WHAT
PYTAGORAS
TAUGHT ABOUT
THE MEANING OF LIFE

BY LARS ADELSKOGH

PART TWO OF THREE

Everything is governed by laws

The foremost object of science is to discover and describe laws of nature. The more research advances, the more laws they find. They are beginning to see that there is nothing outside what is determined by law, there is nothing that is not ruled by law. Knowledge of something is, in the deepest sense, the knowledge of the laws that apply to this thing.

Man’s self-transformation into something higher is a process bound by law and a phase that is immensely larger though equally bound by law – the development of consciousness in all life. The laws that regulate this evolution, the laws of life, are in hylozoics the most important study object of all. There are laws in everything and everything is expressive of law is the principal hylozoic axiom.

Laws indicate that forces are at work, how they work and the conditions under which they work. No laws can be offset. Ignorant people sometimes speak about “neutralizing the laws of nature”. According to this vague thinking it is thought, for instance, that the aeroplane neutralizes the law of gravitation. What actually happens is that the engine of the aeroplane by its stronger force counteracts and overcomes the force of gravitation. Gravitation as a law, however, continues to work, which appears in the very fact that it always must be counteracted by an equally strong force.

The basic law, from which all laws can be derived and on which the immutability of all laws depends, is the law of matter, the law of nature proper. That law expresses itself in the fact that everything strives towards balance, stability, restoration, harmony.

Laws of nature and laws of life

In respect of the meaning of life – consciousness development – laws can be divided into laws of nature and laws of life. The laws of nature are the fundamental ones. They make the cosmos an ordered whole. This order is a condition of the very coming into existence of consciousness in the cosmos. Without self-conscious monads, the cosmos cannot possibly have a meaning. However, only the laws of life make it possible for these monads to realize this meaning. The laws of life are the expressions of natural laws through the cosmic total consciousness. The laws of life give the cosmos a purpose.

The laws of life are the legislation and tribunal of life itself. Before we human beings have reached that insight, we shall speculatively devise various systems of justice according to the stages we reach in our evolution. The higher we reach, the better our human law will agree with the laws of life.

The laws of life accord with the best qualities of our being. According as we discover ourselves and realize our inherent possibilities, we discover that laws are conditions of this realization. We can begin to live in harmony with the laws by liberating ourselves from our ignorance of life. That also affords us the greatest possible freedom.

At lower stages, the laws of life seem unrealistic. Eventually they appear not just possible but also desirable to follow. Having reached a sufficiently high stage, we realize that they are necessary to all evolution. Anyone who wants to reach higher must learn to apply them. Anyone who does not obey them thereby refrains from reaching higher. The choice is free.

The Seven Basic Laws of life

Seven laws of life are basic for us humans. They are the laws of freedom, unity, development, self-realization, destiny, reaping, and activation.

The law of freedom says that every being is its own freedom and its own law and that freedom is gained through law. Freedom is the right to individual character and to activity within the limits set by the equal right of all.

The law of unity says that all beings make up a unity and that every being must realize its unity with all life in order to be able to expand its consciousness beyond its own self.

The law of development says that all life – from the lowest to the highest – develops, that forces act in certain ways towards certain goals, which ultimately lead up to the cosmic final goal. Every primordial atom is a potential god and will some time, through the process of manifestation, become an actual god, that is: reach the highest degree of cosmic consciousness and power.

The law of self, or of self-realization, says that every being by itself – by its own knowledge and its own work – must acquire all the qualities and abilities that will ultimately lead up to cosmic omniscience and omnipotence.

The law of destiny says that the self in every new life-form is influenced by forces and is put into situations that afford to the self the experiences necessary on that very level in evolution.

The law of reaping says that everything we have sown we shall some time reap. Everything we have done in deed, word, feeling, and thought – or failed to do – reacts upon us with the same effect.

The law of activation says that the individual’s consciousness develops through activity and only through his own activity. Everything must be his own experience and his own working-up of this experience in order to be turned into understanding and ability.

