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Dear Friend,

Thank you for the opportunity to express my opinions about the causes of evil as evidenced by its origination from either God, man or the Devil; but first I would like to state categorically: The more I know, the less I know. In the words of Socrates (just a very small paraphrase): "The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing." Einstein, Francis Bacon, Newton, Edison and many others have made similar declarations. Lao Tsu, for example, says in the Tao Te Ching:

As you yourself have pointed out, the apple whereof Adam and Eve ate was from the tree bearing the knowledge of good and evil. Before that there was no notion of sin. Eden was therefore a sinless paradise. Similarly, Hamlet reminds us: "Nothing's either good or bad but thinking makes it so." And one final quote from Lao Tsu again ( I guess I'm addicted to quotes.)

1. GOD (Let's put first things first.)

We are told, however, by mystics from many religious traditions that the nature of God is ineffable ( i.e. beyond human words or power of description). The word mystical connotes not only "direct communion with ultimate reality" but also that which is "vague or incomprehensible". It is derived from the Greek word, mystos meaning "keeping silence". Hence, even though some have been able to experience this ultimate reality in a state of satori or deep meditation, to explain what they have experienced in words is like trying to tell a man born blind about the different colors of the rainbow. Socrates in Plato's Republic describes leaving the darkness of the cave in which all men are imprisoned and being blinded by the blazing light outside (i.e. experiencing a higher level of consciousness). Upon returning to the darkness of the cave he was unable to tell others what he had experienced and appeared to them to be ranting like a madman. St. Paul describes a man (presumably himself) who is transported from earth to the third (i.e., the highest) heaven "whether in the body or out of the body I do not know. God knows . . . . and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter." (2 Corinthians 12:3-4)

Your idea of a deus absconditus has some appeal to me also. (Where is God when we need Him?) It does indeed appear that at times He has forsaken even those of us who believe in Him, pray to Him and rely on Him for guidance in our daily lives. Was it not the only begotten Son who from the cross uttered the words: "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?" Remember that a number of our country's founding fathers, who insisted on placing the words "In God we trust" on our currency, were deists and not theists. Thomas Paine's, The Age of Reason, which was praised by men like Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, was a classical exposition of this point of view. Briefly, Deists (also called Freethinkers), although believers in the reality of God, thought that the light of nature and reason were sufficient guides to religious doctrine and practice and eschewed belief in supernatural revelation and religious orthodoxy. Immanuel Kant's Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone and Julian Huxley's Religion Without Revelation are also examples of this way of thinking.

Slowly, but surely, this way of thinking about religion in the West gave way (or more accurately, the pendulum began to swing to its opposite side) around the turn of the twentieth century to what was then labeled "New Thought". Of course, the experience of the "inner light" had surfaced earlier. For example, there was the founding of the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers) by George Fox in England and the founding of the Quietist movement by Miguel de Molinos in Italy about the middle of the seventeenth century (more than a century before the belief in Deism came to full flower). Not surprisingly for ideas that offend the established religious orthodoxy, George Fox was placed in prison (1649) as also were many of his active followers. For many years there were seldom less than 1,000 imprisoned in England alone. Similarly in Italy, Molinos was summoned before the Inquisition (1685) and two years later, although publicly recanting all his teachings, was imprisoned until his death in 1696.

Let me clear about one thing before going into the New Thought movement: The orthodox churches ( whether Romans, Anglicans or Protestants) were not a party to any of these high-falootin' (is there such a word?) ideas. So Quakers, Quietists, New Thought proponents et al, then as now, were marching to different drummers. They were, and continue to be, fringe groups largely to be ignored or tolerated if not formally anathematized, excommunicated or otherwise exiled from the ranks of "true" believers. The New Thought movement was launched about one hundred years ago by P. P. Quimby and Dr. W. F. Evans in America. It was a direct successor of the ideas espoused by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his fellow transcendentalists. (I'll spare you a summary of their beliefs since Emerson's essay, The Transcendentalist, is in the book of his essays and poems, a copy of which you and/or sister Audrey were kind enough to share with me.) Neither of these men, however, are its parents in any sense since New Thought is merely the expression of an inherent self-affirmation of the soul, which is as old as the soul itself. Hence, like the Transcendentalists, its beliefs are intensely individualistic - being centered on the subjective and not on the objective side of reality. Its first principles closely parallel those found in Emerson's essay on Self-reliance. Also like Emerson they identify one's true self with the Oversoul, with the I AM (the name God gave to Moses at the burning bush on Mount Horeb), and with the identification of the personal self with the Universal Self as expressed by the Hindus in the words, tat twan asi, (Thou art That). When the Pharisees charged that Jesus was committing blasphemy by saying: "Before Abraham was I AM" , he replied: "Is it not written in your scriptures [Psalm 82] 'Ye are Gods'?"

