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Universal Philosophy
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THIS BOOK COULD HAVE OTHER TITLES SUCH AS:
The Essence of All Teachings
The Basis of All Religions
Practical Philosophy
A Philosophy of Life
Ultimate Truths
Eternal Truths
Regardless Of What We Call It, Reading It Will Help You:
Open to love
Develop inner peace
Understand your self
Enjoy greater happiness
Discover your life purpose
Understand your self, others and life
This book will be useful for all who want to create a life of
peace, love, happiness and harmony.
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1. Table of Contents
2. Introduction
3. Sample Chapters from this book
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1. Table of Contents
2. Introduction
3. Chapter 1 What is Universal Philosophy
4. Chapter 11 Fate and Free Will
5. Chapter 18 Finding our Role in Life
May you be well
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 6
1. WHAT IS UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY ? 9
2. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE UNIVERSAL 15
3. METHODS OF UNION 24
4. THE REAL VS. THE NON - REAL 31
5. MAN'S GROSS AND SUBTLE BODIES 34
6. SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE
OF THE CAUSAL BODY 44
7. THE MERGING OF SCIENCE AND UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY 51
8. THE CAUSES OF HUMAN SUFFERING 61
9. THE THREE LAWS OF EVOLUTION 70
10. THE LAW OF KARMA 82
11. FATE AND FREE WILL 94
12. THE CIRCLE OF IMPULSES 109
13. DISCIPLINE 121
14. DEVOTION TO GOD 125
15. THE INCARNATED GOD VS. THE FORMLESS GOD 132
16. THE BIRTH, CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST 137
17. SELF STUDY - SELF KNOWLEDGE 144
18. FINDING OUR ROLE IN LIFE 153
19. DANGERS ON THE SPIRITUAL PATH 160
20. UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY IN ACTION 171
EPILOGUE 176
OTHER EBOOKS AVAILABLE BY ROBERT ELIAS NAJEMY 177
ACCESSING THE ABUNDANCE OF INFORMATION AT
http://www.HolisticHarmony.com 179
MEMBERS? SECTION & LIST OF RESEARCH SUBJECTS 189
To Index of Chapters
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INTRODUCTION
Two main feelings motivate me to put these thoughts onto paper. One is gratitude for the help that they have given me throughout the years. The second is hope that they may also serve others in the way they have served me.
I am not a philosopher, nor an author, although I do enjoy writing. I am a practical man who is in constant search for whatever may make life more pleasant, more enjoyable, more fulfilling, more interesting and more meaningful. If the thoughts in this book didn't do that for me, I wouldn't have paid much attention to them, nor would I have sat to share them with you.
In my search for what «works» in life, I have found that the spiritual approach is the most practical one. This is obvious if you think about it. Since spirit is the cause of everything that exists and happens, the most practical move you can make is to «capture» the spiritual; then all the rest will be yours.
The following parable by an extremely wise man demonstrates this. There is a coconut tree with a coconut hanging high up in its branches. The sun is behind the tree and casts the shadow of the coconut on the sand in front of us. We see the shadow, believe it to be a coconut, and try to grab it. It passes through our hands. No matter how often we try to hold on to it or to have it, it slips away from us. Suddenly we realize that the real coconut is up in the tree. We make many attempts. It takes us a long time and much effort. It is not as easy as reaching for its shadow. Eventually we succeed. We arrive at the top of the tree, and bring the coconut down with us. As we walk away, we notice something else; that wherever we go the shadow follows us. We now have control over both the coconut and its shadow.
In this example, the coconut, which is more difficult to get, is our spiritual self. The coconut's shadow represents all the objects, situations, and persons which we try to possess and holds onto to feel secure or happy. They are temporary and keep passing through our hands. We cannot hold on to them; and if we can, we cannot control them so as to get the happiness we want out of them.
After trying to get happiness out of this «shadow world» for many years, we realize that the only way to real happiness is to climb the tree of spiritual growth, which means making some spiritual effort. In this way, we eventually obtain inner peace, inner spiritual wisdom and power; and life in the material world becomes easy and enjoyable, because we are not dependent upon it anymore and not trying to hold on to it. When you get the coconut, you have control over its shadow. When you get in touch with your spiritual self, the world is pleasant and easy. That is why I say that I am a practical man and not a philosopher.
Just as there is pure science and applied science, there is pure philosophy and applied philosophy. This book touches the deepest roots of pure Universal Philosophy, but is much more concerned with its application in our daily life. It concerns itself with how this philosophy can improve the quality of our lives, individually, as families, as societies and as humanity.
This universal philosophy, as you will quickly understand, has nothing to do with any particular religion. It is based on what is common to all religions. Whoever attempts to apply it in his life will simply become a more effective follower of his own religion. It does not even require that one believes in God; especially in the type of God we have learned about as children.
Neither is it important to accept anything that you read in this book. Think about what you read. Do not accept it because it is written. Books are written by people; people who are not totally enlightened, or perhaps by people who may have a different path than you do. Read, and think deeply. If what you read suits you, accept it. If it doesn't put it on a shelf in your mind as you continue to observe life. It may be useful later. It may not.
At times texts in this book might seem to have been written by different persons. This is because they have been written over a twelve-year period and the author's perception and focus have gradually changed. Most parts have been revised now as these writings come together in this book. Some parts have been deliberately left with a different style and emphasis because they represent real stages, which we all pass through and thus will relate to a wider variety of readers who are at various stages of growth.
Also many concepts and basic truths have purposely been repeated several times. The reason for this is that the author has discovered over a period of thirty years of teaching and working with people on belief transformation, that few ideas really register in our minds unless we read or hear them many times, in different ways, and in relation to different situations.
We have been programmed into believing this «shadow world» through the sheer repetition of our childhood programming. Now only through frequent exposure to these spiritual truths will the light of truth begin to break through the clouds of our present beliefs and preconceptions.
At various points the author will recommend other of his books that give more details about certain subjects which cannot be touched on more deeply in this book. To save words and redundancy, all books, which are referred to, are by the same author, unless otherwise indicated.
The best way to read this book is to read it twice. Read it once at your normal rate. Then, the second time, read just a few pages a day and try to put the ideas you read into practice in your daily life.
To Index of Chapters
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CHAPTER I
WHAT IS UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY ?
WHY PHILOSOPHY?
What purpose might philosophy play in the life of the practical man? Can philosophy be useful to the parent, teacher, student, engineer, artist, businessman, farmer, sailor, army general, politician, doctor, lawyer, plumber, or carpenter? Can philosophy be applied to the process of performing and fulfilling those roles? Can philosophy be useful to everyday life and mundane responsibilities?
My personal belief is, yes, definitely. In fact my experience is that none of these roles can be properly and harmoniously performed without the ability to think about and conceive the deeper reality which is the cause of this material existence and, thus, all those roles and all that we experience.
Christ explained that if we live according to His commandments, we will come to know the truth and the truth will set us free. His followers were confused by this and answered that they were not slaves to anyone. From what would they be set free? Christ answered that anyone who sins is a slave of that sin.
What is this truth about life that will set us free? And does sin have to do with truth and freedom? Philosophy means being a friend (Philo) of wisdom (Sophia), Philosophy is the study of wisdom, the study of truth, the search for an explanation for the various phenomena and questions concerning human existence and the nature of life and the universe.
What then is the relationship between truth or wisdom which are the goals of philosophy and sin which is the source of man's bondage and unhappiness. An answer might be found in the possible etymology of the Greek word for sin «AMARTYA». The most probable explanation of this word is that it comes from «A» which indicates the negative or opposite and «MAPTYPø» (I partake, know, witness) or MAPTYPA? (the witness and also the MAPTYR as in the saints of the early church).
Thus a sin is a state of not being the «witness to the truth». Sin is an act, which we perform when or because we are not witnesses, we are not aware yet of the truth of our divine nature and our spiritual oneness with all beings. Sin is the natural result of Ignorance. But sin or «self centered action» binds us to the returning results of those actions. «As you sow, so shall you reap».
Thus, according to Christ, we are slaves in the bondage of our own ignorance of the ultimate spiritual truth. This ignorance causes us, out of fear, to act selfishly, and this creates a state of being bound to the result or return of those selfishly oriented actions back to us. Truth, wisdom and philosophy then are the only ultimate cure to this situation, as ignorance is its cause.
Whatever we do in life, we must be able to perceive what we are doing in the context of the whole. We need to understand basic points such as why we are here on this planet? Why have we come here? What is the purpose of life? What is our relationship with those around us; people, animals, nature, the planet? What is God? What is our relationship to Him (or Her or It)? What is life and what is death? What happens after we leave these physical bodies? Where were we before we were born?
It is essential to investigate these questions in order to be able to perform any of our life roles with clarity and discrimination, knowing what is useful and what is not, based on the real purpose of our existence on the earth.
Have you ever considered the above questions? Most of us have entertained such thoughts at some moment during our lives. Can we really live our lives in a meaningful way without seeking out the answers to such questions? To live a life without a conscious purpose or meaning, often results in living a meaningless life.
Satya Sai Baba, a holy man living in India today, expresses this truth in this humorous way;
«There are four things in which every man must interest himself; who am I, where from have I come, where am I going; how long shall I be here?