The Law of Freedom

Life is meant for freedom. If the meaning of life is the development of individual consciousness, how would this be possible if not all unique individuals were allowed to choose their own ways in which to develop? In the most profound sense, freedom is individuality: right to, but also capacity for, individual character and individual activity within the limits set by the equal right of all to the same. Life is freedom.

All beings must obey laws if they are to live and develop at all. At all stages the individual’s measure of freedom is a direct result of his ability to live according to the laws. Man is the lowest kind of evolving being that can reach an understanding of laws of nature and laws of life, live intentionally according to the laws. The better he follows them, the higher he reaches. Life is law.

Thus life is freedom and law at the same time. This is an enormously important realization that we can reach through hylozoics. Freedom and law of life are two aspects of the same thing: without freedom no life according to law, and without law no freedom.

People have talked about the paradox of freedom: the greater freedom for some certain individual or group, the less freedom for all the others. Example; the dictator with unlimited power (or freedom) over a subdued, fearful nation. As long as freedom is regarded as a right to arbitrariness and violation of the right of others, so long it must remain a paradox. When freedom is understood as the equal right of all, as law in other words, then the paradox dissolves.

According to hylozoics the law is above all beings, also divine ones. All “gods” are only relatively omniscient and omnipotent. And all “gods” obey the law. They are gods by virtue of their power to understand and apply the law in a sovereign manner within their limited (albeit to us enormous) sphere of life. And this is the condition of freedom and evolution. No god can or even wants to prohibit anything, punish or judge anybody. Hylozoics asserts the inviolability of the individual as a logical consequence of his potential divinity. For all monads will some time reach the highest divine stage. Only the time for this is different for all.

Those who are now at the highest stage know that they would never have been able to reach it without their divine right to freedom.

The goal of the existence of the cosmos is the omniscience and omnipotence of all monads. This harmony is an existence of the greatest possible freedom and, at the same time, the greatest possible lawfulness for all. From the beginning, the monad is totally unconscious and totally unfree.

Its path to final cosmic divinity is named development. This implies self-realization. The monad will itself conquer all the necessary qualities and abilities by having experiences and learning from them. Just so the monad gains knowledge, insight, and understanding. Just so the monad forms its ever unique individual character.

Development is the path from ignorance to omniscience, from bondage and impotence to omnipotence, from isolation to unity with all life, from suffering to happiness, joy, and bliss.

Man works at increasing his freedom by obeying the laws of life. To do this, he need not be aware of them. When he has discovered them, however, he can with greater energy and purposiveness work for his own and other beings’ liberation, evolution to something higher. In order to discover the laws of life, man must first learn to apply them.

Man is at every stage, on every level in evolution, relatively free, relatively not free. He is free to the extent that he has acquired knowledge, understanding, ability. The limit of his knowledge, understanding, and ability indicates the limit of his freedom. The condition of reaching the greatest possible freedom at every stage and level is that man has acquired such extensive knowledge and such activated ability to apply knowledge as is possible at his stage and level.

Man develops under the balancing of freedom and law. This is what is called responsibility. When we prove our sense of responsibility for others, standing up for their freedom and right, then the consequence according to the law of responsibility or reaping is that our own freedom will increase. And, conversely, when we infringe the right of another, we lose the same measure of freedom ourselves. It can happen in this life or later. The law can wait. But a sowing will some time be reaped. The better we know the laws of life, the better we can live our lives. We then avoid infringing the right of others and so have greater freedom, being spared such limitations of freedom as are conditioned by reaping.

“Free will” depends on our power to freely choose motives. For we do not choose between actions, but these are determined by that motive within us which is the strongest. Therefore the question is: Can we reach such a degree of freedom that we can intentionally strengthen any motive whatever and make it the strongest? This problem thus concerns the freedom of consciousness. Unfree is the man who cannot control his mental and emotional life, in whom undesired, disturbing, and destructive thoughts and emotions come and go as they like. Free is the man who can always decide himself what thoughts he will think and what feelings he will cherish. Consciousness becomes free, concentrated, and self-controlled through methodical activation. Nobody else but the man himself can do this and in his own individual way (according to the law of self-realization).

