CHAPTER III
UNIVERSAL LAWS
One of the maxims of Hermes, Trismegisto, character that, as we saw, appears in the origins of the Egyptian thought, says the following: "All that is on top is as all that is below."
Penetrating the deep sense of this Hermetic principle, we verify that what it wants to say is that the Laws that govern the Universe, in other words, the Macrocosms, they are the same ones that govern the Microcosms, in other words, the human being.
There settles down a reversible movement then - if we know the Laws that govern the Universe, consequently we will unmask the human constitution; if we penetrate the Laws that govern the man's constitution, we will unmask the Universe.
We will just mention some of the Universal Laws that are reflected in the man. We will just give an idea of that relationship between the Macrocosms and the Microcosms, because a larger deepen would demand a more detailed study of Cosmogenese than the one of the study of the origins of the Universe.
We begin, soon at the beginning, presenting the Universal Laws because they constitute the base of the structure of whatever exists.
1st - Law of Cause and Effect or Law of Karma;
2nd - Law of the Reincarnation or Law of the Cycles;
3rd - Law of the Polarity;
4th - Law of the Evolution;
5th - Law of the Free Will and other more...
Let us see the Law of Cause and Effect, in other words, the Law of Karma. Karma is the relationship between the Cause and the Effect, it is the Law that regulates the effect after the cause be thrown.
The Law of Karma could be defined: to all action, word or thought correspond a reactions or retribution of equal potential. This means that everything is consequence of something previous, of a previous pulse. All the laws discovered by the science are resultants of Karma, in other words, of a cause that resulted in an effect. Let us say the law of the gravity. The fact of a body to fall when released in the space is effect. The laws that govern that effect are Karma.
One of the great messages of the Esoterism, which elapses from the Law of Karma, is the one that the man's destiny is not an irreversible fatality. Each one can plan future, as well as to lessen and until modify the present events, depending on an internal attitude.
That who practices fair actions before the Universal Law, or unjust actions before it, is working for himself, once he is building his own Karma, or destiny. Then the wisdom of the popular chorus: Who sows winds, picks storms.
Among others, they thought like this:
- Lev (Lion) Tolstoy (1.828-1.910), writer and Russian religious reformer - "How it would have been interesting to write the history of the experiences that, in this life, has a man that killed himself in a previous life - as he now is confronted with the same demands that were made to him before, until he understands that he should give attention to those demands. The actions of the previous life print direction to the present life."
- Plato (428-348 B.C.), Greek philosopher - "Oh you, young man or young that feel abandoned of the gods, know that, if you turn to be worse, you will have to join the worst souls, or, if better, you will join to the best souls and, in every succession of life and death, you will do and you will suffer what an equal can deservedly suffer in the hands of the one equal. It is the justice of the skies."
Whatever exists in the Universe is effect of Causes thrown by the Supreme Architect, foreseen in the plan arquetipal. Like this, the reason of the great Celestial balance, of the bodies that move in the space, is because they are governed by necessary and exact Laws that the Theosophy calls of Karma.
We, as human beings, are today the resulting from causes that we generated previously and we are, at this time of our existence, through thoughts, words and actions, throwing causes that will echoes in this life or in a next life, once the Theosophy accepts the reincarnation.
The Reincarnation is another Universal Law; it is the Law of the Cycles. The processes grow through cycles. Everything is born, it grows, it reaches a certain acme, later it decreases and extinguishes; but the cycles always repeat in new conditions, just as it happens with the day, with the civilizations etc.
Likewise, the man's life is cyclical. The man is born, he grows, he reaches an acme, later he decreases and he dies. But the deaths of the Universe are apparent. It is sufficient to see the fruit that, after dying, is reborn producing new fruits.
Which would be, then, the need of the several lives?
The man, in the current evolutionary apprenticeship, usually reacts impelled by the emotion. Because of that, the mechanism of his operation is the search of the pleasure and he has great difficulty to activate the Will because not always that, which is right, is what satisfies more the emotion.