"All spiritual inquiry begins with these questions and attempts to discover the answers. Suppose there is a letter put into the post box without the address to which it should go or the address from which it has come. It will not reach anywhere. It is a waste to have written it. So too, it is a waste to have come into this world; if it is not known from where you have come, to where you go. The letter will go to the dead letter office».
Unfortunately most people today live their lives in this way. They follow blindly the values dictated by a confused and superficial, materially oriented society, failing to think deeply about the meaning and purpose of their lives. Can a passenger arrive at his destination if the driver does not know where he is going? How can society (the driver) or the individual (the passenger) find fulfillment if they do not know wherein their fulfillment lies? How can one decide how to live, how to act, what to do with his time, whether to be moral or not, what to eat, where to put his efforts, his energy, his thoughts, if he does not know what the purpose of his life is?
Man?s ignorance of his true nature, his relationship to his environment and his purpose in this world is responsible for this great confusion, lack of moral values, and the spreading conflict, violence and human suffering in the world today. Because of this basic ignorance among the masses and their leaders today, life on earth is far inferior to what it could be if people paid more attention to their inner life.
WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY KNOW?
As science continues to uncover more questions than answers about the universe, we arrive at the same conclusion that Socrates did two thousand five hundred years ago when he said, «I know only one thing, that I know nothing». Focusing only on the surface of things, we believe that we live in a very concrete world in which things are the way we think they are. This is like believing that we see the entire iceberg when in reality we see only one ninth of it.
For example, at this moment you are holding this book and are probably sitting motionless in a chair, or lying in bed. You only feel motionless however. The truth is that you are flying 1000 miles per hour around the center of the Earth, 67.000 miles per hour around the Sun and 600.000 miles per hour around the center of our galaxy. Yet we perceive ourselves to be motionless. Do we then perceive the truth of reality or only our own personal distortion?
We say that the sun is rising and setting on the horizons as if the sun is traveling around the Earth, when the truth is that the movement of the earth on its axis creates the illusion of the sun's rising and setting. And as for the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, Copernicus was put into jail for daring to say such a thing. At that time «science» and the church were agreed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun must revolve around the Earth. What makes us so sure today that we are not equally ignorant of a higher truth, which some other scientist will discover in the near future?
What do we really know? We think we live in a material universe in which we and the objects, which make it up, are made of some solid stuff. Yet modern nuclear physics has proven the opposite. The reality is that the atoms that make up this material universe are as empty as the night sky. They are a void with various electrical charges. The atom is virtually empty of matter. If an atom were as large as a fourteen-story building, then the nucleus (the only actual matter in the atom) would be like a grain of salt on the seventh story. Thus the piece of steel which makes up our car or holds our building up is actually 99.999999 percent vacuum sprinkled with a little matter and energy. This, then, is also true for our physical bodies. Our muscles and organs are made up of these same empty atoms. You and I are just vacuums with a little matter sprinkled around, and various energy fields flowing through us.
There are even stranger things to believe coming from modern physics. In studying the matter which makes up the large stars of the universe scientists have found out that the type of star called a white dwarf weighs about ten tons per thimbleful. A large crane would be required to lift something the size of a sewing thimble, which if dropped would certainly crush your house.
As if that is not enough, there are also stars, which collapse onto themselves creating a material of unbelievable density. One cubic centimeter, approximately the size of one bullion (soup) cube weighs 10.000.000 (ten million) tons. If matter can be so compressed so that a bullion cube can weigh 10 million tons, then the matter we are made up of must be pretty empty.
Our sense of material existence seems to be basically a matter of perception. Perhaps for that reason we hear of spiritually advanced individuals being able to make themselves incredibly light, levitate or pass through matter such as the Philippine psychic surgeons who pass their hands into the other?s body and remove cancerous growths.
Our minds cannot even begin to comprehend this physical universe, so how can we even dare reject the existence of the spiritual universe simply because we have not perceived it or studied it.
Have you ever looked at the North Star at night? Did you realize that the light that you are seeing is actually 680 years old? Yes it takes this long for this light to reach your eyes from that star. You are actually looking back 680 years into the Middle Ages. Where then is time? It could already have disappeared and we wouldn't know it for another 680 years.
Every second the universe is expanding by a volume as large as our galaxy the Milky Way. Every second, yes every second. There are 31,536,000 seconds a year, so if you live 80 years the universe has expanded by the size of 2,522,880,000 Milky Way galaxies in the length of your life time.
Matter is condensed energy. Much energy is «compressed» in order to create little matter. The energy of the atomic bomb that killed 140.000 people in Hiroshima was produced by turning the mass equivalent of a one-penny piece into energy.
It is beyond our capacity to comprehend the smallness of an atom. A cubic inch of air (16.38 cubic centimeters), or a cube in which each side is about the size of your thumb, contains 300.000.000.000.000.000.000 (300 billion billion) molecules of air, all moving 1000 miles an hour and hitting each other 5 billion times a second. All this is happening just in front of our nose (and even in our lungs and stomach) and we are completely oblivious to it all. If we are so incapable of perceiving this simple physical universe, how can we possibly reject the possibility of a spiritual reality that is much more subtle and infinite?
Take our own bodies. The DNA that conveys our genetic code is coiled up in string like spirals in each cell. If we took the DNA chromosomes in one of our cells and put them end to end in a straight line they would be 6 feet or 2 meters for each cell. Since the body has 60 trillion cells this means that there are several billion miles of DNA in our body at this time.
These facts are mind boggling. For me they are powerful evidence of the existence of a universal intelligence, which is the cause and motivating power of this universe in which we live. If there were only slight changes in how things are, life would not be possible. Everything is so incredibly interconnected and interdependent.
When I was a student in high school I decided I would become a scientist, because science would replace religion and explain all the mysteries of life. At seventeen years of age I was convinced that man, out of his fear and ignorance, had created the idea of God in order to answer the questions which he could not answer. He also found, in this way, refuge from his fear of death.
I went off to university, studied science and became a chemical engineer. I learned that science did not really explain why anything happens, but only how. The more I learned about the various phenomena of the universe, the more it became apparent that there was some type of universal, non-material cause for all that we see. I decided to search for an answer, for a meaning to the life we live. That search took me into an investigation of most of the major religions and philosophers, as well as psychology, the arts, spiritual systems and even more science.
In all of them I found common factors, common points on which they all agreed. The points on which they differed were superficial details. I began to see that a very practical philosophy of life came out of these common factors, a philosophy which gave much meaning, fullness and joy (all of which were previously missing) to my life. Thus having rejected God for Science, through Science I reconnect with God, but now He was everywhere.
The famous philosopher and author Aldous Huxley called this the perennial philosophy because it kept cropping up in various cultures and places throughout history. It is as if the one root of truth was sprouting trunks and branches all over the earth. They may use different words, symbols, rituals, names, terminology and dogmas, but they are based on the same root beliefs, the same universal truths. Thus I call it «universal philosophy».
WHAT IS UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY?
Universal philosophy as we are calling it in this book is the philosophy that we find at the basis of all religions. It is universally encompassing. Although a few of its tenants may not be accepted by some few religions, the philosophy itself accepts these and all religions and philosophies and even the sciences, including psychology and even the various art forms as attempts to understand and get in touch with the basic truths of the universe. It rejects no religion or philosophy respecting mankind's every attempt to discover the truth and to manifest that truth in some way on the earth.
As mentioned, some religious or philosophical systems may not accept all the aspects of the universal philosophy, but their basic principles are in complete harmony with its basic principles; only secondary factors might differ. Another phenomenon is that these universal principles are sometimes unknown to the masses who are following a certain religion or philosophy, but are well known and sometimes secretly protected by the inner esoteric circles. This is especially evident in the case of esoteric Christianity and esoteric Islam or Sufism.
The masses usually need a more earthy anthropomorphic type of religion with emphasis on the modes of behavior, and forms or ideals to worship. Most people are not yet ready emotionally, mentally and spiritually for the highest truths, which tend to transcend the apparent opposites of daily life. Thus, while in some cases the esoteric circles of various religions may wholeheartedly embrace these universal principles, they may not make them easily available to the masses, in order to protect them from possible harm and confusion. Christ himself commented on the necessity for discrimination in the dissemination of spiritual wisdom.
What are some of the basic principles of this universal philosophy?
1. There is only one primal cause for all that exists. All objects, beings and events are projections of the one supreme being who is not physical and remains unmanifest, although all of the universe is His (Its) manifestation. This primal cause is alternatively called God, the Father, the Christ, the Logos, the Unmanifest, the Divine Ground, the Supreme Being, Universal Consciousness, Universal Energy, the Void, the One, All That Is, Brahman, Allah, Nature, The Divine Mother or The Light. These and many many more are the names which people are inspired to use in referring to this universal intelligence which is the cause of the universe we live in.
2. This Universal Intelligence is Omnipresent, Omniscient and in incessant unbroken contact with each and every being in the universe. There is no place one could possibly go where this «being» would not be aware of him and in contact with him. There is nothing that we could ever do or think or say which is not known (in its own way of knowing) to this Universal Consciousness. There is nothing that we could ever do in order to break contact with It. We can, however, be ignorant or blind to It.