The more responsibility a man is willing and able to bear, the greater the power the Law entitles him to wield. The greatest possible responsibility presupposes the greatest possible knowledge and ability but entitles to the greatest possible power or freedom. For power and freedom are the same thing as seen from different view-points and with boundaries drawn differently between the individual and the collective. Everybody has, according to the law of freedom, a right to live his own life in his own way, as long as he does not violate the right of others to the same.

But freedom over the lives of others (that is: power) should be given only to those who have reached such a degree of insight and ability that they can bear the responsibility accompanying this freedom, should be given only to those who have learnt to obey the laws of life.

The problem of the ideal society is a problem of freedom. The greatest possible freedom to the greatest number of people, respect for everybody’s right, must be guiding principles. Those who want to introduce the ideal society by using violence against the law-abiding, restriction of freedom and right, are on the wrong path. The ideal society is not brought about by means of a certain social system. Societies can never be constructed beforehand. They take shape while growing according to the collective character of people. It is the people that make up the content of the society, and it is people that succeed or fail in living up to the ideals and thus realize or make a parody of the ideal society.

The Law of Unity

Of all laws of life the law of unity is the most important and the most self-evident. Unity or love is the one essential thing. But man thinks that everything else is more important. The law of unity is the law that is incomparably the most important for man’s development, harmony, and happiness. The law of unity is the law of love, service, and brotherhood.

The decisive importance of unity appears in all seven laws of life. For they are universal and aim at unity. In the law of freedom lies everything that helps not only yourself but also all others to liberation, in the law of unity everything that helps you and all others to feel sympathy and loyalty, in the law of development everything that helps you and all others to develop, in the law of self everything that helps you and all others to realize themselves, in the law of activation everything that helps you and all others to think and act on their own. If something only benefits your own self and does not benefit all, then it is a mistake as to the laws of life. Evil and good largely coincide with what separates and unites people. The greatest contribution a man can make is to rally and unite, the greatest harm is to split and disunite.

All the sufferings and present difficult situation of mankind can be brought back to one single thing: men’s will to power. When sufficiently many have understood that the will to unity is the only sensible, the only possible alternative in the long run, and act on that understanding, then everything will change on our planet.

With the will to unity man learns to disregard what is different and to consider what is similar between people. He learns to rejoice at the differences, to understand that they are justified as expressions of everybody’s unique individual character, realize that they enrich the totality as long as all are united in the one essential thing: the common striving forward and upward. Only the man who is ignorant of life can strive for standardization, a similar view and striving.

The most important thing is to fight hatred, egoism, and falsehood in all their countless manifestations, to teach people to live in peace with each other, to teach them to appreciate each other as they are and to teach them to look upon each other as fellow-wanderers on the path, the same path as all must wander with all the mistakes that all must make in order to learn. Any kind of judging and moralizing is a great mistake and a crime against the law of unity. Of course criminals and other violators of the right of others must be efficiently stopped in their recklessness and be taken care of by the community for social re-education. But we have no right to punish, hate, take vengeance, do evil that good may come thereof.

The will to unity above all appears in the personal responsibility we sense for others. The more we grow into unity, the more the sphere of this personal responsibility expands too, embracing not only our closest relatives and friends but also our tasks, our nation, mankind, and every living creature. The knowledge of the laws of life refutes the false talk about the insignificance and impotence of the individual man. Everybody can make a contribution. When making it, it is not for us to decide whether our contribution “is of any use”. Anyone who has really understood what responsibility means does whatever he can without regard for the size of his contribution.

The serving attitude to life arises from the will to unity. Service is an art, the greatest and the most difficult art. Everything is easy in theory. It is his practical life, his realization, how he makes the right decisions, chooses right and acts right, that proves a man’s greatness and capacity. The first thing is to be clear about your own motives. Most motives are selfish. Whenever “self” appears everything is distorted. “I will help. I will serve. I want to feel good.” But this sense of self counteracts service, separates from unity. In unity there is no “self”, only “we”.

