As the human mind begins to awaken to the inner spiritual realities, then we’re more aware that there are these inner subjective laws taking place.
As the human mind begins to awaken to the inner spiritual realities, then we’re more aware that there are these inner subjective laws taking place.
Robert: Hello and 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. Today’s theme is on spiritual law once again and the title of today’s show is Spiritual Law—Part five or the Laws of Attraction and Repulse. We have a thought here from Alice Bailey that I think says a lot about our theme today and I quote: “Under the Law of Attraction, spirit and matter met together and the manifested universe came into being.” Alice Bailey, as you might have heard before, is the founder of the Lucis Trust and all of the dialogue that you’ll hear on this show emanates from one of her volumes of literature. She has written many volumes of literature and I think you’ll find them interesting. So, stay with us and you’ll get some insights about Alice Bailey and her work. Who or what imposes and regulates this Law of Attraction?
Sarah: The main agent of this Law of Attraction is the soul because it’s one of the major laws imposed by the soul upon the human personality. But on a higher level, this opening statement about the Law of Attraction causing spirit and matter to come together to bring the universe into being reminds one that behind all of the outer world there is the law and the mind as known to God. And there’s that wonderful statement—from some writer who I don’t remember—that “the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.” That I think, gives us some sense of why we are subjected to law. We cannot just evolve in our haphazard way, go through life enjoying whatever pleasure comes our way, paying no attention to how we treat others, how we handle or don’t handle the responsibilities given to us. That’s evading the law, and I think there’s kind of a tendency in the new age view of the world to think of spiritual development as kind of a soft and flabby, comfortable progression through life, when it’s not in fact. It’s really a requirement to understand the laws of God, to cooperate, to bend oneself to them, to sacrifice and adapt so that one can become a real agent of the Plan and that’s what lies behind this series of programs that we’ve done on spiritual law.
Dale: Yes, it might be helpful to remind listeners again how we define spiritual law. It’s defined in the writings of Alice Bailey and she says in one place that “a law is only an expression of a force, applied under the power of thought by a thinker or a group of thinkers.” In other words, it’s an impression or an expression that is set in motion by the mind, by great minds. In this case the creator of this world has set in motion these spiritual impulses that effect everything within that creation.
Sarah: So, what we are trying to do is to figure out what these laws and requirements are, to understand them, and to obey them.
Dale: Yes, spiritual laws are imposed by God over his creation, just as we in turn on our little microcosmic level, impose the laws and the impulses on the living cells within our body.
Sarah: Knowingly or unknowingly.
Dale: Yes, the cells don’t have a choice, they are part of our body. They’re part of this organism we call a person and there are certain impulses and desires that every human being has and the cells in our body are subjected to these laws and on the higher scale, we are subjected to the same laws by God.
Sarah: Don’t you think that increasingly today, people have an acceptance of the idea that we might be governed by law in terms of our spiritual development, that increasingly there’s a willingness to understand laws and comply with them?
Dale: Yes, I think there is. As the human mind begins to awaken to the inner spiritual realities, then we’re more aware that there are these inner subjective laws taking place. And I think what’s important to realize about these laws is how much they govern our daily life, unbeknownst to us.
Sarah: The Law of Attraction certainly does.
Dale: Yes, very much so and we’re going to get into that in a minute. They are the source of every impulse we feel and think, and the existence of these laws gives us the ability to create and to destroy, to build and to tear down and to eventually let go of all of that. We couldn’t get through the day without the power of these laws to govern our life. It’s important to realize that a knowledge of these laws will be increasingly necessary as we in the human kingdom begin to manifest and to bring to light the spiritual qualities of the Kingdom of God, the new kingdom that’s in the process of manifesting. This subjective kingdom is governed more directly by these same spiritual laws, so it’s incumbent upon us to learn something about them.
Robert: How does this law affect human beings?
Sarah: Well, as I understand it, the Law of Attraction is really an expression of the driving force of love which is one of the major conditioning energies behind our world. And so, this Law of Attraction drives us, compels us—as Dale uses that word—toward that which we love, that which we desire. And one of the most obvious ways it works out is in the power of the sex drive, which brings man and woman together to produce future generations. So, it’s a law that’s absolutely necessary and that is motivated in the best sense by love.
Dale: Yes, as said in the opening quote, it’s this same Law of Attraction that brought together spirit and matter and that is also a higher correspondence of that same sex impulse, if you could put it that way.
Sarah: Yes, that which we are attracted to, we seek for ourselves and by gaining what we desire, gaining what we think we love, what we are attracted to, we learn whether it is good or bad and it’s part of the great learning process of evolution. We learn, it’s said, by means of evil, that good is best. We learn through direct experience and we pay the price and the Law of Attraction is based on that fundamental truth: That whatever we desire, that we shall have—there’s a familiar saying—be careful what you want, you might get it. There’s some wisdom behind that; if we want something ardently enough and for a long enough time, and dedicate enough of our energy to it, we will get it. And sometimes we learn in getting it that what we thought we had wanted so much is not, in fact, what’s good for us as human beings. It’s how we learn. This benign and beneficent freedom that God has granted us, the freedom of choice and decision, discernment and values, is to me such a deeply spiritual and loving decision by God, to allow us to learn in this way.