3. This Universal Consciousness is within each and every being. It is the inner force in every being and the creator of life through that being. (As in St. Paul's statements, «The body is the temple of God» and to the Athenians, «In Him we are born, grow and live our lives».).
This consciousness is in every being and yet not limited by any being. It is not limited by any form. We can use a form in order to concentrate on this reality, which is usually beyond our comprehension otherwise, but it is better not to limit this Universal Consciousness to that form. This is perhaps what Christ was trying to tell us in the parable where on Judgment day we will be asked why we didn't help Him (the Lord) when he was hungry, without clothing, or in prison. And we in surprise will ask, «but when were You in these states» and He will answer, «Whenever any of my beings were in this condition, it was I».
In other words, The Divine Consciousness can be focused on through the form of Jesus the Christ, but it must not be limited to that form. The Christ, the universal being, lives in all people everywhere, even if they are not Christians, even if they are Atheists. There is no other life energy, but this one. Every being is a manifestation of it. Perhaps this is also why Christ said to his disciples when He told them that He would be leaving them soon, «It is better that I leave, so then will come the Helper (meaning the Holy Spirit)». As long as the Christ existed before them in the form of Jesus, it was difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that this same power could be in them and operating through them.
Thus while Universal Philosophy encourages all peoples to have a form which they worship and use as a means to communicate with and develop their love for and relationship with this Divine Principle, it also encourages them to see this Divine Essence in every being that they meet and respect and love that essence in their fellow men. One does not conflict with the other. One enhances the other.
4. The purpose of life is to reconnect with and eventually identify totally with this Universal Consciousness or God if you like. The purpose of this human existence is to free ourselves from the ego-centered existence of being totally identified with these bodies and minds and their needs, desires, attachments and preoccupations and to realize our higher nature, the soul, spirit or higher Self which are directly linked with this universal Being. We also need to embody many of its higher qualities such as universal love, wisdom, inner peace, compassion, right action, selflessness, service towards our fellow men, clarity of vision, spiritual discrimination, nonviolence and others. Beyond even that goal, is the goal to become totally united with that Supreme Being, losing all traces of individual limitation.
This purpose is achieved through two basic methods; man's effort and Divine Grace. There are various types of efforts that we can make towards achieving these goals and they are mentioned in later chapters. These too seem to be very common throughout the various supposedly different religious and philosophical paths. From Christianity to Islam, from Buddhism to the followers of Pythagoras, the methods are basically the same.
Thus man's purpose on Earth can be described as physical, emotional and spiritual evolution, or self-improvement. This is what is meant by Christ's parable about the three men who received five, two and one talent from their master. (Although the talent was a form of monetary measurement in those days, it obviously also means talent in terms of human ability, human potential). When the time had come to report to their master what they had done with their «talents», the ones who had five and two had doubled theirs, and the one who had only one had hidden his and thus still had only one.
The master was pleased with those who had used their talents and thus doubled them and gave them greater responsibilities in his estate. He was displeased with the one who had hidden his talent, not used it, not increased it and had it taken away from him. We are here on the Earth to improve who we are, to grow spiritually in various ways.
5. The human soul is immortal. It does not die with the body, but continues after the death of the physical body in a subtler spiritual body. What exactly happens to the soul after this death of the physical body is also agreed upon to a considerable degree. (Refer to the book «THE MYSTICAL CIRCLE OF LIFE»)
One point on which there seem to be two differing views is the concept of reincarnation; whether or not the soul has other chances to come back to Earth to continue its evolutionary effort, or whether it has only one chance. The one chance idea is held by Christian and Islamic theologians, whereas the more than one chance is held by most of the other belief systems, and especially among some of the worlds most respected thinkers in every field.
This, however, is not an important part of the Universal Philosophy. Whether one has one or more chances, is a detail. The most important point is that we agree on everything else and especially on what are we to do with this chance which we are presently living. Whether we have had previous or will have future lives or not does not change in any way what we must be doing now at this moment. The thought concerning reincarnation simply helps us to put some otherwise unexplainable phenomena into perspective, and perhaps allows us to learn to forgive and forget the wrongs others might do us, more easily. We will discuss this later.
6. The most effective way of achieving the purpose of life is through wisdom and love: love for God, love for humans, love for all beings, even for those who have harmed us; that is universal, unconditional love.
Thus our Universal Philosophy has six simple principles which are basic to almost all, if not all systems, religions and philosophies. Let us state them briefly:
1. THERE IS ONE PRIMAL CAUSE FOR EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS.
2. THIS UNIVERSAL INTELLIGENCE IS OMNIPRESENT AND OMNISCIENT.
3. THIS UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS IS RESIDENT IN EVERY BEING.
4. THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS TO RECONNECT WITH OUR UNIVERSAL NATURE.
5. THE HUMAN SOUL IS IMMORTAL.
6. THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY OF ACHIEVING THE GOAL OF LIFE IS THROUGH UNIVERSAL UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.
To Index of Chapters
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CHAPTER XI
FATE AND FREE WILL
Are we puppets moved by some divine hand? Is our every thought and act already planned? Or are we independent souls able to make decisions and create our own destiny? Or is the truth found in a merging of these two opposites? In this Chapter we will investigate some possible answers to these questions.
CAN BOTH BE TRUE?
We are conditioned to believe that opposites cannot be true. The new discoveries in modern physics force us to accept the possibility that seemingly opposite concepts like void, consciousness, energy and matter are united and connected at some level, and that time and space are relative to the view point and velocity of the spectator. In the same way, the concept of fate and free will may be simultaneously true.
On the one hand, it is obvious that we think, make decisions and act accordingly, and thus move voluntarily towards certain goals. There seems to be a relationship between effort and result. We decide to become a painter, or lawyer or engineer, or musician or salesman and we make the effort and we become one. We decide to get married and have children and we do so. We decide to stop smoking or loose weight and we do so. These decisions involve discrimination, will power and effort to move towards a goal, which we have decided. Thus there seems to be free will.
On the other hand, many of us make decisions that we are not able to fulfill because of various events or circumstances in life. Some may not even have been given a decision. They may have been born very poor, blind or paralyzed or in a minority group in a hostile environment. Their choices may be few if any. Others make choices but are never able to fulfill them because of various «accidents» and natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, drought, fire or man made disasters such as economic depression, violence or war. Others loose a loved one very early in life, or suffer a car crash or disabling illness, which greatly limits their freedom of movement.
Ten people make the same effort toward the same goal such as starting a business, getting married, making money, having children, raising their children harmoniously, learning to play a musical instrument, learning to dance, or to play a sport, or to relax, or to meditate etc. But, although these ten people have made the same effort in terms of time and dedication, they do not have the same results. Some have met only with failure while others found it quite simple and easy from the beginning. Still others proceeded at varying rates and with differing degrees of success. Since they made the same effort, what is that factor which has limited some and helped others? What is that factor which has caused one to be born blind and the other to see, one materially poor and the other materially rich, one weak and sickly and the other full of strength, one quick to learn music and the other stone deaf, one predisposed to happiness and the other to depression, one to the arts and the other to the sciences?
What is this unknown factor which seems to have so much control over our lives? It seems on the one hand that we have free will to make choices and to strive to fulfill them. If we sat and did nothing, we would starve to death, and we would certainly not develop along any lines. We would become stagnant physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Yet our efforts are not the sole factor which govern the results of our efforts. What is this other factor?
THE PAST
This invisible factor is, for the most part, the past. You will remember that our past is recorded in a morphogenetic field which is a subtle field of energy and consciousness which gives birth to our physical body and to our material, emotional, and mental reality. This field, or causal body, is the cause of our mental and physical forms. It is not the creative cause, but the forming cause. The creative cause is spirit, or God, but this morphogenetic field molds and forms this spiritual consciousness as it is projected through the field onto earth dimension. That is what we call incarnation.
Thus, as long as we are identified with and attached to this physical form and the ego, the present is never actually the present. The present is shadowed by the past. It is as if we are moving into the future with the past chained around our legs obstructing our free movement. In some other cases, however, our past may be a positive helpful factor in the efforts.
THE CONCEPT OF REINCARNATION
We are left, however, with some basic questions. Where do these past impressions or tendencies come from? How could a man born blind, or paralyzed, or poor, or seriously ill, have acted wrongly or sinned before his birth? How can Christ's words «He who lives by the sword will die by the sword» be true, since we see many innocent men, women and children who have never acted violently, die apparently unjust, meaningless, violent deaths at the hands of others? Yet some of those who have lived violently harming others live on into old age without problems? How can we understand this?
Since all are God's children, how is it that one is given greater abilities or talent at music, dancing, mathematics, business and some are given very few, if any, abilities? What is that factor in God's judgment which makes one «lucky» and the other «unlucky»? Or is there perhaps no such thing as luck? Perhaps God does not involve himself in the process; but we create our talents, «luck» and misfortune. Over and over again in the New Testament Christ uses parables to make people understand that they must use and develop their abilities that they must become productive and creative or else they will loose whatever abilities they have. In the parable about the fig tree, which did not produce fruit, and in the parables about the servants who are given a certain amount of money (talents) to see how they will use them, we are made to understand that we create our future and develop our talents and abilities and that if we do not, we will loose them.