(Question: Since Lucifer's fall was occasioned by his claiming to be equal in power to God, why didn't Jesus also fall? Perhaps it has something to do with pride, which as I remember, "goeth before a fall". Or does it have to do with Lucifer's awareness of a duality -God and himself as equals - while Jesus merely claims that he is in the Father and that the Father is in him - This doesn't sound like much of a duality, does it? Jumping ahead briefly to man's part in this threefold partition of the causes of evil which you propose (how's that for a dangling participial phrase?}, the ancient Greeks made many references to the consequences of man's reaching up beyond his natural position in the hierarchy of being. They called it "hubris". Thus when Icarus tried to soar too high in the sky, the wax, with which his father, Daedalus, had secured the wings to his body, melted and he fell into the sea. His father, however, following the middle path, neither too close to the sun or to the sea, was able to keep his wings attached and hence escaped the Cretan labyrinth which he had created for King Minos. Prometheus, although one of the Gods on Mount Olympus, was imprisoned on a mountain top for bringing fire down in a fennel tube to mankind in opposition to the wishes of Zeus, the Greek head honcho. Since "fire" is also the symbol for "spirit", this legend can also be interpreted as the penalties for stealing the fire (or spirit) from the gods and implanting it in men, thus unlawfully elevating the level set for them at the time of their creation. Remember also that there were two trees in the Garden of Eden, one of which was the tree containing the knowledge of good and evil and the other of which was the tree of Life. The reason for banishing Adam and Eve to the earth after they had eaten the apple from the first tree was so they might not then also eat the fruit from the second tree and secure eternal life. Hence the cherubim were placed East of Eden with flaming swords to make their return at a later date difficult if not impossible. Does any of this resonate in you with stories of Jason and his argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece, with King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in their quest for the Holy Grail, with Jack and the Beanstalk and his trying to climb up the beanstalk to steal the pot of gold from the giant, with Dorothy's and her three companions' quest to steal the broomstick from the wicked witch in order to claim the rewards promised to them by the Wizard of Oz., etc, etc, etc.?)

Now in a leap to the middle of the twentieth century we no longer talk about New Thought. Instead the new rage and revolt against religious orthodoxy with many of its dogmas, rites and rituals, calcified by rote repetition and a literal reading of all the scriptures, is called the New Age movement. More than a revolt against the various religious establishments, however, it has invaded every aspect of our lives in the last fifty years or so - - geopolitics, economics, social structures, science, philosophy, ethics, etc., etc. as well as traditional religious beliefs. Just as the New Thought movement grew out of ways of experiencing reality articulated by other groups that preceded it, so does the New Age movement encompass all those like-minded individuals and groups that were its precursors. Although I have written about this in all five of my essays to date, please forgive me for inserting one more example of this new way of experiencing reality - this from the English visionary poet and writer from the late nineteenth century, Edward Carpenter:

"If you inhibit thought (and persevere) you come at length to a region of consciousness below or behind thought ... and a realization of an altogether vaster self than that to which we are accustomed. And since the ordinary consciousness, with which we are concerned in ordinary life, is before all things founded on the little local self . . . it follows that to pass out of that is to die to the ordinary self and the ordinary world. It is to die in the ordinary sense, but in another, it is to wake up and find that the 'I', one's real, most intimate self, pervades the universe and all other beings. So great, so splendid, is this experience, that it may be said that all minor questions [like good and evil?] and doubts fall away in the face of it; and certain it is that in thousands and thousands of cases, the fact of its having come even once to an individual has completely revolutionized his subsequent life and outlook on the world."

