opportunities to develop. Anyone who has understood that we are here in order to have experiences and to learn from them, that there is a life task for everybody (his “dharma”), will be spared that turning of life’s lessons which implies still more compelling circumstances in lives to come.
6The qualities the individual has acquired on the lowest developmental levels are chiefly negative. As the fund of his life experiences increases so that his sense of reality and knowledge of life begin to make themselves felt he begins his work at gradually replacing the negative qualities with positive ones. If he will not do so voluntarily, he is according to the law of destiny put into circumstances that force their development. Circumstances (according to the law of destiny) act by force, by enticing or deterring. It is inevitable that such a path will be largely suffering. It is painful to “sacrifice” the lower.
7“Nobody escapes his destiny.” That destiny is for our own good, however. Having that attitude, we make the best possible of our lives. Having the opposite attitude, we counteract development and harm ourselves. We can bear the “blows of fate” in quite a different way when we know that what happened was not just inescapable but also the mildest suffering and what best furthers our development. Whatever is must be or should be or is the best.
8The law of destiny teaches us that we are tools of the forces of Life and that it is up to us whether we will be willing tools, and that we win freedom by willing whatever destiny wills. When we put our will to the service of the purposeful forces, then we begin to understand what unity is and we become co-workers for the highest purposes of Life.
9The great people have become great by becoming the instruments of destiny, by serving the various purposes of Life.
10All forces originally spring from the dynamic energy of primordial matter. They work only mechanically. The purposive forces work through the active consciousness of evolutionary beings. These final forces work in the service of evolution and unity and therefore they are solely good. Those who intentionally attempt to counteract these purposive forces must sooner or later be destroyed. Those who do so unintentionally at any event cause themselves suffering.
11The powers of destiny are those of goodness and unity. But law is law, and they can do nothing about that. At the most they can portion out the repercussions of the law of reaping in the mildest possible manner. And they can do that if the man has shown mercy.
12External circumstances, people’s behaviour, etc., must not be able to influence our attitude toward them. All such things are reaping determined by destiny and thus inescapable. That is also the best for us. For us it is a matter of facing everything gladly, willingly, gratefully.
13From the viewpoint of destiny and reaping, everything is for the best. From the viewpoint of the personality, it is best if we have done our best. Also our mistakes are reaping, however, and we always learn from them.
14Out of the 60 billion individuals composing mankind, 24 billion are found at or near the stage of barbarism. If only clans of barbarians incarnated, then mankind would relapse into sheer barbarism. Civilizations and cultures will perish ever and again. It all depends on how the clans at higher stages keep their legacy. If the knowledge is abused to an ever increasing extent, then it may happen that barbarism is let loose again. The systemic guardians of the law, the supreme legal authority in the solar system, see to it that the law of cause and effect, sowing and reaping, works so that the balance upset is redressed. If mankind does not want to use its reason and apply the laws of life that have been proclaimed during millions of years, then mankind will be taught that lesson, time and again, by painful experiences. There is no other way.
15If mankind were exclusively thrown upon itself, its own experience and possibilities of acquiring knowledge of reality and life, then mankind would be forced to wander the way of discarded mistakes. Then the individual would need more than seven eons to pass through the human kingdom, since in his stupid self-assertion he would sow such a sowing that eons would be needed just for reaping without development.
16Those who sincerely strive for self-realization, for knowledge, for ideals, are, according to the law of destiny, provided with the materials they need for working up experiences, circumstances for necessary experiences, environments satisfying their emotional and mental needs, etc. It is true that the effects of the law of destiny are often counterbalanced by those of the law of reaping. However, those effects are just delayed, not neutralized. Sooner or later, when the reaping meted out has been liquidated, they assert their force. The functions of the laws of life are exercised by collective beings including innumerable lower “servants”. There is no possibility of influencing them to “commit illegal acts”, whether through prayer or “sacrifice”. We may quite objectively regard them as unfailingly working “laws”.
17We are all both disciples and teachers. We are disciples of life, of all who have anything to teach us, and we are teachers of those who want or are able to learn from us. Life is, rightly understood, a constant give and take.
18We all have life tasks that consist of solving the problems of life that we daily meet with in everything. Some individuals are given greater tasks by life. Such things we do not just assume. If we do so, we run great risks of disappointment. If we seemingly fail in the tasks allotted to us, it only means that we have overrated the importance of our contribution. Sometimes these tasks have been intended to impart necessary experience and insights to us with regard to future tasks, for we are all the agents of destiny, knowing anything of it only rarely. All this has been told us countless times in various connections. But such is the unconscious effect of public opinion on us that we constantly forget what we know by ourselves.
19We gain understanding by applying the knowledge we have already comprehended. The knowledge that is not put into living life is dead knowledge and turns into an obstacle to further development. In this is our responsibility, what is meant by responsibility; “sequel” according to the Law.
20Anyone who wills for development must realize the understanding of life he has acquired and do so through one-pointedly keeping, despite all hindrances, to the way his understanding indicates. While he does so, forces are set going that influence his circumstances of life and cause him to walk “the way prepared” even in darkness. It is through our understanding of the laws of life, the sincerity of our purpose, and through our striving that our understanding of life increases and, with it, our possibilities of automatically acquiring expedient qualities and abilities. The powers of destiny demand no absurdities: will to unity, will to understand, will to realize what we understand and can do is all they demand in order to be able to help efficiently.
21We all receive help for development. The more we are able to receive and rightly use in the service of life, the more help, inspiration, power is given to us. Helpers of life we shall become only when we no more demand anything for ourselves but see our task to be just service. As long as we demand anything, we are in some respect burdens instead of assets. As long as we demand knowledge to become wiser, we get possibilities of acquiring it ourselves. When we begin seeking wisdom in order to help others, however, to help the hierarchy in its work for evolution, then they are able to help us, then we shall receive wisdom and energy in abundance. For unity is no mere bliss and beauty but also wisdom, power, and energy. We must become able co-workers. We must be prepared for sacrifice of everything belonging to the lower in order to acquire qualities and abilities belonging to the higher. As long as we are discontent with whatever we meet with in life, discontent with our fellow human beings, so long we are far from unity.
1There is a guidance in the life of individuals, and that guidance is the work of the planetary hierarchy.
2There is a continuous revelation in history, and it appears in the ever-expanding knowledge of existence.
3This revelation keeps pace with the development of man’s envelopes. Little by little ever higher molecular kinds are worked into these envelopes. The development of the consciousness aspect keeps pace with the material aspect of the envelopes. If the knowledge of the motion aspect were given to mankind prematurely, then the envelopes remaining in their present condition would be disintegrated by the all too forceful vibrations.
4In the matter of guidance, the laws of freedom, development, self, destiny, and reaping come particularly into consideration.
5According to the laws of freedom and self, man has the right of life to pursue his own path and must be allowed to do so.
6In the course of the process of manifestation, the forces that influence man according to the law of development make it easier for him to raise his vibrations in ever higher molecular kinds according as more spirals in the atoms are vitalized through cosmic vibrations.
7The law of destiny puts man into circumstances that favour his development. It is up to man to use these opportunities.
8Good reaping furthers, bad reaping hinders, the possibilities of self-realization.
9Man is guided by his instinct of life at lower stages, and by his superconscious at higher stages. The instinct of life is the personality’s collected experience of life together with that part of the self’s latent experience which is at the verge of a new remembrance.
10The causal superconscious remains only receptive until it is activated by the self. At the end of an incarnation it collects the ideas worked up by the mental consciousness in case these ideas have such a reality content that they can be sublimated into causal ideas. Fictions are sorted out when causal consciousness is able to activate the ideas. The lower reality is “reflected” in the causal ideas, which little by little are elaborated into a higher exactitude and a wider content of reality. The reality ideas are strengthened with each new incarnation. Fictions are different in each incarnation. They do not harmonize with the causal “reality vibrations”. In the causal world, awakening causal consciousness works up its ideas in a continuous exchange with other causal beings, in which process every remainder of fictitiousness and illusoriness is weeded out.
11Guidance from the causal superconscious is possible only when this consciousness has been activated, has had the time to work up its causal ideas to a considerable extent, so that it is able to use them when judging things and is able to follow the course of events and the doings of the personality. Moreover, it is necessary that there are no hindrances to the reception by the personality of “causal inspiration”.
12Some words concerning the fiction of “divine guidance” would not be out of place here.
13“Divine guidance” is often the reaping we have prepared in previous incarnations.
14The elemental of reaping formed for man’s “guidance” sees to it that the good or bad reaping meted out is indeed reaped. It is in many respects a powerful or irresistible factor.
15At lower stages, direct intervention by some “higher being” is precluded. At higher stages, the individual may have come into contact with his second self collective being, whose “chief” of course may intervene, if there are particular reasons for it and no hindrances according to the law of reaping. This possibility can be disregarded at mankind’s present stage of development.
16In the emotional world, there are “departed” people in possible contact with the physical world, moreover “invisible helpers” of various kinds. Some of these may intervene occasionally. Any constant guidance by them cannot be counted upon. And their “inspirations” may be misleading.
1Fatalism, belief in inevitable fate, and predestination, belief in unconditional foreordainment, are views of partially rightly, partially wrongly ascertained causal relations, views made absolute by ignorance.
2There is an apparent justification for speaking of fatalism and predestination. Everything that happens is determined by causes in the past. The individual (as well as nation and race) has himself determined his destinies through his consciousness expressions and actions in thousands of previous incarnations. The result of all these factors must be inevitable.
3How so-called accidents are necessary in the world process Schopenhauer has tried to illustrate in the following excellent presentation.