In reason of that emotional preponderance, the man, in his behavior, tends to repeat the circuits that provoke pleasant sensation. As consequence, there ends by installing certain psychic outlines based on the circuit - action that produces pleasant sensation, pleasant sensation that takes to the repetition of the action. It is the mechanism of the conditioning, of the habits, of the vices.
If the man was left indefinitely inside of the same circumstances, those habits would go on stabilizing to the maximum and, because of reactions moved by the pleasure, those habits would go more and more moving off him the Law. It is for this reason that there is a need for the Law of the Cycles which interrupts the life and breaks the circuit of those tendencies, making possible a new experience in new atmosphere and with new emotional vehicle and new mental vehicle. To disconnect entirely from the outlines fastened in the past, that is why the man forgets about the previous lives.
Through the Reincarnations, the man has new opportunities to organize his interior life which, actually, is the purpose of the life on the face of the earth.
If that is the purpose, then, of what the man's interior life is composed?
The man is ternary - body, soul and spirit. Our interior life is processed inside of the elements that constitute the soul.
The psychology shows as components of the soul, as elements that make possible the human being to face the impacts of the environment, the factors of the will of sensibility and cognition. In the Secret Doctrine, volume I page 111, H.P.B. she confirms that: "Mind or intellect" is the name that we give to the sum of States of Conscience understood for: Thought, Will and Feeling."
This subject will be much more developed in subsequent chapters.
A very important Law to understand the structure of the human nature is the Law of the Polarity. The Theosophy affirms that the Universe comes from a Unit, from that principle Incogitable that will only be able to be understood when the human being reaches his perfect accomplishment. Well then, this principle, in the state of Unit, in the state of perfect balance, could not give appearance to the Universe. To create that which is manifested, that is objective, the Unit needed to polarize giving appearance to two elements dialectics that, in a game of attraction and repulsion, made possible the structuring of the matter.
This Law of the Polarity is reflected in everything - each principle of the Nature brings in itself, implicit, his opposite - the day foresees the night, the cold opposes to the heat, the life to the death.
As all of the Universal laws, this is reflected in the man's constitution. The factors of the soul - will, intellect, emotion - they are polarity exactly as reflex of that cosmic polarization.
Looking inside of ourselves, it is easy to verify that our Will acts in several levels. And, besides, that is intimately linked to the emotion. We have strong will for actions that produce immediate pleasant sensations and we have weak will for what should be done but that will bring benefits only at long term.
As for the polarity of the mind, it is enough to say that, for it to function, needs to play with two factors. It needs the resources of the analysis, of the comparison, of the dialectic game. The fundamental characteristic of the rational mind is the doubt. We are always under to two possibilities, before a dilemma, before a conflict - I do, I don't do - I should, I shouldn't... In fact, this doubtful state, in spite of provoking suffering, is necessary so that the man could exercise the Free Will, could have autonomy to proceed to a choice and to make a decision. We will see this subject with larger detail in the chapter VI.
As for the polarity of the emotion, we noticed that sometimes we have altruistic pulses and other times egoistic, selfish ones. The chapter VII explains better this subject.
Only through a self-knowledge process, the man can notice the Laws that govern that whole polar game and acquire the capacity to manipulate that game, addressing him for a perfect equilibrium and self-domain. Through the control of this internal game, the man walks inside of the Evolution that is another Universal Law. Everything develops in the Universe, everything is dynamic, it modifies and it changes, staying inside of the objectives contained in the arquetipal plan.
That need to develop is translated in the man for an anxiety state and of dissatisfaction. The man notices that his nature is incomplete and, there in his being's profundities, a pulse appears for the search of an imponderable value that will come to give him the sensation of fullness.
Considering the human existence, it is easy to conclude that it would not be exactly just to restrict the man to am unique life, once, inside of the same generation, we see so many disparities - social, economical, mental, physics etc. Our current life would not be understood in function of an only life; the differences would not have explanation in terms of justice unless we believe that each one is facing this life in agreement with the causes that he threw in the past, but he will have not only the opportunity of this life to improve, as well as other countless opportunities.
In each life the person goes on jumping over new evolution levels.
