CHAPTER 5: FREE WILL AND KARMA.The theories of Necessity and Free Will — Cleared up by Re-incarnation and Karma — The pressure of Karma on action — Concurrent freedom of thought — Bearing of this on the Karma of the act — Thought forces in connection with good acts — Dangers of a half comprehension of the law — Progress of emancipation from Necessity — Complications of inter-blended Karma — Readjustments — The Lords of Karma — Distribution of consciousness — The predestination idea.The general purpose of this work is to interpret the opportunities for spiritual progress lying before humanity. The nature of these opportunities is the first great revelation of occult science, and the prospects before us, if we are resolute enough to explore them, are the subject of the occult student's most eager study. Every phase of emotion and faith embraced in religion, if rightly understood, is in harmony with the theosophical exposition of the evolutionary task provided for us by the design of the world. We have traced in the great law of Re-incarnation the method employed by Nature in working out that design up to a certain point, and have seen how the Higher Self of each human unit is the permanent centre of consciousness which is in fact the Ego, and the final expression of every effort which it puts forth during the successive periods of its long struggle in incarnate life. We shall go on ultimately to endeavour, as far as it is possible, to do this from the point of view of consciousness reflected in a material organism, to realise the kind of existence towards which the Higher Self, strengthened and illuminated by accumulated knowledge and capacity, must strive if it would fulfil the loftiest potentialities of its Nature.
And the explanation will be fortified by a review of the traces in ancient and mediaeval history which show us, now that we have the key to their real meaning, how earlier generations of men were already bent upon the supreme task. But many side lights have to be thrown on the explanations already given before the sufficing character of the theosophic revelation can be entirely appreciated. And at this stage it may be convenient to deal with some metaphysical embarrassments which thinkers, trained in European schools of philosophy, will be apt very likely to regard as stumbling blocks in the way of the all-important doctrine on which the whole argument turns — that which recognises in the spontaneous Will of each individual the force which may direct his evolution into the right channel.
Although few European thinkers adopt in its naked simplicity the doctrine of fatalism, we find the essential idea of that doctrine firmly established in the theories of "necessity," which stand in time honoured antagonism to the doctrine of "free will." The arguments which make for each of these theories considered separately, are often regarded as so irrefragable that the paradox in these days is accepted as such more often than discussed. The conflict of Free Will and Necessity is hardly any longer an academical — rather a schoolboy theme for the exercise of wit, just as perpetual motion and the quadrature of the circle are problems left now to amuse juvenile engineers and mathematicians.
Reason out the matter how we like, each man feels within him that he has a liberty of choice between various courses of action at every step in his progress through life. Moreover, he not only feels this, but, as a reasonable being, if he has any faith in an ulterior destiny — whatever it may be — for the soul, he feels that human beings must have free will, or the notion of any spiritual consequences befalling them as a sequel to this life, is incompatible with the operation of justice as a law of Nature. If rewards and punishments are meted out to saints and sinners in accordance, not with their independent responsible acts in life, but in accordance with the way they were compelled to act by an overruling power which dictated every thought and movement of which they fancied themselves the authors — then, of course, such an overruling power would represent the principles of mockery and malignity, instead of justice and goodness.
On the other hand, the theory of Necessity is supported by an unbroken chain of logical reasoning. In its broadest aspects we all recognise it as a matter of course. We can all see that people born under conditions of extreme degradation, brought up in ignorance of all motives for right action and of all meritorious example, surrounded, as they grow, by every temptation, and educated in vice and crime, must take to such pursuits, like ducks to the water. Their evil deeds in the main are the outcome of moral influences as powerful as the forces of the storm and tide on the floating driftwood of the sea. So with the self-denial, and actively benevolent lives of others. The persons who lead such lives must, of course, trace their general character to the teaching and influences of their bringing up. They may feel — in accordance with the other view of the subject — that when they came to years of discretion, they exercised their own free will in applying to the opportunities of existence, the principle of deliberate choice, but many of the best among them have, as a matter of intellectual conviction, declared on the whole for Necessity as the only logical theory of life. There is no line to be drawn in Nature between important things that it is worth while for her laws to pay attention to, and others which are insignificant and fit to be left to chance. The earth's attraction operates equally on a microbe and a mastodon; and the chemical affinity that holds together the elements of the ocean is not permitted to neglect those of the smallest drop of dew. So argues the metaphysician with regard to human conduct. He is withheld from shooting the man who offends him by the influences that have been poured into his mind by his education, his observation of others, by reading, and reflection. The minor acts and abstinences of his life are in just the same way the product of moral causes working in his interior consciousness. He takes such and such a journey, let us say, because he has read such and such a book. He read the book because he had acquired certain habits of study. These were the product of previous influences, and so on. This kind of reasoning has, at all events, grasped one efficient principle. Cause and effect rule on the moral as well as the physical plane of Nature, and if the recognition of this is plainly at variance with the theory that human beings are responsible agents, the devotee of Necessity may sometimes say, "So much the worse for the general character of the Universe," or sometimes "the contradiction is a mystery which can only be elucidated, if at all, hereafter."