Love remains just a beautiful word, binding us to nothing, if it is not expressed in action. Lip-service is not enough. Freed from sentimentality, love rather manifests itself as action; action motivated by impersonal will to unity. We need ideals to worship, we need people to admire and to love. By loving one we learn to love more and more. What we love and admire we become one with. You cannot meditate without love, and you cannot develop love without meditation. For that reason meditation need not be intended as such, but only persistent, unremitting concentration.

The Law of Development

The fundamental law of nature is the law of cause and effect. The basic law of life is the law of attraction or law of unity. This law manifests itself consistently in all worlds in such a manner that the higher world attracts and influences the lower world. This attractive power has been compared to the effect of the sun on the plant. It entices the plant out of the ground and causes it to reach out for the light and heat of the sun, symbols of the wisdom and love issuing from higher worlds.

The law of development says that there are forces working in various ways towards the cosmic final goal. The power of attraction is one such force. Man’s response to this power is another similar force. It expresses itself in his striving for self-realization. When he has once decided to work for self-realization and follows the attraction to the higher he senses, his development may accelerate forcefully.

The law of self-realization is in fact a law concomitant to the law of development. It is true that man must do his due and as though no help were to be found. But if he does so, his purposiveness will be rewarded. The forces of the law of development will then automatically add to his own contribution, strengthening it. Without this addition, his own forces would not suffice.

But note this: the law of development is the manifestation of a force of unity. Whether energy is added to man depends on his attitude to unity. Anyone who wants to develop for any other motive than to serve life, anyone who wants to develop for himself, will have to do without this help. However, to the same extent that man lives for others his own development is promoted so that he will be able to make an ever more efficient contribution.

The lower a man is in development, the more experiences of a similar kind are necessary for him to learn, to comprehend, and to understand. That is why development at the stage of barbarism takes such an enormous time.

When man has once acquired that general fund of experience of life which is required for comprehension, he can start specializing. In life upon life he has to study ever new spheres of life, until a dawning general understanding of life makes itself felt. This is repeated at each stage of development. This is why people at these various stages “do not speak the same language”. They all have the words in common, but the content of experience that man puts into them differs for different stages. What a barbarian means by “freedom” is not the same as what a cultural individual puts into the word.

When man reaches the higher human stages of culture and humanity, he eventually develops his sense of reality and his interest in human things, his understanding of the true values of life, of the meaning and goal of life and the means for attaining the goals.

When the self in a new life, in a new body, awakens to consciousness in the physical world, it is from the beginning totally ignorant and disoriented. The new brain knows nothing of what the old brain knew. During the years of childhood and adolescence the self must activate consciousness by means of its latent abilities and dispositions. Having contact with other people and sharing their experiences, the self learns to perceive and understand and it tries to orient itself in its new world. Whatever the self has no opportunity to contact again remains latent. The capacities the self does not exercise again remain latent.

The Law of Self

Self-realization is to realize what you potentially are. All life is in essence divine. By this we understand that all monads will some time realize their inherent potential divinity.

The law of self-realization rules all self-conscious life. The law of self says that the individual’s development is the individual’s own business, that nobody other than himself can develop him. It is so because what develops is individual character, what is eternally unique in each individual.

The law of self makes it clear that man’s consciousness development depends on himself, however many incarnations it may take. Self-realization is a long-term work even when you have begun to consciously strive for it and seek to apply the laws of life intelligently.

Anyone who wants to reach the goal wants to use the means; tries spontaneously and without external influence to apply his knowledge of the laws of life. To take on yourself any other “obedience” than to follow the highest light you see is to break the law of freedom and the law of self as well. It is not the business of others to force self-realization or aspiration for development. That is as impossible as to force somebody to love.

