In the Light of Truth

15. The mystery of birth

If men say that great injustice lies in the unequal manner in which births are distributed, they do not know what they are saying.

One person persistently affirms: If justice exists, how can a child be burdened with a hereditary disease? The innocent child must help bear the sins of its parents.

Another declares: One child is born in rich circumstances, the other in misery and bitter poverty. How can one then believe in Divine justice? Or again: Granted, the parents deserve punishment, is it fair that this should happen by the illness and death of a child? Why must the child who is innocent, suffer? These and such like opinions circulate among men by the thousand. Even serious seekers for the truth rack their brains with regard to such subjects. The simple statement that the inexplicable ways of Providence are all for the best, does not answer the question satisfactorily. He who accepts such an answer, must either be of obtuse understanding, or he must immediately suppress every questioning thought as pernicious.

Such a state of mind is not desired by God. By questioning one finds the right way. Obtuseness or forced suppression reminds one of slavery. God does not want slaves. He does not want blind subjection but free self-conscious looking upwards. His wonderful and wise dispositions do not require to be enveloped in mystic darkness. On the contrary, they gain in sublimity and perfection when they lie exposed before us. Immutable and incorruptible, deliberate and infallible, they are unceasing in their eternal work. They take no heed of man's approval nor of his disapproval, nor do they consider his ignorance, but they return to each one with the minutest accuracy the ripe fruits of the seed he has sown.

“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding fine” is the saying that so aptly describes the never changing process of reciprocal action interwoven in the whole universe. The laws of God reign supreme and carry out Divine justice. Whether men are willing or not, they must submit and are either punished or rewarded by being raised to a higher spiritual level.

If a grumbler or a doubter could but throw a glance into the invisible world and could observe the wonderful and unceasing work of the spirit, weaving its threads through Creation, he would immediately be silenced and be filled with shame at the presumption of his thoughts. The reposeful sublimity and infallibility that he would see there would force him to his knees in the dust. How small did he imagine his God to be and what magnitude does he find in his works! He will then see that his highest earthly conceptions could only belittle God and depreciate His works, in the fruitless endeavour to compress them into the narrow limits indicated by his intellect, that earthbound, limited tool.

Man must not forget that he, himself, is a part of God's work, and is thus unconditionally subject to the laws governing this work. Now the work does not only encompass things visible to the eye of physical man, but it encompasses the transcendental world in which man passes the greater part of his existence and in which the greater part of his work lies. His different lives on earth are only small sections in his existence, but they are always great turning-points.

Birth on earth only means the beginning of such a section, but not the beginning of man's existence. When man, as such, begins his career no threads of fate whatever hinder him. Fate weaves the threads that knit man's life on earth to his life in the transcendental world. On their passage backwards and forwards,

the power of attraction compels them to intermingle and to amalgamate with homogeneous species by which they increase in strength. The original colours of returning threads intermingle and owing to this process of blending the colour of the thread changes and it takes a new shade.*(Lecture No. 6: Fate) The single strands are communicating channels on which the reactions travel back to the author until such time as his inner life is such that they no longer find an anchorage in him. He has not kept the communicating passage free, so, whether they were bringing him good or evil, they must perish.

Thus every strand of fate develops a form of invisible substance as soon as the human will has determined on an action. It remains attached to the author of its being and is the connection to homogeneous species to which it brings reinforcement and from which in return it receives strength which it carries back to its starting point. It is this process from which those who strive upwards get help; and likewise those who are inclined to evil are strengthened and encouraged in their downward course.*(Lecture No. 30: The Free Will of Man)

The repercussion of these strands is the fate every man has ordered for himself and to which he must submit. Arbitrariness or injustice are equally impossible. The Karma that a man carries about with him and that seems one-sided predetermination is, in reality, the inevitable result of his past, in so far as this has not already been made good by the law of reciprocal action.

The very beginning of man's existence, is always good and for many the end, with the exception of those who have gone astray of their own free-will, who stretched out their hands to evil which then drew them down into perdition. The alternative possibilities only occur in the between time, the season of inner growth and ripening.

Thus man always shapes his future life himself. He provides the strands and decides the colour and the design of the garment which is woven for him, according to Divine laws in the loom of God. The causes influencing the surroundings and likewise the period into which a child is born, often lie far back; these outward circumstances are specially adapted to help a soul lay aside its faults and to encourage its advancement and development during its life on earth.