For some of us — yes — "hereafter" — a very distant hereafter — may be the only period at which we shall be qualified to fathom such mysteries. But the "hereafter " of one man may be the " now " of another, more advanced than himself in cosmic evolution. The conventional thinker is too apt to suppose that all human intelligence is waiting to bear him company in that progress which he may, perhaps, admit as a possibility of Nature, after he shall have passed on to other states of being. All phases of consciousness are co-existent if we take all planes of Nature into account together. Time and change are merely conducive to the advance of knowledge qua any given centre of consciousness localised at one point of space at the moment under consideration. If A B — any man of our generation — is destined, in the lapse of ages, to attain a condition of consciousness in which any given mystery of this period shall be made plain, assuredly Y Z in the progress of past ages, has already accomplished that amount of development. We are not necessarily bound to wait so long as is sometimes imagined for revelations that we may rightly conceive to be outside the reach of mere intellectual cogitation of the kind with which we are familiar. That which is known may sometimes be communicated — in a world which has many more avenues to its consciousness than the general multitude of its inhabitants are yet in the habit of using.
One of the most interesting among the many communications of such a nature that have enlarged the theosophical student's comprehension of spiritual science during the last few years, has related to the great metaphysical dead-lock represented by the conflict of Free Will and Necessity, and I now approach the occult solution of that old difficulty, not merely for the sake of its value as such, but because it is preeminently necessary to understand it, in order that no misleading conceptions of the Necessitarian may stand in the way of a full acceptance of the all-important truth that every human being holds the control of his own ultimate future in his own hands, however closely he may seem to the eye of exoteric reasoning bound down and hemmed in by the narrow limitations of circumstance.
To begin with, the dead-lock, as a mere logical dilemma, is loosened as soon as we apply to the apparent contradiction the law of Re-incarnation. As long as a human life is thought of as a complete operation of Nature, beginning at birth and ending at death, there will be no possible reconciliation for the opposing lines of argument which show first, that Free Will must be exerted — to leave room for justice in the conception of human affairs; and, secondly, that Necessity must be recognised, or we do violence to the uniformity of cause and effect. But when we remember that justice has more than one — a long series — of lives to work in, we see how it may operate, even though acts at each moment of existence may be the product of predetermining influences. Each act may be — and necessarily is — surrounded, so to speak, with an interior atmosphere of consciousness, the cloud of thought by which it is accompanied. In other words, an act is not exclusively to be estimated by the dead letter of the thing done — this may be done in one spirit or another. The interior consciousness may follow and emphasise the act, or hang back from it and in a measure resist it. And it will be plain that this interior consciousness — the product of the voice of conscience or the promptings of the Higher Self, blending with the habits of thought engendered by the incarnate will or lower self — may be regarded as entirely within the control of Free Will, even though the law of cause and effect may determine, by overmastering influences, the actual deed performed. Now Karma, the law of cause and effect on the spiritual plane in one of its aspects, assuredly does not leave out of account the spirit in which an act is performed, The act itself is a Karmic consequence of the sum total of influences bearing on that point of the life concerned, from the previous life of which it is the sequel. And it is necessarily also a cause of further consequences to ensue in the future. But at the moment of its projection into objectivity as such a cause, it may be qualified to an enormous extent by the concurrent thought, state of mind, or spirit with which it is associated. And the effect it will have on the next life is thus modified to a corresponding degree. At every step of our progress, therefore, we are thus working out Karma, the causes set in motion by our last life, and determining by the spirit in which we realise them, by the Free Will we apply at every step to the Necessity under which we act — the Karmic effect, of our acts on the conditions, welfare, happiness, and opportunities of our next life.