Real evolution implicates in reaching a simultaneous balance in the three factors of the soul. The man's evolution comes processing in a unilateral way, because it is noticed great distance between the mental development and the development of the emotional field. The man, in spite of their great stunts of mental nature, is still egocentric, is still moved to the action in search of their interests.
When doing choices to approach the Universal Law, and, therefore, of the Universal Harmony, the man ascends in his evolution and starts finding the peace, that is the thermometer of the progress. When doing choices that turn him away from the Universal Law, the man regresses in evolution terms and is whipped by the pain and by the suffering.
This imposition for the self-knowledge comes from Socrates that, about the year 440 B.C. recorded in the frontispiece of the temple of Delphos, that sheltered an initiatory school, the famous saying: "Man, does know himself". When knowing himself, the man necessarily ends up by knowing the Universe, once the Laws are the same ones. As well as the scientist is going on discovering laws through the analysis of the phenomena, inside of the laboratory, likewise we should, progressively, go on discovering the Laws of the Life, inside of the laboratory of our own nature.
There exist today, inside of the psychology, efficient techniques, capable to take the man to unmask the mechanism of his emotional one and of his mental one.
The book "Personal Equilibrium", the same author, presents a safe way, in Psychology, for self-knowledge and self-realization.
We are, in the stage of the current evolution, acting in the plan of the rational mental. It happens that each attribute reached by the man has a limit that comprises inside of the range of potentialities of the Universe. The vision only notices a strip inside of the range of vibrations of the light. The audition only notices a strip inside of the range of vibrations of the sound. The mental includes only a strip of the potential of the cosmic mind. While the man goes on balancing his internal nature, he starts reaching more refined potentialities, starts entering in the strip of the mental abstract, of the intuition and goes towards the Absolute Conscience.
This to progress of the internal life has been foreseen by the philosophers and scientists. For instance:
Francis Bacon (1.561-1.626), English, philosopher, creator of the experimental and inductive method: "In a mysterious way, the human mind has a quality that makes us to wake up for the truth that is out of the mind, with a subtle answer that comes from their profundities; truth that comes to be proved later."
William James (1.842-1.910), psychologist and North American philosopher: "Our normal conscience of the vigil state - the rational conscience, as we denominated it - it just constitutes a special type of conscience, while, at is circuit, and from it separated by an extremely tenuous film, there are potential forms of conscience entirely diverse."
The life is, truly, a scientific process governed by laws - polarity, cause and effect, internal adjustment, free will, evolution etc.
The observance of those Universal Laws leads the man to reach balance in their organic lives, energetic, emotional and mental and as consequence; he will open the doors for that contact with their transcendent possibilities.
Dominating the Laws that govern his own life, the man goes on, more and more, leveling his form of acting and reacting to the demands of the Law, in other words, he starts juxtaposing the Microcosms to the Macrocosms, which is the maximum objective of the terrestrial life.
While the man is immersed inside of the great unbalance that we witness today, he will be struggling in the pain and in the suffering. The Law doesn't coerce, but it impels by the pain, only language capable to make the individual to discover the true road of the evolution. The suffering is the great tool that the Law throws hand to impel the man to find the road of the balance. Trying to leave from the interior badly state, the man goes, in an unconscious way, discovering the Laws that govern the life and begins walking inside of his evolution.
The difference among belonging or not to a self-realization movement, to an initiatory movement, is exactly in that the common man has to learn the lessons through the hard school of the suffering, of the attempts of mistake and success, while the Theosophist, the disciple, avoids certain phases of the suffering through the knowledge of the Laws and consequent application of the same ones in his life, because knowledge without application serves only to increase the suffering.
The conscious existence inside of the several sections of the human activity, will make that the functions be carried out in a way the most perfect and efficient possible, be in whatever branch is - medicine, education, politics, economy, family - in a true base reform, because starting from the essence, the nucleus of the whole problem, that is the own human being.
Acting like this in an harmonious way, as individual, the quality of the coexistence in collectivity will also tend to get better because we will see to appear a man capable of acting with humanity and not in a way purely emotional, egoistic, seeking private interests, generating the most tremendous disagreements political, social and moral that we witness. This effort of interior transformation is one of the hopes for the appearance of a new civilization.