Robert: Is it fair to say then that the desire for evil can lead us on the path to good?
Sarah: No, but if you mean my statement that we’ve learned by means of evil that good is best, then yes, in a roundabout way. By attracting that which is low, unworthy, and in fact evil to us we experience it in its totality and eventually end up rejecting it, repulsing it. Hopefully, if we have enough sense and enough foresight, we can stop going after that which our minds and our higher nature would tell us is not good for us and is not good for anyone. The point is to use our mind, our imagination, our values, our power of decision making and discrimination to foresee the consequences of our choices.
Dale: Yes, and that’s the very value of the mind itself and that ability to discriminate and to, as you say, make choices. And if we choose wrong, then we run the risk of breaking the law.
Sarah: But we don’t have to suffer the penalty of wrong choice if we orient ourselves towards service. Service is the great releasing factor in obeying this law of attraction. If we desire, if we want to serve, to make our lives useful to others in some context, whether we’re speaking of a small group or a world service, then we are most likely learning to avoid the penalty of having desired wrongly. Because when you desire to serve, you are expressing the innate urge of the soul, which is to love and serve. So, you are allowing yourself to be attracted by that which is beyond your own little sphere.
Robert: And also, something brought up in another show was harmlessness. I would think also that if we adopt the viewpoint that harmlessness is the highest priority, the highest value, wouldn’t that keep us away from the evil because it would have to fit into that scheme of things before we made a choice?
Sarah: Yes, it would make one’s choices and values seen in terms of the larger context of society and the group.
Robert: Alice Bailey also writes about the Law of Repulse. Could you explain how this law works?
Sarah: I like that word. I notice you’re kind of recoiling from it. Repulse. You’re sort of swallowing it.
Robert: I’m favoring the word repulsion—but repulsive okay, yes! (laughter)
Sarah: Repulsive, that’s one of my favorite words. Wasn’t there a movie called Repulsion—a French movie years ago? Anyway, I think there was. In the terms of the Ageless Wisdom Alice Bailey defines repulse as an attitude towards that which is not desirable. So, when it’s thought of in that context, the ability to repulse that which is not in our highest interest is something that we can develop and must develop in our consciousness. It’s something based on the faculty of discrimination, of discernment, of judgment. You can learn to put away the forces and the urges that are not in your soul’s interest. And speaking on a group level, humanity is intended to create a kind of defending wall of repulsion against the forces of evil. To me, that’s very interesting because we’ve been focusing so much in the last few months on the power of evil, which is a real power in the world and we’ve seen some of its effects, but we are not helpless in the face of it. Humanity does have the capacity apparently to stand as a kind of a defending wall against evil forces, if enough people of goodwill and of intelligence can unite in their conviction that love is more powerful than hate, that service is more important than self-interest, that spiritual values are greater than material things. All of this can help to repulse evil.
Dale: Yes, I think it’s part of the genius of the creative spiritual powers that be—the great Creator of this world—to include in these laws the ability to repulse something undesirable. Because if we couldn’t, if we didn’t have that ability, evolution would stop, I think. We need that ability to leave behind that which is undesirable so that we can move forward.
Sarah: It’s a matter of choice, isn’t it?
Dale: Yeah, that’s right. And this law comes into play primarily when a person begins to feel the need of the desire to overcome his own desire nature and to substitute a higher desire for something of a lower nature. So, it’s the ability to repudiate and to let go of that which limits one’s freedom that is embodied in this Law of Repulse.
Sarah: Apparently it also involves the ability to put aside the purely material and coarse values in favor of more spiritual attributes, because the writings of Alice Bailey say that the soul demands release from the outer material tangible satisfactions. That gives you an idea of how far we have to go because most of us still do enjoy earthly life and material pursuits. That doesn’t mean we’re evil, loathsome beings, but it shows that there is probably a kind of a friction in our lives as long as we do hold this desire to still build our foundation on material values. Even if they’re decent urges like a nicer house and more money so you can enjoy life more, travel more and see the world, still you’re not really pursuing the soul’s intention, which as I understand it, is purely to do with consciousness, which would mean to me the ability to understand and to include larger and larger states of being and to identify with larger and larger numbers of humanity. That doesn’t mean that we will stop living in a material realm, but that we will stop worshipping it so much and craving it, and our attention and our urge and our compelling desire will be to expand our consciousness to include these states of being.
Dale: Yes, I think the word desire probably embodies the major problem humanity is facing right now. It’s that we’re governed by desire so much, and that desire has been defined as the urge towards satisfaction—satisfaction of all of our appetites, for sexual gratification, or for the urge to be popular…
Sarah: For chocolate?