The law here defined may be illustrated by extreme cases. Let us assume first of all that some person under consideration is going through the current life under the influence of some terribly bad Karma in the last, which is not only productive of sorrow and suffering but of renewed offences against the purpose of Nature. Say in this way, it is within the "necessity" of the situation that he should commit some serious offence, against not merely the exalted dictates of ethics, but the plainest principles of right and wrong, of course he will never feel that he is an automaton as regards that act, nor if the crime is a serious one, can it be truly affirmed from any point of view that he is. A qualification must come into play here which I will explain directly, for in truth though the broad law is that our acts are dictated by Karma, there is room in the design of Nature for some lateral play of the forces concerned as regards action. But reserving the subject of this qualification let us for the moment assume the act to fall within the category of those which are Karmically inevitable.
Now the man has at all events Free Will as regards the cultivation of internal states of consciousness. Will any reader wish to interrupt me here and argue that the interior states of consciousness are as much the product of education, training, heredity and circumstance generally, as the acts performed? The answer would be very simple. That may be true as regards a man who has never come into contact with moral teaching, which is the first step towards theosophic enlightenment. But such a man is, indeed, far in the background of evolution, and even in his case the opportunities will come later — in later lives — which will bring him to the stage already reached by the man who is a moral agent. So we go back to the statement made above. The person in question is hurried by circumstance into the commission of his crime, but is a free agent in thinking about it. That is a part of his inalienable heritage as a human being with a higher self in the background and potentialities of Divine perfection. First, let us suppose he applies that Free Will in the same direction in which his bad Karma is operating. He commits his crime with ardour and fierce intensity of desire. He is glad he has done it, perhaps, and would do it again if the circumstances were placed before him again. He suffers no remorse; his Karmic career is going on with its old momentum. The Karmic effect, therefore, of his crime on the circumstances of his next life is appallingly intensified.
When that life comes on, the suffering attendant on his continued career of crime will probably force on his consciousness a distaste for all the experiences associated with that suffering — the crime included. So in the ultimate working of a penal Karma, the interior repentance is engendered which will have its Karmic effect in turn. And in this way we see how Nature tends back into the straight road, so to speak, in any case, even while her (unenlightened) children are perpetually straying off it. But let us now imagine that the man with whom we started, after having committed his crime, brings to play upon his reflections concerning it the Free Will of his own interior consciousness. Let us suppose that he has taken the first step towards the expansion of his moral nature, that he has seen fit to take a new departure, to cultivate higher aspirations than were present to his former life, to give in that way freer play within the consciousness of his lower self or personality, to the promptings and reflections of his Higher Self, previously almost shut out from his cognition. Still, it may be the evil legacy of his last incarnation is realised in the criminal act which the modern metaphysician would then regard as the inevitable outcome of early training, circumstance, and so forth. He has no sooner committed the evil act, than the rush of interior sensation, due to the fact that his lower consciousness is now partly open to the influence of the spiritual plane, is overwhelming. He is horror-stricken at what he has done, borne down with remorse. Every subsequent event in life may be coloured by this terrible emotion; the suffering through which he passes during this period may be greater even than that through which he would have passed if he had for the moment been making worse Karma, still on his old bad road. But bad as his momentary condition may be, he is all the while closing that formidable account, closing it in the tribulation that is inevitable under the circumstances one way or the other, but no doubt is less that way than if it were propagated as a persistent force through the ages.
According to whether the crime is thus committed in the one spirit or the other, the next life is altogether different. Free Will is realised in the conditions and opportunities it presents to the being concerned, even though he may be bound perforce to the necessity inherited from the past.
In just the same way, mutatis mutandis, we can apply the law under examination to the Karmic necessities of a good life, and the varying effect of a persistent spirit co-operating with their tendency, or on the other hand retarding and weakening them. It is in the Karmic necessity of the case, with some given person let us assume, to accomplish some great work of charity and benevolence. The good Karma of his previous life has drifted him into the pleasant and influential position in which he is enabled to design this and carry it out. Well, it may be that the charm and soft indulgence of circumstances have a good deal obscured the active sympathies which, in the former life, were productive of the good Karma. The man performs his act of charity — little realising that it is simply the behest of his former personality — but performs it perhaps with some interior hesitation and grudging. He is not at all sure in his own mind afterwards that the objects of his beneficence deserved the good things he has secured for them. He feels as if he has been too good-natured, and so forth, and that after what he has done, no one can blame him for thinking of himself and his own enjoyment for a change. Here the stream of Karmic influence is stopped again. The man in question will not be troubled with having to accomplish noble deeds in his next life, nor embarrassed, it may be, with the power and influence required for this accomplishment. Whereas if, on the other hand, the life under notice had been as well filled with lofty emotions as its predecessor, if the seductive circumstances had been held in subordination to the continuous spiritual effort begun in the former life, the man would have been carried far on along the path to ulterior perfection, and the cumulative effort of good Karma in successive lives might have given rise to some very far-reaching results.
