THE FORCES WE GENERATE
Every human being is constantly generating three classes of forces, and
they determine the kind of life he will lead here, the degree of success
or failure that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness
on the inner planes after the death of his physical body. The law of
rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but it is the law of action and
reaction under which we evolve while here.
The three classes of energies which we generate are those of thought,
desire and action. They belong, in the order named, to the mental world,
the astral world and the physical world. All people are constantly
thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees of energy, are putting
thought and desire into action. These forces sent out into the worlds of
thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions, or consequences,
and to them the man is bound until justice is done and the soul has
learned its evolutionary lesson.
That thought and desire are forces as certainly as electricity is, the
student of the occult well knows, but the world is not quite yet at the
point where the fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the
history of all human progress. When Franklin began his experiments with
electrical force almost nobody believed there was any such thing in
existence. Yet today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains and
drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all that at the time of the
first experiments he would have been considered extraordinarily foolish.
What the world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually has
very little to do with the facts. The general public can be expected to
come trailing along, about a half century late, with its acceptance and
approval. Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would be
impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated.
The mental body grows by the process of thinking. The force generated in
thinking reacts in the production of greater faculty for thinking, so
that we literally create our mental abilities. The activities of thought
change the mental body into a better and constantly better instrument
through which the ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect
others and we thereby make ties with them that must work out sooner or
later in associated experience.
Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a most important role in
the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring together the
desirer and the object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only
judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the result of gratifying
them. Thus do we acquire discrimination. It is usually a strong desire
nature that brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of desire
it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through experience the soul
finally learns to control desire, to raise lower desires into higher
ones and thus ultimately to attain non-attachment and liberation.
Actions are the physical expression of thoughts and desires and, as we
are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring and acting, very
complex results arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set up
relationships with other souls, some of the results of which reach far
into the future. The average man, with no knowledge of the laws under
which he is evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for future
incarnations and is often unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for
himself that a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every
injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily in
kind. Nature does not punish. She merely teaches and knows nothing of
retaliations. Her great concern seems to be that all souls shall get on
in evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose appears to be
accomplished.
The forces we generate in each incarnation shape and determine the next
and succeeding ones. Our friends, our families, our business associates,
our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in
the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth
or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our
intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or
limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the
past. From their consequences there is no possibility of escape.
But that does not mean that we are the helpless slaves of fate from
which there is no release. We who generated the forces can neutralize
them. We can undo anything we have done. It only means that for a time
we must work within the self-imposed limitations created by a wrong
course in the past.
Those who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will and
determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably strong
arguments that can be marshaled by each side to the controversy. Either
side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive. The explanation
lies in the fact that each is right, but only to a certain point. Both
free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical viewpoint
is understood the apparent contradiction disappears. We are temporarily
bound, _but we did the binding_, by the desires we indulged and the
emotions we freely harbored in the past.
The condition of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may
be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into Alaska to
locate mines. They are all aware that in that remote northern country
navigation closes very early and that after the last boat leaves there
is no possibility of getting out of that region until navigation opens
again in the next season. Some of them are discreet and reach the
landing in ample time. Others are careless. They continue their search
for gold a little too long, and arrive at the river a day too late. The
boat has sailed and they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a
great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They cannot escape from
Alaska for many months but within Alaska they are absolutely free. They
can build a cabin and either waste the time with idle games or seriously
think and study. They are limited but free within the limitation, and
the limitation itself was of their own making. It is precisely so with
us in the environment of the present incarnation and with our various
fortunes. We made them and, when the forces with which we did it are
exhausted, we shall be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification
and improvement.
The reactions from the forces we generate naturally do us exact justice
just because they _are_ reactions. We reap precisely what we sow. The
reaction may sometimes seem harsh but consideration of the matter from
all points of view will show that mercy as well as justice is always a
factor. Let us consider the method by which nature changes recklessness
into caution. A man is careless, we will say, about lighting a cigar and
throwing the burning match down wherever it may happen to fall. He may
go on doing that a long time with no serious result, yet all careful
people know that he is a source of danger. Some time ago a newspaper
told the story of such a man, who passed along the street, lighted a
cigaret and carelessly flung the flaming match from him. A nurse was
passing with her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell on some of
the light, airy wraps of the infant and they burst into a blaze. Before
the fire could be extinguished the child was so badly burned that it
died the next day.
