Elementary Theosophy

by L. W. Rogers

Every human being is constantly generating three classes of forces, and they determine the kind of life he will lead here, the degree of success or failure that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness on the inner planes after the death of his physical body. The law of rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but it is the law of action and reaction under which we evolve while here.

The three classes of energies which we generate are those of thought, desire and action. They belong, in the order named, to the mental world, the astral world and the physical world. All people are constantly thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees of energy, are putting thought and desire into action. These forces sent out into the worlds of thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions, or consequences, and to them the man is bound until justice is done and the soul has learned its evolutionary lesson.

That thought and desire are forces as certainly as electricity is, the student of the occult well knows, but the world is not quite yet at the point where the fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the history of all human progress. When Franklin began his experiments with electrical force almost nobody believed there was any such thing in existence. Yet today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains and drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all that at the time of the first experiments he would have been considered extraordinarily foolish. What the world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually has very little to do with the facts. The general public can be expected to come trailing along, about a half century late, with its acceptance and approval. Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would be impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated.

The mental body grows by the process of thinking. The force generated in thinking reacts in the production of greater faculty for thinking, so that we literally create our mental abilities. The activities of thought change the mental body into a better and constantly better instrument through which the ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect others and we thereby make ties with them that must work out sooner or later in associated experience.

Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a most important role in the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring together the desirer and the object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the result of gratifying them. Thus do we acquire discrimination. It is usually a strong desire nature that brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of desire it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through experience the soul finally learns to control desire, to raise lower desires into higher ones and thus ultimately to attain non-attachment and liberation.

Actions are the physical expression of thoughts and desires and, as we are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring and acting, very complex results arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set up relationships with other souls, some of the results of which reach far into the future. The average man, with no knowledge of the laws under which he is evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for future incarnations and is often unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for himself that a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily in kind. Nature does not punish. She merely teaches and knows nothing of retaliations. Her great concern seems to be that all souls shall get on in evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose appears to be accomplished.

The forces we generate in each incarnation shape and determine the next and succeeding ones. Our friends, our families, our business associates, our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the past. From their consequences there is no possibility of escape.

But that does not mean that we are the helpless slaves of fate from which there is no release. We who generated the forces can neutralize them. We can undo anything we have done. It only means that for a time we must work within the self-imposed limitations created by a wrong course in the past.

Those who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will and determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably strong arguments that can be marshaled by each side to the controversy. Either side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive. The explanation lies in the fact that each is right, but only to a certain point. Both free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical viewpoint is understood the apparent contradiction disappears. We are temporarily bound, but we did the binding, by the desires we indulged and the emotions we freely harbored in the past.

The condition of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into Alaska to locate mines. They are all aware that in that remote northern country navigation closes very early and that after the last boat leaves there is no possibility of getting out of that region until navigation opens again in the next season. Some of them are discreet and reach the landing in ample time. Others are careless. They continue their search for gold a little too long, and arrive at the river a day too late. The boat has sailed and they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They cannot escape from Alaska for many months but within Alaska they are absolutely free. They can build a cabin and either waste the time with idle games or seriously think and study. They are limited but free within the limitation, and the limitation itself was of their own making. It is precisely so with us in the environment of the present incarnation and with our various fortunes. We made them and, when the forces with which we did it are exhausted, we shall be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification and improvement.