There could be a variety of answers to these many questions: I can only give the one that seems most logical to me. The most reasonable explanation I have heard until now is the concept of reincarnation. The idea that the soul does not really die when it leaves the physical body, but eventually returns again creating a new human body, so as to continue its evolutionary process towards union with God. This concept explains so many otherwise unexplainable phenomena. There is no space to discuss that here, but those who are interested can refer to the book "THE MYSTICAL CIRCLE OF LIFE" by the same author.
Since probably 80% of those reading this text are likely to be coming from a Christian background, it would probably be worth while here to say a few words about reincarnation and Christianity. I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ. I love Him. I am grateful to Him, His teachings, His life, His example and His sacrifice for our sake. I try to see Him in each person and in each situation. When I need to make a decision, I try to think what would Christ want me to do in this situation? However, I do not reject other spiritual leaders. I accept them. I respect them. I learn from them. I am grateful to them. But my Spiritual Focus is Christ.
I feel absolutely no conflict between my Christian focus and my belief in reincarnation. After reading and studying the New Testament cover to cover a number of times, I cannot find any sentence, which says that there is no reincarnation, or that the soul did not exist before this lifetime. On the other hand there are many phrases which can be interpreted as referring to the concept of reincarnation. In the final analysis, however, it is not important whether one believes or not in reincarnation, but whether he acts with love and unity in relationship to his fellow man.
LIFE IS A SCHOOL
The following models may help us understand the balance between fate and free will. No model, however, can be perfect in its attempt to describe a reality, which is actually beyond time and space. Every model will have flaws, but each will help us to understand this enigma in a different way.
The first model is that of a school. When we first go to school we have no choice about the subjects we are going to study. We do not even have a choice about whether to go to school or not. We must start in the autumn and finish in the fall, and must study exactly what we are told at each point along the way. We have no freedom of choice, no free will. As we become maturer, we are allowed to make decisions as to when we want to study and what we want to study. There are still limitations. We are still required to study, but there is greater flexibility in choice and timing and we can even change our choices occasionally.
Life is the school. We spirits incarnate into the school of life. A lifetime is like a year at school. In our earlier incarnations, as souls with little experience on the earth level, we are forced to incarnate at certain times and to take certain basic lessons concerning how to function on the earth plane. As time passes and we become more capable, more spiritually evolved, we have greater freedom of choice concerning how we are going to proceed. Our eventual goal of self-realization and reunion with God is fixed, but the way in which we are going to approach this destination is variable, and each takes a different route.
In school, however, our freedom to choose among professions and lifestyles depends on how much we have studied and worked in the earlier grades. Our past performance limits or enhances our choices in later years. In the same way, our performance in previous lives and in the past of this present life limits or enhances our freedom of choice in the present. If we have behaved in an egotistical way or have done nothing to develop our inner abilities, then we will have limited degrees of freedom in this life.
Thus, not everyone has the same amount of free will. Some are more limited by their past than others. This will depend partly on their past and partially on their way of thinking today, and also the degree to which they are really conscious or whether they are functioning mechanically based on past or childhood programmings. If someone chooses to be a doctor because his father was one, or because he is programmed to feel secure only if he has a lot of money, and not because he really loves to be a doctor, then his choice is not made out of free will. It is a mechanical choice made through social programmings.
Thus, each person experiences a varying mixture of fate and free will based on his previous actions, his present attitude, his will power and the degree of his freedom from his childhood programming. It must be remembered that even the factor of fate is self-created and not the will of some other power.
LIFE IS LIKE A MOVING CAR
Our life is like a moving car which has a certain direction and momentum, depending on its speed and weight. If the car is moving very fast and has a great weight, it will be difficult to change its direction. If we do not have a good hold on the steering wheel we may not be able to change the direction of the car in the case that it might be headed for danger. If we cannot see clearly, we cannot steer the car effectively so as to avoid obstacles, and arrive where we want.
We are like the car. Our body is like a car's body; our energy body is the engine, our mind is the steering wheel, our higher self is the driver and the spirit is the owner of the car.
Most of us have little control over where our car is going because the driver (the higher self) is asleep, undeveloped. Thus, the steering wheel is unattended and is turns at each bump, moving downhill along the path of easiest motion. We follow the senses, avoid whatever requires effort and lose control over where we are going. We seek after the superficially pleasant and avoid the unpleasant, even though it may mean greater joy and health in the long run. We lack discipline, discrimination and willpower.
The momentum and direction of life is controlled by our habits, our ways of eating, acting, thinking, reacting and feeling. These are fixed and heading us in a certain direction. If we like that direction, then every thing is fine. But if we do not like it, if we would like to change the way we are eating, the way we are acting, living and thinking, and cannot, then we have no free will. Why? Because we have no will.
Two factors determine how much free will we have, how free we really are. One is how much spiritual discrimination we have. That is whether we can see the road clearly, whether we can distinguish what is really beneficial for ourselves and others in the long run. Discrimination means being able to understand what has real value and what does not. For example, whether we will give more importance to money, personal possessions, sensory pleasures, professional and social recognition, or whether we will give higher priority to love, unity, to helping others, to self knowledge and to spiritual growth. Discrimination means having the ability to see far down the road, understand where it is leading to and being able to decide whether that is really where we want to go.
The second, will power is having the ability to turn the direction of the steering wheel once the discrimination has determined where we really want to go. It is being able to change our way of thinking and living so as to move in a new direction which is more in line with our real inner desires.
Without discrimination we are spiritually blind and cannot see the road. We have thus no control over where we are going. We have no free will. Without will power, we have no strength to make changes in our life direction. We have no free will.
Thus whether or not we have free will depends on the development of our spiritual discrimination and our will power.
A GOAT TIED TO A POLE
Imagine a goat, or a dog if you like, tied to a pole. This animal has a certain degree of freedom depending on the length of the rope. If the rope is long he can move about quite freely. If it is infinitely long, he can go just about anywhere, if he does not get it tangled up. If the rope is short, he is limited to a very small degree of freedom.
We are like that goat tied to the tree. We are born into this life with a certain length of rope. That length is dependent on how we have lived our past lives. If we have lived very selfishly or if we have lived a lazy life without developing our abilities and our knowledge, then our rope will be short, we will have few talents to start off with, we will learn slowly. If we have harmed others, then we will be chained, as it were to certain experiences such as abuse from others, hardships or illness that are the result of our past negative actions. Thus, our freedom of choice in this life will be limited, at least until we mature and begin a process of spiritual growth and self-development. Then we may release ourselves from certain past limitations and lengthen our rope.
If, on the other hand, we have lived lives of love and service, helping others; if we have developed our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual abilities, then they are already developed when we are born, and we do not actually learn things from scratch in this life, but rather remember what we have already learned before. Thus things come easily to us and we feel free to move in the various directions that interest us.
Thus, our past actions are responsible to a great extent for the length of the rope. The other factor is our degree of inner strength and self-acceptance, our lack of fear to move on into new directions. If we do not believe in ourselves, then we shorten the rope. If we fear failure or rejection, then we shorten the rope, and we are fated to live a limited life. We are not limited by some other power, but by our own fear, our own lack of courage and self-acceptance. We are limited by our own ignorance of our true limitless nature.
Today is tomorrow's past. Today we have the power to change the future. Free will does not exist in the past and neither does it exist in the future. The present point in time is the only power we have. I am free if at this moment I can free myself from my limiting beliefs, if I can free myself from my habits and my mechanical nature and lengthen the rope of my destiny. I am free if I can get free of my ignorance and resulting desires and addictions, which cause me to ignore the golden rule and harm those around me, and thus shorten my rope. When I harm, my rope is shortened. I may even find myself in jail, in which case my free will is greatly limited. (In some extreme cases one may find the rope around his neck).
Let us decide to work on lengthening our rope daily by developing ourselves emotionally, mentally and spiritually and living a life of love and service to others. In this way we will regain our freedom of movement which we lost as spirits incarnating in matter.
OUR COSMIC BANK ACCOUNT
Most of us have had some experience with a bank account. We make deposits and withdrawals. As long as our deposits are greater in sum total than our withdrawals, then we have a positive balance and can use our money to move around freely. The more we have in our account, the greater the degree of freedom to try out new things or to journey etc.
If, on the other hand, we make more withdrawals than deposits, our bank gets upset with us. Not only do we not have money in the bank in order to move about, but also we owe money; and people are pressuring us to pay them back. Thus we are forced to limit our expenses, do less and perhaps increase our hours of work so that we can make up what we owe and pay it back. Our freedom is limited. If this continues for large sums of money or long periods of time, we might even find that they come and take our belongings or they might even put us in jail. Then we have very little freedom of movement.
Thus, our relative freedom of movement depends on how we manage our bank account, on the relationship between our deposits and our withdrawals.
The same relationship is true between our free will and our «Cosmic Bank Account». Our cosmic bank account is a record of all our thoughts, words and actions. It is also a depository of all our efforts, improvements, talents and abilities that we have developed, as well as everything we have learned. It is another way of describing the morphogenetic field or the causal body.