This New Age phenomenon is not so much a movement as it is a revolution in our way of looking at science, philosophy, healthcare, psychology, politics, economics and religion. In fact there is no aspect of our lives that it is not impacting. However, it has no well-defined doctrines or clearly articulated principles. One of the earliest writers to explore its multifaceted nature was Marilyn Ferguson in her 1980 book, The Aquarian Conspiracy. As you know, astrologers, seers and futurists believe that we are nearing the end of the age of Pisces; and as a result of the slow precession of the equinox (about 26000 years to make a complete cycle through all twelve signs of the zodiac), we are now approaching the age of Aquarius.

You are no doubt wondering what all this has to do with God his culpability in causing natural disasters, etc. Some, if not most evils, can be directly laid at the door of unenlightened men, whether individually or collectively. ("In Adam's fall, we sinned all.") However, there are events beyond our control that we may call evil, but which are simply due to "natural" causes - e.g. earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc., etc. True, with increasing scientific knowledge and instrumentation we may be able to give advanced warning of some of these events, but not all. We may implore our Creator to spare us these calamities, but unlike Abraham's bargaining with God to spare Sodom if he could find even ten righteous men there, imploring and beseeching doesn't seem to help much these days. To summarize all of the above on God's culpability on the evils which befall us let me resort once again to a well-known quote:

Before leaving my thoughts about the Devil I would like to comment on the problems of an ethical dualism. (I will discuss my own predilection for a ternarian philosophy in the next section about man's culpability in the problem of evil.) It has been a long journey from primitive man's belief in everything possessing a god (i.e., animism), to a polythesistic belief in a hierarchy of gods, to tribal gods, to belief in a single, supreme God of the universe. From this last step there arises a classic dilemma when an all powerful God is also believed to be the source of all good but not the source of evil. As formulated in the enclosed article on evil: "Either God can prevent evil and chooses not to (and therefore is not good) or chooses to prevent it and cannot ( and therefore is not all-powerful)". Historically several resolutions have been suggested for this dilemma: (1) the unreality of evil; (2) a denial of God's existence; (3) a struggle between coeval forces of good and evil; and (4) the inability of man to fathom a solution. In other words, deny the reality of one side or the other of the duality, accept the reality of a fundamental duality of powers and drop the idea of omnipotence, or admit that it is an unsolvable mystery.

Hinduism opts for the unreality of all phenomena in the physical world. Hence all ideas concerning both good and evil are simply illusions (maya). They thus retain a belief in Brahman as the only reality and all existences whether visible or invisible are manifestations of this one spiritual being. Modern secular humanists, atheists, et al, on the other hand, go to the other extreme and deny the existence of God, the Devil or any other invisible spirits and affirm that the basic stuff in the universe is composed of combinations of energy and matter - equivalent concepts ever since Einstein's famous formula, e=mc². The teaching of Zoroaster (Persian, Zarathustra) is credited with the earliest articulation in religious thinking of two powers - Ahura-Mazda, the Best Mind and Angra Mainyu, the Worst Mind. However, against the primitive animism existing at that time (circa 600 bc) Zoroaster proclaimed that there was one God alone, Ahura-Mazda, who was holy and almighty and the creator of all things. He taught that every man was faced with one supreme duty: to choose between truth and falsehood. Thus his religious teaching was originally monotheistic and not dualistic. However, "throughout the Avesta [the bible of Zoroastrianism] is this constant refrain: truth and falsehood, justice and wickedness, good and evil and the choice that all must make between the two constituents of reality. Ahura-Mazda himself, as well as his 'most sacred spirit', must make this choice. [Therefore] there is no doubt that Zoroaster thus divided the world of being."¹(Good grief, Charlie Brown!! The One and only God of the universe was tempted by the Evil One? Is God a schizophrenic? No wonder the human race is so screwed up!!)

