English
One of the most interesting among the many com- munications 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 con- flict 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 pre- eminently 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 130 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. moment of existence may be the product of predeter- mining influences. Each act may be—and necessarily is—surrounded, so to speak, with an interior atmos- phere of consciousness, the cloud of thought by which it is accompanied. In other words, an act is not exclu- sively 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 docs 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 pro- jection into objectivity as such a cause, it may be quali- fied 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 pro- gress, therefore, we are thus working out Karma, the causes set in motion by our last life, and determining FREE WILL AND KARMA. 131 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 quali- fication 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 cir- 132 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUI,. cumstance 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 ts 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 cir- cumstances 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 FREE WILL AND KARMA. 133 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 con- sciousness. 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 conscious- ness 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 com- mitted 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 134 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUI.. 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 neces- sities 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 indul- gence of circumstances have a good deal obscured the active sympathies which, in the former life, were pro- ductive 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.