The laws of the soul give us the key to the entire psychological problem of every human being.
Robert: Welcome to Inner sight. 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. The work of Lucis Trust was started by Alice Bailey, the founder of the Lucis Trust organization which sponsors this show. All the dialogue that you hear on this show emanates from the twenty-four volumes of literature written by Alice Bailey, as does this particular 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.” Could you explain what is meant by this statement?
Sarah: There is no evading the laws and requirements of the soul. One has to pass through every step and observe every condition and requirement in order to develop spiritually. So, it has the effect of pulling one’s socks up, of pulling one up short because you realize you have to have the discipline and the awareness and the humility to adapt yourself to these requirements, to learn what they are and to obey them. Obedience is not a very popular quality among human beings today; probably it never has been, but especially not today. The idea of having to be obedient to anyone or anything other than one’s own will is abhorrent, and yet really, we are staying within that urge to have freedom because the laws of the soul are self-imposed. They’re not imposed from some exterior source. The soul exists within every human being. Nothing and no one can make you submit to those laws until you yourself realize that it’s time and right and inevitable. So, what we’re talking about when we speak of laws is not something that somebody else—the church or some senior spiritual official or your mother or anyone—is forcing you to do. It’s a recognition that each person reaches within themselves, that there are requirements and standards that one has to strive to meet.
Dale: That’s true. I think what impresses me about these laws is that they have a universal quality, a universal nature to them. They are laws of the soul and just as human beings respond to the man-made laws which we all have to respond to every day, the soul also has a large body of laws that it has to respond to, and in turn, we have to respond to those same laws because that’s essentially what we are. We are that soul in this physical body, so we have to respond also to these universal laws as they work out.
Sarah: First, we have to figure them out. I think for eons of human history, these laws have probably been assigned to the category of the mysteries of life, that it was God’s will that such and such happened. It was something out of a human being’s hands and something that they had no control over, so it was a mystery. People didn’t know why death happened, why suffering happened, why limitation and sorrow and hardship happened, or why joy happened, or gifts that come unexpectedly in life. All of that was assigned to the realm of mystery. But now, as the human mind develops and human beings become more and more able to think, things are coming under the category of law rather than mystery. The realm of the soul is one of those aspects of life that is being recognized as a series of laws that the human mind and the will can grasp through contemplation, through meditation, through experience, through reflection. These laws can be grasped and understood, and when one can grasp them mentally, then I think you can begin to cooperate with them because you understand more and your will is engaged. So, what used to be mystery now is a science. The laws of the soul are a science, just like many other fields of human experience are.
Dale: Well, maybe we should mention one of those: the law of sacrifice. What did she say about that?
Sarah: Well, it’s one of the major conditions that is imposed by the soul on the human being living in what we call the three worlds: the emotional, mental, and physical worlds of our daily experience. Sacrifice, again, is one of those qualities that’s not very popular. We notice in our school of spiritual training, the Arcane School, how many of our students recoil from the idea of sacrifice, and what’s interesting is that the first thought the student is given for his meditation when he enters the school touches on sacrifice, and many of the students rebel against that. But in fact, the word sacrifice is from the Latin, which means literally to make holy. To make holy. When you think of sacrifice as the making holy of some action, then I think it takes on some significance.
Dale: Yes, as it says in the book, Esoteric Psychology, we are already responding to this law of sacrifice.
Sarah: Like it or not.
Dale: Well, many people do. They’re very willing to sacrifice and give up some of their time. They relinquish their time for their children, or they relinquish their time to help in community projects and things like that. These are little sacrifices, but there are even those that make a big sacrifice, where one is willing to give up his life for some greater cause. That’s all a response to this law of sacrifice.
Sarah: In a sense, if you boiled it down, it’s the giving up of something lesser for something greater. On the level of the soul, it’s a choice. It’s a conscious choice of values that appreciates the greatness of something and is willing to give up something lesser for that greater good. It’s one of the major lessons of human development that we learn to discriminate, to discern difference in quality, and gradually to prefer the higher quality or the greater principle or the greater good over the lesser. On the spiritual path, these distinctions between greater and lesser become increasingly subtle. We’re not talking about black and white, evil and good, spirit and matter. We’re talking about a greater good and a lesser good. It’s the fine-tuning of these choices and sacrifices that hones the will of the soul and develops the sense of spiritual quality and principle that every human being has to grasp.
Dale: I think that the main point behind sacrifice is that one sacrifices and one loses in order to gain something greater. Usually in a true act of sacrifice, one is gaining more than what one is losing.
Sarah: Well, yes. There’s that saying, “To hold one must detach; to keep, one must release.” Such is the law. In letting go, you find that you gain something much greater, and really nothing’s lost.
Dale: Right. I was interested to read that this law doesn’t affect only the soul and human beings. It affects everything, and it’s one of the most basic laws underlying the force of evolution. It even goes up to the deity of this planet itself. He undertook—if you can call it a he—undertook a great sacrifice to create and work through this physical planet and give his life to all the life forms upon this planet. So that is another indication or another example of how deep and universal this great law is.