Another window on these early conflict experiences by God (or more likely by the Sons of God, i.e., gods with a small "g") can be viewed through an examination of various mythological cosmogonies. (I detailed some of these in my last essay under the heading, War in Heaven, p.14-15.) For example, Indra, the King of the gods in the Hindu pantheon, had an arch-enemy, Vritra, a great serpent who lay coiled about the world mountain at the navel of the earth. His defeat by Indra unleashed the creative power in the universe. Significantly, Indra and Vritra were brothers. They had the same father, Tvashtar, who Indra also kills because he had hid from him the elixir of immortality. Similarly, in Greek mythology Ouranos (Sky or Heaven) begets by Ea (Earth) the generation of gods known as the Titans, but he would not withdraw himself from Ea to allow her to give birth. This was finally achieved by one of their Titan offspring, Kronos (the Roman Saturn), who, with the help of his mother, castrates Ouranos with his giant sickle and allows the process of creation to proceed. Translation: The creation of the world cannot come into being until the One has become Two (Heaven and Earth, Father and Mother, Male and Female, etc.) As creation proceeds, the One retreats into the background or is killed by one of his offspring. Thus, duality is the sine qua non of existence in the world as we mortals know it.

Not from mythology but from esoteric sources we learn that "the uncognizable Cause does not put forth evolution [or devolution] but only exhibits periodically different aspects of itself to the perception of finite minds. . . . That which is finite cannot be perfect. Therefore there are inferior Beings among those Hosts [of Creative Power], but there never were any devils or 'disobedient angels' for the simple reason that they are all governed by Law [i.e., Karma]. ...[These Beings, called by the Aryans, asuras] are referred to as the 'Sons of Darkness', as a philosophical and logical contrast to light immutable and eternal. The earliest Zoroastrians did not believe in Evil or Darkness being co-eternal with Good or Light. . . . Ahriman [originally called, Angra Mainu] is the manifested shadow of Ahura-Mazda (i.e., Asura-Mazda). Himself issued from Zeruna Akerne (Boundless Time or the Unknown Cause). Its glory is too exalted, its light too resplendent for either human intellect or mortal eye to grasp and see." ²

This glimpse into the arcane world of "esoterica" (If we can have the word "erotica", why not "esoterica"?) brings us to a consideration of the fourth and last of our possible resolutions to the dilemma posed on page 6: "God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform" Therefore, "Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment and who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding." (Isaiah 40:13-14) This is basically the answer the Lord gave to Job when he wanted to know "why bad things happen to good people".(a slightly altered title of the book by Rabbi Harold Kushner). The story opens with a dialog between God and Satan:

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, "Whence have you come?' Satan answered the Lord, 'From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?' Then Satan answered the Lord, 'Does Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face.' And the Lord said to Satan, 'Behold, all that he has is in you power; only upon himself do not put forth your hand.' So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord." (Job 1:6-12)

Satan (aka God's alter ego) promptly goes forth and takes away all of Job's many sheep, camels, servants, all his worldly possessions and even kills all of his sons and daughters. In spite of all these calamities "Job arose, and rent his robe and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshiped [God]. And he said, 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord'." (ibid 1:20-21) Having failed in his first attempt at having Job curse God, he returns to the Lord to ask permission to "touch his bone and his flesh" in a second attempt to prove his point. "And the Lord said to Satan, 'Behold, he is in your power; only spare his life.'" Armed with this additional authority Satan promptly "afflicted Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, . .. Then his wife said to him, 'Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.' But he said to her, 'You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?' [emphasis added] In all this Job did not sin with his lips." (ibid 2:7-10)

When word spread about the misfortunes that had befallen Job three of his friends agreed to come and "condole with him and comfort him". When they arrived they did not even recognize him, "and they wept and rent their robes and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great." (ibid 2:12-13). Then, although he did not curse God, he cursed the day he was born and laments, "Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than hid treasures; who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they find the grave? (ibid 3:20-22).

His friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar then take turns trying to console him by using orthodox explanations that he, like each of us, is a sinner and although he has not flagrantly sinned, his misfortune must ultimately lie at his own feet. Everyone knows that God rewards those who follow his commandments and punishes those who turn away from them. They even use the argument that "affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble spout from the ground; but man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." (ibid 4:6-7). Then they even admit that the Lord may seem to be doing evil to man but he is only correcting his behavior like a loving father: "Behold, happy is the man whom God reproves; therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he binds up; he smites, but his hands heal. (ibid 4:17-18)

Job, however, refuses to be consoled. He retorts that his friends speak only "windy words". He admits that in spite of the fact that all men sin that the punishment does not fit the crime (ibid 14:1-6). He accuses God of appearing as a "sinister enemy" (from the Latin word, sinister, meaning "from the left hand'). (See 9:18-19; 16:7,9; 16:12-14) In utter misery, he wishes that God would leave him alone at least long enough to swallow his own spit, for if he could escape God his spiritual agony would end.