Our deposits are our selfless, altruistic thoughts, words and actions; and our efforts to develop and improve physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Our deposits are all our efforts to develop spiritual discrimination and will power. Love is our greatest deposit.
Our withdrawals are our selfish thoughts, words and actions, the harm we have done to others, the hours we have wasted in laziness, our lack of self-development, and our failure to develop discrimination and will power. Hate, anger, bitterness, jealousy, fear and selfishness are all withdrawals.
A major factor determining whether or not we have free will depends on the state of our cosmic bank account. If we come into this life time carrying a large deficit, then we may have to make deposits continuously without making withdrawals in order to balance our account so that we can eventually move about more freely, and perhaps even start receiving «interest».
For example, if we came into this lifetime carrying a large deficit in our account concerning love; if we were very selfish and unloving in the past, we may need to give love selflessly for many years before we will actually begin receiving love back. Others around us may give much less but receive much more from the very beginning. Their account may be more positive than ours.
We may come into this life with a large deficit in our account concerning self-improvement and self-development. Thus we may need years of effort to learn to relax, or meditate, or stop smoking, or loose weight, or overcome our emotions of fear, anger or guilt. We may not make as much progress as someone else whose «discipline account» is very positive. They may have worked on this aspect of themselves more, just as we may have worked on some other aspect more than they. That doesn't mean that we should forget about trying to discipline ourselves. It means the opposite, that we need to work more than the others on self discipline until we eventually balance our cosmic account and start having the results that we want. Sincere effort and patience will be required.
It appears, then, that we are free to make any efforts we desire in life towards any goals that we value. Our freedom of choosing and trying is not limited, but the results, which we will obtain, are limited at least temporarily due to the inertia of our past. Thus we might say that many of the events which happen and do not happen are a function of the past, but that how we react to them in the present is our free will.
We can resist the events which our cosmic bank account sends us (our monthly balance sheet, which arrives, however, on a second to second basis). We may reject an event believing it to be a mistake or an injustice. We can doubt the fairness or the intelligence of the Cosmic Accountant. We can blame him for not dealing fairly with our account. We can become depressed, feeling weak and helpless, a victim of unjust supernatural forces, believing that what has happened to us is the result of the whims of some playful or unjust God.
Or we can realize that whatever happens or ever will happen to us in our life will always be in exact harmony with our cosmic bank balance. We can trust that the cosmic accountant knows what he is doing, and neither punishes, nor gives rewards, but simply tallies our account; and we are paid (or not) accordingly. Thus we can accept what has happened until now as exactly just and correct.
We can ask for guidance as to how we can react to these situations in the most effective way so as grow spiritually and improve our account. We can accept each experience as an opportunity for self-knowledge, grow and self-improvement. Thus it may have been fate that my loved one would leave me, or leave his body, but it is my free will to react positively or negatively to this. I can become angry, fearful, hurt, depressed, and, in general, negative towards life. I can search to find someone else immediately so as to cover up the hurt, insecurity and fear which I feel. I can turn to tranquilizers, alcohol or various other chemical substances to drug my mind and ease the pain.
Or I can use this experience to realize that life in the physical body is temporary and fragile; that I cannot really depend on someone outside myself; and that I must develop my spiritual nature, my faith, my concentration, my self mastery and proceed in my spiritual evolution.
Thus life is like a game of cards. The cards we are dealt by the cosmic dealer are our fate - a fate however which we have created through our previous thoughts, words and actions, as well as our present beliefs. How we play those cards is our free will. Play them smart and we will get better cards in the future.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM WHAT IS HAPPENING?
According to what we have said this far, these various life events are exactly what we have created by our own past actions and present thoughts, words and actions. On the other hand, they seem to be exactly what we need in order to continue our growth process as souls in a process of evolution from a lower state to a higher state of consciousness.
It is more effective to see these events as possible learning experiences rather than some form of punishment. Rather than seeing them as something that we must pass through in order to «pay for what we have done», we can see them as opportunities which life is offering us so that we may grow emotionally, mentally and spiritually more mature.
As mentioned previously, in every situation we have various choices as to how to react. We can react with fear, or with denial, with aggressiveness or with some type of escapism. Or we can react by searching for the inner strength necessary to overcome the particular problem. Our freedom to react positively or negatively to a particular event will depend on our freedom from our own fears, attachments and beliefs about our own weakness, or about the dangers that exist in the world around us.
Thus we see again that our «free will» is totally dependent on the degree to which we have developed our freedom from our own programmings and emotional mechanisms, fears and expectations which force us into becoming robots incapable of even conceiving alternative reactions to certain stimuli.
We have «free will» only if we have worked on developing that «will» against our own mechanical and habitual, emotional, mental and physical functioning. This freedom can be achieved through self-analysis and serious spiritual effort.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM AN ILLNESS
Illness is one of those «fated» events of our lives which seems to be at times related and at other times unrelated to how we live in the present. Even those who do all the "right things" physically and spiritually sometimes become ill or suffer from accidents of some type. Thus it is something over which we can have some control, but is not within our total control.
We could hypothesize that an illness in most cases has something to teach us; either about what we are doing which has created the imbalance, which is called illness or about attitudes, or powers which we can develop in facing it. Let us look at some examples of what we might learn in confronting an illness.
1. We may learn to change our diet. We may discover that the way we are eating is causing our body (and thus also our mind) to lose its balance or vitality, and thus it is necessary to change our dietary habits. These changes then may serve to help raise the overall vibration or quality of the body and mind so that it becomes more sensitive to higher spiritual energies, qualities, powers and truths. Thus our overall evolution is enhanced through our reaction to the stimulus of the illness.
2. We might learn to stop, relax and create a more harmonious life rhythm, which is neither overactive nor sluggish. This reassessment of our routine and our level of activity will benefit all aspects of our lives including our mental abilities and relationships. Thus the illness comes to teach me about harmony and rhythm; something which I may have ignored until now.
3. Our negative thoughts and feelings such as worry, fear, bitterness, self pity, jealousy, anxiety and weakness or inability are known to play an important function in determining the degree of resistance the body and mind have to illness. Thus we may be forced through an illness to observe, analyze and change negative emotional and mental habits so that we can get well and stay well. This change in our thinking patterns then leads to greater emotional, mental and spiritual maturity.
4. An illness is often humbling. Some of us need this lesson in humility. We can often get an unnaturally high opinion of our body and mind, believing that we are in some way the center of the universe or that we are worthier or more important than the others are. Having a small microbe, which we cannot even see knocking us flat on our back helps us change our perspective.
The need to accept help from others and the realization that this body is only a temporary and a fragile reality creates a clearer perspective of our place in the universe.
5. We can learn to accept love and caring from others. Some of us are programmed that we must only give and must never receive. We believe that this is altruistic; but it can also be very selfish. We may not want to be put in a position of owing something to someone (which is an indication of a feeling of separation). We may feel that we must always give more than we receive so that we can be «better» than the others, or worthy of their respect and love. Thus, through an illness some may learn the lesson of «receiving gracefully», or the lesson that they deserve love and acceptance even if they cannot offer something back to others in that particular situation.
6. An illness may force us to stop activity for an extended period of time. This quietness may then become a stimulus for deeper thought about life, what we are doing, where we are going and if that is really what we want. Many of us get caught up in a life style based on the needs during a past period of our lives. Although, as the years passed, our needs have changed, we have not taken the time to make the corresponding changes in our life style. Thus, illness often offers an opportunity to stop and think more deeply about what we want from life and whether we are moving towards those goals effectively.
7. Many systems of positive thought projection have been developed and taught over the last years. These mental projection techniques have successfully created cures and recovery from the wide range of physical problems from arthritis and high blood pressure to cancer. Thousands of people all over the world in the last decades have been motivated to learn how to channel the positive powers of mind and spirit out of their need to cure themselves of an illness or solve some problem.
However, regardless of what happens with this illness, this new positive mental power remains as a newly acquired mental ability. Many people would never have had the incentive to develop this mental power without the stimulus of the illness.
8. We all need to take a more active role in creating our health and happiness. Few people realize that they themselves are totally responsible for their health, happiness, harmony and success in life. No one else can give these to us or take responsibility for these. No one else can create our health or happiness. This is our responsibility. An illness may be the only way in which we can realize this and the only experience that will force us to finally take an active role in creating health, happiness and harmony for ourselves.
9. Often illness is an opportunity to examine and reassess our values in life. This is especially true when that illness brings us to the realization that this body is only temporary and that our days here on this planet are limited. This new perception of life causes us to examine more deeply the purpose of life and thus the purpose of our own life and how we want to live it. Many people have had life changing experiences through a serious illness or a near death experience.
10. When there is intense pain accompanying the illness it becomes an opportunity to learn to deal with pain. One way to deal with pain is to cease identifying with the area of pain. When we put our attention elsewhere the pain message does not overwhelm our consciousness. When we can experience the separation of our consciousness from our physical body then we can transcend the pain.
This ability and experience then become an important asset in our spiritual growth process; which is basically to realize our conscious existence as independent from the physical body. This reality is now being scientifically investigated in near death experiences where people leave their bodies, which are often clinically dead, and yet are totally aware of what is going on or being said. Their consciousness is functioning independently of the brain, nervous system and senses.