This does not happen in a one-sided manner only for the child, but the strands spin on automatically so that the law of reciprocal action operates on earth also. The parents give the child just what it wants for its advancement and again the child does the same for its parents (it may be good or evil). For, in order to develop and advance, it is necessary to free the soul from evil, by personally experiencing its effect, whereby it is recognised for what it is and cast off. The opportunity to do so is brought about in the way of reciprocity. In no other way could man really ever be free from what has happened. This law of reciprocal action is really a great and merciful gift, as, through it, a path to freedom and further advancement is opened. It is quite erroneous to speak of punishment. Punishment is a wrong expression, for immeasurable love lies in this law. It is the Creator's hand, stretched forth in forgiveness and for rehabilitation.

The coming of man to earth comprises procreation, incarnation and birth. The life of man proper begins with his incarnation.*(Lecture No. 7: The Creation of Man)

Thousands of strands cooperate in determining an incarnation. But here, as everywhere else in Creation, the most scrupulous and absolute justice prevails and contributes to the advancement of all concerned.

Therefore, the birth of a child into the world, is a far holier, more important and more felicitous event, than it is generally taken to be, for its parents, its brothers and sisters if any, and all other people that come into contact with the child, get, by the grace of God, fresh opportunities for development.

An illness of the child, requiring self-sacrificing nursing, great anxiety and care, may give the parents many opportunities for spiritual gain; it may be a corrective, a simple means to attain the end, or it may be the discharge of an old debt, perhaps even a preventive measure against threatening Karma.

It often happens that a man, who of his own good-will, has nursed his own child or another person, with self-sacrificing devotion, has in consequence been mercifully permitted to escape from a severe illness which should have befallen him in the way of reacting Karma. He has discharged his debt in advance. Atonement can only be perfected inwardly by experience. In faithful and loving nursing it is possible that the feeling of anxiety for the other is even keener than it would be for oneself.

Anxiety and pain suffered during the illness of the child or of the other, the neighbour, whom one really loves, is more intense. And the joy at recovery is equally great. This impressive experience alone leaves its mark on the inner, the spiritual man, shapes him differently and, in so doing, cuts the thread of fate, which otherwise would have laid hold on him.

When these threads are thus severed or dropped they rebound, like elastic, in the opposite direction; they are attracted by and return to their own centre in the invisible world. With this all further influence ceases for want of a connecting bridge.

Thus, there are thousands of ways of liberation in this form, if a man voluntarily and gladly takes upon himself some duty towards another for love or for pity's sake.

In His parables Jesus has shown us the best examples. Likewise in the Sermon on the Mount and in all his other sayings He has pointed out the results of such practices. In so doing He always spoke of the neighbour and indicated that love for one's neighbour was the best way for man to find release from Karma and in truth the most simple, practical path to advancement. “Love your neighbour as yourself”, He charged them, thus giving them the key to all spiritual ascent. It need not always be a case of illness, children requiring training and education, give in the natural course of things so many opportunities that they embrace in themselves all that comes into consideration to emancipate a man from his Karma. For this reason children are blessings, no matter how they are born or developed.

What applies to parents, applies equally to brothers and sisters, and to all who have much to do with children. These also have opportunities to profit by the new-comer, by striving, it may be, to cast aside bad habits or defects in patience and in unselfish help of different kinds.

The child itself is not less helped. Birth gives each individual soul the possibility to advance greatly on his way upward. If this is not done, it is the fault of the individual himself. It was not his will. Hence every birth is to be looked on as a blessed and as an impartially distributed gift from God.

He also who, being childless, adopts a strange child, will be blessed and the blessing will be all the greater on account of the adoption, provided that it has been for the child's sake and not to satisfy a selfish wish.

What determines the circumstances in an ordinary birth is the attraction to what is homogeneous in cooperation with the working of the law of reciprocal action.

Qualities regarded as hereditary are not really inherited; they are to be explained by the attraction that drew the soul to this birth. Nothing spiritual is inherited from father or mother, for the child is a distinct being for itself, as they are for themselves; it is only that they have the analogous qualities which attract it.

It is, however, not alone the attractive power of the homogeneous that determines the incarnation, other threads of fate which bind the soul to be incarnated have also a word to say; maybe they are in some way connected with a member of the family into which the soul is born. All these work together and draw and lead the soul to incarnate.

The case is different where the soul volunteers to undertake a mission, either to help some special person or to engage with others in some benevolent work for all mankind. That soul then accepts in advance all that will happen to it on earth. Neither is there here any question of injustice. If all has been done in self-sacrificing love without looking for a reward, reward will come automatically by the law of reciprocal action.