4Accidents would mean coincidences in time without any causal connection. Nothing is accidental, however. The seemingly most accidental is, instead, a necessity from an immeasurable distance. Causes in the causal chains of the distant past meet in the point making up the events of the present. Each event is a link in its own chain of causes and effects, which run in time. The number of such chains is of course immense. Many such chains are intertwined and may be traced back to a common origin. They may be said to be related to each other, like the individual is related to his progenitors. Some certain event is often the result of several factors, every one of which has its own causal chain from the past. All the causal chains running in time form together that great, intertwined, unitary network which we call the world process. If we conceive of these causal chains as meridians in the extension of time, then simultaneous events (precisely therefore not causally connected events, since cause precedes effect in time) can be indicated by parallel circles. Now, events found within such a circle are not directly dependent on each other but are distantly connected through the network of intertwined chains, which makes up the sum total of all causes and effects. Simultaneity is therefore a necessity.
5“The freedom” to choose is largely illusory. We walk the paths we have cleared in past lives. Now and then we come to a crossing where other paths meet. That is our opportunity to choose for the next crossing.
6Those who can look into the future can perhaps see one of the paths to walk. They cannot decide, however, how to choose at the future crossing. There the law of freedom comes into operation instead of the law of destiny.
7The question whether “life is predetermined in the matter of trials, etc.” cannot be given a general answer. The horoscope (which present-day astrologers cannot interpret, see The Knowledge of Reality, 2.13) indicates what kinds of energies (according to the laws of destiny and reaping) will influence the individual. Then the result depends on the individual (the acquired tendencies of the envelopes) and his ability to live according to or in opposition to known and unknown laws of nature and laws of life. The word “punishment” does not exist in the dictionary of the powers of destiny, only “effect” or “reaping”, the work of the individual himself. Generally, the individual has a possibility of “paying off” by doing “good deeds”, what he otherwise would have to suffer. So we are better off than we deserve. Then people pride themselves on their helpfulness, which in actual fact was foreseen and just is redress. This was the original gnostic meaning behind the dogma of theologians that we cannot by ourselves “do good”.
8Disease is the outcome of crimes against the laws of nature, not against the laws of life. Also the genetical inheritance from parents is the result of the individual’s crimes against laws of nature in past lives. He is born into a family having such predispositions to disease. Men lead their lives so perversely that a 45-self said he was astonished at the fact that the human organism can evince such power of resistance as indeed it does.
9We are attracted to people by our acquired tendency and so by vibrations in our envelopes. Like is attracted to like. From this fact we can learn what kind of people we are without seeing it. On the other hand, the people we “are forced together with” through circumstances of life are often ancient relations.
10Like is attracted to like if there is a possibility of choice, which also depends on “reaping”. Those on higher levels who, in life upon life, have had the opportunities of meeting “likes”, have greater prospects of quicker development and of meeting “the teacher” earlier. That, too, may appear as predestination.
1As long as the individual is human, he is a member of mankind and shares its collective responsibility in various respects. The fact that, in some certain incarnation, he has succeeded in being born into a “cultural nation”, cultural family, has had opportunities to assimilate the pertaining learning and has had other advantages, does not in the least mean that he will succeed in attaining the same developmental level in future incarnations. That will depend on how he has used his life for his development, how he has used his qualities and abilities to further evolution (the welfare of all).
2“Farewell to everything.” That is not the way to reach liberation. On the contrary, you will be ever more firmly attached to what you seek to escape. In actual fact, it is not the idiotic and inhuman things in mankind you want to flee from but your own part of it. But you cannot run away from yourself. We are all parts of a whole. And we have much to make good from lives past. When the debt to life is paid, we have paid off a part of our common debt and thereby a part of the whole debt. To disregard the collective, which in all things is the primary and the very condition of life without which nobody would be anything at all, is the injudiciousness of ignorance.
3All too many people who have assimilated the esoteric world view and life view are content that they have finally come into possession of these views. They have been liberated from the ruling idiologies (illusions and fictions) and have been given a rational view of existence. They are content with that. The planetary hierarchy has not given us this knowledge for that purpose, however. We have received the knowledge in order that we make something out of our lives and serve mankind. Anyone who omits to do that will have to be content with not getting the same opportunities for a correct view but will remain disoriented in his next incarnation.
4Anyone who wants to have esoteric knowledge in order to know, comprehend, understand more than others, to be sovereign and superior, to be self-important and look down on others, makes a serious mistake for future incarnations. The planetary hierarchy has not worked to give men knowledge in order to strengthen egoism.
5In the olden days, such egoists had no chance of being initiated into esoteric knowledge orders. Nowadays, they have the possibility of studying this knowledge without the need of reaching even the stage of culture (48:3). This has created a new problem: the abuse of the knowledge by the unworthy. For everybody abuses the esoteric knowledge who uses it for his own good and not for serving others.
6You have an inalienable right to a new contact with the knowledge you have once acquired. If you have abused the knowledge, however, you may lose it.
7The meaning of life is the evolution of all in all kingdoms. Anyone who does not want to live in order to realize this very meaning of life may not count on special favours, and particularly not on having future opportunities of abusing the knowledge further. Every offer of life is indeed a good reaping, but it is also a test. The law of destiny comes into operation. The egoist’s good sowing yields a “good reaping” (pleasant physical conditions, etc., that strengthen egoism) but no consciousness development; but he is cut off from the energies in his centres that would have furthered this.
8You who have received this knowledge of reality and life and have been given it for nothing, you have not received it just for your own good but also for spreading the light among people, so that they are liberated from their illusions and fictions, so that the world may be changed. If you do not do so, then you have no right to regain this knowledge in your next incarnation. We have received for nothing, then give for nothing! Responsibility goes with the light of knowledge. Anyone who does not want to help mankind cannot count on receiving knowledge in his future lives.
1The law of cause and effect, belonging to the matter and motion aspects, the law of sowing and reaping, belonging to the consciousness aspect, are the same fundamental law, absolute in all worlds and in all kingdoms. The fact that it manifests itself differently in different worlds, can be understood by anyone who knows that every one of the 49 atomic worlds has its own “space” (dimension), “time” (duration), material composition, mode of motion and kind of consciousness.
2This law is a guarantee against any kind of divine arbitrariness. It is deplorable that this must at all be said, but it is apparently necessary for a mankind that is so horribly ignorant of reality and life.
3The law of reaping is an expression of the law of cause and effect. The mistakes we have made through our wrong use of the matter aspect, in our ignorance of the Law, have made “traces” in the physical, emotional, and mental atoms of the pertaining molecules (also in their passive consciousness), traces that must be removed for the cosmic harmony to be restored. How this works out in detail is still esoteric, probably because the possibility of rightly understanding the relations is still lacking. It has been thought that only third selves are able to understand them. At any event it is meaningless to speculate, for in that way you will not find any facts, which is a truth that men seem to find hard to realize.
4The reaping often seems cruel, meaningless, absurd, hostile to life. Then we have acted thus in past lives.
5Nothing is unbearable once you know the cause and see the end. The cause lies back in the past (bad sowing). What is a brief earthly life (some few decades) in the eons?
6We are slaves to the laws of nature and laws of life we do not know, do not understand, do not apply. We become free through knowledge of the laws and through our ability to rightly apply this knowledge.
7What you think that you become. What you wish you receive. Everything you do to others is returned to you.
8The three laws consequential on the law of reaping: Be careful with what you think, with what you wish, with what you do.
9In spite of energetic assertions by the planetary hierarchy that no man can rightly understand “karma”, the result of causes and effects in endless sequence, of course everybody who has been given some infantile definition of the concept knows what karma is. The individual does not seem to be able to distinguish what he knows from what he does not know, what he can know from what he cannot know, until he has become a causal self. Until he has learnt that, however, he will remain an idiot. What mankind “knows” is more than ninety-nine per cent illusions and fictions.
10There is cosmic, systemic, planetary karma. Every natural kingdom and every kind of collective in these kingdoms has its karma. The individual’s karma is a result of all his consciousness expressions in all natural kingdoms. With some certain modification it can be said that his individual character is his karma.
11After the primordial atoms have been introduced into the cosmos and have been involved to form ever more composed atoms, they are during immense spaces of time affected by energies (vibrations) of innumerable kinds. All affections bring about results, and all such things are contained in the concept of “karma”.
12Since in the natural kingdoms all affect all with their vibrations, still more complex results are obtained in these kingdoms.
13Beings in higher kingdoms, who lead the processes of manifestation and particularly the process of evolution, must always take the existing results into consideration. They thus have to work with a material that is collective as well as individual.
14The highest supervisors of the application of the law of reaping in mankind on our planet are 43-selves belonging to the deva evolution. Where disciples are concerned, they collaborate with the 43-selves of the human planetary hierarchy. Sowing has to be reaped, but it may be reaped when it is considered to be the most expedient.
15At the shaping of solar systems and planets, the atoms of cosmic matter have their cosmic individual characters and their departmental characters from the energies of 42 atomic worlds. We have received no facts about the selection of 42-atoms made when the different solar systems are begun. Nor do we know what is taken over in the form of laggards from solar systems in the process of being dismantled.
16Our solar system is of the second degree. It has taken over the physical and emotional matter that was mentalized in the previous system. This has made it possible in our system to form seeds and eggs with their developmental faculties, also a kind of “karma”. Moreover, matter has also in innumerable other respects acquired a collectivized as well as individualized character.
17Without the knowledge of all these facts it is not possible to understand even the conditions of giving a rational definition of karma.
18The law of reaping is the law of unerring justice, a law belonging under the law of restoration or redress.
19The implacable law of justice rules life. There is no injustice, however cruel everything appears. It is us who have made life what it is. We have to incarnate until we have restored everything to what it was. It is on our own responsibility that this wretched state of things may go on. We just reap what we in previous lives have thought, felt, said, and done. And we must experience that this has consequences. Most people take everything in the wrong way – success as well as setbacks. Many there are who turn bitter and malcontent. Others learn Stoic impassivity and invulnerability. Few there are who receive it gratefully.
20In the most profound sense, the law of reaping is an expression of the unity of life. Whatever we do for or against others we do for or against ourselves.
21Everything good or evil we have done in lives past is returned to us with the same effect. Whatever I complain about could not possibly have happened if I had not deserved it.