Between the two extreme cases put forward, there is room, 6i course, for an infinitely varying operation of the same law on minor conditions of good and evil. Always, however, the same result will be seen emerging from all the complexities that might be imagined. We are — however little we can realise that state of the facts in our physical consciousness — the heirs of our last life's Karma, the obedient progeny of its complicated impulses. But we have never parted company with the Free Will, the use of which in the past has given rise to those impulses. We can apply it to the cultivation of beneficent or maleficent states of mind in the current life, and so accordingly will the Karmic account of that life work out.
I can imagine an objection raised against this view of the subject on the ground that it is a dangerous doctrine. It will be held by some people to lend too powerful a support to the theory of Necessity, by clearing away the apparent absurdities which, in spite of its logical character, stood in the way of its acceptance. People will say, if our acts are dictated by an irresistible force, it is useless to struggle against them. And perhaps a very imperfect grasp of the doctrine here defined might be demoralising rather than beneficial. But this is only one of the many cases in which the exposition of occult laws is more or less ethically dangerous. With enlarged wisdom and knowledge, comes enlarged responsibility, and an occult truth half understood may indeed be a perilous possession. But in the present case it is, at all events, easy to point out one consideration which militates against the notion that the doctrine of Necessity in Act, Free Will in Spirit, must tend to make people drift into evil and give way without an effort to temptation. Even though the accomplished act, whatever it may have been, may have been inevitable, no contemplated act can ever be assigned to that category up to the moment of its accomplishment, it may be that it belongs to the group of acts which we are destined to avoid ! It would require a far greater degree of occult advancement than is embodied in an intellectual appreciation of the law under review, to help us in all cases beforehand to a knowledge as to what acts are decreed by the Karma of the past, and which are empty suggestions of the imagination. When that sublime foresight shall have been attained, we shall probably with it have attained to other characteristics that may enable us to bear the weight of increased responsibility and power. Of course, the only way in which we can deliberately apply the right spirit to the events of a current life in which we "will" to elevate our destinies — to extinguish bad Karma in the past and accomplish spiritual progress — is by working on the hypothesis that we are free as to the acts. Nature has prescribed that hypothesis for our guidance by implanting so fixedly in our consciousness the feeling that we are free as to act. And here we revert to the "qualification" I spoke of a few pages back.
Within limits, we of the present stage of human evolution are not bound by Kartnic necessity to acts with such a rigid destiny as to deprive us altogether of Free Will as regards them. Will any one suppose that there is going to be something loose here in the chain of occult reasoning, a flaw in the great system of cause and effect? On the contrary, there is merely a beautiful adaptation of minor to higher laws. Gradually, very gradually, the whole world, "and all that it inhabits," is moving on to higher conditions of being in which continued evolution must be blended with the exercise of their own spiritual will by all who share it. It is a law of Karma — of the Karma we are now talking about, that of physical life — that the perfected Arhat gets above its operation. This is no legal quibble like the saying that the sovereign can do no wrong, but is simply another way of saying that a man does not become an Arhat till the temptations of the ordinary physical life have quite ceased to be temptations for him. He has got beyond the hopes and fears of physical life. His existence in the body is merely an inconvenient phase of his everyday existence out of the body. He keeps it going for duty's sake alone, and for no other conceivable or possible motive, and he is as likely — or shall we say less likely — to sin on the physical plane than a grown man with us is likely to cry and beat the table if he accidentally hurts his hand against it.
Very well; that being so as regards the extreme case of the Arhat, there is clearly no Karma left binding him to physical acts. But Nature always shades her varieties of condition one into another like the rainbow's tints. The man partially developed in the direction of arhatship is already partially exempt from the tyranny of Karma as regards his acts. His Free Will is becoming a more potent force in his life than it is in the case of the man whom it can merely influence through his interior states of mind. And at the present stage of human evolution that we have reached as a body, we human beings of the "nineteenth century," or as the occultist would prefer to put it, of the fifth race, have all of us, broadly speaking, passed the stage at which we are mere automata in the hands of Karma as regards our acts. It would not be true, for instance, to say at the present day that any man in a civilised country is under Karmic obligations to commit a murder. He may be under Karmic suggestion in that direction, but unless we can find a man whose education and training have been such that it has never been suggested to his mind that committing murder is wrong, then we may fairly deny that anyone is under Karmic pressure so unbending as to make him a mere instrument in respect to such an act as that. Observe, of course, that in speaking here of " murder " I mean the wilful murder which really involves the intention, and I am not noticing any crude distinctions made by legal enactments.
