OPERATION OF THE LAW OF THOUGHT Out of the thoughts available, some are selected to appear in form, others often contribute thereto. The selection of what act is produced physically cannot be made by elementals, for none of them are intelligent. The selection is made by complete Triune Selves according to the law and according to the possibilities permitted by the limitations of time and place and of existing conditions, and at their conjunction the elementals carry out the bidding of the Triune Selves, and in this way successive acts fit naturally into and develop from existing conditions. Each man has stored up many thoughts which have not been given form, and many more have form and are thronging on the physical plane but have not yet been given physical expression. The Triune Selves administering the law and marshalling the order of exteriorization of effects, have to hold back on the radiant-physical plane many acts and events which will appear when place, time and conditions permit. A man hastens or postpones the exteriorization of his past thoughts by his general mental attitude and definite mental set as to a certain course of action. All things which suit that course are drawn in whether they have been held back for a long or a short time. His thinking and acting make the time, place and conditions for events about to happen to him. He may postpone exteriorizations of his thoughts by trying to ward off events which threaten as natural consequences, just as he is able to put off a trial in a court or an appointment to meet a creditor. He may postpone by planning, but though a man may put off the events which are to come he cannot avoid them forever. If he succeeds in postponing what is unpleasant to him, he interferes with the Triune Selves who arrange the actions of the elementals and who see to the arrival of events at the proper conjunction of time, place and condition. If he is successful, many of the conditions which are due him accumulate. The tendency of the accumulated energy is to increase their pressure. The longer he continues his accumulating the greater is the pressure, until finally vast elemental powers may be disturbed, and they react on him and will force him to make an opening through which the accumulated destiny will pour in on him. Every one knows as much of his destiny as is necessary. It is his good fortune that he does not know more than that, because knowledge of unpleasant things about to happen might prevent him from doing his present duty, and knowledge of agreeable things to come might cause him to neglect it. All that is necessary for one to know is his present duty. He can always know it if he wishes. Duty is that part of his destiny selected by his Triune Self from all of his past, which he should dispose of in the present. His Triune Self marshalled his past and present and some of his future destiny so that all three converge into the duty of the present moment. If one refuses to do his duty, he merely postpones it; it must be performed by him in time. The performance of duty opens the road to other duties leading into larger fields. So the willing performance of duty allows him to see his duties more clearly and to come more under the Light of the Intelligence
SECTION 6
Duties of a human being. Responsibility. Conscience. Sin. The human has duties to nature, to his breath-form, to his Triune Self, to the Intelligence from whom the Triune Self receives its Light, and to the Supreme Intelligence.
The duties to nature are, to nature in the human body and to nature outside. While nature-matter is in the human body it is the doer’s duty to improve it so that the naturematter becomes conscious in higher degrees.
In most of this improvement, as that through the progression of the nature units in the body, the doer in the human is unconscious, but senses a duty to keep the body whole, sound and clean; this includes the duty to care for the four beings which are the four senses. To outside nature the human has the duties to worship it according to the religion into which he is born or which he chooses, and to be true to that religion while he believes in it; to worship, pay tribute to and to nourish a nature god or the nature gods, so long as the human believes him or them to be the source of his being. This is the case chiefly while the doer is in the stage of the run of human beings. When the human advances he has the duty to see and understand nature in his own body. The duty of the human to his breath-form begins when he discovers that nature and the nature gods are not the source of his being. The duty is to restore his breath-form to the Realm of Permanence so that it will take its place in the Eternal Order of Progression when his Triune Self becomes an Intelligence. The duties of the doer in a human to its Triune Self are to learn what the three parts of the Triune Self are, as doer, thinker and knower, and what their proper relation is, and not to allow itself to be lost into nature. The doer must learn the nature and functions of itself as feeling-and-desire, of the thinker as rightness-and-reason, and of its knower as I-ness-and-selfness. Feeling must be kept sensitive, so that it may receive accurately impressions from nature and from the other parts of the Triune Self. Desire must be restrained so as not to strive against rightness-and-reason. Thus rightness should be made safe against the pressure of desire. Rightness should receive the respect due it for showing the standard of what is right, and reason should receive the reverence due it as the guide of the doer in the human who should learn to communicate with rightness-and-reason. The human should revere the I-ness of his knower as his unchanging identity, and the selfness of his knower as his Self-knowledge and as his bringer and dispenser of Light of the Intelligence.
It is the duty of doer-in-the-body to
distinguish itself as that which is not the body with a name, but as
desire-and-feeling in the body, and
to adjust each to the other towards a final balanced union. The duties of the doer in the human to the Intelligence are to recognize it as its Conscious Light, as different from nature, as the source of the Light that is in the Triune Self. The human should preserve the Light and not lose it into nature. One should try to become conscious of the Light and to be conscious of the Intelligence through the Light of the Intelligence. The duty of the human to the Supreme Intelligence is to become conscious of it through the Light of the Intelligence which gives its Light to the Triune Self. When these duties are comprehended they will be done as naturally as are the bodily duties of eating and drinking and bathing and breathing and sleeping, and as gladly as one communicates with those whom he respects and loves. Responsibility is closely connected with duty. A man’s duty, the decree of the law of thought, is measured by his responsibility and this is based on his standard of right, his appreciation of right and wrong, that is, on the amount of knowledge of what is morally right or wrong which he has acquired through the doer-in-the-body.
A man is responsible
to the degree of his knowledge in a given situation and of his ability to
perform the duties of that situation. The law of thought
centers upon the doer of the Triune Self.