22All joy and happiness, pain and suffering others have experienced through our doings ties us to them. If we try to sever such ties before life has let them fall off by themselves, then we just tie ourselves to others the more firmly for the future.
23Until we have reached a higher stage of development, acquired a sufficient fund of experience of life, and developed our reason so that we can draw our own conclusions instead of merely parroting others, we, in our great ignorance of life and injudiciousness, make hardly anything but mistakes in life, we inflict sufferings of all kinds on living beings, mostly by our thoughts.
24According to the law of cause and effect, of sowing and reaping, we must ourselves experience everything good and evil we have done to unity (that is: all living beings) during thousands of incarnations. That will mostly be discomforts and sufferings, until we have learnt to live in harmony with the unyielding laws of life. There is no injustice of life, no divine arbitrariness, for everything is law. The ignorant of life who suffer accuse life, not suspecting that it is all their own doing, that nothing can happen to anybody who has not deserved it. If we think it is horrible, then we have been horrible to others. Nobody may suffer without a just cause or more than what he has inflicted on unity himself.
25Sowing has to be reaped to the last grain. Every thought, feeling, word, action carries its inevitable reaping.
26Anyone who afflicts suffering on others must suffer for it himself. All help given is returned to the helper.
27We are all given burdens to carry, bad reaping from bad sowing.
28The law of reaping works in everything. All mistakes we make as to our way of life (hygiene, diet, exercise), attitude to life, etc., are mistakes that have consequences. Law is law and cannot be altered.
29We cannot reckon on help from the gods unless we are innocent of the mistakes made.
30We receive the help of light and guidance if we seek it.
31Our motive does not reduce reaction.
32There are no catastrophes for anyone who is prepared to repay his debt to Life.
33Nothing evil can happen to us, because everything is for the best in the future. Our fear is our idea that whatever happens is something to fear.
34Life always turns into sorrow and suffering for anyone who desires and is attached to whatever is perishable.
35Everything that happens is the result of past causes. The same is true of whatever happens to us. We reap what we have sown. Since mankind has hardly done more than left the stage of barbarism, it is realized that what we have sown in the past is largely just the sowing of hatred. It is good for us that we must not immediately reap the evil we have thought, felt, said, or done in past lives. We generally reap in small portions, the smaller the more primitive we are. The further we develop, the more suffering we can stand. Anyone who is able to bear very hard sufferings, endure catastrophes, has gone far on the path and has soon made his final payment.
36It is important to realize that suffering is not just an instalment but also has its immensely great compensation. For suffering hardens the individual to steel, gives him a deeper insight and power over his envelopes and circumstances. Only the developed man can use happiness for “creative” work. To all the others, happiness mostly means a useless life and often bad sowing, missed opportunities to lead a useful life.
37Suffering can be abolished only by introducing new forces that change conditions. We can do this for others in certain respects. This does not imply that the law of reaping is “suspended”, as the ignorant imagine. Nothing can suspend a law. New forces brought into play work in full harmony with the Law.
38It is a charitable action that those who do not wish to learn at all are taught through bitter experience. Otherwise they would never develop.
39The law of reaping liberates from the dependence on everything in the lower worlds. Anyone who wants to liberate himself must learn to see that everything which ties him drags him down.
40People pray to god to be “saved from evil” not knowing what this evil is. They believe it is freedom from disease, poverty, dishonour, designs of enemies, impotence, etc. A big mistake. Everything they meet with is according to the Law. Evil is first and foremost their own evil thought which they lavishly spread about them and, as for the rest, everything they do in violation of the laws of life. Man has to take control of his envelopes of incarnation and to solve their problems himself, for that is the only way to develop. What more happens to him is according to the Law. If he is wise, he sees to it that his next incarnation will be better. That is up to him.
41Reaction according to the law of reaping may come in several ways. It may work mechanically, measure for measure. It may come with lightning speed or wait eons. It may be adapted so that we can learn from our mistakes. The evil we have done we may make good positively through service instead of negatively through suffering. If there is a possibility, we may reap in the mildest possible manner.
42If the reaping would hit as blindly as the sowing, then life at lower stages would be made more difficult if not impossible altogether, and its lessons would not be learnt in the best way. That part of our bad sowing which can be so adapted that it develops necessary qualities, teaches us to respect life, reveals the laws of life, etc., is to wait until the individual has reached a level where such results are possible. That is the explanation why those on higher levels generally have to suffer more than those on lower ones. The hardest suffering those meet with who approach the human final stage, since then the reaping still remaining must be finally settled.
43Reaping is always teaching and test at the same time. Anyone who has entered into unity and incarnates only to serve life will not sow any sowing for reaping. He instead contributes to blotting out collective reaping. That is the kind of “sacrifice” meant by the misunderstood socalled vicarious suffering.
44We have a wrong idea of the law of reaping if we think that everything we meet with in life is just a product of reaping. The law of freedom excludes the possibility of what fatalists call blind fate. We have a ninety-nine per cent chance of changing our apparently inescapable destiny in most respects. But in order to do so we must have a positive attitude to life, we must have acquired the ability to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
45The law of destiny is a law full of consolation. It sees to it that the law of reaping works in such a manner that however hard and difficult life appears it is nevertheless best as happens. We would be in an incomparably worse state if our desires were satisfied. Our own stupidities in this life with their quick reapings are within the range of our judgement. If reaping seems just absurd, then its sowing is part of past lives.
46Our destiny is to a great extent due to the ways in which we reap our old bad sowing. Having a negative attitude to life we increase the inevitable discomforts of life and reap in the worst possible manner, namely negatively by suffering. Having a positive attitude to life we serve life, we further development, we make it easier for everybody to live, we receive possibilities to work positively, making good the evil we have done.
47“Man is the master of his destiny.” This ancient esoteric tenet, which ignorance as usual has misinterpreted, is valid and can be understood only if it is seen as a corollary to the law of sowing and reaping. “Man is a slave under the destiny he has made for himself” would have been more comprehensible but not very true, for he does not need to be a “slave”. He is none when he has understood his potential godhead and the meaning of life. He is even his own “law-maker” in the sense that he himself determines under which laws of life he will take his stand. They become his law of destiny.
48Theologians and moralists scare people by talking of a “misspent life”. According to the planetary hierarchy, all incarnations are “misspent” if the individual does not manage to reach the stage of ideality and become a causal self. So there are many thousands of such lives. It would be a big mistake to believe that it “does not matter” how you lead you life. The law of reaping is an efficient law. A purposely wasted life may cost you many incarnations of suffering. The harm you then have done yourself and others takes time to repair, to make good. And the more a man knows, the greater is his responsibility, for knowledge is a gift that is not given for nothing. You may forfeit the right to knowledge. That was what mankind did in Atlantis, and that is the reason why mankind has been “wandering in darkness” for twelve thousand years. The same may happen to every individual. He may lose the possibility of receiving (grasping) the knowledge when it is offered him the next time. The planetary hierarchy calls this “to have destroyed the instinct for reality”, and it may take many lives to repair that damage.
49So much about that. If the individual is well aware of this it is enough to say to him that his anxiety about misspending his life in this incarnation is unnecessary and testifies to a lack of trust in life and trust in law. You can reassure him saying that his next life will afford him fresh and most often greater opportunities. “Fear”, which so controls, tyrannizes and paralyses life, is the curse of mankind, the result of the fact that we banished the planetary hierarchy and still hinder it from reappearing. The planetary hierarchy is in our midst, for the essential world, which is its particular world, occupies the same “space” as our physical world. And the chiefs of the various departments of the hierarchy are always incarnated, unknown to all except their disciples. Their anonymity is absolutely necessary until mankind has realized the absurdity of treating their “gods” in the manner it has done. And their work is of such a kind that unnecessary disturbances must be avoided. They have greater tasks than helping the individual with the affairs which according to the Law he has to manage himself. If men would have any idea of the enormous organization and how everything in it works without friction for the final good of all and everybody according to the law of development, then their anxiety of life would vanish as if it had never been. Anyone who has realized this also has trust in self, trust in life, trust in law. Without this threefold trust the individual will remain a helpless victim of all the inventions of Satan. Any other name cannot be given to the prevalent disorienting world views and life views blazoned abroad by the “wise” ones of this world in their paltry self-importance.
1Just as theologians in all ages have preached their views, mystics in all ages their ideas, so teachers of all kinds of superphysics will proclaim their views. There is already a vast occult literature spreading all too distorted versions of esoteric life view. There is hardly a single theosophist who does not know everything about the “law of karma”. And so they do despite the warnings expressly given by 46-selves, 45-selves, and even 44-selves and 43-selves to the effect that man cannot rightly interpret karma but just grasp this causal law in its most primitive form. How it works in individual cases is beyond the range of human power of judgement.
2It is often said in theosophical and other occult books that “there is no karma in the animal kingdom”. Then they do not know what karma is. Karma is the law of sowing and reaping, cause and effect. It rules absolutely in all worlds and in all natural kingdoms and divine kingdoms. The karma of animals is that they live off each other. They inflict suffering on each other. Would that be without consequences? It is quite another matter that in the case of man his ever increasing knowledge and understanding of life brings about increasing responsibility. Man has a greater capacity for inflicting suffering on other beings, physical as well as emotional and mental suffering. The fact that he does so is the best witness to his level of development.
3“The animal is free from debt.” (Geijer) Mistakes as to the laws of life are not debts; they are balance disturbances that according to the law of reaping have to be redressed. If the saying quoted means that the animal cannot make mistakes as to laws of life, then this is downright false. Any individual can make any mistake at any stage of development whatsoever. At the animal stage it is chiefly the tendency to repulsion (hatred in all its innumerable manifestations) that makes mistakes.
4Debts between individuals will be settled. If men will not do it voluntarily, then the law of reaping sees to it that everything is settled. Nobody can escape paying his debts, sooner or later. The manner in which to pay will depend on his circumstances in general.
