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.Many of these"waiting souls," however, choose to sacrifice their well earned rest, bycoming back to earth to help and uplift their brethren, either in the form ofAstral Helpers, or even by a deliberate and conscious rebirth (which is notneeded for their development) they deliberately taking on the body of flesh,with all its burdens, in order to assist their weaker brothers toward the goal.The great teachers of the races, have been largely composed of theseself-sacrificing souls, who voluntarily "renounced heaven" for the love oftheir fellow man.It is very hard to imagine what a great sacrifice thisFourteen Lessons in YogiPlease Share1903-By YogiPhilosophy and Oriental OccultismThis E-BookRamacharaka242 YOGI PHILOSOPHY.is - this coming back to a comparatively low developed civilization, from ahigh plane of spiritual development.It is like Emerson doing missionarywork among the Bushmen.Toward what goal is all this evolution tending? What does it all mean?From the low forms of life, to the highest - all are on The Path.To whatplace or state does The Path lead? Let us attempt to answer by asking you,to imagine a series of millions of circles one within the other.Each circlemeans a stage of life.The outer circles are filled with life in its lowest andmost material stages, each circle nearer the center holding higher andhigher forms - until men (or what were men) become as gods.Still on, andon, does the form of life grow higher, until the human mind cannot graspthe idea.And what is in the center? The brain of the entire Spiritual Body- The Absolute - God!And we are traveling toward that center!Fourteen Lessons in YogiPlease Share1903-By YogiPhilosophy and Oriental OccultismThis E-BookRamacharakaTHE THIRTEENTH LESSON.SPIRITUAL CAUSE AND EFFECT.Life is the constant accumulation of knowledge, the storing up of theresult of experiences.The law of cause and effect is in constantoperation, and we reap what we sow - not as a matter of punishment,but as the effect following the cause.Theology teaches us that we arepunished for our sins, but the higher knowledge shows us that we arepunished by our mistakes instead of for them.The child who touchesthe hot stove is punished by reason of the act itself, not by some higherpower for having "sinned." Sin is largely a matter of ignorance andmistake.Those who have reached the higher plane of spiritualknowledge have borne upon them such a convincing knowledge of thefolly and unwisdom of certain acts and thoughts, that it becomes almostimpossible for them to commit them.Such persons do not fear there issome superior being waiting to strike them to the earth with a mightyclub for doing certain things, simply because that intelligence has laiddown an apparently arbitrary law forbidding the commission of the act.On the contrary they know that the higher intelligences are possessed ofnothing but intenseFourteen Lessons in YogiPlease Share1903-By YogiPhilosophy and Oriental OccultismThis E-BookRamacharaka244 YOGI PHILOSOPHY.love for all living creatures, and are willing and ready to always help them,so far as is possible under the workings of the law.But such personsrecognize the folly of the act, and therefore refrain from committing it - infact, they have lost the desire to commit it.It is almost exactly parallel to theexample of the child and the stove.A child who wants to touch the stove willdo so as soon as he finds an opportunity, notwithstanding the commands ofthe parent, and in spite of threatened punishment.But let that child onceexperience the pain of the burn, and recognize that there is a closeconnection between a hot stove and a burnt finger, and it will keep awayfrom the stove.The loving parent would like to protect its child from theresult of its own follies, but the child-nature insists upon learning certainthings by experience, and the parent is unable to prevent it.In fact, thechild who is too closely watched and restrained, usually "breaks out" later inlife, and learns certain things by itself.All that the parent is able to do is tosurround the child with the ordinary safeguards, and to give it the benefit ofhis wisdom, a portion of which the child will store away - and then trust tothe law of life to work out the result.And so the human soul is constantly applying the test of experience to allphases of life - passing from one incarnation to another, constantly learningnew lessons, and gaining new wisdom.Sooner or later it finds out howhurtful certain courses of action are - discovers the folly of certain actionsFourteen Lessons in YogiPlease Share1903-By YogiPhilosophy and Oriental OccultismThis E-BookRamacharakaSPIRITUAL CAUSE AND EFFECT.245and ways of living, and like the burnt child avoids those things in thefuture.All of us know that certain things "are no temptation to us," for wehave learned the lesson at some time in some past life and do not need torelearn it - while other things tempt us sorely, and we suffer much pain byreason thereof.Of what use would all this pain and sorrow be if this one lifewere all? But we carry the benefit of our experience into another life, andavoid the pain there.We may look around us and wonder why certain of ouracquaintances cannot see the folly of certain forms of action, when it is soplain to us - but we forget that we have passed through just the same stageof experience that they are now undergoing, and have outlived the desireand ignorance - we do not realize that in future lives these people will befree from this folly and pain, for they will have learned the lesson byexperience, just as have we.It is hard for us to fully realize that we are what we are just by the result ofour experiences.Let us take one single life as an example.You think thatyou would like to eliminate from your life some painful experience, somedisgraceful episode; some mortifying circumstances; but have you everstopped to think that if it were possible to eradicate these things, youwould, of necessity, be forced to part with the experience and knowledgethat has come to you from these occurrences.Would you be willing to partwith the knowledge and experience that has come to you in the wayFourteen Lessons in YogiPlease Share1903-By YogiPhilosophy and Oriental OccultismThis E-BookRamacharaka246 YOGI PHILOSOPHY.mentioned? Would you be willing to go back to the state of inexperienceand ignorance in which you were before the thing happened? Why, if youwere to go back to the old state, you would be extremely likely to committhe same folly over again [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]