So with any of the very great crimes against duty, whether they come within the catalogue of human codes or not. The least enlightened of us are at least beginning to be responsible beings.
In most branches of science, and in occult science especially, the solution of one problem will often suggest others with which we may not previously have been in relation. So it may be well here at once to deal with a difficulty that will be sure to occur sooner or later to anyone who thinks over the limited Free Will, even as regards acts, which is assigned by occult teaching to people of the present race.
All of us are in very close relations on this plane of life with one another. Perhaps, indeed, on all planes, and on others more even than here; but at all events the manner in which our acts influence one another is obvious. So obvious as to make loose thinkers recoil from the notion of anything resembling predetermination in the course of events. If A robs B he may alter the whole course of B's life. If A has Free Will whether to rob B or not, how can B's Karma be correctly worked out? And so on ad infinitum, with small acts and events as well as great ones. Indeed, the mightiest events in our lives often ensue from acts on the part of others that look quite insignificant at the time. Where are we to draw the line in any scientific spirit? Human affairs are so intensely entangled that it looks as though we must say — all or nothing, either every act, to the smallest, must be automatic and inevitable, or there is no prearranged course of events and no regular working out of Karma at all. But there is a way of drawing the line which becomes intelligible in the light of some further revelations. These are so subtle that I must approach them gradually.
When we talk about the laws of Nature being the will of God we use language with which few European thinkers will quarrel. Even materialism, if not absolutely atheistic, might let the phrase pass. Religious instinct will cling to it as a mode of bringing the incontrovertible facts of physical science into harmony with theological ideas. But those beautiful generalities are never completely satisfactory to the occult student. He wants some closer interpretation of the spiritual facts. When two chemical salts are mingled in solution, and thereupon the acids and bases change hands and group themselves into a new arrangement of molecules, is the will of. God consciously ordaining that change? On the other hand, if a nebula of fire mist come under the conditions that convert it into a system of planets teeming with life, with joy and suffering, with lofty human aspiration, and with evil tendencies, with love and hatred, and so on, can we suppose that the will of God, if producing this result, is unconscious of it? The double problem lies in the region respectfully put aside as inscrutable in most cases. But the inscrutability only ensues from the pestilential touch of modern thinking, which will only concern itself with God in the cosmic sense if it transcends the narrowest observation of the physical facts of this world at all. It is only occult teaching that introduces us to the links between humanity and absolute universal spirit — the cosmic God.
We are coming into relations at this stage of the explanation with one of the sublimest mysteries of the spiritual plane, and I hope my readers will deal with the subject, and think of it, in an appropriate attitude of mind. But the fact is as I have just foreshadowed. Just as there are, undoubtedly, men far more highly endowed or evolved, both as regards goodness and power and faculty, than the generality of those around us, so in Nature and in relation with this world there are spiritual beings of again far more exalted attributes. And the direct influence on the affairs of the world of some among these beings is a profound and wonderful truth. Of such beings we can obviously know but little beyond the fact that they exist, and beyond the obvious logical necessity for their existence in the great hierarchy of consciousness — of individualised spirit. But in the fact of their existence we may begin to discern the real truth at the bottom of the somewhat distorted popular conceptions concerning the providential government of the world.
How far these spiritual Lords of Creation are directly concerned with carrying out the cosmic will in regard to those great uniformities of Nature which constitute the laws of matter, is a question we need not here investigate, but it is at once intelligible that they should direct with conscious intention the marvellous concatenation of events which constitute the laws of Karma. Of course, the ordinary mind is aghast at the complexity of the problems to be dealt with, but physical science teaches us not to shrink from complexity as tantamount to improbability in our interpretations of Nature. The laws of the spiritual plane are not likely to be less complex than those of matter and multiplex telegraphy — not to seek for still more powerful illustrations in the laws of optics — will suffice to warn us not to reject as inconceivable activities in Nature that the human mind cannot imagine itself as following consciously in detail.