Self-realization goes through your own experience. All develop by having experiences and working them up. Only by working up your experiences will you get insight and understanding. Only by reflecting, analysing, making efforts to be objective can you perceive the general lesson that lies hid in each personal experience. Whatever is given to us by others in the form of teaching, advice, experience shared, is as a rule too weak to influence us. It will soon be lost unless we have already reached the corresponding understanding and are able to use it as our own. In that case we have already had the experience and worked it up in a previous life; then we have the insight latently and just needed to remember it anew.

From the lowest to the highest level, development is a series of problems that man must solve, tasks that man must do himself. A problem he does not bother to solve, solves in the wrong manner or by the aid of others, will come up again until he has solved it in the one right manner, which is the solution of his individual character, so that he has finally understood that problem of life in his own way. Only then he will be able to reach the next higher level. Whatever is important for a man in some certain problem of life will be found by him alone and nobody else.

Self-realization is understanding and application. Each higher level in evolution affords the possibility of understanding something that you could not understand before. There is a difference between comprehension and understanding. Understanding is something definitively conquered and belongs to the abiding individuality, the self. Comprehension depends on the degree of education during the present incarnation and belongs to the personality, the envelopes, the new brain. “Uneducated” people on higher levels thus understand more and better than “educated” people on lower levels. What you understand you can as a rule apply and realize. Not so what you merely comprehend. This was what Plato had in mind with “he who knows the right does the right”. For if you will not do the right after knowing, this shows that you have not understood but only comprehended.

Self-realization presupposes three qualities to be effective. These are trust in life, trust in self, and trust in law.

Trust in life gives man the faith that life intends all for the best even though there seems to be much that tells against this faith. Trust in life is a non-intellectual certainty of the fact that there is also a positive meaning of what happens, that life is a school for the gaining of necessary experience, that the game is never wholly lost, that defeat is never final, that there are always new opportunities and a new day, that failures and misfortunes are necessary to make us understand life and men, to draw necessary lessons for the further journey.

Trust in self affords man the ability and courage to be himself, simple, artless, spontaneous, to dare to think, feel and act in his own way, dare to show his ignorance, dare to doubt, dare to question the “wisdom” of authorities, dare to defend freedom and what is right, dare to follow noble impulses, dare to make mistakes. Trust in self is independent of success or failure, of the illusions that break when tried. It is independent of the praise or blame of men or the individual’s own lacking ability. And it has nothing in common with conceit, self-assertion, or presumption.

Trust in law is our reliance on the immutable laws of nature and laws of life. It is a spontaneous confidence that perfect justice rules life. They do not worry for their own development or that of others but know that all work that is well done in the service of good must yield results, even though such results may be long in coming. Trust in the law includes the ability to wait for the right opportunity, the right connection, the right level of development.

The most serious obstacle to self-realization is the separative tendency. The separative tendency is the direct opposite of the will to unity. It manifests itself in egoism and a spiteful attitude to life and everything in life, also to oneself. This includes aggressiveness, envy, and the desire to dominate others. All these things counteract unity, as do exploitation and competition. The separative tendency of course also includes moralism and judging.

Moralism, or the judging attitude, is due to hatred and ignorance of life. The moralist believes that he can assess another man and then has a right to judge him. A big mistake. No man can assess another man. What does he see of the other man? The self in its present incarnation, that is all. A fraction of the individual’s acquired qualities and abilities appears. Add to this the fact that his bad reaping for the present incarnation can have forced him down to a much lower level than the one he has once attained. The moralist sees only what he wants to see, the negative traits. In so doing he unmasks himself. We see in other people only the lower that we possess ourselves, actually or latently. The higher always passes us by unnoticed.

Other obstacles to self-realization are such as hamper the very instinct of seeking which is so important for our inner growth and renewal. Such obstacles include intellectual slavery and dogma.

The Law of Destiny

Everything that lives develops towards the cosmic final goal. It is the destiny of us all to reach that goal sooner or later. How this will be achieved, what path we shall go, nobody can predict. It is part of our freedom and individual character that we choose and take the consequences of our choices. That we will reach the goal is certain. And the goal is the only thing that is determined and common to all. Everything else is part of our individual destiny and of the numberless collective destinies we share, now and in the future.