Dale: Oh of course, always for chocolate and to be loved—the love of chocolate. (laughter)
Sarah: I’ve had it! (laughter)
Dale: Well, that’s right. We stop there. (more laughter)
Robert: I’m kind of confused. How does one do that? A negative thought comes into one’s mind or an evil desire comes into one’s mind, is it then a matter of discipline where one says to oneself, I will not entertain that thought?
Sarah: Yes, you know the expression that you hear today—it’s so trite and trivial—but it says, “don’t go there.” Yes, don’t go down that road.
Robert: OK, so the thought comes into one’s mind and if you’re on the spiritual path and you have the desire, as Dale said a moment ago, to evolve as a person spiritually, then one says to oneself, I will not entertain that thought, and you just keep it out.
Sarah: And the same would go for lines of entertainment and conversation. You can choose not to partake of them.
Robert: Don’t participate.
Sarah: Yes. If you don’t think a television program is worthy of your best interests or your children’s interest, turn it off. Music, if it creates a kind of a low vibration within you, turn it off.
Robert: Or if you get caught up through accident downing someone else or speaking against someone, you say to yourself, I will not participate in this situation, in this conversation.
Sarah: Right. And it’s a long, tedious process of overcoming those habits which are so ingrained; it doesn’t happen overnight, but little by little you can retrain yourself. If you think of yourself as a long-playing record, you’re cutting new grooves in your consciousness.
Robert: Yes, but first, before anything happens there has to be, as Dale mentioned, the desire to be that way.
Sarah: And the awareness of what you are doing with your energy and force—just paying attention.
Dale: Yes, we have to realize that by working with these laws, by applying them and going over and over and over these laws, we’re learning to wield them, to use this energy and this force and to use it rightly. Each of these laws is given to us for a reason and they govern our lives and we have to learn to wield the Law of Attraction and the Law of Repulse in the same way that God has to learn the Law of Sacrifice and all of that.
Sarah: And coming back to the larger level than just the individual self, humanity as a whole has to learn these laws if it’s going to play its part in the Plan that God has for our world. This comes back to the tremendous power of goodwill—if it could be mobilized— because goodwill has to become the active repelling force that will overcome and put away evil. That’s humanity’s duty: to stand with goodwill in massed formation against these forces of evil that would divide us, that would keep hatred alive, that would keep people separated from each other and fighting with each other. Goodwill is the only force that will overcome that.
Robert: Now you’ve spoken about the need to overcome certain desires. Of course, there were the desires that are positive that we were speaking about, like the desire to evolve spiritually, but overcoming certain desires we’ve also spoken about. Does this mean that desire and desirous feelings are wrong?
Sarah: No, they’re probably for most human beings, inevitable. We desire one thing or another. The Buddha’s message was to overcome all desire and that is the goal: to achieve the state of complete dispassion, which enables one to find his way between the pairs of opposites, through that narrow razor-edged path that leads down the Noble Middle Way; that’s the path of dispassion and freedom from desire. But for most of us perhaps a more realistic goal is to transform our desires, elevate them from the purely selfish and base to the more inclusive and higher urges.
Dale: No, there was a time in our past history, maybe a million years ago or even less than that, when desire for the material world, for material things was required, was right at the time. It has to do with where the consciousness is focused. But now we’ve evolved to a stage where we have to move on, and desire that continues to hold us back or to hold us imprisoned at a certain point—at a certain stage in evolution—that has to be let go. That’s where the Law of Repulse comes in. So yes and no to answer that question. There were times when it was right, but now maybe it’s not quite so right.
Sarah: I think part of the problem in identifying or answering this question of desire is that a lot of us probably aren’t sure what we desire. It’s all kind of down there somewhere in our gut driving us, compelling us to do and to seek after things but we may not be consciously aware of what really, is motivating us. So, the first step might be for people to just get a clear idea of what they really desire in life, because when you can identify it, then you can begin to evaluate its worth or its unworthiness, depending on what your desires are. But first we have to be able to isolate it in consciousness, see it in reality, and then gradually learn to recognize those higher impulses that do work through all of us, and act upon them. Look at September 11th. That was a remarkable day when people’s higher impulses absolutely held sway for the most part from what we read and people lived up to the highest and best within them to help each other. Those impulses are always available to us. We have to learn to notice them and act on them.
Dale: Yes, it’s a matter of listening to your inner self because that is the true guide that each one of us has within us. It’s that spark of divinity within us, that is our true guide and that should be the point.
Sarah: And be patient with ourselves. This whole discussion reminds me of Saint Paul saying that, “The good that I would do, I don’t do. And the evil that I would not do, that I do.” It’s a long struggle.
Robert: Yes, good thought! That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You have been listening to “Inner Sight” and now we’d 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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