At all events, the differences that exist between the laws of physical matter and the mysteries of human consciousness suggest, as an analogy, some different mode in which universal spirit should control the laws of matter and the incidents of life, which contribute to make up the justice of Karma. Somehow we may think of the former as provided for by some stupendous exercise of Creation or Divine Will in advance, so to speak, of the human drama to be enacted on that stage. Then, when the human drama begins, we may think of that Divine Will as focussed in some sort of exalted individual consciousness or consciousnesses, but scarcely less omnipresent than the other or fundamental stratum of the Divine Will. The problem, as a metaphysical problem for the human mind contemplating it, is a problem in the distribution of consciousness. The terrible limitations of the physical organism as an instrument of thought are such that, broadly speaking, an incarnate man is only able to think of one thing at a time. With practice, indeed, I believe that on the very threshold of that great process of evolution, which occultists call initiation, it is found that these limitations are not so rigid as most people think, and that it is possible to keep up more than one continuous train of thought simultaneously — and by that, of course, I mean something more than the power of jumping rapidly backwards and forwards among various trains of thought and recollecting each in turn, after the manner of a chess-player engaged on several games of chess at once. The distribution of consciousness required for a being conscious, so to speak — in Divinity — and concerned with the control of Karma, is, again, something as transcendently greater than this simplest distribution, in degree, as the rapidity, for example of light waves counted by billions per second is greater than the rapidity of a pianoforte player's execution. But from the power of thinking of two things at once to the power of thinking of two million would only be a question of degree. To recognise the conceivability of the higher achievement is logically possible for the understanding. And this is all we have to recognise, in order to bring within the range of imagination the Karmic government of the world, as providing for the lateral play of individual Free Will. Any of us may now and then disturb the pre-existing Karmic plan with which, so far, we had been entangled. Let it be assumed, for example, that it lay within the Karma of A and B that they should be ruined and made to suffer much material discomfort by the (probable) act of C. But C has developed a moral sense, out-running that of his previous incarnation by the exercise of his spiritual Free yfill, and he misses his appointment with Karma, to put it that way. Then other arrangements have to be made, and A and B are provided with the suffering due in some other manner, and a great number of minor adjustments have to be carried out accordingly. But this is only a question of adequate capacity on the part of the governing power, and our hypothesis — or rather, the esoteric teaching concerning the actual state of the facts — recognises that adequate capacity as existing in the " Providences " of the world.
The principle I have been endeavouring to explain in regard to the lateral play of Free Will during each physical life may be further elucidated with the help of a diagram (p. 144).
In this figure the centre line A B represents the general direction of evolution for the race at large, and the small parallelograms represent a few individual lives. Taking the life a first, its place on the centre line shows that the Karmic impulses from the previous incarnation are in accordance with the normal tendency of the age. But the privilege of partial Free Will, which the person whose life is in question enjoys, enables him to modify the tendency of his individual evolution either to the right or the left, to the extent shown by the dotted lines. He cannot modify that tendency more than is shown by the dotted lines, for he is hemmed in by the limitations of Karma and circumstance, in so far as the side lines of his parallelogram restrain the divergence. Let us assume that the direction to the right is towards spiritual good — that to the left, towards spiritual evil. If the individual concerned makes the necessary efforts during the life, represented by a his next incarnation has a general Karmic tendency in the direction of the centre line of the life b. Supposing, again, efforts in the direction of the better spirituality determine a further inclination of the centre line of life towards the right, then the third life of the series will be in the direction of c. And it will be obvious that a few more lives of similar effort will finally establish the centre line of the life at right angles to the original centre line — as in the case of the parallelogram h, which may be taken to represent complete adeptship in harmony with the Divine idea of absolute good.
But at every step of the process the Free Will of the individual is an uncontrolled agency in the matter, and it will be always possible before the complete perfection of the h life is attained that the individual in question may swerve in the wrong direction. Thus the energies of the life c may be misdirected, and give rise to a subsequent incarnation in the direction d, and one more wrong swerve in that case would bring back the Ego into the original main current of commonplace evolution. At any stage of his progress along that centre line an evil swerve will take him in the left-hand direction, and determine a new life with its predominant bent towards evil, as in the case marked f. And persistence in the evil tendency will, in a few lives, establish the Ego on the horizontal centre line in the left hand direction, which may be taken to represent the course of absolute evil, which, like that of absolute good, disentangles an Ego from the main current of evolution altogether, under conditions dealt with in theosophical teaching.
It will be seen that the general probability in regard to a great majority of lives — considering the complex tendencies of human nature — will be such that most Egos will swerve now to the right and now to the left in such a way that they continue in the main current of evolution. But to make the diagram a little more significant, we may suppose that the main centre line, A B, is not a straight line, but the arc of an enormous circle bending towards the right, so that in the great procession of the ages the great majority will be slowly borne round towards the direction of good — this tendency representing that general preponderance in the long run of the principle of good as compared with the principle of evil, nearly balanced as they often seem to be if we take short views of human affairs. And yet another modification might be introduced into the figure, with which I have not thought it worth while to embarrass the drawing, which should give a somewhat greater breadth to each parallelogram as it swerves from the main centre line in either direction representing the increased efficiency of individual Free Will as the Ego inclines more towards spirituality of either sort. This would hasten the possibility of attaining the completely horizontal position as compared with the rate of progress that would be available if the more spiritualised lives were as narrowly hemmed in by the walls of Karma and circumstance as those on the normal centre line.