5Life’s waste of geniuses is the bad reaping of these geniuses. Any nation’s waste of its few (!!) geniuses is the very bad sowing of that nation. And then the nations boast about them!!
6The wrong interpretation of “karma” has contributed to making the Indian attitude to life fatalist, passive, inactive. The fear of doing evil has contributed to the Indian preference for doing nothing at all, and their belief in the risk of “standing in the way of karma” deters them from doing good. Then they have not realized that passivity is an even greater mistake, that thought and feeling (with their concomitant speech and action), issuing from a higher kind of consciousness, bring about a better sowing than those originating in lower kinds, that good reaping has a many times stronger effect than bad reaping. The knowledge of the laws of self-realization and self-activation would have afforded them quite another attitude to life. Anyone who wills for the right need not fear bad reaping. The motive is the essential thing. Of course this is no defence for doing evil intentionally in the hope of a good result, for then you have falsified your motive.
7Not even the Buddha’s exoteric teaching on karma (something quite different from the esoteric teaching) has been grasped by Buddhists. They cannot grasp it, for they know nothing of the self in the causal envelope and the envelopes of incarnation. The process of karma can be scientifically studied by causal selves. This much should be said: “It is individual and national karma that forces the human individual down into a human organism with its qualities.” As long as the individual is found within the range of the action of this law, he will remain in the fourth natural kingdom.
8It has been objected against the law of reaping that it is not the same person that sows and reaps. It is true that the envelopes are not the same. But it is the self that sows and reaps, and the self is the same in all its incarnations. In its new envelopes the self cannot remember its sowing. However, when the self becomes conscious in its causal envelope, it will see all the long chain of causes and effects. Before and after incarnation the self has a vision, albeit a rapidly vanishing one, of the validity of the Law. Knowledge and common sense in conjunction are quite sufficient to clarify the validity of the law of reaping.
9Considering man’s seemingly ineradicable conceit of believing himself able to judge without knowledge of facts it is necessary to warn people against attempts at interpreting the effects of the law of reaping in their own or other people’s lives. There is no such possibility in the fourth kingdom, and this is fortunate since all knowledge is distorted and abused.
10We have already heard people saying that they regard the kind deeds shown them by other people as the latter’s “lawful” duties, since it was all just “settlement of an old debt incurred in a former life”. Such a view is of course a serious misinterpretation but it is typical of those who want to throw off uncomfortable feelings of gratitude.
11Also such a statement as “if I hadn’t received this knowledge from you, then I had received it by some other means, since evidently I have acquired the right to it” is a misinterpretation of the law of reaping. Certainly one receives what one has got a right to receive, but how and when and from whom and whether one is “then able to accept it” are also factors to take into consideration. Besides, holding such an attitude one will miss much that a better attitude might have enabled one to receive. Ingratitude is turned into hindrances in the future. That is a mistake akin to treason.
12“The law of sowing and reaping, saying that you must make good everything evil you have done, is very unsympathetic. I rather keep to the teaching of complete forgiveness.” Did that individual think that his “faith” could change the laws of life?
13When the individual’s balance account is settled before his passing into the fifth kingdom, then his debits and credits agree to the last penny.
14There are those who wonder how the planetary government could drown the good people along with the evil ones at the destruction of Atlantis. Those who had “become good” had so much to make good that according to the law of reaping they could have been drowned a thousand times. It is only at the stages of culture, humanity, and ideality that we sow more good than bad sowing and find opportunities to make good the evil we have done.
15The knowledge of the law of reaping shows us how we should face the trials of life and shape our future. The laws can become helpful forces if we use them in the right way.
1Suffering arises when the self does not live in harmony with the laws of nature and laws of life. The after-effects of such mistakes may extend over three or four incarnations (“third and fourth generation”). The responsibility (consequence) increases with knowledge and understanding. Conscious opposition to the Law in life upon life brings about its own consequences.
2A common mistake in life is that the self (being ignorant of the meaning of life) identifies itself with its envelopes and the matter aspect. That is a mistake as to the laws of development, self-realization, and destiny. In its opposition to life (hatred) the self violates the laws of freedom and unity.
3Many think that the law of reaping is a “hard law”. Is this logic? That law is hard to the hard. Those who love deem that law sweet.
4Many people wonder what ill deeds they might have done, since they have to suffer so much. But if they knew themselves (what devils in human guise they have been throughout history), then they would understand that it must be so if there is a law of justice, a law of sowing and reaping, a law of cause and effect. We have all, during tens of thousands of incarnations, committed all manner of infamies, countless misdeeds out of hatred. We have lived on the toil of others. We have helped to idiotize mankind. And then they believe themselves free from responsibility of life? It is we that were world history! Try to use a wee bit of your power of reflection instead of living in your chaotic feelings that just idiotize you! Besides, we need not study history, which all the life-ignorant disavow. We need just look at the state of the world, all parts of the world, today: lying and hatred of all forms, inhumanity and irrationality, life ignorance and stupidity and deceit in everything.
5Moved to tears of self-pity people complain about their hard physical fate. They need to be informed that, despite everything, everybody is in a better situation than he has deserved. All the agencies of the law of reaping are aware of this fact, not least Augoeides.
6“Be grateful that it is not worse.” So says the planetary hierarchy. And it means that the law of reaping is applied with the greatest possible leniency, even when it appears as bad as bad can be. It is a charitable deed that we are made oblivious to all the infamies we have done during our tens of thousands of incarnations at the lower stages of development. It may be that most of it has been reaped. But there is much remaining still, since the powers of reaping reckon with the fact that we, having reached the stages of culture, humanity, and ideality, shall voluntarily make good the evil we have done by serving all in all respects and so be spared suffering for it. Many incarnations are used up just for “lives of giving” until everything is atoned for. Man’s accumulated debt is immense. Those who think they are very noble because they help should now and then ponder the possibility that they just pay off a debt. At any event, we are wise in not being “so good that we caress ourselves”.
7What have higher kingdoms done for men! They have built the cosmos. They lead the process of manifestation. They invest the monads with the envelopes they need. They guide evolution. That is a debt which must be paid according to the law of eternal justice. What have civilization and culture given us, our fathers’ heritage to us and our children? What have the geniuses and pioneers of mankind, our parents and teachers given us? Without thinking we receive it, complain, blame, demand more. Everything given us in the great life throughout incarnations commands some price. He is wise who gives willingly instead of being demanded. For when the final balance is to be settled, debits and credits must agree to the penny.
8When people reflect on what reincarnation means for the individual, then their attitude to mankind will change. You grow like the man you admire but also the man you despise. Those who hate Jews will be born into that religion, etc. You will incur a debt to the man you hate. Anyone who is proud of his superiority in some life will have an opportunity to pity his inferiority in some later life. Anyone who abuses his station of power will be the victim of the power of others. Everybody may go on meditating on the consequences of thoughts, words, actions, of wrath, contempt, malicious joy, envy, presumption and all other kinds of stupidity.
9Life ignorance envies those who have been born into very rich families. Wealth entails a greater responsibility in life. If you consider how rich men’s children lead their lives you have no reason to envy them. They generally manage to sow a very bad sowing for many future incarnations: missing unique opportunities of life to help and be useful, opportunities to have experiences for a deeper knowledge and understanding of life. Enjoyments are intended to be opportunities of rest and relaxation. If they bring about disgust for work, for serious occupations, then they are hostile to life.
10“Why should I be just when nobody else is?” “Why should I not charge stiff prices when everybody else does?” That seems to be the general attitude in this transition period. It was hoped that the two world wars should have clarified, at least to those at the higher civilizational levels, where such an attitude will lead us. However, general disorientation as to right and wrong seems to have affected even legislators. Nations where such is the case prepare a deplorable future for their children and grandchildren. Perhaps the law of reaping must be applied in such a manner that these sowers may reincarnate quickly to reap their sowing. Incorrigibility requires special measures.
11We need not necessarily suffer for the evil we have done. We may make good by doing good deeds.
12Men demand to be given knowledge for nothing when they abuse the knowledge they have. Only those who use their knowledge rightly may be sure to receive new knowledge in new incarnations.
13The knowledge must not be withheld from those who are ripe to receive it, from those who comprehend and understand. If the knowledge is kept secret by means of the power of a certain caste, then the knowledge will be lost to the exoterists.
1The tendency to repulsion (separation) is hatred. It is stupidity in life, a hindrance to self-realization. It abolishes freedom, counteracts unity and development, sows a bad sowing.
2The esoteric tenet “love brings all earthly karma to an end” (D.K., referring of course to bad karma), is actually a self-evident conclusion from the fact that bad karma is the consequence of hatred. So life-ignorant and egoistically shortsighted are people that not even Indians, who nevertheless have heard about karma for thousands of years, have been able to conclude such a plain truth.
3How life-blind men are in their egoism and latent (never understood) hatred can be seen in the simplest things. Those who have come by some rare recipe for a dish, a medicine, for production of some kind, etc., keep it to themselves and begrudge even posterity having the description. Bad sowing.
4Judging others is a serious mistake in life (crime against the law of love, of unity) and particularly serious is a judgement passed on the “innocent”. That mistake is almost always the true explanation for the inconceivable sayings and doings that also individuals at the humanist stage are guilty of, the “catastrophes” that overthrow highly advanced people, the “hindrances” they meet with everywhere. Lack of love is the greatest stupidity in life.
5This, the greatest of all life-truths, has, ever since Christos revealed this law, been preached for two thousand years, and how many have cared for it? Hatred has been allowed to rule unchecked, and the very few exceptional people who have applied the law of love have been crucified and burnt. They have been hated by the hateful for the sake of their love. Verily, mankind has nothing to pride itself of or to complain about. But self-righteous self-blindness has filled itself with self-pity and lamented about “the evil of the world”. That piece of psychological idiocy amazes anyone who has been granted a small glimpse of esoteric psychology. And then people think they are psychologists. The parody is grotesque. Anyone who realized that he is a “psychological idiot” has, perhaps for the first time, judged himself correctly. When will people reach the Sokratean realization?
