The Law of Unity
All Life Is a Unity
”Consciousness development is the meaning of life, and its condition is brotherhood.”
Life is unity, for all belong ultimately to the whole. All monads make up a unity (like the water drops of the ocean), since they together make up the cosmic total consciousness in which every individual shares. The condition of reaching higher kingdoms is to become ever more conscious of an ever increasing part of this total consciousness. Anyone who has reached the highest divine kingdom has incorporated this total consciousness with his individual consciousness, has become one with the whole cosmos.
Every monad is a part of the cosmic total consciousness, a part of the whole that can never be lost. To exclude anybody from the universal brotherhood in any natural kingdom is to evince ignorance of life.
To the law of unity belongs the insight that you get that help from life which life can give you when you live for unity and not for yourself. That is the insight affording trust in life, a thing not granted to anyone who places himself outside.
“We are all one.” “Life is a unity.” All have an unlosable share in the cosmic total consciousness, the consciousness of community, whether they know it or not. Another side, however, is that we do not have a greater share in the common consciousness than the one we are conscious of, a participation that increases gradually until we have reached omniscience in the cosmos.
Even when the monad has attained the highest divine kingdom and the highest world in the cosmos, the monad senses its relative insignificance in the innumerable mass of individuals who have, as it has, reached their final goal. The greatness of the monad is in that it is one with all. The monad owes everything to unity.
Abiding happiness is possible only through participation in universal harmony where every individual plays his instrument together with the others in the cosmic orchestra.
Consciousness development is the meaning of life, and its condition is brotherhood. All exist in order to help each other, all in lower and higher kingdoms.
Collective consciousness is something that has been but little considered hitherto. But the individual must learn how to work with this consciousness in order to acquire telepathy and continuity of consciousness. The “will to unity” is the strongest power in man’s life and the one that “develops” him in the most rapid way.
Mankind is a collective. Those who want to be saved should discover the collective and work for the salvation of the collective. Those who forget their own salvation for that of others demonstrate that they are fit to work for evolution and get opportunities to do so. That is the simple secret of discipleship and joining a higher kingdom.
We always belong to a “group”: nation, family, circle of friends, colleagues, audience, etc. These make up visible groups in the physical world. We belong to many kinds of groups in the emotional, mental, causal worlds. Loneliness is an illusion and should not be confused with physical isolation.
The path to universal brotherhood goes through the significance of the group. This gradually increases our understanding of the significance of the community and our desire to join ever larger groups. This also widens the understanding of the concepts of right and wrong by making us ask ourselves: Will this action of mine benefit or harm the group, strengthen the community?
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, The Laws of Life, The Law of Unity www.laurency.com
The Will to Unity
”The will to unity, the striving for unity, is, the essential thing and what makes us progress most quickly.”
Higher kingdoms work concertedly for the cosmic evolution, the goal of which is the omniscience and omnipotence of all monads.
More and more people realize that individual egoism does not pay. But they are still blind to the fact that the law also applies to group, class, and national egoism.
Humanity is the dharma of mankind. And humanity is humanism, is universal brother-hood, is community, is unity.
The will to unity, the striving for unity, is the essential thing and what makes us progress most quickly. It appears in the physical as well as in the emotional and the mental. At the present stage of mankind’s development, loving understanding is incomparably more important than unity in views. Whatever view we hold, it is something that continually changes as our experience of life increases, and it may be regarded as unimportant in comparison with our relations to people. We do not help others by our intellect but by understanding. It is sympathy that all people need, even though they do not know it. That also makes our own life incomparably richer. “To him who gives will be given.” And nowhere does this appear more clearly than in the matter of sympathy.
People must learn to find each other, to disregard the variety of views and conceptions. The unifying bond is the welfare of mankind, the welfare of all. Those who do not wish to participate in that work lack that will to unity which pulls down the walls that men have built between themselves. There can never be any peace until men have learnt not to infringe the equal right of all to the same inviolable freedom. The right to the freedom granted by the Law is the condition for peace, the condition for unity.