I hope it will not be supposed that in the arbitrary length and breadth I have assigned to the parallelograms in the foregoing diagram I have been endeavouring to indicate the extent to which Free Will is a potent factor in determining the events of our lives. Perhaps if we correlated the figure with events alone, the lateral dimensions would have to be much narrower. But reason about Necessity however much we please, even with the light of the present occult interpretation to fortify the conception, we shall always, when the strain of action comes on, proceed on the practical assumption that we have a liberty of choice before us. And there is not much danger for any one with intuitions sufficiently awake to take in the full significance of the occult interpretation, of his taking, as it were, an unfair advantage of his intellectual knowledge of the occult law. Should any one argue after any given surrender to temptation, " Now the thing is done, and therefore it could not have been left undone, and it is useless to make a fuss about it," then the answer would be that the application of such a feeling, state of consciousness, or spirit, to the Karmic result just accomplished would be the very worst possible spirit in which it could be enveloped for its transmission through future ages as a new Karmic force.
It must be remembered, after all is said that can be said about the lateral play of Free Will as regards acts, that the law concerned is mainly related to thought in reference to acts. For the last few pages I have been dealing with an all-important qualification of the main rule, but let us now revert to the consideration of the main rule, always keeping the qualification at the back of our minds, but treating the extent to which Free Will can make the centre line of evolution swerve to the right or left as having chiefly to do with the manner in which we surround the acts of our lives with a Karmic aura imposed on them by our thoughts.
Rightly appreciated, the whole doctrine laid down should tend to elevate and dignify life. It exalts, to begin with, the importance of thought regarded in itself as a force in Nature. Too often people imagine that thought is a casual and unimportant concomitant of acts. Take care of the acts, and the thoughts will take care of themselves, may be a view of the subject that many people will consider to embody a sufficiently heavy tax upon the good aspirations of a fallible humanity. That we may be somehow held responsible for what we do, may be admitted, but our thoughts, it may be argued, are beyond our own control. The lessons of esoteric philosophy are directly at variance with that popular delusion. Our thoughts are by no means beyond our own control, and for them, in a very high degree, we shall be "held responsible," to use a familiar phrase, which can easily be thrown into a more philosophical form.
A very crude and imperfect idea, which points the same way as the doctrine here laid down, is embodied in the frequently-expressed theory that after all " motive " is the great thing; that people may perform the most mischievous acts and yet be blameless in the sight of Providence if they do whatever they do from a good motive. That notion is only to be recognised as sound, in so far as it contains the germ of the far more subtle idea that the Karmic efficiency of acts is greatly qualified by the spirit in which they are performed. It is in its straightforward meaning both incomplete and false, as far as it goes. A good motive will not extinguish the Karma of a bad act any more than a previous belief that a piece of iron you may touch is cold will prevent it from burning you if it is really hot. The act done will reverberate through time and produce its consequences, and if these are evil, they will sometimes, under the infallible operation of the Karmic law, react on their author. Motive may qualify their Karmic effect certainly, but if an act be evil, good motive may simply operate to blind the agent to its evil character, to prevent the development in his mind of the thoughts which bring with them remorse for the evil act, and hence the extinction of the Karma of the act. The tendency to repeat such acts, on the contrary, would be established in the mind, and that line of Karma would be intensified till in later lives it developed, perhaps, to a terrible degree the suffering which such a line of action would be calculated to produce. Moreover, when people talk about good motives excusing bad acts, they speak without regard to the complexities of old Karma, which really produce the acts. They treat them as an altogether fresh departure, which a more philosophical comprehension of the matter shows us that they are not. Of course it is needless to grant that a man who does a bad act from a bad motive is worse than another who does a bad act from a good motive, and up to a certain point the good motive doctrine may be better than none for unphilosophical thinkers. But it is a doctrine that will not carry any one very far on the road to a true conception of ethics, and, above all, it contributes nothing whatever to the elucidation of the mystery concerning Free Will and Necessity, which the corresponding occult doctrine so satisfactorily furnishes.