6They overlook the law of compensation, the fact that difficulties, sorrows, worries can always be neutralized by turning on energies of liberation. They make everything harder for themselves by feeling themselves to be martyrs like true self-tormentors, by revelling in misery. Having an anxiety complex is in fashion, and so they do everything to get one. Especially poets then manage to take on themselves, in their imagination, all the world’s misery, not suspecting that this is a sure method of self-destruction.
1By our vibrations (etheric, emotional, and mental) we affect all beings we contact and particularly our immediate surroundings. This esoteric truism has been too little considered, as is the case with all too familiar truths. But this is a great mistake. Everyday things are the important ones.
2Our thoughts and feelings have their particular effects, apart from the fact that they are factors influencing future sayings and doings.
3Man is responsible for his envelopes, which consist of matter having passive consciousness. It is by no means unimportant what this consciousness is allowed to experience and express; generally speaking, it is lawless disharmonious vibrations that always leave traces in the subconscious of these primordial atoms. The mistakes we make in such cases must, according to the cosmic Law, be atoned for, even though this will not be done until we, as planetary rulers, take over the management of planetary matter and the various collective planetary consciousnesses. The Law works down to the least detail, a fact of which men are abysmally ignorant, the esoteric literature be however extensive. What we are allowed to know, possibly can grasp, belongs to the esoterically infantile. And people think they are important and show off before those on lower levels.
4The individual’s emotional envelope is a centre of attractive or repulsive energies affecting everything within its sphere of radiation. Due to the quality of these energies, they attract to the individual the people, animals, and even circumstances to which he instinctively reacts with attraction or repulsion. Only when having some knowledge of the significance of everything does he begin to understand that this falls within the domain of the law of reaping and how he is to use the seeming accidents of life to sow a good sowing. The radiation of the emotional envelope is, expressed most simply, an agent for the law of reaping.
5“Skandhas” are emotional and mental material forms made of the molecular kinds we have activated in our envelopes. In respect of consciousness they make up our illusions and fictions, our good and bad sowing, our tendencies to good and evil. Such a material form follows us throughout our incarnations until we have reaped our final reaping. Our past, our future incarnations, our destiny and reaping exist in our material skandha form. It is a Herculean task to clean out that Augean stable.
6Those who have reached the stage of humanity are “geniuses” in understanding of life merely because of that. Their abilities may have been shut off. The same is true of individual faults. These are not due to the absence of positive qualities or to the presence of the opposite negative qualities but to the fact that the positive qualities have been shut off from making themselves felt through the absence of horoscope vibrations and that the elemental of reaping forces the faults on the individual.
1Not everything affecting the individual needs to be his personal reaping but may belong to collective reaping. We are responsible for the various collectives to which we belong. We have undeserved advantages from conditions over which we have no power. The same is true of disadvantages. We derive advantages from the wealth, culture, etc., of a nation. We must share the responsibility for the mistakes of our nation, class, family. Also mankind makes up a collective, and we must share in its good and bad sowing and reaping.
2All must suffer for all. But also individual reaping is unavoidable.
3The individuals who are present when collective sowing is reaped always have their own sowing to reap. Injustice in respect of life does not exist. It may be added, however, that justice does not exist in mankind at its present stage of development. Man cannot be just. He is all too life-ignorant for that. But this fact does not free him from the responsibility to do as best he understands and can do. The talk of “washing one’s hands of it”, the belief in the possibility of freeing oneself from responsibility, are the locutions and views of ignorance and, if applied, are serious mistakes in life.
4As long as we have bad sowing to reap, the taking on of the sufferings of others will just be an atonement for our own bad sowing. Anyone who has reaped his final individual reaping participates in the annihilation of a gigantic thought-form that has been built by the negative consciousness expressions of all during millions of years and which is daily reinforced with new elementals, potential forces that will be discharged when opportunities present themselves.
5In times of hard collective sufferings for mankind certainly much of this collective form is annihilated. But it has soon swollen out again.
6One example of our common participation in human collective and individual reaping is the shortage of natural resources that will sooner or later be unavoidable when these riches have been wasted.
7Natural resources are not inexhaustible. The sowing of waste must become the reaping of shortage some time. And those who have wasted must suffer the shortage. Everything we receive is a loan to keep well. Another example is the insatiable possessiveness of producers and distributors which is directed at lowering the quality of goods as well as raising their prices excessively.
8What is taken by violence or trickery will sooner or later be lost. The most well-known historical example is the history of the Jews. They gather all the gold of the Earth subsequently to be deprived of it. They conquered Palestine and lost it in due time. They still claim to possess that country, which is a serious mistake.
9The historical mission of the Jews, which they have never wanted to recognize and therefore always failed at, was to “missionize among the gentiles” (to ennoble emotionality up to the stage of attraction), among the nations that have received them.
10Another example is India, which banished the disciples of the Buddha. She will not be able to rise from her misery until she has recognized that this was a mistake.
11It is a serious mistake to allow evil to rule. The theological illusion saying that the fight against evil must be left to god is a piece of satanic inspiration. It is up to man to resist evil. If we have not done everything to combat evil with all lawful means, then we are accessary to the rule of evil. What mankind can do it must do. And this in all respects. That is a law which the planetary hierarchy constantly inculcates upon us. God does his duty and not ours. Christos never said that we shall not resist evil. The saying “resist not evil” is one of the many lies attributed to him.
12As long as mankind is found at such a low stage of development that war has not been outlawed internationally, the state may demand of the individual that he participate in the defence of culture against the attacks of barbarism. If he refuses to do his share, he makes the collective burden heavier, not lighter. Instead of paying off a bad sowing, he sows a new bad sowing.
1The ignorant of life always want to see the results of their service. The esoterician knows that there will always be a result, whether he sees it or not. You have sown a seed. Whether it grows or not, the very desire has had an effect in the emotional world and the ideas thought and expressed have had their effects in the mental world. All consciousness expressions have their effects. No attempt made is entirely wasted. We must learn never to look for results. That is not our business. We are just channels for energies that do their work. The quality of the energies is due to us.
2Because the vast majority of people cannot study their previous incarnations, they do not realize that what they sow they shall also reap in the matter of everything good they have planned and accomplished for posterity. Everything you have done for your race, your nation, your class, your family, for culture, for science, etc., you shall also reap, even though your own generation is ungrateful. The Law sees to it that all debts are paid.
3Love brings about happiness. By letting feelings of admiration, affection, sympathy reach out to more and more people you acquire the ability of always acting with love.
4When circumstances of life liberate us from our illusions and fictions, this may be an instance of good reaping, even if we do not realize it. There are people who, in incarnation upon incarnation, are deprived of everything that man considers desirable but who still do not see through the vanity of it all.
5“The granting of prayer” is an instance of good reaping. When mankind has the knowledge of reality and life and the laws of life concerning the superhuman kingdoms and their organization, then mankind will also understand the real significance of what Christians call prayer. We have a full right to desires, and they are also granted to the extent that they agree with the Law and the causes of the so-called past.
1It is good reaping when people show their best sides, have a benevolent attitude. It is bad reaping when they show their worst sides and are averse, disobliging and unsympathetic. This tells us that we are like those we meet. We have been such ones as they, and if we have not reaped our final reaping we can become such ones again. Those who blame others may consider this matter. The blows that others deal us are reaping and set-off. We are liberated from as much bad reaping as we have reaped. It is indifferent to the individual who is the agent of bad reaping, who causes suffering. That much is “paid off” for ever, and that is the main thing.
2It means nothing whatever happens to us! Everything is part of necessary experience or inevitable reaping. It is meaningless to grieve at what has happened. The way in which we bear our destiny in the present has a great effect on our character and our destiny for the future. We should use our difficulties to develop good qualities (patience, staying power, etc.).
3By being hurt and returning the vibrations that others have caused in us we are guilty of the effects that our vibrations rouse in those who have hurt us. We sow a bad sowing.
4His bad reaping did not allow me to help him.
5My bad reaping did not grant me the privilege of helping him.
6Most people sow new bad sowings by their way of taking the reaping meted out for them. Anyone who bears his destiny not just with equanimity but willingly and gladly, desiring to use the opportunity to relieve himself of his reaping, makes the best of that which is. What we have unfairly appropriated from another will in due time be taken away from us.
7The sowing we sow in thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds will some time become our own reaping.
8Our enemies help us to pay off our bad reaping. They are unwittingly the agents of bad reaping. That is their own bad sowing. By hating them we sow a bad sowing, hurt them, and put obstacles in our way. When enemies slander or persecute us, we know that this could never have happened if we had not “deserved” it.
9Bad reaping is by no means, as expounded, merely settlement of an old debt but always also implies an opportunity of liberation or hardening or service, learning a lesson, passing a test. The greater his understanding of life, the more the individual can use these opportunities for his development.
10Thought constantly shapes elementals in the mental world, and feeling shapes elementals in the emotional world. Also suspicion is such an elemental. According to the law of reaping, this elemental has a blinding effect on its shaper, so that his suspicion is apparently confirmed. It moreover shapes an apparent reality, which also confirms the matter, and affects the victim of suspicion so that he often instinctively does or says what is required to confirm the suspicion. The responsibility for all this falls on the suspecting man.
11Evil speech has more or less similar effects. Everybody who listens to such speech in so doing contributes to strengthening a collective elemental that also performs its work with a collective responsibility – quite apart from whether the things said are true or false.
12Blindness in life you may call those obvious mistakes and stupidities that otherwise sensible people make. Generally they are not due to ignorance of life but to bad reaping, possibly the blinding interventions of the reaping elemental. The ignorant are surprised and the moralists are indignant or maliciously pleased.
13The complex of sin is an emotional complex of inoculated fictions. If it has been deeply rooted and been fed with constantly new repetitions it can, in delicate characters, have the same devastating effect as an idee fixe, a mania, and a psychosis combined. The antidote is in most cases the fiction of divine grace and forgiveness. To see through the fictitiousness of that entire view would require a whole new world view and life view, and the work of forming such a view is beyond the powers of most people.