Under that law is made the advance of the human or by that law he is cast into nature and imprisoned as a “lost” doer portion.
What the human has
become conscious of as morally right or wrong, finds its expression as
conscience which is man’s knowledge of his departure from what he knows is
right for him, that is, his duty. In
any given case, his duty to do or not to do, to suffer or not to suffer, is
shown to him by his conscience. If he thinks about doing what he knows to be
a positive wrong, his conscience will tell him “Don’t.” If he is in doubt
about the rightness of his doing or not doing, suffering or not suffering,
conscience will advise him as he keeps
on thinking. Conscience will never show the way, nor will it give an explanation, but it will say: “Do not” or “No” as often as necessary to let him find the way. He must find the way himself through the maze of life. Conscience will protect him from going wrong by telling him whenever he is about to do so. That is enough. His conscience makes him responsible. His conscience will speak, whether he listens or not. He must listen to the voice, if he wants to know. The voice of conscience becomes the balancing factor in thoughts which are conceived or entertained and issued notwithstanding the warning. Thoughts against which conscience does not warn make no destiny. In them the balancing factor, which is conscience, is satisfied at once by the issuing of the thought. It ends when its design is exteriorized. Intending to violate one’s duty, conscience and responsibility, is sin and will be exteriorized in a sinful act or omission. Sin originates in ignorance, that is, a man’s act is a sin not because he does not know better but because he does what he knows to be wrong. Acts done without knowing that they are wrong, are not sins, though harmful results may follow, as where one poisons another accidentally, or unintentionally causes him to fall under a train. If these acts are done with the intent of producing the result, they are sins; if not, they are done in ignorance. The difference under the law that demands that adjustment be made lies in the fact that in the second case conscience does not warn and no duty is violated; but in the first, responsibility attaches. The ignorance out of which sins originate is different from that which causes ignorant action. The ignorance from which sin springs is due chiefly to obstinate prejudices and one’s refusal to see his own mistakes.
A man may sin in various ways. He sins first in thinking, and then the thought is exteriorized as a physical sin. There are sins against bodies and against doers, his own or those of others. Further, there are sins against outside nature and against his own Intelligence and the Supreme Intelligence.
Sins against one’s own body are all acts or omissions by which its well-being and usefulness are interfered with; as, sexual sins, overfeeding or eating unwholesome food, drunkenness, uncleanliness, not taking care of one’s eyes, teeth or any part, not attempting to cure disease once it is noticed, inflicting a physical injury and murder of one’s own body. Some of these sins, like injury and murder, may be inflicted also directly upon the body of another. However, many more sins, which will demand a serious discipline and retribution, are inflicted indirectly upon the bodies of others. Such sins are the manufacture or sale of adulterated foods and drinks and of narcotics, sins of indifference, or extortions which cause poverty, overcrowding, disease and indecency in miserable dwellings, sins of employers who do not provide safe and sanitary places to work, and who pay insufficient wages. These sins, too, may be chargeable to those who are not directly interested as employers but are their agents, and to persons in public office, through whose connivance such conditions are allowed to exist.Revolutionists who fish in troubled waters also belong here. In the same way the people at large are responsible if they know of such facts and do not do what they can to remedy conditions by which sins against the body are committed. In this way a community as well as its party politicians may commit sins, as by permitting abuse of convicts or by allowing rivers and lakes to be polluted by sewage or by not insisting upon laws to compel sanitary food, dwellings and travel. The physical body is the house of the doer and should become the temple of the Triune Self; into a physical body are solidified the four elements and the beings in them. Matter and beings travel in the body and are there affected by the conditions in which it exists and then are transformed, transmuted, etherealized and go back into the kingdoms of physical nature.
In a human body the four great spheres are together
and there they may be affected. In a human physical
body the Great Universe and all its many beings can be brought
together and focused. Therefore by sins against a human body, one’s
own or another’s, nature is more directly affected than by any other sins of man. Sins against the Triune Self are giving free rein to one’s desires and appetites, in disregard of what one senses or knows to be wrong. The desires may be for physical enjoyments, as overeating or laziness, or for psychic enjoyments, as sensuality or pleasure generally, or they may be for mental enjoyments as ambition, arrogance and selfishness generally.
There are sins against the thinker. They are the denial of the existence of the Light of the Intelligence, the intentional shutting out the Light so that one may remain in desired darkness. Then there are the sins against the doer of another. These are the encouragement or seduction or coercion of him to acts or indulgences that are sins against his Triune Self. Sins against the thinker of another are keeping him in darkness, shutting out the Light of his Intelligence for him, preventing him from reaching out for knowledge and generally seducing or forcing him to do or suffer sins against his own thinker, as by encouraging infantile belief, lying, perjury and otherwise acting against his conscience.
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VẬN HÀNH QUY LUẬT TƯ TƯỞNG
Một số tội lỗi này, chẳng hạn như thương tích và giết người,
cũng có thể được gây ra trực tiếp trên cơ thể của người khác. Tuy nhiên, nhiều
tội lỗi khác, sẽ đ̣i hỏi một kỷ luật nghiêm trọng và quả báo, được gây ra gián
tiếp trên cơ thể của người khác. Những tội lỗi như vậy là sản xuất hoặc buôn
bán thực phẩm và đồ uống bị pha tạp chất và chất ma tuư, tội thờ ơ hoặc tống
tiền gây ra nghèo đói, quá đông đúc, bệnh tật và sự khiếm nhă trong những ngôi
nhà khốn khổ, tội lỗi của những người chủ không cung cấp nơi làm việc an toàn
và vệ sinh, và người trả lương không đủ.
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