At present, the most important thing is to fight hatred in all its countless manifestations, to teach people to live in peace with each other, to counteract gossip which always turns into slander and strengthens repulsion, and to teach people to look on each other as fellow wanderers on the path, the same path that all must walk with all its mistakes that all must make in order to learn. To make life more difficult for others is to make it more difficult for ourselves in life after life. If you can see the limitation of another with all the difficult problems he has to wrestle with, then you want to do whatever you can to help his self in its life struggle. In so doing you also help others and have the most valuable experiences you can have yourself, which also makes you progress most swiftly.
We are all one in our common striving towards the final goal. This is the striving that is the truly essential work. Everybody has his physical, emotional, and mental needs according to the experience he has acquired. Only ignorance blames others for their needs of experience. Only ignorance tries to force his view of life on others. Everybody has to acquire by himself fall the prerequisites for insight and understanding and the ability to apply the laws of life. When men have seen this, they will let everybody keep his own world view and life view corresponding to his level of development.
Unity is always the one essential thing. The “will to unity” is not enough in itself but only along with the realization of unity. And it must be unity according to the Law and not as a result of a compromise, to say nothing of that unity which the tyrant forces on people.
Whatever mankind unites to achieve will be achieved. Emotional will is, at the present stage of mankind’s development, the strongest power, and unity makes it irresistible, works “miracles”.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, The Law, The Law of Unity www.laurency.com
Attraction
”Without attraction the stage of unity will not be reached.”
The attraction of the higher emotional stage manifests itself in the spontaneous, impersonal affection, in the desire to help others to the extent you can and in ways that really benefit, in helping others to help themselves. Everybody has his problems, and the desire to help discovers by daily exercise and experience more and more of those difficulties with which everybody is harassed. The sincerity of our striving for unity, our will to unity, appears above all in our sense of personal responsibility for everybody. The more we grow into unity, the more the sphere of this personal responsibility expands, so that it does not include only our family and friends but also our tasks, our nation, and mankind. The knowledge of the laws of life puts an end to the talk about the insignificance of the individual. It is not for us to decide whether our contribution “is of any use”. The most insignificant part of a machinery has a function to perform. We are all cogs in the machinery of evolution. You could even say that a man’s greatness is in his sense of responsibility for everything that is and happens. Lack of the sense of responsibility is the sign of life-ignorance.
Just as the cosmic total consciousness, the common collective consciousness of all, is the primary factor and the condition of existence, so the individual is important only as being a part of the whole, a part of unity. When the individual can see this and realizes that insight, then he is ready for the fifth natural kingdom. An isolated individual who has broken away from unity has no possibility of development, will never reach the common goal of us all, omniscience of everybody in which also omnipotence inheres.
The stage of the mystic above all implies acquisition of the qualities of attraction. For the animals, acquisition of devotion is the highest stage, being the intermediate stage before their transition to the human kingdom. For man, the stage of the mystic forebodes transition from the emotional to the mental stage. Man has a need of loving somebody other than himself. He creates a god (or takes over the ideas of others), doubly valuable since it liberates him from fear (anguish before life). At the mental stage this need falls away and is superseded by trust in law, later also by trust in self and trust in life when he has got knowledge of life. Then he sees the togetherness of all life, and that he must direct his emotions towards men and all life instead of towards god. Without this attraction in crescendo (since item braces more and more individuals), the stage of unity will not be reached. The fictitious concept of god is replaced by reality concepts: the planetary hierarchy and the planetary government (thus no concepts of personality).
It is in the very nature of unity that everything in the matter of judging is absolutely precluded.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, The Law, The Law of Unity www.laurency.com
Service
”It is not a matter of ‘I am going to help’. There is somebody who needs help through me.”
All make up a unity, all are brothers. But this does not mean that all are found at the same stage of development. Development consists of a seemingly endless series of levels of development.
Even if we are found at different stages of development, we are all on the path, whether we know it or not, all in the same kingdom. And that is the insight we must apply in our view of mankind, if we will have any prospects of reaching the next higher kingdom, where nobody compares stages but everybody just wants to help everybody, wherever he stands. By helping others we acquire the essential qualities that enable us to enter the world of unity.
According to the law of unity, those on higher levels have to help those on lower levels. We all need help. Anyone who does not want to help has no “right” to receive help.