14Missed opportunities are everyday happenings. How many people use their power to serve their immediate environment, help, support it? How many people think of helping their fellows to go forward? And so on ad infinitum.
15Those who are lavish with their promises deceive themselves with their “generosity”.
16“To strike a good bargain” is to appropriate unwarranted advantages. From the reaping point of view it is a bad bargain.
17A serious mistake in life extends its effects over several incarnations.
18If children turn out “failures”, this is never only their bad reaping but it is also part of the parents’ bad reaping. Neither children nor parents have any logical right whatsoever to blame one another. If parents have done their best for their children, then children make a serious mistake in life if they blame their parents for their own failure. And as to the assertion often heard, “I never asked to come here,” it should be called a lie, for that is precisely what they have done. Anyone who refuses to incarnate has to wait until his urge to physical life becomes irresistible, as it without fail does sooner or later.
19The individual receives from his parents the organism determined according to the law of reaping. Thus the parents are not responsible for the diseases children inherit from them. Children inherit the diseases which, according to the law, they shall get to know. This of course does not mean that these diseases cannot or should not be cured, if the law permits it, which only causal selves can predict. Even if they are cured the individual has reaped what he should reap and has had some experience.
20Causal selves as well as essential selves may still make real mistakes. Such mistakes always entail severe consequences for these individuals. If other individuals have been affected, it will not suffice that they as best they can atone for such a mistake. They may lose the possibility of using powers already acquired, and lose them for several incarnations. This fact explains many otherwise incomprehensible things (deviations from the “normal”).
1The Buddha never said that life is suffering. He knew that the cosmos has been built in order that all monads acquire consciousness and, in the evolution of the great cosmic process of manifestation, omniscience in ever higher worlds. There is no place for suffering in that plan. Life is one great unity. But only unselfish love understands that matter. There is no suffering for those who rightly apply the Law. The fact that monads have acquired a repulsive basic tendency with parasitism and the cruelty of life as consequences is no fault of Life.
2The Buddha explained that suffering is a consequence of physical ignorance and emotional attachment. “Control your lower nature, and everything is joy.” The most simple method is refusing to consider anything lower, never attending to it. Anyone who is able to forget himself has fixed his attention on something previously decided upon or lives intensively in the present (without thoughts of what has been and without worries about the future), is “divinely indifferent” to his own person, his own importance, is an artist in life “pleasing to god” (something quite different from what people think to be the art of living).
3Knowledge dispels ignorance but does not liberate us from bad reaping. Suffering consists in the fact that we identify ourselves with whatever causes suffering. Suffering comes to an end when we have reaped our final reaping. Suffering is the negative way of reaping a bad sowing. The positive way is making good by service. There is physical, emotional, and mental suffering. Physical suffering is bad reaping out of bad sowing. Physical suffering, which mainly is what afflicts the organism (disease, disablement, etc.), is always due to mistakes as to the laws of life, mistakes that are collective or individual, made in this life or in past lives. Mankind has in all ages lived so perversely that esoteric “authorities” have expressed their amazement that the human organism can exist at all.
4Emotional suffering (anxiety before life, fear of all kinds, sorrows, disappointments, losses, vulnerability, “spiritual” darkness, etc.) is due to a wrong life view, missing qualities, or sufferings we have inflicted on others. Often they are connected with physical sufferings. The basic cause of emotional suffering is a repulsive basic tendency. Mental suffering is a direct consequence of the insane fictions of ignorance.
5Most people strengthen their suffering to the bounds of the bearable by their unbridled imagination. As a rule we suffer ten times more than intended through our wrong way of facing suffering. Emotional suffering depends on the illusions engendered by desire and the fictions of ignorance.
6The sufferings of bad reaping are unavoidable but can be weakened through the use of controlled imagination. In order to reach a higher level we must learn to see through the sufferings caused by our illusions.
7Emotional pity increases suffering in the world to the benefit of none but to the damage of everybody. Mental sympathy is the only sensible way of helping where help can be given.
8What people consider to be meaningless suffering can have several different purposes. It can simultaneously be a settlement of an old debt, a liberation from undesirable qualities, a useful lesson (a necessary experience), a test unwittingly passed, a requisite hardening. Suffering is unavoidable in as much as it is reaping meted out from bad sowing. However, we can use our reason to lessen suffering considerably, and suffering also has its compensations. Suffering liberates and reveals, ennobles and raises, deepens and clarifies, arouses the power of understanding and sympathy. Suffering develops qualities such as patience, self-control, impassivity, endurance, heroism. Nobody may suffer undeservedly. Life is not suffering. Life is happiness when bad sowing has been reaped.
9An esoterician has a right to speculate provided he knows that it is speculation and that he cannot decide whether it is true, even though it perhaps seems possible.
10The view of suffering as a principle of life, as an inevitable factor in consciousness development, appears to be a satanic invention. Suffering as reaping after bad sowing can also be avoided through service, and where the desire to serve is present it should not be necessary to resort to suffering. Suffering may be the last resort when all other possibilities to make us atone for the evil we have done have been tried. It seems probable that such atonement is feasible only at the cultural and humanist stages.
11The meaning of life is happiness, and the cult of suffering as being “the will of god” found in some mystics seems to be an expression of a misguided instinct of life.
1People have yet to learn what is meant by “responsibility” and above all by “collective responsibility”. We are all co-partners of the collective, jointly responsible for all. Nobody exists for his own sake. “One for all and all for one” is the law of collective responsibility. We are all and always jointly responsible for what happens when we know of it. The chain of causes and effects may disappear out of our sight. But through our past we are both directly and indirectly implicated in whatever happens. All laws of life are valid collectively and individually. Mankind makes up a unity and each individual part is responsible for the totality.
2Also pets (dogs, cats, etc.) are by the human barbarians regarded as existing for their pleasure, which is a big mistake. We are responsible for animals. And responsibility means, in the individual case, that it falls within the scope of the law of reaping.
3Every contact with “life” (the monads in all natural kingdoms) inevitably entails affection with an equally inevitable reaction. This enters into the concept of “responsibility”. The monads we have not benefited we have harmed in some manner, often both. Every contact thus entails a relation. The gems we carry, the food we eat, everything brings about relations to these monads, relations of which we shall perceive the effects in some manner when we have become second selves, third selves, planetary rulers, etc., if not before. This fact is of course beyond the range of our understanding. But knowing about it affords perspectives on the reality of responsibility. However, it should not be used as material for the usual imaginative speculation of ignorance, which has no other results than it idiotizes our reason and makes it more difficult for us to acquire “common sense” in the future, when we approach the humanist stage. He is wise who keeps to facts, put things down at their true value, and does not accept anything without sufficient (precisely sufficient) grounds. We are so ignorant that, in most relations of life, we have no logical right to speak even of probability. We may be very satisfied if we have a logical right to speak of possibility.
4Certainly the individual is responsible for what his envelopes set about on their own. It is his duty to answer for their stupidities. This may seem a hard saying. But it is just and right. If he could disavow himself, there would be no law. And he would not learn anything from his experiences.
5Full responsibility for action presupposes a knowledge of reality and of the Law. Mankind, being idiotized by idiologies that falsify reality and being moreover satanized by the black lodge, has no chance of a free choice. The Russian people, for instance, who are being methodically and systematically misled and are being crammed with lies, like the German people were by Hitler and his gang, cannot be held responsible for what their Communist leaders decide.
6In the matter of good and evil there is no possibility of compromise, no “third standpoint”. Either “yes” or “no”, and no “perhaps”. Life is a series of opportunities: choose to be for or against and be it done unto you according to your will. That is the motto of the law of reaping. “Karma” (the law of reaping) has been totally misinterpreted. The karma they speak of is the result of bad sowing. What man has done wrong, however, can be put right. Passivity suffers the “law to have its course”, does nothing to change what happens, nothing to change conditions. But anyone who applies all his energy to righting what is wrong counteracts the effects of the law of reaping. The deeds of love blot out the evil we once did. Anyone who does not take a definite stand against all manifestations of hatred, force, constraint, will himself some time become the powerless slave to the “force of circumstances”. Anyone who passively looks on when human rights are trampled under foot becomes implicated in the evil being done. Omission becomes complicity, and life accepts no excuses. Nobody can “wash his hands of it” and disavow himself.
1About the law of reaping it should be pointed out that the past always lives along with the present. In that respect there is nothing beyond recall. You may reap the evil you have caused in two ways: either by suffering for it or by atoning for it in a new life. You can blot out your mistakes, such as they are represented in the planetary memory, as if they had never been. In actual fact nothing unatoned-for may remain in this memory for anyone who is to become a 45-self. He must have made everything good. The opportunity of atonement the ancients called “grace”, an idea that was distorted so that people thought they could “sin on grace” and then buy indulgence from the church. It is disgusting to hear priests in Catholic countries make uneducated people believe that they can buy off twenty or ten thousand years in purgatory, etc. by giving gifts to the church.
2The individual must make good to all for the hatred he has directly and personally directed at them. The hatred produced by general slander goes to the fund of joint responsibility. Of course it will be the worst for those who with malicious joy wallow in their hatred. All judgement hits the judging man with exactly the same effect, except the hatred against all higher beings, which has another effect.
3There are two ways of making good the suffering you have inflicted on every living creature (not just people). The one way (on lower levels, where the will to unity is non-existent) is the negative one: experiencing the same kind of suffering yourself. The other way is to atone for your violations of the law of unity by serving others (superficially viewed as “sacrifice”).
4Most people concentrate stubbornly on the negative way, and it is this that has totally perverted the idea of “karma” into one of retaliation (an invention by hatred and vengefulness). Also “the law of sowing and reaping” is an unsatisfactory term. The “law of atonement” would perhaps be a better name than the “law of reaping”.