Life is a hierarchy of collectives without number. The whole cosmos is a collective being that consists of lesser collectives; these of still lesser collectives and so forth down to the individual. Every individual develops under conditions that depend on the larger unit he enters into as a part. The collective has its common destiny, which limits the possible destiny of the individual. The welfare of the individual human being depends on the destinies of his nation and of mankind.

Destiny is neither blind nor omnipotent. The powers of destiny are those intelligent agencies who, being subordinate to the great purpose of life, influence man and put him into situations where he may have the experiences that are necessary to his further development.

This does not mean that man has these experiences. The powers of destiny just afford the opportunities. Man’s free will appears in the fact that he has his full freedom to choose. Therefore, it is ultimately man himself who determines his destiny and has to take the con- sequences of his choices according to the laws.

The law of reaping is the law of necessity. The law of destiny is the law of opportunity. In their cooperation they put man where he is to stand, where he must stand, where he should stand and where he may make his best contribution. By his actions and omissions in lives past man has by and large laid out the path he must wander in this life and in many lives to come. By the experiences he has had ever since the self was roused to consciousness, his individual character has been formed into the eternally unique being that he is himself. He has reached a certain level in evolution. The law of destiny takes all this into consideration when it lets us be born into a certain nation, family, and other human relations.

Destiny is man’s own creation, the effect of his own action, the result of his own positive or negative attitude to life, his own attractive or repulsive consciousness expressions.

“Nobody escapes his destiny.” But our destiny is our own creation and for our own good. If we hold that attitude, then we make the best of our lives. Still more important for our self-realization is the insight that the powers of destiny are intelligent agencies that take an interest in our self-development and promote it. If you make the one important decision, and so definitively take your stand under unity, then you put in the strongest possible force for the change of your own destiny. That force can change your future completely. To work for evolution and unity is to walk the shortest path out of ignorance and impotence, the quickest path to freedom.

The Law of Sowing and Reaping or The Law of Reaping

The law of reaping is the law of cause and effect as it finds expression in the relations between all living beings. Being ignorant of the laws of life we unfailingly make mistakes that violate the rights of other beings and disturb the harmony of the cosmos. The universal principle of responsibility says that since we are the authors of the disturbance, we must restore the harmony. Generally and at lower stages this is done when we are afflicted with the same kind of evil that we have caused. However, as our understanding of the laws awakens, possibilities open up for us to work off the debt, make it good through service.

The law of reaping is absolutely valid in all worlds and for all beings on all levels of development. It is valid for all activity. It is valid for the individual human being as well as for collectives of all kinds, for nations and for all mankind. Everything that happens are forces that become causes. These causes must have their effects. Nobody escapes his responsibility. No kind of activity is free from responsibility: thoughts, feelings, manifestations of the will, motives, words, actions. Every consciousness expression is energy, therefore it is a cause.

The law of reaping is the manifestation of absolute and total justice. The justice of life is impersonal, matter-of-fact, incorruptible. Injustice of life is absolutely impossible. Only people are unjust to one another. But life is all justice. Admittedly, the law of reaping appears to be cruel, hard, merciless to us. Then we have acted so ourselves in lives past. The law of reaping is hard to the hard and mild to the mild. However, nothing is unbearable if you just know the cause and see the end. The law of reaping may wait however long. But the sowing must be reaped some time.

How can we learn from the law of reaping? We sow in one life and reap in another when we no longer remember what we sowed. It is true that the direct memory of our evil deeds is lost in a new incarnation, so that we cannot relate our present sufferings to their causes. Yet we learn from our reaping. Sufferings and violations we have been the victims of in past lives leave deep traces in our subconscious, making us more sensitive to precisely these kinds of sufferings. And this is later on expressed in the fact that we more easily sympathize with people who suffer and have become less inclined to cause such suffering to others.