Often it is difficult to decide how to act, to understand right, to make the right decisions. Most important of all is to eliminate selfishness and to become independent of one’s own likes and dislikes and consideration of one’s own happiness. Whenever “self” enters into the matter it distorts everything.
It is not a matter of “I am going to help”. There is somebody who needs help through me. And that is an essential difference. I am the instrument. Whenever self enters into the matter it spoils everything, more or less so, and grows more and more important and so less and less useful. So subtle is self-deception that you may think you are important because you are an instrument. In unity there is no “self”. Self destroys unity, separates from unity. It is this impersonal self that man has such difficulty in acquiring.
Skill in action is always needed, skill in emotional reaction is necessary. Loving people is the condition of helping them. But that love binds neither them nor yourself. Only the man who is free can truly love.
In respect of research, life is a never-ending series of problems of reality through ever higher worlds and kingdoms in nature. It is characteristic that the pertaining problems cannot be solved theoretically but only practically. It is true that you must get to know the facts of existence. But in addition understanding is required and you gain that only by living the life. It is in life that you find the solution, see the solution, not through pondering and speculation. The solution is spontaneous, like a revelation, when you live in unity and for unity. That is the meaning of the ancient saying “love solves all problems”.
Service is a difficult art. It is very difficult to serve in the right way. By serving others you can do more evil than good. You shall not serve evil, and you may do that by serving without discrimination. The important thing is not to satisfy egoism, not to allow yourself to be exploited, not to yield to claims.
We have a duty to resist evil. Else we abandon life to the power of evil.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, The Law, The Law of Unity www.laurency.com
Love
”Without love everything else is nothing! So great is love and so insignificant is everything else in comparison.
A misused word is “love”, which can mean anything from the most fleeting sympathy to absolute unity with all life. People also love food.
We cannot love all equally much. We love our friends more than strangers or enemies. There are degrees of everything. Anyone who says he loves all equally much lacks self-knowledge in that instance, unless he means: all equally little.
By experiencing unity with some individual or group we learn to transfer this faculty of attraction to more and more until it is extended to everyone we meet.
We need something to admire and to love. Seek the star everywhere, and eventually everything will be nothing but sunshine! Manifoldness is absorbed into unity. By worshipping one we learn to worship more and more. By worshipping we become one with all. By worshipping everything we become masters of everything.
We must have feelings, strong feeling of attractive power. Else we cannot develop, cannot ennoble, raise our emotional vibrations. Only those who are able to love can be loved in their turn. Only those who are able to accept love are able to love.
We know that the Great Ones love us. It is not difficult to love Them back.
Love is unity, community, the affinity of souls, togetherness, admiration, affection, sympathy.
“Tenderness, sympathy, and self-sacrifice are the consummation of love.”
Love is the community of souls and abides forever. Nothing can separate those who love in order to serve. There is in the entire universe no separation whatsoever between those who live for unity.
Without love everything else is nothing! So great is love and so insignificant is everything else in comparison.
The eyes of love are not blind. But they see in another way. That vision must be acquired.
Love thinks no evil. Love is the consummation of the law.
Madame de Staël’s winged words, “to understand everything is to forgive everything”, have been criticized by many. It all depends on what you mean by understanding and forgiving.
Those who have taken their stand under the law of unity have nothing to forgive. All hatred directed towards them affects unity with special consequences.
To forgive is to forget. It is not enough to merely desist from retaliation, grudge, or hatred.
“It is not by the intellect you teach others to understand but by love and understanding.”
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, The Law, The Law of Unity www.laurency.com
Marriage
”The better possibilities man and wife have of understanding everything in their life together, the better prospects for a happy marriage they have.”
Marriage is a psychological issue much more than a purely physical one. We human beings do not have just physical needs but as important emotional needs, and cultural individuals mental needs as well. In all life together the most important thing is to avoid frictions. The greater the differences between the parties in various respects, the bigger and the more frequent their collisions. If they have no understanding of each other, everything will fail. Those are wise who see to it that the prospects of understanding are as great as possible and the risk of conflicts is reduced to a minimum.