5It is true that we must reap what we have sown, but there is much remaining when the individual has become a causal self and an essential self. He must largely devote himself to atonement for the remnants of the evil he did as a man. Only when all remaining debts have been “settled per contra” can he become a superessential self. The good do not perish with the evil when catastrophes occur. They all have debts remaining, even though theologians have guaranteed absolution.
6“What a man has done can be made undone.” That is an esoteric tenet which, according to the planetary hierarchy, men cannot understand. Man can always make good the evil he has done, such evil as falls under the law of reaping. Everybody is also given opportunities to do so during his last incarnations in the human kingdom. There is much that the representatives of the law of reaping postpone until the individual will be able to “settle” voluntarily in the most efficient and quickest way.
7Indian fakirs and Christian flagellants believe that maltreatment of the organism “pays off karma” or “is pleasing to god”. However, in so doing they sow more bad sowing that must be reaped. “Karma” is made good by bearing the trials of life in the right way, for they are bad reaping, and they are for man’s own good since they develop requisite qualities. Self-tormentors are reborn with such organismal defects as they in their previous lives produced themselves.
8The higher the level a man is on the less we understand what he does and does not do and why. In the physical, emotional, and mental chaos characterizing the transition from one zodiacal epoch to another, there are many people at the stages of culture and humanity who have opportunities to make an “incarnation of settlement” with an unserviceable organism and brain and in trying social conditions. Of course these also imply “periods of probation”, during which the individual has the opportunity to demonstrate what he is able to do also under the least favourable circumstances. There is of course no possibility for the “environment” to rightly judge the latent capacity of such an individual. The usual assessment by success or failure is as perverse as always, since the knowledge of the laws of life is missing.
1Theologians have of old talked about the “will of god”, which they know nothing about. The “will of god” is mentioned also in esoterics. There the term refers to the methodical and systematical process that brings about the continuous consciousness development of all monads in the planet, a process that makes it possible for them to acquire ever higher kinds of consciousness, together with all the other processes that are the conditions of this. Like all processes this one entails expedient use of energy, the action of higher matters on lower ones (of atoms on molecules). The planetary hierarchy sees with amazement how indolent human beings are when it comes to self-initiated consciousness activity, being content with some knowledge of facts without transforming this knowledge into purposeful striving, as if all efforts were too tiresome, an attitude that increases the number of not too pleasant incarnations. Men lament about the troubles of life when they have themselves to blame. It is as though they could be driven forward only by coercive circumstances, not understanding that they necessitate these themselves. Life is activity. Without knowledge it is largely planless activity. With knowledge it should be purposeful activity.
2It is up to the individual how soon he will reach higher levels and higher stages. There is a possibility of passing through the human kingdom in twenty million years. That is the absolute record. But then he did not “fail” in one single incarnation. Most human individuals use four eons. They go with the stream, let others think for them, accept the views of public opinion.
3The individual develops by activating the consciousness of his envelopes himself. The most important thing is self-initiated consciousness activity. Most people are passive and let their consciousness be activated by vibrations from without. They accept the views of other people without examining what facts they are based on and whether these alleged facts also are real facts. Through their education they have acquired a mental system and reject without examination everything that cannot be fitted into that system, not understanding that all such systems, at the present stage of mankind’s development, are just systems of hypotheses, not of facts. They make themselves comfortable with their system for this incarnation. And that is not all. They detest everybody who has not accepted the same system. Always easily inflammable, hatred has many grounds and causes (physical, emotional, mental). There rages an unceasing “war” on our planet in all the worlds of man. And that is the ground for the immense slowness of development of most individuals. “Divine love”, the principal factor of development, is the insight of the universal unity of all monads. He develops the quickest who lives to accelerate evolution. Most people counteract it and do not suspect this fact. Anyone who serves unity acquires automatically precisely those higher molecular kinds that facilitate his further development.
4On the higher levels of the stage of civilization, the individual begins analysing more and more what he hears and reads; he no longer just parrots what others have said. In so doing he begins his self-initiated consciousness activity and thereby he starts to contribute to his individual development. By working up his experiences and applying them he acquires, more or less intentionally, qualities and abilities possible with his resources. Eventually he reaches higher levels. The more exactly his conceptual world agrees with reality, the more rapidly he develops. Without a contact with objective reality the content of his consciousness will be a subjective imaginative life of emotional illusions and mental fictions. Most people fill their consciousness with nothing but commonplaces and platitudes. It is only when we see that everything is a problem, begin to take an interest in problems and their solutions, that we strengthen our consciousness activity. When we have seen that the meaning of life is consciousness development and make up our minds to apply that insight in real life, only then do we start activation with one-pointed purposiveness.
5Theological submission to the “will of god”, the Christian ideal of the saint renouncing his own desires (typically represented in quietism), the expectation that “god will do it”, is a total misunderstanding of the teaching of Christos, who demanded the full application of human power of action. This attitude demonstrates ignorance of the fact that the law of activation is a fundamental law of life, and it also conflicts with the law of self-realization. It is our business to do all we can. The planetary hierarchy has no more use for drones than fanatics but only for workers having common sense and a full understanding of the art of possibilities. It demands no absurdities but just purposiveness, steadfastness, and perseverance.
6It is the task of the self to assimilate the consciousness content of its envelopes by activating their passive consciousness. It is up to the self to discover the method of doing this. Certainly the method is given. But it is the business of the individual to ascertain that the method is correct and to profit by its usefulness. We never discover the self-evident, so it must be given us, but then it will be our business to prove its reality to ourselves by our own work.
7Actually, it is wrong to speak of “passive consciousness”. Not even the “passive consciousness” of involutionary matter is ever passive, since it is activated by external vibrations and these penetrate, in an enormous current, all envelopes from the cosmic worlds, from the higher worlds of our solar system, and from the worlds of man. Instead of using the term “passive” it would be more correct to use “not self-activated”.
8Activated “passive” consciousness fulfils a basic function in the processes of manifestation. All aggregates of involutionary matter serve as perfect robots, not just automatically but also as intelligent beings. Their intelligence is made up of the thought that shaped them. If this thought is directed by sufficient knowledge, then it also fulfils a purposeful energy function.
9At any event the envelopes of man are also activated by external vibrations. The thoughts of most people are such products. Then it all depends on which molecular kind the individual has his self-consciousness centred in, what kinds of thoughts are received by his waking consciousness.
10When centred in the emotional and mental envelopes, self-consciousness receives the illusions and fictions ruling in the surrounding world. It is different with the causal envelope, however. When man begins to contact his causal consciousness and has learnt to think mentally in agreement with reality, he will receive more and more ideas from the causal world.
1Passivity, the lack of one’s own initiative, the belief that “god will do it”, is a big mistake. God will do his part when we have done our part, not before. Nobody will reach the fifth natural kingdom who has not performed the twelve labours of Hercules.
2The more passive man is, the more slowly he develops. Consciousness development requires self-initiated thinking and is hampered by parrotry and thoughtless acceptance.
3The activity of man’s emotional consciousness (particularly the vibrations of lower kinds) is more than sufficient for the needs of the envelope. Mental consciousness, however, is all too passive, parroting thoughtlessly, even idiotically. People expect to be mentally “fed” like little children. The school largely imparts the fictions of the day as if they were the knowledge of reality, and children learn their lessons and, at the universities, they go on parroting their professors. Mankind is mentally passive not to say indolent or apathetic.
4A typical instance of human obtrusiveness, tactlessness, disrespect, is the curiosity people at once show when they hear, for example, that a certain individual is a causal self. They apparently believe they have a right to demand solutions to their simplest problems. That is a comfortable way of avoiding individual experience and work. Fortunately, the causal self is forbidden to answer such questions. The pretensions of egoists must be refused. “Come back after ten, a hundred, a thousand incarnations; then you will perhaps have learnt how to learn.”
5It is abuse of mental consciousness to omit to use it for the acquisition of higher kinds of consciousness, to use it just for physical life. It is necessary for our further development that we acquire mental ideas and put them into their correct relationships, so that we get some knowledge of reality, life, and the Law and know how to use this knowledge in the best way.
1We change our life by reflecting. We develop abilities by thinking of them. We acquire qualities by directing our attention to them. All this we can do if we rightly use our intellect. How few people do it!
2“Introvert” means that the self has its attention directed chiefly to its emotional and mental life, “extravert” that the self has its attention directed outwards to the events of the physical world.
3The esoterician strives to “forget himself” by having his attention occupied with other things. He is introvert only when activating higher consciousness.
4The self is restless, for it is troubled by external vibrations. The self overcomes this unrest by learning to control the content of its envelope consciousnesses and by becoming the master of its ideas.
5The individual is responsible for his consciousness expressions. This will not be fully clear until he has learnt to differentiate the self, using an envelope for the consciousness expression, from the material form which is then produced and has its effect. Thought, emancipated from the mental envelope, has its own existence.
6When people say “I” they do not mean the self but some one of self’s envelopes with its various demands: physical, emotional, or mental ones, which the self still regards to be essential or necessary. When the self is grateful to be spared further occupation with all these too familiar things, then it will pursue higher goals. The trick of life is to be able to “forget oneself”, refuse to consider the demands of the various envelopes.
7You do not remedy faults and failings by fighting them. In so doing you rather strengthen them, since consciousness stimulates whatever it observes. You remedy them by never considering them and by constantly meditating on the opposite qualities.
8Dejection, depression is cured with self-forgetfulness; pride with humility; touchiness, irritability with invulnerability; etc.
9Anyone who cares about how it feels lacks the impassivity of noble indifference.
10Johannes Muller (Elmau) thought that the one right way of living (the trick of life) was to be intensely absorbed in the present in order to be able to solve the problems of the present perfectly, that the mystics were wrong who had their undivided attention directed to “god”. He thought that it was impossible to perform both activities simultaneously. However, that is precisely what the esoterician must learn to do. He must learn to be able to do at least two things at the same time and both equally perfectly, learn to be simultaneously as attentive in physical reality as in mental. The esoterician learns to live in three worlds simultaneously: the physical, mental, and causal worlds; or the world of daily work, the world of intellectual and cultural interests, and the world of reality ideas. The essential self must have learnt the art of being simultaneously equally attentive in the physical world, the causal world (which, correctly understood, also includes the conception of the mental world), and the essential world.