The law of reaping alone does not teach us. It is when being adapted to and interacting with the other laws that the law of reaping teaches and develops us. The law of destiny sees to it that man in each phase gets the reaping that benefits his development best. The higher he has reached in evolution, the more bad reaping he can stand. In this manner he pays off the debt account faster. Only when this is completely squared is the monad able to pass to the fifth natural kingdom.

All mistakes as to the laws of life are bad sowing which yields bad reaping. Bad sowings are, above all, expressions of hatred and egoism. Not only our manifest violations of the rights of others are included here, the visible suffering we inflict on others. But also what we, in our ignorance, believe does not hurt anybody. We also hurt with our unfriendly and judgemental thoughts and feelings. “Energy follows thought” is a hylozoic axiom. Everything that consciousness observes is affected. And the energy involved reaches its defenceless target.

Abuse of power is a serious mistake as to the law of freedom and the law of unity. The law of reaping regulates this, too. The consequence is that you will be the victim of the humiliation and injustice of impotence. And you will lose the possibility of wielding power for a very long time. Knowledge is power, too. Abuse of knowledge leads to the loss of knowledge.

The worst possible sowing is to inflict suffering on other beings, to avenge oneself, to play the part of punitive providence. Those who do evil that good may come thereof expect good reaping from bad sowing. The suffering we have inflicted on others is returned to us regardless of our motives.

Bad reaping is most things in life and everything that cannot be regarded as happiness; everything that harms us and displeases us and thus not just obvious misfortunes and sufferings. The law of reaping works individually, with extraordinary adaptation to everybody’s individual character and conditions. It takes the law of unity and the law of freedom into particular consideration. It works in everything and utilizes all opportunities to make it possible for us to pay off from the debt account.

You are born into the race, nation, and family that you deserve. You have the schoolfellows, teachers, later on work, colleagues and chiefs that you shall have according to the law of reaping. The same is true of your life partner and friends. If these influences work so as to lower your level, then they are the outcomes of bad reaping; in the opposite case, of good reaping. All kinds of sufferings, defects, sorrows, disappointments, adversities, hindrances, losses and so on ad infinitum are bad reaping as is the lack of possibilities of acquiring knowledge and understanding, qualities and abilities.

Good sowing is to apply the laws of life without friction. Man becomes the lord of nature by applying the laws of nature. By obeying the laws of life he will become the lord of life.

Good sowing is to cultivate the will to unity, to work to acquire noble emotions and qualities, to gain knowledge and understanding, to strive after self-realization.

Good sowing is to work to abolish social evils, to enhance understanding between people, to spread knowledge of the laws of life, to lessen suffering in the world, to defend freedom and right and the just cause of the weaker man.

Good sowing is to bring children up in love, to bear your suffering heroically, to be indifferent to the hatred people direct at you and not hate them back, to counteract illusionism, lies, and hatred in the community.

Very good sowing and the quickest liberation from egoism and illusions is to do the right just for its own sake, without any thought of personal advantage or disadvantage, gratitude or good sowing, and to assist The Great Ones Who work for evolution instead of counteracting Them as most people do.

Good sowing is to systematically cultivate the sense of joy and happiness and to think good of everyone as a matter of principle. In so doing you strengthen what is best in everyone and make life easier to live for everybody.

To be born into a civilized nation, into a family where people understand you, to be brought up with love and have friends who ennoble you, to have opportunities of gaining knowledge and of acquiring good qualities and abilities. All these things we have won the right by sowing a good sowing in previous lives.

Good reaping is health, beauty, intelligence, talents, understanding, good friends, helpers, success: everything that life affords us without our efforts.

The best possible reapings are opportunities of rapid development through experiences that awaken our higher abilities, intercourse with highly developed people, for instance. One hour of rational talk with a child can change his entire life.

Without good reaping we will never find happiness, however much we pursue it. We are happy in so far as we have made others happy.

We all are parts of collectives, many kinds of collectives: family, circle of friends, group of colleagues, nation, mankind. And in each collective we are jointly responsible for each other. Nobody exists for his own sake. The laws of life work primarily through collectives, secondarily through the individuals of the collectives.