The moment such a case is stated we realize the necessity of something
that will cure the man of such fatal carelessness. He is a menace to the
lives and property in his vicinity. No law, however, can be invoked. He
had no criminal intent but he is none the less dangerous for that, as
the incident proved. We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued
carelessness. But nature is not helpless. Under the law of action and
reaction he must reap as he has sown. It may be in the latter part of
this incarnation, or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later
his carelessness will react and he will lose his physical body in pain
and distress and come to know personally just what his recklessness
means. In the reaction, a part only of which is on the physical plane,
he gets the experience that is necessary to set him right. The folly of
his course is so driven in on his consciousness that he is changed from
the careless man to the careful man. In no other way could his cure be
brought about.
It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as the result of our
wrong thinking and acting in a past life we can now know nothing of its
cause and therefore we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we do
not know in the limited consciousness of the physical brain the soul
does know and in the wider consciousness the lesson is registered.
The principles of justice are never violated in teaching the soul its
evolutionary lessons. Nothing can come to a man that he does not merit
and that which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent
working of the law seen from an angle that makes it illusory. But, it
may be objected, how does theosophy see "beneficent working of the law"
in the burning of a theater where a score of people lose their lives,
including several children? How can theosophy explain that?
How can it be explained by those who hold that the soul is created at
birth? If God really brings the soul into its original expression in an
infant body, why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even
months? What can be the purpose? It would be difficult indeed to explain
the death of children if the soul were created at birth. But let us look
at it from the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul with a
young body. Hark back to the case of the man whose carelessness caused
the death of the baby in its carriage. He, and others like him, are
again in incarnation and in the burning theater they get the reaction of
the unfortunate forces they have generated. But why so many in some
catastrophes? it may be asked. A principle is not affected by the number
involved. If we can see justice in the death of one person we can see
justice in the death of a hundred. It is simply class instruction.
People of a kind have been drawn together.
We should not forget that we see only a small fragment of any such case
from the physical plane. We form an opinion, however, on that inadequate
survey and are quick to declare our opinion of the justice or injustice
involved. But our verdict depends wholly upon a viewpoint. Let us
suppose, for example, that a man strolls down the street and that, as he
turns a corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy of life. A young
man is lying on the ground, battered and bleeding, while two others
stand over him. What would the average man, coming suddenly on the scene
say? He would probably indignantly blurt out "The ruffians!" and he
would be inclined to assist the man who was down. But let us suppose
that he had been a moment earlier. He would then have been in time to
turn around the corner with the other men and would have seen him rush
upon a defenseless woman, push her down, snatch her purse and dash away,
but, fortunately, in the direction of the men who assaulted and stopped
him. Had the last arrival seen the entire affair he would have reversed
his opinion and said that the thief got what he deserved. And so it is
in our inadequate physical plane view of what we call a calamity. It may
appear to involve an injustice, but only because we do not see the
entire transaction.
Those who study the occult laws that shape human destiny may learn to
use them for their rapid progress and for insuring a comfortable, as
well as spiritually profitable, life journey.
But before we can work successfully within the law we must know that the
law really exists. Most people seem either to believe there is no law
that will certainly bring them the results of their good or evil
thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they can in some way
dodge it and escape the consequence, and so we see them go along
through life always doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing.
They misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil thoughts,
they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme to bring discomfort
and humiliation upon those whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest
from this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled by the
falsehoods of others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the
company of schemers and are swindled, when a false story is started
about them, when--through no fault of the moment--they are plunged into
discomfort and humiliation, they merely call it so much bad luck and go
blindly on with their generation of wrong forces that will in due time
bring another enforced reaping of pain.
There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain of daily life as
certainly as there is a law that guides the earth in its orbit about the
sun. That law of action and reaction is just as constant, accurate and
immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet upon the ground
while we come and go and think nothing at all about it.
There is something almost terrifying in the immutability of all natural
laws and their utterly impersonal aspect. They are the operation of
forces which, in themselves, are not related to what we call good and
bad. They simply are. The law of gravity will illustrate the point. It
operates with no consideration whatever for character or motives. It
holds all people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while it
whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble over a precipice,
it will hurl them both to the bottom with perfect impartiality. If the
fiend, who may just have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the
saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored him. He has
merely reaped the reward of his alertness in spite of his bad morals.
The saintly man may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but the law
of gravity takes no account of that. When he stepped over the precipice,
and was dashed to death, he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless
of his benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words "God is no
respecter of persons," for, of course, all natural laws are but the
expression of the divine will.
But this immutability of natural law is not in the least terrifying when
we come to look more closely at it. On the contrary it is within that
very immutability that divine beneficence and compassion are hidden. It
is only by the constancy if the changeless law that we can calculate
with absolute certainty and surely attain the results at which we aim.