11. Many people turn to God when they have problems. It is unfortunate that we have to have problems in order to feel the need to contact such an important aspect of our reality as the creative and sustaining force of all that exists. We are still quite superficially oriented and usually need a serious problem to force us to look at things more deeply. Thus, illness may be the stimulus which will cause someone to come into deeper contact with God and develop that relationship more seriously and consciously. This, then, hopefully becomes a habit, which continues after the problem subsides.
12. Surrender, like active effort, is a quality which man needs to learn and master. There are moments when we need to master all our energy and abilities and try to change or correct something. There are times when we also need to learn to surrender. Most often we need a combination. We need to make the most intense effort we can while simultaneously surrendering the results up to God or to life. This is the key to life; trying our best, but being able to accept whatever results.
This does not mean that we would benefit from seeking to become ill in order to learn lessons. It does mean, however, that, when we do have a problem, it is much more effective to try to understand what we can learn from that problem and how we can go about solving it. That is our free will, the ability to face and learn from the events of our lives. Otherwise we can fear, resent, worry and complain about what life gives us. It is our choice. We can choose.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE LOSS OF A LOVED ONE
Let us now examine the same question in relationship to separation from a loved one either through a parting of ways or through the leaving of the physical body. Let us take the example of a spouse to whom we have become accustomed, dependent upon and probably attached to. In the case of a parting of ways, that is separation or divorce, what can we learn? If we have done everything that we could to save the relationship, and in spite of that we pass through the experience of separation (at least temporarily) what can we learn?
1. It can be an opportunity to examine our behavior and our beliefs about ourselves, and the other, and about relationships in general so as to determine how we may have contributed to this disharmony. There will surely be weakness, faults or negative thinking patterns that we can discover, analyze and seek to free ourselves from.
Then, in the case that we get back together, or we create a new relationship, we will not make the same mistakes. We will have also grown in our self-knowledge and emotional and spiritual maturity.
2. We can learn to love the other in spite of his behavior or his abandoning us. We can learn forgiveness. We can learn to wish the other to be well and happy, whatever he does, however he acts and with whomever he chooses to be. Unconditional love is a difficult lesson but an unavoidable one on the spiritual path. It does not need, however, to be learned in this way. This is only one of the many ways in which this lesson can be learned.
3. As we are left to face life on our own, we will feel a temporary emptiness, and perhaps a fear or insecurity. In such a situation we have various possible solutions. Some people try to find someone else immediately to cover up their inner emptiness and insecurity. Others fall into a depression and retreat from life, sometimes through tranquilizers, drugs or alcohol.
But we can choose another solution. We can face the fear of loneliness and pass through it to discover the fulfillment and the power, which exist within us. This effort to develop inner strength often starts the person on an inner spiritual search which benefits him on all levels of his life, and of course, in his future relationships where he can now create relationships out of love and not out of need or dependency.
One lesson then may be that we can live alone, and that we can face life alone; that we have the power to do so. This does not mean that we would benefit from leaving our present relationships in order to discover this fact. We can learn this while remaining in the relationships that we have presently created.
Many more lessons can be learned by improving ourselves so that the relationship can work and be loving and harmonious. However, if in spite of our efforts at improving ourselves and the relationship, it does not work out, then we might as well take this opportunity to face our fear of loneliness and our insecurity and work with them before we rush to create a new relationship.
4. We seek to find security, happiness, fulfillment, affirmation and pleasure by creating relationships with people around us. We sooner or later realize, however, that people cannot really give us these feelings which we are seeking to create. When we have realized this clearly, we may then seek to find what we are looking for through a spiritual relationship with our inner self, a spiritual teacher or with God.
People who have passed through disappointments (no appointments - no disappointments) eventually turn to developing a deeper spiritual life, finding within themselves or in their relationship with God that which they were seeking until now in other people.
This does not mean that they do not love or care for others, that they do not hope to get something from them, but are satisfied to be able to give to them. They can accept from others but do not expect from others. Then they are truly happy, and can, for the first time truly love the other independently of what the other may or may not do.
In the case of the departure of our loved one from his physical body, there are even other possible lessons.
5. Facing death is a difficult and unhappy experience. It can also be the shock which we need to think more deeply about life and to realize that we are only temporarily here; that these physical bodies and all the objects and physical pleasures which we seek after are only temporary sources of superficial and short lived security which we will eventually lose. This does not mean that we should not enjoy life and all the physical and other pleasures that it offers us. It does mean that we need to spend more time looking more deeply at what is behind this physical reality. It means that we would do well to investigate the nature of the human soul, what happens at the moment of death, and how we can live so as to get the most out of life while being simultaneously ready for the inevitable moments of departure, whether it be ours or a loved one's.
The death of a loved one is an opportunity to think more deeply about life, to reexamine our values and way of life, and to give more importance to emotional, mental and spiritual maturity and evolution.
6. When something happens that we do not want to happen, we often feel that an injustice has been done to us and feel angry towards whomever we believe is responsible. In the case of the death of a loved one, we may feel that God is responsible, since we are told that He controls these matters. We can hold on to this feeling of injustice and resulting resentment or anger for years or a whole lifetime. Or we can overcome this test of faith and believe in the wisdom of the Divine Plan that knows when each spirit has decided to leave its body, and that there are no mistakes or accidents or injustice.
If we can develop this faith through this experience, then we can learn to have the same faith in other matters. This ability allows us to remain free from fear of what will happen; for only that which needs to happen will happen. This does not, however, free us from the need to think, analyze, decide and act. It frees us not from action but from the fear or worry about the result of our actions. Then we are much freer to act according to what we believe and feel rather than out of fear of failure or of what others might say.
A belief in a divine plan also frees us from bitterness, resentment or anger towards people which may have «harmed» us in the past. Since we cannot change the past, it is much more useful to accept that an event, for some reason, had to happen, and let go of those negative feelings. This does not mean that we allow people to do whatever they want to do in the present, but we let go of the negativity about the past.
Thus there are many lessons which we can learn from the loss of a loved one through separation or «death». The choice is ours. We can do everything in our power to prevent such an event and it is our free will and responsibility to do so. But if, in spite of all these efforts, we lose the presence of this person in our lives, then it is our free will to react positively and constructively with strength and love; or negatively with hurt, fear and perhaps anger. Each can choose for himself.
THE FLOW OF THE RIVER
Let us take one last example, that of a river flowing from the right side of the page towards the left. This is the river of life, of evolution, the river of the gradual perfection of humanity and of creation. The flow of this river represents the divine plan, the direction in which the process of evolution is proceeding. All beings, human, animal, plant, insect, microbes and even minerals; all of creation, mountains, seas, suns, stars and galaxies are flowing along this river. You and I are also flowing along this river.
Diagram No. 17 THE RIVER OF EVOLUTION
The flow of this river creates the events, which we call fate. They are not events that come from some other higher power. They are created by our collective way of thinking and functioning. Our every thought, word and deed creates a disturbance and a movement on this river which is so large that it is like an infinitely large sea moving in a direction. Our collective thoughts, emotions and actions create what we call material reality and the events we experience.
These events are exactly the «stimuli» which we need in order to keep moving along in the direction of the river's flow. Whenever we move against the flow of the river, it is natural that the river exerts an equal force back at us. If we are clear enough in our perception and thinking, the water?s force will make us turn and start flowing again in the direction of the river. If we try to move towards the banks of the river, again it will continue exerting a force on us until we let go of the banks and continue flowing in the direction we are destined to eventually flow.
Our free will is to resist and delay our flow from fear and separateness to love and unity, or to flow freely without resistance and perhaps help ourselves to flow more quickly down the river of evolution. Our free will is to flow or not, to resist, reject, fear and hold on, or to have faith in the flow of the river.
Let us remember, however, that the lesson is not always to accept what is happening. Sometimes the lesson is to find greater inner strength, overcome fear and fight (without attachment or negative feelings) for what we believe. Some times the lesson is to accept more, other times the lesson is to make a greater effort. We must cultivate the clarity and discrimination which will allow us to understand which it is. «Father, give me the strength to change what I can, the peace to accept what I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference».
What are those actions, which resist the flow of the river? Since the river is flowing towards a manifestation of our inner power and of our spiritual unity with all beings, any actions that obstruct these resist the flow of the river. When we act selfishly; when we attach ourselves to external forms of security, pleasure, affirmation or power; when we act out of negative feelings such as fear, hurt, jealousy, anger, hate etc. In these cases we are resisting the flow.
How can we move with the flow? With acts which help us get free from our feelings of weakness and need to attach ourselves to the banks. Spiritual disciplines; depending more on our own power and not on others; believing in ourselves; acting out of compassion and love; serving our fellow beings who are all flowing along the same river. Developing contact with our inner spiritual dimensions so as to receive power and guidance from within. Faith that the river knows where it is taking us; that we can TRUST in life and what it will bring us in the future, and what it has brought us in the past.
That means no feelings of injustice, for the river has given at every moment of our lives exactly what we needed in order to grow (regardless of whether we took the opportunity or not). The river gave to us and is presently giving us simply the reflection of our own thoughts, words and actions; past and present.