11The individual’s stage of development appears from his contribution to general development, from the tasks he has decided to perform.
12Development is in actual fact a continuous experiment with energy. The esoterician realizes that “life is energy” and he grows more and more aware of the fact that he lives in a world of energies. When he becomes irritated and this expresses itself in a fit of rage or even just angry thoughts, then he uses emotional energies and sinks down into emotionality, in doing which he counteracts his striving to live in mentality. The insight of the fact that “everything is energy” helps him to attend ever more purposively to what kinds of energy he expends, so that he finds it easier to make his choice between the various kinds of energy.
13Men have to learn the basic lesson of allowing themselves to be guided by their Augoeides and learn to live in harmony with their fellow men. When they have learnt to “forget themselves”, not to demand anything for their envelopes of incarnation, and to stand on their own feet, then and only then will they be able to live in the right way. After that, everything they need will be at their disposal. All this has been told to them by all those who have walked the path before them. But that path is too tiresome.
14When the teacher encourages the disciple to “live as a soul”, this means that he should apply his esoteric knowledge to assess all things in life and live in order to realize unity, make himself independent of emotionality and mentality, at any event not allow these envelopes to control him. This is said to disciples, not to occultists with a theoretical learning far beyond their power of application. There is a fundamental difference between comprehension and understanding, between learning and wisdom, between knowers and realizers. Learning can be picked up at the stage of civilization, but realization is successful only at the stage of culture (48:3). And real understanding belongs to the stage of humanity (47:5).
15The planetary hierarchy emphatically asserts that the esoterician runs a great risk of falling a victim to “imperil” (mental self-poisoning). All too easily he is seized with disgust before a mankind that “understands nothing” and largely makes nothing but blunders. Thereby he becomes unfit for life, unable to help. He must overcome the irritation that too easily ensues when he constantly faces the absence of perception and understanding in the life-ignorant, the solid resistance to all his strivings, the “excuses of the unwilling”.
16It says in theosophical literature that precisely “irritation” is the last of all the failings the individual must overcome in order to acquire superessential (45) consciousness. This hindrance, however, is something quite different from human irritation. It is the essential (46) self’s intense desire to help even when intervention does not accord with the Law. It is painful to desist, and that is the very failing.
17The esoterician’s greatest wish is, quite naturally, to “live entirely” in (have his undivided attention directed to) mental consciousness. There is a risk that he omits to strive for “perfectibility” in physical life. According to the planetary hierarchy, such an omission is due to life-ignorance. Physical life is as “divine” as any other kind of life. Anyone who is perfect in the physical world has unwittingly acquired many qualities and abilities necessary to higher development. “Thoroughness in everything” is the prerequisite also of “spiritual solidity”. Being tormented by not “living in the heights” is an instance of “spiritual egoism”, the most treacherous kind of egoism, which becomes a hindrance to the acquisition of an essential quality.
1The method of activation activates consciousness. Every consciousness expression produces vibrations in matter. These vibrations affect their own kinds of matter, which in their turn affect lower matter when penetrating them.
2Active consciousness activates consciousness. Our consciousness expressions make up our emotional and mental states. Through our consciousness expressions (thought, desire, feeling, imagination) we decide whether we will be happy or unhappy. They set their stamps on the present and determine the future. With them we stake out our destiny in future lives. With them we build our being, our character, our emotional and mental nature. Thoughts are thus powers for good and for evil. As our thoughts are, such we shall be, such will our future be, such environment, such fellow men shall we have. Like attracts like.
3Control of thought brings about control of life.
4Controlling his thought the individual becomes the master of his destiny.
5Thought is the power that shapes matter.
6Thought is not the effect but the cause of the composition of matter.
7Life and consciousness are not the products of matter. The function creates the organ, not the organ the function.
8The methodical activation is done individually. Everybody must experiment to discover his own method. It stands to reason that this requires a knowledge of reality, especially knowledge of the consciousness aspect. Only the causal self (the monad centred in the causal envelope) can find the truly efficient method. Before reaching that stage the individual would run too great a risk of abusing the method.
9Concentration (perseverance, staying power, intensity, energy, purposiveness) affords powers that realize our ideals.
10Concentration is to gather all forces into one single point. “All art consists in being strongest in a given point.”
11The idea is realized if we keep to it sufficiently long.
12Concentration replaces genius.
13Will is omnipotent when given the right outlet through consciousness. However, also the consciousness expressions of life ignorance are efficient.
14Our emotional and mental state affects our organism for health or disease, influences breathing, circulation, nervous functions, digestion, excretion, etc.
15Control of thought is required in order not to let in the furies of fear and all the other inhibitions of life into consciousness. These furies are dispelled through courage, trust in life, trust in self, joy, calm.
16Visualization brings about vitalization. Every consciousness expression is at the same time an energy expression, and energy follows feeling, imagination, thought, intuition, etc. By studying you vitalize your brain-cells, by thinking you mentalize your brain-cells.
17All knowledge (thinking in agreement with reality) serves to unconsciously influence the superconsciousness in higher molecular kinds. The more esoteric facts (facts from the planetary hierarchy) we put into their correct contexts, the more we strengthen perspective consciousness (47:5), which in the majority is superconscious, so that the self will eventually be able to work in this layer of matter and consciousness.
18Conscience is the result of experience had in the past. It enters into the acquired fund of understanding of life.
19Anyone who wants to form a strong complex must daily and regularly think of the quality in question. Otherwise the complex dissolves or remains ineffectual.
20Anyone who wants to receive constant inspiration from the superconscious must have acquired the power to control his consciousness.
21It is not enough to see and understand what is right and true. If wrong ideas, wrong habits, etc. have been rooted into complexes, these retain their power over the individual until they have been superseded by new complexes opposite to the old ones.
22In the emotional eon, mentality is weak in comparison to emotionality. If mentality and emotionality get into mutual opposition, emotionality wins unless the individual makes efforts to strengthen mentality through new complexes.
23“Faith does it. Without faith nothing will succeed.” Such old sayings of ignorance add to superstition and the confusion of ideas. Will obeys consciousness. The more concentrated the consciousness, the more dense physical, etheric physical, emotional or mental energy is developed. “Faith” is concentrated consciousness quite simply. It stands to reason that anyone who performs his work without energy, without purposiveness, without interest, indifferently, listlessly, never concentrates on his task and never achieves such results as would otherwise be possible; often no results at all. No faith is necessary, however. It is sufficient if you set about the task as an experiment. Your interest must be present, however, and your desire to do your best when you try.
24Those who belong to the first department, the true people of will, who need neither comprehension nor understanding to “do it”, need not form any counter-complexes to counteract the old complexes. To them it is enough to make a firm decision. Like all ignorant people they cannot understand the different modes of activation in the different types but dislike all who cannot at once carry out what they have decided.
25Higher consciousness is activated through active consciousness. This is “so self-evident that it need not even be said”, to quote habitual, self-important injudiciousness. To think that you know when you have been informed! Then you can puff yourself up, which is stupid. For in so doing you have pulled down the bridge ahead to more knowledge in future incarnations of what you have been given to know. Sometimes you find some highly intellectual person to whom the otherwise self-evident is incomprehensible. A sign of knowledge abused. Mental atoms are not attracted to the brain-cells.
26Envelopes as well as their consciousness can be activated.
27Innate objective consciousness (so-called clairvoyance) need not imply that the individual in question is highly developed or understands everything he sees or is able to use this ability rationally. He is therefore wise in acquiring esoteric knowledge before he trusts his clairvoyance overly.
28Indians have elaborated the activation of organism, etheric and emotional envelopes into an entire system of methodical activation, called hatha yoga. For instance by bringing the organismal eye under the control of consciousness the etheric counterpart of this organ can be so stimulated that etheric physical objective vision becomes possible. The corresponding is true of the organismal ear. No warning against such a method can be strong enough. The organs in question are strained, atrophy, organic blindness, deafness, etc., being the results. The only positive result that may be achieved is that some etheric molecular kinds (49:3,4) are brought under control.
29Etheric and emotional objective consciousness in a real sense is obtained through the methodical activation of the centres (chakras) of the respective envelopes, in which process all the physical and emotional molecular kinds are activated. This method (in India called the raja yoga method) starts from the consciousness of the envelopes, uses these consciousnesses to refine and raise the envelope vibrations in ever higher molecular kinds. This presupposes a special diet and exercises in the control of envelope vibrations (sense perceptions, desires, feelings, and thoughts). This training may take several incarnations before results are achieved. There comes a time when this training must be started, however, for it is the only way to acquire higher kinds of consciousness, first subjective and later objective. Without a systematic activation of consciousness, development and self-realization go at such a slow pace that hardly any change can be traced when studying one hundred incarnations of a normal individual.
30It is by controlling thought that we learn to master our vibrations. First you must learn to stop the flow of idea associations. This you do by keeping to an idea without allowing yourself to be disturbed by any throw-in. Then the mental envelope shapes itself from the idea. By training this ability the mental envelope and its organs are developed. When this has been developed, thought can in the same manner develop the organs of the emotional envelope, and finally the brain is influenced and reshaped, so that it is made ever more receptive to mental and higher vibrations.
31It is thought that develops the organs of these consciousnesses and then uses these organs to master vibrations.
32Two laws consequential upon the law of activation are the law of repetition and the law of habit. Each repetition makes each new repetition easier, strengthens its tendency to recur, inculcates the idea more firmly into memory, makes it more easily accessible, until it automatically repeats itself.
33All ability is a matter of exercise.
The above text constitutes the essay The Law by Henry T. Laurency. The essay is part of the book Knowledge of Life One by Henry T. Laurency. Copyright © 1999 by the Henry T. Laurency Publishing Foundation.