It is because of the certainty that the doing of evil brings pain and
the doing of good yields a return of happiness that we can control
circumstances and determine destiny.
Why should there be such a law operating in the mental and moral realm?
Because only thus can we evolve. We must not only change from ignorance
to wisdom but from selfishness to compassion, from wrong doing to
perfect harmlessness. How would that be possible without the law of
cause and effect, without action and reaction which brings pleasure for
righteousness and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a law can we
learn what is the right and what is the wrong thing to do. If it is
agreed that we are souls, that evolution is a fact, and that perfection
is the goal of the human race, then the necessity for the law of action
and reaction is as obvious as the reason for a law of gravity.
The existence and operation of this law of cause and effect are set
forth repeatedly in the Christian scriptures. "With what measures ye
mete it to others it shall be measured to you," is certainly explicit.
In Proverbs[M] we have this definite declaration: "Whoso diggeth a pit
shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon
him." Of course the language is figurative. No writer of common sense
would assert that every time a workman digs a pit he shall tumble into
it nor that whenever anybody rolls a stone it will roll back upon him!
We dig pits in the moral world whenever we undermine the character of
another with a false story, whether we originate it or merely repeat it,
and into such a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the law.
We have loosened and set rolling the stones of envy and hatred and they
shall return to crush us down to failure and humiliation in the reaction
that follows. We have ignorantly generated evil forces under the law
when we could have used it for our success and happiness.
"Judge not, that ye be not judged," is another statement of the law of
action and reaction. It is not an assertion that we should not judge
because we are not qualified nor because we may ignorantly wrong
another with such a judgment. It is an explicit statement that the
consequence of judging others is that we, in turn, shall be judged. If
we criticize, we shall be criticized. If we condemn others for their
faults and failures, we shall be condemned. If we are broad and tolerant
and remain silent about the frailties of others we shall be tolerantly
regarded by others.
All of us who have studied the subject find in our daily lives the
evidence of the truth of such Biblical declarations. We know perfectly
well that anger provokes anger and that conciliation wins concessions,
while retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort calls out
retort, while silence restores the peace. In these little things it is
usually within the power of either party to the trouble to have peace
instead of turmoil--just a matter of self control. But in the larger
events it is not always so. They are not invariably within our immediate
control because they are often the results of causes generated in the
past which we can no longer modify. And this brings us to a wider view
of this law of cause and effect.
If we look at the life history of an individual as it stretches out from
birth to death it presents a remarkable record of events that appear to
have no logical relationship to each other. In childhood, there may have
been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering regardless of
the qualities of character we are considering, and there is nothing in
the present life of the child to explain either. The child itself may be
gentle and affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross abuse
and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may find still greater
mysteries. Invariably there are mingled successes and failures,
pleasures and pains. But when we come to analyze them we fail to find a
satisfactory reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive
when they are not warranted by anything that was done to win them, and
for the want of any rational explanation we call it "good luck." We also
observe that sometimes failure after failure comes when the man is not
only doing his very best but when all of his plans will stand the test
of sound business procedure. Baffled again we throw logic to the winds
and call it "bad luck."
Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and our inability to
trace the working of the law. Suppose we were to ask a savage to explain
how it is that a few minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to
know what happened yesterday in London. He knows nothing of reporters
and cables and presses. He cannot explain it. He cannot even comprehend
it. But if he is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance
he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is because we are
lucky; and he would be using the word just as sensibly as we use it!
If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing in this world. Chance
means chaos and the absence of law. From the magnificent, orderly
procession of a hundred million suns and their world systems that wheel
majestically through space down to the very atom, with all of its
electrons, the universe is a stupendous proclamation of the
all-pervading presence of law. It is a mighty panorama of cause and
effect. There is no such thing as chance.
What then _is_ good luck? We know that people do receive benefits which
they apparently have not earned. There simply cannot be a result without
a cause. They have earned it in other lives when the conditions did not
permit immediate harvesting of the results of the good forces generated
and Nature is paying the debt and making the balance of her books at a
later period. It may be in the case of one that some specific act is
attracting its reward, or it may be in the case of another that he is
nearing the point in evolution where he no longer desires things for
himself, only to discover that nature fairly flings her treasures at his
feet. He has put himself in harmony with evolutionary law--with the
divine plan, and nature withholds nothing.
When we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to seek the cause of
unexplained good or bad fortune beyond the boundaries of this life
because there is nothing else we can do. We have results to explain and
we know they do not come from causes that belong to this life. They must
of necessity arise from causes generated in a past life.