Our responsibility for the collective appears in common sowing and reaping and common destiny. We are jointly responsible for oppressive social systems and inhuman laws, incompetent leaders, democracy and dictatorship, wars and revolutions. The fact that responsibility is shared by many does not mean that it is less for each one. “One for all and all for one” is the law of joint responsibility. We have all had advantages to the cost of others. We have all helped to oppress and stupidize mankind.

The Law of Activation

Life is activity. Life is motion. Life is generation of energy. Without activity evolution comes to a standstill. The individual develops by activating himself the kinds of consciousness there are in his envelopes. The most important is the consciousness activity he initiates himself. Most people are passive and allow their consciousness to be dictated by external vibrations. They accept the views of others, not examining what facts they are based on. When they got their education they also acquired a world view, and subsequently they reject everything new that cannot be fitted into it. They do not understand that life is change, development, that you must always be prepared to revise and re-evaluate, that knowledge is endless and that all explanations are just temporary. They have settled down to a quiet life for that incarnation. This is the exact opposite of the meaning of life.

The law of activation says that every expression of consciousness is activity in some matter. This expression becomes a cause that inevitably has an effect. Thus everything that consciousness observes is influenced in some manner.

Every content of consciousness takes some shape or other. Everything you strive for or want to do, have or realize, must first have been a content of your consciousness. Everything you desire you will some time have (though seldom exactly as you thought!). Everything you receive you have once desired.

A law consequential on the law of activation is the law of repetition, or of reinforcement. Active consciousness reinforces itself through repetition. By each repetition thought is made ever more active, ever more firmly engraved in your memory, an ever stronger factor of your subconscious, ever more intensive in your feeling and imagination. Thus by each repetition the content of consciousness is strengthened, so that it becomes increasingly easier to resuscitate it. By repetition this tendency is automatized. Eventually the thought or emotion is automatically expressed in action.

Our consciousness expressions are thought, desire, feeling, and imagination. They can be more or less activated, possess more or less “will”. It is through them that we decide whether we will be happy or unhappy. They put their imprint on our present life and determine all our lives to come. They make us strong or weak. Thus thought is a power for good and for evil, the greatest power, and the power that determines our destiny.

The great question is then: who controls our thought? We ourselves very little. Thoughts and feelings come and go as they like. Through external suggestions, things we have read, seen, or heard, we are dragged down into consciousness states which lie below our true level attained; states which we detest and which counteract our self-realization. In memories and associations, painful past experiences make themselves felt again. Finally man sees that control of consciousness is necessary.

Control of thought is control of life. By controlling his thought man becomes the master of his own destiny. The method of activation is the systematic manner of reaching this goal. The method is general and individual. It is general because the laws of activation of thought and emotion and their respective kinds of will are universal and many people can apply a universal method. It is individual because in addition everybody must, according to the law of self-realization, find his own way, elaborate the method of his individual character.

Free will is for many people an insoluble problem. The solution lies in the understanding of the fact that every conscious choice is determined by motives and by the strongest motive. We have many different motives, and they are most often in conflict with each other. We have selfish motives and relatively unselfish motives. We have lower motives and higher motives. We have short-term motives based on the desire for enjoyments, and we have long-term motives directed at the purpose of our lives. Many motives lie hid in the subconscious. Those are motives of fear, shame, and guilt which have been forced on us in childhood through a faulty upbringing. The question whether we may have a free will or not thus is actually the question whether we can consciously control our motives or not.

We can. The law of activation teaches us that we can strengthen any consciousness content whatever. Everything depends on how strongly we attend to it, how often we consciously cultivate it. The method of activation teaches us how this is done. Using the right method we can strengthen any self-chosen motive whatever, so that this will become the strongest one. Only so shall we attain the freedom of the will.

Only through such a self-initiated activity can we liberate ourselves from the automatic dependence on all inner compulsion that hampers our striving for self-realization.

WHAT PYTAGORASTAUGHT ABOUTTHE MEANING OF LIFE