With that profound reflection before us, it may be worth while to look back at the pitiable shifts by which a corrupt theology and a conventional system of metaphysics — ignoring the sequence of continuous earth lives — have endeavoured to grapple with the plain contradictions of Free Will and Necessity, applied to the one life. The Articles of Religion, for instance, of the Church of England, inform us — in the interests of the necessitarian theory — that "Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation as vessels made to honour," — certain other vessels in large number being accordingly made to dishonour, and provided for in a very different way. The chosen people "by grace obey the calling," and walk religiously in good works. This, of course, is a naked statement so far of the necessity which makes of men the automata of a Deity who would, by that hypothesis, have decided before the foundations of the world were laid, to carry it on on principles revolting to the moral sense. But though the Articles may not hesitate to libel Divinity, they are quite ready to contradict themselves, and leave their disciples to take which meaning they prefer. So the article containing the words just quoted ends by saying that "we must," after all, "receive God's promises in such wise as they may be generally set forth to us in Holy Scriptures." Inasmuch as Holy Scriptures leave room for many readings, the adherents of Free Will and justice, as a principle of Divine government, are thus empowered to accept the article set forth if they so please, not in the sense the words convey, but as meaning diametrically the reverse. A is B; that is the doctrine of the Church, but at the same time, if you think that A is not B, then you may work it out that way, and remain, nevertheless, a faithful believer of the Church's doctrine. This is as though one should teach geometry by saying the three angles of a triangle were made to equal four right angles before even the foundations of the earth were laid; but, nevertheless, these facts may be received if you are obstinate about them, subject to the general conclusions derived from the study of Euclid; and with this reflection to ease your mind, please go on saying, whenever you talk of such things, that four is the proper number for good people to put their faith in.
Metaphysicians hardly deal with the subject more logically than the church, Materialistic philosophy would, as a rule, plump for "uniformity," a pleasanter word than necessity or predestination, but meaning exactly the same thing in this concatenation. Free Will then goes irretrievably overboard, and with it justice in the government of the world and all conjectures concerning consciousness prolonged beyond the grave. The Materialist and the Calvinist join hands in this matter, and there may not be much to choose between the view of the school which makes Divinity a myth and the soul an attribute of matter, on the one hand, and on the other that which recognises a God only to invest Him with moral attributes that would disgrace the most degraded manhood. However, both the Materialist and the Calvinist are so far logical; that may be granted to them. On the other hand, the reasoners who cling to Free Will — never suspecting that it may exist, and exist with complete efficiency even if generally incapable of controlling acts — try to work it out by saying the emotions of mind have a uniform efficacy as motives; but independently of the attributes of mind, there is the substance thereof to be considered, the actual Self or Ego which is exempt from the conditions that attach to its attributes. This ultimate personality is free and independent, and a self-determining power of action, independent of external causes, resides therein. That is almost as much as saying that the height of a tree may be twenty feet, but that is the measure of its height and not the measure of the tree. Assuredly the Self or Ego is a very different thing from the attributes it manifests during any one earth life, but while it is in that earth life, you can no more deal with it for the purposes of its relations with earth — as something apart from the sum total of its attributes — than you can deal, on the physical plane, with Berkeley's orange apart from the sum total of its size, colour, weight, shape, &c.
There is a something in the Ego which has touch with the physical plane, but is not of it, and which is exempt from the "Uniformities" spoken of by the old disputants concerning Free Will and Necessity. This something is the thought of the Ego, its own interior spiritual aspect which has direct relation to its acts, but does not constitute act, and therefore does not come — or, at all events, does not come entirely — within the operation of the Karmic forces which make up the influences under which the doctrine of uniformity is supposed to operate. It is free at any time, and always to appeal to its own Divine fountain-head to review the acts to which it has found itself driven, in the light of its own Divine consciousness; to reach out towards future acts that may better express the Divine purpose (which it may, if it so choose, become a co-operative agent in carrying out), and very often in so reaching it may discover as the future unrolls itself, that the Karmic forces of the past are asserting themselves in the same direction, and that the Free Will of its ennobled desire has a plain pathway before it, no longer encumbered by the obstacles that have hitherto created such terrible trouble — or it may find them, for that matter, strewn all the thicker in the way, and may only realise that they can be passed, however painful the process.
The great point to emphasise is that the recognition of this interior freedom, which is in scientific and complete harmony with the whole view of Nature prescribed by the Esoteric Teaching, has the effect, among others, of accomplishing what has hitherto been regarded as a problem no less insoluble than the squaring of the circle — the reconciliation of Free Will and Necessity.