Now the moment we get away from the narrow view that we began existence
when we were born, all the mysteries about us disappear and we can fall
back on natural law and logically explain everything. Why does one
person begin life with a good mind while another is born with small
mental capacity? Because one worked hard at life's problems in past
incarnations while the other led a butterfly existence and merely amused
himself. Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances always
maintaining a cheerful view of life while another loses control of his
temper at the slightest annoyance and wears himself out with the
trifling vexations of existence? Only because one has for a long period
practiced self control while the other has never given a thought to the
matter. Why is one so thoughtful of others that he wins universal love
and admiration while another is so self centered that he makes no true
friends at all? Again past experience explains it. The one has studied
the laws of destiny and lived by them while the other has not yet even
learned of their existence.
Putting aside the old belief that the soul is created at birth, and
keeping in mind the newer and scientific view that we have all lived
many lives before, all the difficulties and perplexities at once
disappear. We are no longer puzzled because we find in a man's life some
good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to deserve it, for we
see that he must have set the forces in motion in a previous life which
now culminate in this result. We are no longer mystified because
apparent causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that in the nature
of things he did generate the causes in the past. A single incarnation
has the same relation to the whole of the soul's evolution that a single
day has to one incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights and
yet all the days are related by the acts which run through them, so the
incarnations are separated by periods of rest in the heaven world and
yet all the incarnations are related by the thoughts and acts running
through them. What a man does in his youth affects his old age, and
what we did in our last incarnation is affecting the present one. The
one is no more remarkable than the other. As we mould old age by youth
so we are shaping the coming incarnation by this one. Before we shall be
able to see the utter reasonableness of the truth that what we are now
is the result of our past we must have a clear understanding of the
relationship between the soul and the body. The physical body in each
incarnation is the material expression of the soul, of its moral power
or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance, of its purity or its grossness,
just as one's face is, at each moment the expression of one's thought
and emotion in physical matter. Every change of consciousness registers
itself in matter. A man has emotions. He feels a thrill of joy and his
face proclaims the fact. He becomes angry, and the change from joy to
anger is registered in physical matter so that all who see his face are
aware of the change in his consciousness, which they cannot see. These
are passing changes like sunshine and shadow and they are obvious to
all. But we know that as the years pass the constant influence of
consciousness moulds even physical matter into permanent form. A soul of
sunny disposition finally comes to have benevolent features while one of
morose tendency as certainly has a face of settled gloom. Nobody can
contact the soul of another with any physical sense we possess yet
nobody has the slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between a
sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony with life. We
know the difference only because consciousness moulds matter. But this
is merely the surface indication. Consciousness is continually
influencing matter and the major part of its work is not visible to us.
What the consciousness is, the body becomes. Whether we are now
brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed, is the result of the activities
of consciousness, and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the
physical body are the registrations in matter of what we, the soul,
thought and did in the past.
Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall begin to see just
why and how it may have come about. If in a past life a person was
guilty of deliberate cruelty to another, and on account of it suffered
great mental and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted on his victim are
reproduced in himself. In idiocy we have apparently merely a distorted
brain so that the consciousness cannot function through it. Might not
that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result of violent
reaction from cruelties in a past life? The consciousness that can be
guilty of cruelty is seeing things crooked--out of proportion. Otherwise
it could not be cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register a
corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is the faithful and
accurate reflection of that consciousness. It is just because the body
is the true and exact expression of the consciousness in physical matter
that the palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such remarkable
delineations of character. The record is there in hand and head for
those who can read it.
This broader outlook on the life journey, extending over a very long
series of incarnations, gives us a wholly different view of the
difficulties with which we have to contend and of the limitations which
afflict us. It at once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice
there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody; that all good
fortune has been earned; that all bad fortune is deserved, and that each
of us is, mentally and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put
it well when he wrote:
All that I rightly think or do,
Or make or spoil or bless or blast,
Is curse or blessing justly due
For sloth or effort in the past.
My life's a statement of the sum
Of vice indulged or overcome.
And as I journey on the roads
I shall be helped and healed and blessed.
Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads
To urge to heights as yet unguessed.
My road shall be the road I made.
All that I gave shall be repaid.
Have we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth more inspiring? It is
surely a satisfying thought that every effort shall give increased power
of intellect; that all kindly thought of others is a shield for our own
protection in time of need; that every impulse of affection shall ripen
into the love of comrades; that all noble thinking builds heroic
character, with which we shall return, in some future time, to play to a
still noble part in the world of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[M] Proverbs, XXVI, 27.