The laws of the soul give us the key to the entire psychological problem of every human being.
Robert: Welcome. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present, but not yet fully recognized. You have, within you, the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our topic for today is the laws of the soul. All the dialogue that you hear in this show emanates from the works of Alice Bailey. There are twenty-four volumes of books written by Alice Bailey. The particular volume upon which this show is based is Esoteric Psychology where we find this opening thought: “The laws of the soul give us the key to the entire psychological problem of every human being, and there is no condition which is not produced by the conscious or unconscious reaction to these basic influences.” We spoke last time a lot about the characteristics of the soul, the values or the laws of the soul. What are some of the other laws of the soul and how do they affect human behavior?
Sarah: Well, I wanted to come back to the basic concept of the soul imposing laws. This might be a kind of extraordinary concept to people, but essentially the laws of the soul are laws of group life. They are the laws that produce right relationships among the various members of a group, and we’re speaking essentially about humanity. We’re told in the writings of Alice Bailey that we can see the expression or the working out of the laws of the soul in such things as the science of social relations and international relations, political science, the fields of economics and philanthropy. These are all examples of the expression of the laws of the soul in the sense that they foster right human relations within the group. They govern the urge to share, to produce consensus, to protect rights, and to live in harmony and concord with others. So, the laws of the soul are imposed in order to create a group consciousness. The opposite of the laws of the soul might be said to be the free, unchecked, unbridled, individualistic spirit that says, “I want that”–”I grab that”–“That is mine.” The laws of the soul work against this selfish impulse within the personality and foster the urge to sacrifice, as we discussed last week. That’s one of the essential laws of the soul. Another is the Law of Service. It’s one of the fundamental urges that governs the soul.
Dale: Yes, in fact it’s said that it is the spontaneous effect of soul contact, this impulse to serve. It’s just as natural for the soul to want to serve, as it is for human beings to want to eat and want to desire.
Sarah: It’s a drive and an urge. It’s an incoming urge, we could say, in the sense that the new age that we’re moving into will be dominated more and more by this urge to serve. The Law of Service will govern the coming era in a way that will make it not only natural, but a kind of a propelling instinct to be of service. I sometimes think back to the era of John Kennedy as one of the early harbingers of this Law of Service, when he called upon the American people to ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. More and more in the years since then, this idea that we owe something to the larger group, I think, is developing in human consciousness. Volunteerism is so widespread now. There are so many different groups that serve: Doctors Without Borders, the United Nations volunteers. The groups are legion now. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of groups that work in the world giving of their utmost for human betterment.
Dale: Philanthropy is also another expression of this law and is a growing phenomenon. Many people are giving and sacrificing their money and time for larger purposes, for larger causes which they recognize there’s a need for. I think that’s a remarkable testimony to the awakening of the human spirit. It is awakening and that little selfish self does step aside and allow that soul impulse to serve, to come through.
Sarah: I think it’s important to understand that most human beings are a mixture of the personality and the soul, of the lower and the higher self. None of us is an angel on earth yet, at least not too many of us. Most of us are a mixture of the higher and the lower impulses. I don’t think it’s productive to imagine that the world in the coming years will be full of saintly people giving their utmost without a thought for the personal self. It’s not that. But what I think is going to happen more and more is that the higher urge will win out over the impulse to selfishness. This urge to serve and share will become a more overpowering impulse. The reaction of the world on September 11, 2001, was an indication that we responded unselfishly and with love and with an urge to comfort and share when we were put to the test. There are these conditions that happen in everyone’s life where we are forced by circumstances to make a choice without a great deal of time to think or weigh the evidence and the possible outcomes, and at those moments, we reveal our real colors. I think human beings will more and more instinctively choose to serve and share.
Dale: Yes, and if anybody has any doubt about this factor that we call “the soul” even exists, then we only have to look around and see these great acts of service because that represents the beginning of the soul manifesting in the world. An empirical example of soul manifesting through human beings is this great act of service that human beings are expressing now.
Sarah: It may be that people aren’t very sure what is meant by service. Essentially, I think service means what is done any time one puts the good of another or of the group, of the larger whole, over self-interest. That’s the expression of service. So, it isn’t just those actions that, say, the Red Cross does, or that a nurse, or a teacher, or a mother does. Those are examples of service, certainly, in quite a literal sense. But there’s no aspect of life that can’t be turned to productive service. One can be a worker on Wall Street, a businessperson, an artist. One can work in any field. One can be a housewife, a community member, and serve. If one sacrifices self-interest to the achievement of what is good for the greater whole, and if you use that conditioning perspective in whatever situation you are in, you can find an opportunity to serve. It doesn’t mean a self-abasement. It’s not that. But it’s blending one’s own little will with the larger will of the larger group.
Dale: And when that impulse to serve is spontaneous and as long as it’s not qualified by some ulterior motive of the personality to want to serve because my friends are serving or because it’s the thing to do or to look like a good community helper and person. Too much of that gets in the way sometimes. But if the impulse to serve is really a spontaneous thing, of giving without thinking of oneself, then that is a true soul response.