How different would marriages be if the parties had some knowledge of mankind’s various stages of development and understood that by human love is meant physical, emotional, and mental attraction? Children grown up under similar social and cultural conditions have the best prospects of understanding each other. The better possibilities man and wife have of understanding everything in their life together, the better prospects for a happy marriage they have. The greater the differences between them in worldview and life view, in their outlook on all human problems, the greater is the risk of disharmony in marriage.
We should not marry for egoistic reasons but in order to serve, to help one another to live in harmony and with the least possible friction.
There is a prospect for a happy marriage where both parties complement each other in emotional and mental respects. If, in addition, they have the same interests, possibilities of understanding each other, work for the same goal, then there is a prospect for an “ideal marriage”.
The difference between falling in love and true love is seen in the fact that a love affair always passes, but true love always abides.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, The Law, The Law of Unity.
Knowledge of Life Five, Psychology, Marriage www.laurency.com
Individualism and Collectivism
”There are two kinds of collectivism: the unfree and the free one.”
The individual is the primary unit, and individualism is a condition of collectivism. Individualism is necessary for the individual as an individual, and collectivism for the individual as a part of the collective. Both individualism and collectivism are conceptions made by the individual. Collectivism is an ideal and a reality. To the ignorant it remains an ideal.(sista meningen var struken i Enhetslagen grund men med I Svenska hemsidetexten)
We all make up a unity. Mankind constitutes a collective of consciousness, a collective of individuals on different levels of development. At the same time man is an individual, a group being, and a unit in mankind.
Individualism secures the individual’s right against the collective. The individual has always a right to individuality, to freedom within the collective, against all the demands of others of self-sacrifice, against claims violating the individual’s right. The collective can never assert collectivism against the ideals, in which the higher ideals take priority over possible lower ones. Many ideals are rejected as freaks, utopias, fantasies, and are treated as illusions hostile to the collective. Nor has the collective any privilege of being infallible. There are always individuals who can be in the right where the greatest collectives are not. To ignorance ideals are always madness. Those ideals, which like signposts have marked out the course of development, have always appeared as unrealities to ignorance.
Individualism is justified until the individual has acquired a certain fund of self-reliance and self-determination [Link to our text concerning The Law of Self]. The same applies to egoism, within certain, narrower, limits. Without it, the individual could give up his individuality, not acquiring the qualities necessary to independence. When the individual has developed his individual character, however, egoism becomes self-assertion at the expense of others. If his abilities are not put at the service of the collective, he will counteract unity and his own consciousness development. There are those to whom individuality is the one essential thing, and who fight unity as a matter of principle and with all means. They eventually form a special group.
There are two kinds of collectivism: the unfree and the free one.
Compulsory union abolishes individualism, has a hampering and a debasing effect. Egoistic group collectivism, which desires solidarity in order to line its own pocket at the expense of society or of other groups and individuals, counteracts unity and has a destructive effect. In such a collective, the mottos of hatred may rule, the psychoses of hatred may influence misdirected loyalty and compel the most reasonable and noble members to remain passive before actions which they, as free outsiders, would dislike and condemn.
True collectivism is based on individualism, freedom, unity, and ideality, and understands the necessity of the collective.
The individual always sacrifices something for the collective: some of his sovereignty, among other things. The higher the level of the collective, the less it encroaches on this sovereignty, because all compulsion hampers activity and initiative, and because everybody is himself the best judge of his contribution. The more ideal the collective is, the more the individual puts the ends of the collective before his own ends and interests. The more the individuals live for the collective, all serve all, with benevolence, understanding, interest, sympathy, and mutual appreciation, the more important it will be to cooperate for the common cause. The result depends on the spirit of solidarity. A collective with their emotionality and mentality closely welded can accomplish stupendous work, to say the least of it.
The group is a harmonious association of individuals united in their concerted aspiration for a given mission in life. The superconsciousnesses of the group increase the insight, clarity, power of everybody in the group and compensate for the individual failings. Also the work on self-realization is made easier through the group work. It is a great mission in life to search out your group, help it form itself, establish its goal, and try to realize it.
Henry T. Laurency, The Philosopher’s Stone, Esoteric Life View, The Law of Unity www.laurency.com