Souls are incarnated in families scourged with hereditary disease which need just these diseases to purify and redeem them and fit them for further advancement. The directing and compelling threads of destiny never allow a wrong or an unjust incarnation to take place. They exclude the possibility of error. To rebel against this Divine law would be to attempt to swim against a powerful current in a river bed. All resistance would be vain from the outset. If, however, the swimmer swims with the current, it will carry him safely for his good.

All circumstances are carefully taken into consideration in the case of voluntary incarnation in which diseases are voluntarily incurred in order to attain a certain end. If the father or the mother contract a disease by some sin, maybe only by neglecting to obey the strict laws nature lays down for the health of the body entrusted to their care, the grief at seeing the same illness reappear in the child would in itself be atonement. This, if genuinely felt, purifies and ennobles. It would be purposeless to give particular cases as examples. Every birth offers a new picture differing from the other, owing to the intermingled threads of fate; even homogeneous categories offer thousands of variations on account of the fine shades of difference in the interaction of influences.

Let one simple example suffice: a mother loves her son so dearly that she resorts to all manner of means to prevent his marrying and leaving her. She chains him to herself. Such love is wrong, purely egoistical and selfish, even if the mother does all she can think of to make her son's life on earth as happy as possible. She has allowed her selfish love to interfere wrongfully in the life of her son. True love never thinks of itself but always of the advantage of the loved one, and is always unselfish, even if self-sacrifice is called for. When the hour of death comes, the mother is called away. Now the son stands alone. The time has passed when he could summon the energy that only glad youth has at its command to realise his own wishes. Still, in spite of this, he has gained something, for by this renunciation he has atoned for something. It may have been an analogous case in a former life, when he avoided the inner loneliness which must have fallen to his lot had he married. In such things there cannot but be gain for him.

On the other hand the mother has carried her selfish love over with her. The attraction of what is spiritually homogeneous draws her to people with similar qualities, for, in their company, when they are indulging in their selfish love to the detriment of others, she has the possibility of finding a part of her own passions reflected in their feelings. Thus she remains earthbound. Should it now happen that procreation takes place in the circle she frequents, she might, by the strength of these spiritual ties, become incarnated. But now the leaf is turned. She now must suffer what she made her child suffer from the same qualities in her present father or mother. She cannot sever herself from her home in spite of the longing and the opportunity to do so. In this her guilt is atoned, for she experiences personally the evil that such qualities occasion, and is thus released from them.

When the soul is incarnated, the physical body draws a veil over its perceptive faculties and prevents it from looking back on its previous existence. This also, like all happenings in Creation is but an advantage for the person in question. The wisdom and love of the Creator lie in it. If every one could remember his previous existence, he would, in his new life, merely stand aside as a passive observer, in the consciousness that, by so doing, he was making progress, or that he was working off some debt, which also means progress. This however would be to misapprehend, for it would be no advance, rather would there be a danger of back-sliding.

Life on earth must be really lived if it is to be profitable. A man can only call his own, experience that has made an indelible impression on his inner self. If man knew from the outset the course that would be the most profitable for him to take, there would be no occasion for him to weigh and consider. Hence again, he could not acquire the strength and the independence that are indispensable for him. But so he realises every situation more fully. What has once possessed his soul is ineradicably stamped on it. Its memory is the distilled extract of his incarnation, and this is what man takes over with him as part of himself — his profit.

It is not necessary to experience all one learns, but it is only that learning which one has experienced that is one's very own. All the rest of the profitless lumber that one learns and for which many a man sacrifices his whole life, remains behind as husks. For this reason it is not possible to take a moment of life too seriously. Strong, warm currents coining from our thoughts, words and deeds should pulsate through and animate our life so that it should not deteriorate into mere meaningless habit.

By reason of the afore-mentioned veil, a new born child appears utterly ignorant and is, therefore, erroneously taken to be innocent. Whereas it is often burdened with a grievous Karma and is now given the opportunity, in living, to atone for former errors. Karma in pre-ordaining is only the necessary result of past happenings. In the case of special missions, Karma is voluntarily accepted, in order to acquire proficiency in worldly knowledge and the physical maturity requisite to carry out the mission.

Hence man should no longer grumble at injustice at birth, but gratefully look up to the Creator, who has accorded him but a fresh proof of His mercy with each birth.

[Grail Message by Abdrushin]  [Resonances to the Grail Message]