This means no fear of the future, for it will bring exactly what we need in order to grow. This is also true for our loved ones. It means not worry about them. Life has been giving, is giving and will always give them as souls in the process of evolution, exactly what they need in order to keep moving along the river. Remember that our worry does not help them in the slightest. It harms them because we send them the message (unconsciously if not consciously) that we do not have faith in their ability to handle and overcome any difficulties that life may be presenting to them. They get the message from us (regardless of whether we express it or not - it is sufficient just to worry inside ourselves) that we do not believe in their discrimination, clarity and inner power to face life. This does not help them.
This means that we can live with an inner sense of peace and freedom. That we can live an open, loving, joyful life. All our worries were illusions based on our previous ignorance. Life is simple, easy, and each of us can be a creative happy and helpful being if he chooses so.
Author Richard Bach uses the same metaphor in the introduction to his book ILLUSIONS - THE ADVENTURES OF A RELUCTANT MESSIAH.
«9. And he said unto them, «within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and to sickness, to riches and to poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.
«10. A mill-man spoke and said, «Easy words for you, Master, for you are guided as we are not, and need not toil as we toil. A man has to work for his living in this world.
«11. The Master answered and said, «Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.
«12. The current of the river swept silently over them all young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way knowing only its own crystal self.
«13. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.
«14. But one creature said at last, «I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. Clinging I shall die of boredom.
«15. The other creatures laughed and said, «Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you troubled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!
«16. But the one heard them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
«17. Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
«18. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried: «See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!
«19. And the one carried in the current said, «I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true mark is this voyage, this adventure.
«20. But they cried the more: all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone and they were left alone making legends of a Savior".
Each of us is a «messiah» in the making. Each of us is the Divine itself in the process of perfecting its ability to express its divinity on the physical and mental levels. The river will gladly lift us up, if only we have faith in it.
Faith in God. That simple formula which we heard as children. After much searching, much philosophy, many techniques, we come back to this simple formula, faith in that One Universal Consciousness which is the cause and motivating power of every being and object. Faith that we are only temporarily here on the earth engaged in a learning process. Faith that we are immortal and can never come to harm, even if we loose our temporary physical bodies.
Everything that happens to us is designed to help us. In some cases where we resist, what happens may force us to return to that simple faith («unless you become like these children, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven»).
Our free will is to look at these events in this way and thus benefit by the lessons that they contain for us, or to reject, resist and fear thus creating more suffering for ourselves and others. Which do you choose?
It appears that, ultimately, our free will lies in our ability to merge our individual will with the Universal Will of the Divine Plan. When we are able to let go of our personal desires and attachments, and desire the greatest good for all, then we merge with the Universal Flow of life, which supports and guides us. Our needs (not our desires) will be taken care of and we will experience unity with all beings. Although we still learn through the law of Karma, we have comprehended the laws of Dharma and Love.
When we learn to merge the individual will with that Universal Will, the ego is diminished. When there are less ego demands, there is less identification with the body and ego. Less Karma is generated and we gradually become free from the bondage of the karmic restrictions. The choice to be made is between egoism and selflessness.
This transcendence of karmic situations seems to come in stages.
1) We act in order to satisfy selfish needs desiring some result for ourselves.
2) We begin to act seeking results for others.
3) We learn to act with detachment offering all results up to God.
Thus, although we act with intensity and sincerity, we are willing to accept any result as exactly what is necessary at the moment.
4) When we act without seeking or expecting any result, we cease to create new Karma.
Remember, we do not give up the action, but the attachment to the fruits of the action.
To Index of Chapters
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CHAPTER XVIII
FINDING OUR ROLE IN LIFE
(Although this chapter is also found in the second volume of the book «The Psychology of Happiness», I have included it here because I believe that it is especially important and relative to what we are discussing here.)
Many of us are discontented with our lives, or work, our way of living. But few of us know what it is that we really want to do, and fewer still have the courage to do what they really want in order to find happiness and fulfillment.
Why is there such a crisis of unhappiness today when we have so much more than man has ever had in the way of material security and various comforts? The average man today lives with the comfort only kings enjoyed hundreds of years ago. Yet statistics show that more and more people are disillusioned with the old recipes for happiness. They have money and material security, but their jobs have no meaning for them. It is as if they have sold their souls for the comforts of the material world. Many are now beginning to realize this fact.
I, for one, experienced this crisis at the age of 22 having worked for a year as a chemical engineer in a large industrial chemical plant. I had everything which society said I needed to have to be happy. But I was miserable. I decided to find something more meaningful to me. This is not to say that such a job could not be meaningful to someone else, or that it does not have value. Such jobs obviously have great value for society and are interesting to many people if that is what they came to do. It simply was not what I came to do on this earth. Thus, what may be the perfect role for one person, may be boring and meaningless for another. It is well that the world is organized in this way, otherwise everyone would want to do the same job, and the world would fall apart.
Thus the search for our role in life is the search for the part which we, as unique individuals, have come to play in this theater of life. We who find it, and play it with all our heart, find contentment and happiness. Those who do not find it, or do not have the courage to play it, live in discontentment and a type of superficial emptiness. There is little real joy or meaningfulness in our lives. Our lives are often mechanical and lacking in essence for us until we find our proper role.
Have you ever walked into a room to get something, but arriving in that room forgot what you came to get? I have. I have also found that, when I turn and start heading in the direction I was coming from, I remember what it was that I was searching for. This is true of our lives here on the earth. We are immortal souls who have come here for a short time to learn certain lessons and offer certain services to the overall evolution. But, upon arriving here, we forget why we came, and waste our lives occupying ourselves with various superficial pleasures and material pursuits. Eventually, through some series of events, often in the form of problems and difficulties, we are forced to look inward and remember why it was that we incarnated on the Earth at this time.
THE EARTH SYMPHONY
We, upon the earth, are like members of a great universal orchestra. Each has his part to play. The harmony of the universal piece (called life) we are playing depends on two basic requirements from each member of the orchestra. Each must first know his part and, secondly, must be capable of playing it. All the other beings in nature (the unconscious members of this symphony orchestra) know automatically their parts and play them with the help of the cosmic conductor called Nature or God.
Man, however, the most advanced aspect of nature, has a new quality called free will and has separated himself from nature and its laws. He has the choice to play his part or not. He also has the new responsibility to develop the inner qualities necessary to play the part.
At the present time we may say that the Earth Symphony Orchestra is considerably off key and its sound is quite discordant. Each is playing his own song, each trying to sing or play louder than the others, and the result is competition, aggression, strikes, violence, famine, poverty and war. This is happening because few have found their real part in this symphony, and out of discontent are competing rather than co-operating with the others. Thus finding our role in life is not only imperative for our own happiness, but also for social and world harmony.
Each of us then has the choice to make between money and meaningfulness, between comfort and creativity, between security and evolution, between satisfying the expectations of others and following our own inner voice of wisdom, between social «success» and social responsibility, between superficial happiness and real inner contentment. Let us choose wisely.
TUNING UP OUR LIVES
Let us examine what we can do to regain contact with our real purpose for being here on the earth, which will bring us and society so many benefits.
1. We must get free from our social conditioning concerning what kind of work has value. Society puts a certain value on each profession. This is usually based on the amount of money that one can make and how much prestige one gains in society. This money and prestige, however, may not make us happy. Society?s formula for success is based on a very superficial view of man?s nature. We are programmed as young children concerning our insecurity in this world and how we must strive and struggle for economic security. We are also programmed concerning how important the opinion of others is. We believe that we must do everything we can to make the others think that we are important, to envy us, to admire us, so that we can believe in ourselves.
As many people are beginning to realize, this is all a big mistake, which not only does not lead to happiness, but most often leads to anxiety, fear, nervous tension, and illness.
In order to find our real role in life we must liberate ourselves from these programmings that we have received from society defining happiness, survival and success. We will also have to face the criticism of family and relatives who may feel intimidated by our changes in life style. Our changes may cause them to either doubt their presumptions about life or reject us. The second is easier for them. In such cases we will need plenty of inner strength so as to not be affected by their reactions, but at the same time to have enough love to forgive them and try to help them to understand that we are not running away from them or from life, but just asking for the freedom to be who we really are.
After passing through a period of self-examination, we may find that we have been doing all our lives that which we were born to do, but that we just couldn?t accept it. The simplest role can offer us the greatest spiritual lessons. Take for example the roles of motherhood or fatherhood. Not much importance is given to them today, most feeling that working in an office has more prestige. But there is no more important role than that of motherhood. The future of the world depends on the quality of today?s children. Their inner world and quality of being and behavior are clearly a product of how much attention and love they receive as children. Many parents believe that they can offer their children more by working more so as to offer them a better education. This is a great mistake. A person becomes great not because of his education but because of his character.
OVERCOMING FEAR
2. We will need to overcome our fears. Our fear of being unable to accomplish what we came to do. Our fears of what others might think. Our fears that we may not make it financially. We have a guarantee from God that if we do His work, our needs will be taken care of, as are those of the birds and flowers. It must be His work (which is the same as our real role) and not the role our ego wants to play. We need to overcome the fear of not being perfect in what we do, the fear of making a mistake. We are all in a process of evolution. If we were perfect, we would not have incarnated, we would have no need to come to Earth. Thus our existence here verifies that we are not perfect. Let us accept it, and accept that we are okay and lovable even though we are not perfect, and that we have every right to make mistakes as we learn to do something new in our lives.