Sarah: On the opposite spectrum of evolution, there’s the sacrifice that starts from the mineral kingdom on up. The water that receives the gift of minerals, which is then passed on to the plant kingdom, which is then passed on to the animal kingdom and the animal kingdom then makes its sacrifice to the human. You can see this pattern of giving for the higher good of the higher kingdom all the way up through evolution. It also goes in the reverse direction, the sacrifice of the one who knows more or who has achieved a greater wisdom in order to bring along the lesser. We find the most natural example of that in the relation of a parent to a child. The parent sacrifices in order to help the child develop. The teacher sacrifices their wisdom, their time, their energy in order to help the student grow in consciousness. So, it’s a flow of energy both up and down the evolutionary spectrum that makes life possible. The whole concept of evolution on our planet depends on this law of sacrifice, of the giving of the greater for the lesser, and the giving up of the lesser for the greater choice. It goes both directions, and the whole evolution of life depends upon it. So, it’s an utterly beneficent law. One of the odd things about human nature is that we recoil from the idea of sacrifice when it is such a deeply sacred and benign purpose; we should rejoice in it. I think the problem that people have with it is that they think it’s imposed upon them and not their own choice. We need to see these things as our own choice.
Robert: I’m trying to assimilate all this information that Sarah and Dale are setting forth and what I perceive is that the soul is part of all of us, we’re all part of the soul, the soul is within us and that to reach the highest potential of our own existence, we on this level should be in sync or in harmony with the soul’s values, and any time we depart from the soul’s values, we have to somehow be brought back to be in sync with those values. Is that perception correct?
Sarah: Yes, I think that’s in a nutshell the whole struggle of the human experience: that there is suffering and pain when we depart from the values of the soul. The parable of the prodigal son is the story of that journey away from the soul, away from the father, and the realization that having traveled to a far distant land, he was bereft of everything meaningful and awakened to his emptiness and need and decided, “I will arise and go to my father.” The soul—the individual—then made the return journey to the Father’s home, the realm of the soul. That parable is the story of the struggle of the personal self and the pull of the soul. It’s a duality that’s set up between the selfishness of wanting to live a totally personal, individualistic life and the inclusive group consciousness of the soul, which exerts its pull increasingly as one awakens spiritually. The real power lies on the side of the soul, we’re told. It will eventually win out, but it’s up to each of us to decide how slowly or how quickly that victory will come.
Dale: Yes, and it’s all a matter of relinquishment along the way. The example you gave of the prodigal son, what he had to relinquish in order to return to the Father was all of the experience that he had gained in the world, he had to leave all of that behind. That requires a certain amount of relinquishment, and anyone who is serious about their spiritual studies, their spiritual path, can also work at this act of relinquishment and sacrificing the lesser for the greater.
Sarah: And it’s not the same for everyone, is it? For one person, relinquishing certain values and goals would be quite different from another. For example, someone who is awakening to the life of the mind might pursue as a very high goal an advanced education, and that would be utterly right and a real step forward for that person. But then there’s another stage that a human being reaches where he realizes the life of the lower concrete mind—which is what education develops—can take you only so far, and then you need to relinquish that for something still higher, the spiritual consciousness. So always there is this sacrifice of the lesser for still greater goals. That’s what I mean about saying the path is so subtle. The phrase “the razor-edged path” is no laughing matter. The distinctions between good and greater good become finer and finer and more difficult to distinguish.
Dale: But even at the lower end, I think one can begin this process of detaching oneself or relinquishing at the physical level, the attachments that we have. For example, with our physical world, our material things, the house and all the stuff.
Sarah: But not the car. (laughing)
Dale: Not the car, okay. Forget the car. (laughing)
Sarah: Not the Mercedes, I know. (both laughing)
Dale: I just want to say, it isn’t the material things themselves that we should have to give up. What you have to relinquish from your Mercedes is the attachment to it. It’s the same with all material forms. It’s the attachment we have for these forms because that represents certain identification with form, and it’s the relinquishing of that attachment and identification with form that enables us to move on and let go and to move up and thereby gain more freedom and liberation from those attachments.
Robert: Knowing both of you as I do, if you had a Mercedes, you’d probably donate it to some spiritual advancement. (laughing)
Sarah: I don’t know, it’d be a test. (laughing)
Robert: I want to bring us back to that wonderful thought that we opened with, because I think I understand it better now. It was by Alice Bailey, taken from her book, Esoteric Psychology. “The laws of the soul give us a key to the entire psychological problem of every human being, and there is no condition which is not produced by the conscious or unconscious reactions to these basic influences.” Now I take that to mean that all negativity—and this may be kind of far-fetched, but you’ll comment on that—that all negativity of the human condition is a result of departing from the values of the soul that lives within us. Is that correct?
Sarah: Well, I’m not sure, because I’m not sure what you mean by negativity. Now, there are hardships and deprivations that we would view as negative, unpleasant, that might be exactly right and called for by the soul according to its purposes. What this statement from Alice Bailey seems to suggest when she says, “There’s no condition that is not produced by the conscious or unconscious reaction to the laws of the soul” is saying that everything is proceeding according to law. If we can begin to accept that the soul is imposing its laws and its corrective measures upon our life, then maybe we can begin to see the meaning and significance of whatever our circumstances and limitations are, and they become kind of a creative experience rather than an imposed limitation.
Dale: Yes, I think we also have to realize that these originate from the soul, and they’re not from our genes. These impulses don’t originate from our physical …
Sarah: They’re not your mother’s fault.
Dale: That’s right, yes.
Robert: 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. Let’s 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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