Sarah: There’s a wonderful statement in the books of Alice Bailey that says we should serve as the sun shines: abundantly and without any limitation or preference. The sun shines on everyone and everything on earth. It doesn’t favor the few over the many. It doesn’t pick and choose. It simply gives of its radiance and it gives with no expectation of return. What can we give back to the sun? Nothing. It doesn’t need anything from us. It needs only to be the sun and to radiate its essence, and so should we serve. There was a comment made by the singer Barbara Cook that I thought was very interesting. She said when she was starting out as a singer, she felt kind of intimidated and inferior when she auditioned for opportunities to sing because other singers she thought might be more beautiful than she was or perhaps a better singer or whatever. Then she realized that she couldn’t imitate them because she wasn’t them. She could only be herself and give through her singing whatever was in her, her own special Barbara self. She had to give that. That’s service: if we give of whatever resources are ours to give. We might have to start on a level that’s quite humble. Sometimes all that’s asked of us is that we stand still and listen to another person. Just listen. Give them our undivided attention. We might be asked to give of our time, or our money, or our compassion, but give of whatever you have to give at that moment. That’s how we learn to serve.
Robert: One of my favorite thoughts is the advice that was given to me, to never betray the best within you. Would you say that the best within us is the soul?
Sarah: Yes, I suppose it is.
Dale: That would be the best and the highest that one is capable of identifying with at that moment.
Sarah: In a sense that is saying not to go against the laws of your highest self. There is this voice or this impulse within every one of us that is our, what you might call “our better angels.” We have to learn to listen to it because it is trying to communicate its message to all of us. We know when we have evaded the laws of that higher self, when we have the sense of having betrayed something that was not in our highest interests. We know when we’ve not lived up to our better nature, and it’s called our conscience.
Robert: So, when we depart from soul values, then there’s something within us that we really know, that we really understand.
Sarah: We do know.
Robert: We’re more-or-less born with that then.
Sarah: Yes, I think so. I think even very small children know because—maybe like other people—I can remember things even when I was very, very young that I did, that I knew at the time were wrong. I registered it very clearly. I did it anyway because I was a willful little kid, but I knew it and I knew it was wrong of me, and I still remember those things today. They can drive you crazy, those memories and those realizations, but it’s also a way of getting ourselves to wake up to the voice of the soul. Laws of the soul—there are quite a number of them. We’ve talked about sacrifice and service. Another fundamental law of the soul is the Law of Attraction, which really is one of the governing laws of our world as we know it. It’s a force that holds our world in being, we’re told. In other words, our planet and all that lives upon it is held in form, in being, through this great Law of Attraction which was set in motion by God. We live on earth in physical bodies as long as the Law of Attraction is imposed by our soul, to work through a particular personality known as Robert or Dale or Sarah. When death comes, the soul withdraws its energy and its vitality from that outer form and seeks out another way to express itself through the attracting of new substance that will make for another personality and form as a vehicle through which it can express. But we’re told that its full force—the Law of Attraction—isn’t felt until one has reached a rather high state of spiritual consciousness. So, we can only kind of make a little stab at it with our minds.
Dale: Well, it works out at the lower expression, I suppose, in desire.
Sarah: That we know!
Dale: That we know because everybody expresses desire of some kind at some level. It’s usually often at a rather crude level, but more refined levels as well.
Sarah: And starting with babyhood.
Dale: Yes, so even at that lower level, there is a law that is working out. Desire is an aspect of that, or manifestation of that.
Sarah: There’s a little baby boy that lives next door to us and every morning about six o’clock I hear him cry and howl and he’s awake and he’s up and that desire to say, “I want to eat, feed me,” is at work. I think, well, that’s the human being. I want this, I want that. It’s said that the entire psychological problem of humanity as a whole lies in this impulse to grab, to hold, to get, to possess, which is desire, and that every lesser complexity is sort of a sub-complexity of this great impulse. Freud attributed it to sex. Others call it the wish life of humanity. But it’s an urge towards satisfaction that for eons of time is the satisfaction of self-interest, of the separated personal self. Only when this impulse becomes transformed or transfigured into the desire or the urge to serve the group good and the good of humanity does it begin to express the law of the soul. So, every urge has its higher component, as I understand it. But interestingly, another point to keep in mind is that this law also works in a kind of an opposing force, which is called the obscure name of the Law of Repulse. The Law of Attraction depends upon also being able to repel that which is not in the interests of the soul. This is quite fascinating to think about. The soul exerts its law by teaching us to learn to repel from us what is not in the interest of the soul.
Dale: And that’s a very valuable ability to have: to repel or to let go or to push away that which is no longer useful or necessary for the soul in the world. There is, as you say, this other law that works in the opposite direction of attraction. That’s the Law of Repulsion and it’s said to be “an attitude towards that which is not desirable.”
Sarah: I suppose for every human being, this is going to be different. But we can probably think of things, experiences, streams of thought, immersion in certain activities that we know instinctively are not right for us. That’s the Law of Repulsion working within us when we know that something is not appropriate for us, not right for us, that we shouldn’t indulge in it.
Dale: What this law engenders and what it helps to develop in a human being, is the power of discrimination. You need discrimination and a certain amount of dispassion and discipline to allow this law to work through you, because we learn to discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood, love and hate, and thereby we learn what is good and what we have to let go of, and to try and find that middle ground in between.
Sarah: You can see how free God leaves the human being to work all this out for himself; what trust there is in knowing that experience will be the best teacher.
Robert: Would you say our highest purpose for existence is to be in alignment with the soul?
Sarah: Yes.
Robert: Okay. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called The Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of The Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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