We will also need to overcome various fears for specific objects and situations such as airplanes, elevators, boats, hospitals, dust, microbes, certain kinds of people, certain animals etc. These are obstacles to the fulfillment of our roles here on the earth. We want to become effective instruments of the Divine Will, able to play any part which the cosmic conductor asks us to play. Our fears are an obstacle to that effectiveness.
SUCCESS IS NOT REQUIRED
3. We will also need to free ourselves from our excessive concentration on success as a measure of our self-worth and effectiveness. It is not important to succeed. It is important to have pure motives and to try to the best of our ability. The results of any effort do not depend only on our efforts, but on many other factors, which have to do with our pasts and the general situation in society and the world itself.
Think of the greatest examples of courage in history. Did they succeed in our terms? Did Jesus succeed? How many have lived their lives according to His messages throughout the last two thousand years? He was omniscient. He knew that few would really be able to live as He asked us. Yet He gave all of His life and finally His body itself to His purpose, to His role. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Socrates, did they succeed? They were all killed by the societies in which they lived.
Success is not required of us. We must only ask ourselves whether we believe that what we want to do will offer something, however small, to man?s welfare and evolution. This offering may occur in many ways such as building houses for people to live in, cleaning the streets, raising children, educating people, creating beauty through art, music and dance, cooking wholesome food, putting order and cleanliness into an environment, or listening to someone?s problems. The list is endless.
It might be useful here to discuss the Sanskrit word dharma. It is an interesting term that encompasses many concepts simultaneously. A dharmic act is one that is in harmony with the laws of the universe, meaning that it offers something to the whole and does not harm anyone. It follows the law, "do not do to others what you would not like others to do to you", and on the other hand more positively, actively "do to others that which you would like others to do to you". All roles that are in harmony with the universe will be in harmony with these two guidelines.
No job, however, is inherently dharmic or in harmony with the universe. What makes an act or role dharmic is whether or not our motive is selfless and whether we are detached from the result. This is true even if the result is something we desire for another. We often have anxiety concerning certain results for others because we are lost in the belief that they are those bodies and personalities that we see and experience. We forget that we are all universal spirits who temporarily take on bodies for the purpose of learning lessons on this earth, and that often we must pass through certain situations in order to effectively learn those lessons.
Thus a dharmic act is one in which we are free from attachment to personal gain or any specific result. We would even be willing to perform the act or service without any form of reward. We know that we have found our dharmic role in life when the reward is the joy of performing the action itself. We might accept a certain amount of payment in order to live and to provide for those who depend on us for a living. But most people take much more than they need for survival and evolution. This creates a lack in other parts of the body of humanity and also disharmony in the symphony of the earth. Thus our role in life is something we would be happy to do even if we were not paid, although we may accept payment if we need such for our survival and evolution.
WE OF LITTLE FAITH
Those who believe that they have the obligation to leave large amounts of money and belongings for their children are, in my opinion, mistaken. In my personal experience this passing on of inheritances only undermines the child?s inner resources and often creates negative situations among the various inheritors. It would be better for us to will to our children self confidence, love, dedication to the needs of the whole and a feeling of interest in the welfare of mankind, rather than houses, money and furniture. The psychology of the average man is based on a psychology of the lack and the idea that man is incapable of surviving on the earth without help from the parents.
God has promised us, that He will provide. We have little faith. That money and time would be better directed towards social works that would better the condition of society as a whole.
This type of thinking is all based on a very limited concept of family; that only those who are products of my own physical body are my family. This is a very superficial view. We are all one universal spiritual family and, if we do not start thinking in this way, we will not exist at all - on the earth in a short time.
CONTACT WITH OUR INNER VOICE
4. We will need to develop a deeper contact with our inner voice through prayer, silence, and meditation. We need to quiet our minds from all the various voices that occupy our minds, so that we can hear the small voice of inner wisdom, which seeks to be heard. We know, within ourselves, the role that we have come to play, but we are too full of the other?s opinions to hear ourselves. Each would do well to take a few days a year and go off by himself. (The others will survive without you, and you without them). By retreating inwardly for a few days, in order to get in touch with our real self, we can then offer much more to those around us. Daily meditation in the morning and evening will also help us to develop and maintain contact with this inner voice.
TUNING UP OUR INSTRUMENT
5. We mentioned that the second prerequisite for playing our part in the earth symphony is to be capable at playing the part. This requires that we tune up our instruments of expression here on the earth, that is the body and the mind. If we are constantly ill, tired, nervous, fearful or upset, even if we know our role, we will not be able to play it effectively. We can employ the various effective techniques for the purpose of developing a healthy body and clear mind such as exercises, breathing techniques, healthy natural food, deep relaxation and positive thinking. With daily practice of these techniques our bodies and minds will be capable of expressing that beautifully harmonious symphony called life.
Our first responsibility is to tune up our own instruments. No musician would dare start playing his part without tuning up his instrument and harmonizing it with the others. We must realize that exercises, breathing, relaxation and meditation, are not a waste of time. They are essential steps that must be taken if we want to play our roles harmoniously.
I often wonder how it is possible for people to ignore such an easy way to develop health and harmony in their lives. It is as if they are each holding an unlit flashlight and calling out simultaneously, «help, I cannot see in the dark». If they themselves are not willing to employ a little discipline in order to create health and harmony in their lives, they should at least not burden others with their complaints about problems which are totally within their own hands to overcome.
SURRENDER TO THE DIVINE
6. An instrument must surrender completely to its player. We are instruments of the Divine Flautist. If we say to the Cosmic Musician, «no, I do not want to play that melody, I don?t like it, I want a better part, a lead role», then we are not much use to that Cosmic Maestro who needs co-operative and selfless instruments in order to create harmony among so many different instruments. Finding our role in life means being open to what role is useful to the universe at this place and time. We must let go of ego needs and realize that, at times, we will be called upon to do great works and, at other times, simple tasks, which seem unimportant to us. But all are important to the harmony of the whole.
We must pass through the test of humility and surrender to the divine in our search for our role. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as an example that humility is absolutely necessary in order to enter stages of higher consciousness. The ego thrives on the three lower stages of consciousness, which have to do with security, pleasure, and affirmation. When a person feels his own inner worth, he is not concerned about whether he is going to find greater self recognition through his role in life.
In searching for our role in life, we must ask, «how can I improve the situation on the earth before leaving? What can I do to make life healthier, happier, more harmonious for those who live around me?». Those who are playing their own tune out of harmony with the cosmic symphony are not much use to the cosmic conductor.
PRAY FOR GUIDANCE
7. We can pray to become purified and remolded, guided in our role as instruments of divine harmony here on Earth. Through prayer and sincerity we can become transformers of spiritual energy into material harmony. Just as plants take the light energy of the sun and use it to combine oxygen and carbon dioxide in order to create sugar, starch and other forms of food for us, we too can take spiritual energy and use it to manifest thoughts, ideas, words and actions which make this world a better place. We can meditate daily and take in spiritual energy and inner peace, and then share that with those around us in the form of love, compassion, understanding and service. This will give us much happiness and contentment. And, because life is a mirror, we will be surrounded by love and harmony. Do not expect the mirror to start reflecting your present actions immediately. Life is a delayed mirror and is now also mirroring your past actions. If, however, we keep on loving, forgiving and serving, we will at some point start experiencing the joy of love, unity and brotherhood here on earth.
BELIEVE IN YOUR SELF
8. Follow your intuition. Believe in your inner feelings. You may make mistakes in the beginning. You may go down some roads that are dead ends, or go to certain excesses. But there is no other way to get in touch with our inner voice than to believe it. At times it will be the voice of the ego, but gradually we will gain discrimination and will be able to tell the one voice from the other. And, eventually, there will be one voice only. Believe that you are here to perform a certain function that will benefit yourself and the world simultaneously. Desire to find that role. Maybe you already have. You will know that if you are happy, fulfilled and in harmony with yourself and your environment. This does not mean that everyone must love you, but that you will love him or her and feel harmoniously towards him/her, regardless of their feelings towards you. The best indication as to whether we have found our role in life is whether we are happy and content, and enjoy waking up each morning because what we are going to do really has meaning for us.
USE YOUR TALENTS
9. Get in touch with and develop your talents. They will guide you to what you have come to do. Your talents are the tools that you have brought into this incarnation to perform the specific tasks associated with your role. Recognizing and developing your talents will help you discover your role.
There is no other more important task than this, to discover the purpose of our presence on the Earth.
Let us summarize the steps towards finding our role in life:
1. Free ourselves from social conditioning.
2. Overcome fears and limiting beliefs.
3. Let go of attachment to results.
4. Develop greater contact with inner voice.
5. Develop physical and mental harmony.
6. Surrender to the divine will.
7. Pray daily to become an instrument.
8. Follow your intuition.
9. Get in touch with and develop talents.
I wish you health, joy and harmonious unity with the family of man.
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