The technique to reach this state of internal balance is object, as it was already said, of several lines of the psychology. They cover the whole complex game of the objective components - body, soul, covering the emotional and the mental - and they present, besides, introspection and meditation practices, in way to propitiate the opening of certain channels that make possible a larger tune among the me inferior and the ME Superior, in other words, a tune more and more perfect with the Divine principle that inhabits the human being.
They are words of Leibnitz (1.646-1.716), philosopher and German mathematician: "For us to be happy, it is necessary to live in the harmony of God"
We register, to proceed, the great thinkers' opinion confirming the survival after the death and the return to the life for new experiences:
1. Cicero (106-46 a.C.), Latin speaker - "Other strong indication that the men know most of the things before the birth is that, when children, they learn facts with enormous speed, what demonstrates that they are not learning them for the first time, but recalling them..."
2. Fançois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1.694-1.778), French writer - "to be born twice is not more surprising than to be born once; everything in the nature is resurrection."
3. Benjamin Franklin (1.706-1.790), physical, inventor of the lightning rod, philosopher and North American politician - "Verifying that I exist today in the world, I believe that I will always exist, under a form or other; and, in spite of the inconveniences to what is subjected the human life, I won't oppose myself to a new edition of myself, waiting, however, that the mistakes of the previous edition be corrected."
4. Frederico II, the Great (l.712-1.786), King of Prussia - "Maybe I won't be a king in my future life, but that is much better; I will continue to live an active life and, still, I will pick up less ingratitude."
5. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1.749-1.832), great German writer - the man's soul is as the water; it comes from the Sky and it arises for the Sky, for later to return to the Earth in eternal going and coming. I am sure of having been here a thousand times before, just as I am, and I hope to return other thousands of times."
6. Sir William Fairbairn (1.789-1.874), engineer and Scottish psychoanalyst - Pierre Weil, in his book "The borders of the regression", makes the following citation: It was Fairbairn who introduced the conception of an ego that exists from the birth and to which belongs the psychic energy. We can wonder, however, what means this ego that exists from the birth. If he exists in the birth, we are forced to question if he would not exist, already, before the birth; it is not because the source of oxygen changes, that the psychic structure is subject to a sudden metamorphosis."
7. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1.803-1.882), North American poet - "THE secret of the world is that everything subsists; nothing dies, it just disappears of the view during some time to appear again. Nothing is dead; the men pretend to be dead and they support false funerals and tearful obituaries, but there they are, to everything attending through the window, alive and in good health, under new and strange form."
8. Walt Whitman (1.819-1.892), North American poet - "I know that I am immortal. Without a doubt I have already died before a thousand of times. I laugh at that which they call dissolution, and I know the width of the time."
9. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1.844-1.900), German philosopher - "My doctrine is: You should live in a way so that you could want to live again - that is your duty - because, in any way, you will live again!"
10. Mohandas K. Gandhi (1.869-1.948), national and religious apostle of India: - "Believing how I believe in the theory of the rebirth, I live in the hope that, if not in this current life, in another life I can embrace all the humanity in a friendly hug."
11. Albert Schweitzer (1.875-1.965), theologian, philosopher, musician and doctor French-German - "Like this, the idea of the reincarnation contains an explanation more invigorating of the reality, by which the Indian thought overcomes difficulties that leave perplexed the European thinkers."
12. Carl Gustav Jung (1.875-1.961), psychologist and Swiss psychiatrist - "My life, just as I lived it, a lot of times seemed a history without beginning or end. I had the sensation of being a historical fragment, a passage to which missed the previous passage and the following. I could perfectly imagine to have lived in centuries precedents, where I found questions that I was not still capable to answer; that I would have to be born again for not having accomplished the task that had been designated to me."
13. John Masefield (1878-1967), English poet - "I believe that, when a person dies, the soul returns to this planet, in new carnal appearance. Another mother makes him to be born. With stronger legs and lighter head, the old soul puts to walk again."