                                What is man, that thou dost make so much of him,
                                And that thou dost set thy mind upon him,
                                Dost visit him every morning and test him every moment?
                                How long wilt thou not look away from me,
                                Nor let me alone till I swallow my spittle? (Job 7:17-19)

To the very end Job maintains his integrity and the conviction that the record of his life is unblemished:

                                Far be it from me to say that you [my friends] are right
                                Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me.
                                I will hold fast my righteousness, and will not let it go;
                                My heart does not reproach me for any of my days. (Job 27:5-6)

He finally challenges God directly with: "Let the Almighty answer me!" (31:35) In one of the better known passages in the story, God answers Job out of the whirlwind:

                                Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
                                Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you,
                                and you shall declare to me.

                                Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
                                Tell me, if you have understanding.
                                Who determined its measurements -- surely you know!
                                Or who stretched the line upon it?
                                On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
                                when the morning stars sang together
                                and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job: 38:2-7)

The Lord continues dressing the self-righteous Job down to size for the next four chapters. At the end of his confrontation with God, Job repents and answers him:

                                I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine
                                can be thwarted. . . .
                                Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
                                things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. . . .
                                I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
                                but now my eye sees thee;
                                Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
                                                                                                        (Job 42:2-6)

The story ends with the Lord accepting Job's repentance and restoring to him not only his previous possessions and family but twice as much as he had before. "And after this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, four generations. And Job died an old man and full of days." (Job 42:16-17)

Perhaps this was a longer recap of the story of Job than was really needed in order to make the point that God's ways (and even those of his counterpart on the left hand, Satan) are beyond the ken of us ordinary mortals. (Feel free to read the entire book for yourself and see if you don't agree with my conclusion. Some scholars also point out that "Along with Job's confession of his sin of self-sufficiency went a new consciousness of fellowship with God -- not the God of traditional religion, but 'the Living God'." ³ (I couldn't have said it any better than that. Not only does Job now worship the traditional God who is "wholly other" and transcendent but also the One who is both personal and immanent --the "Christ within you, the hope of Glory" - Colossians 1:27)

One final point about the ambivalence of the person known as Satan, Lucifer, the Serpent and the Old Dragon: I made mention in my last essay that the name Lucifer, meaning "the light bearer", was given to the Planet Venus, and because of its proximity to the Sun it was not only an orb of the night skies (i.e, the Evening Star) but half of the time it was also the Morning Star rising just before the Sun. Also the snake, serpent or dragon from ancient times signifies wisdom as well as that which is reviled. In a speech to his disciples Jesus charges them to "be wise as serpents and innocent as doves."

C. Man (including, of course, Wo-man)

I suspect you already perceive why I rearranged the original order of topics on which you suggested I comment:

(1) God - The Supreme and only One "in which we [and all other beings -visible and invisible] live, move and have our being." (Acts 17:28)

(2) Devil - the manifested shadow or emanation of that ineffable Being we call the God above all gods, the causeless cause, the unmoved mover, etc. ⁴ This duality forms the matrix from which all creation is generated (Spirit-Matter, Father-Mother, Good-Evil, Light-Darkness, etc.).

(3) Man - the microcosm of the Macrocosm - the being that not only contains all duality within himself (or herself) but is also a reflection several times removed from the Whole - a monad of the Monad (to use Pythagorean or Leibnitz's terminology). Thus, man, like the Almighty Him (or Her) self, although a unity is also composed of a trinity of coexistent constituents: (1) Spirit; (2) Mind or Consciousness; and (3) Matter. (Do I dare suggest, like some early Christians, that the Holy Ghost was feminine? Then the trinity of man would be analogous to the higher trinity of Father, Son and Holy Mother. I have already made note in my last essay of the etymological similarity between the Latin mater and materia. Some related trinitarian concepts in other cultures may be of interest just to reinforce the universality of the idea:

After eons and eons, even though each one thought he was traveling in a straight line, they were in fact traveling in a gigantic circle so that when they finally met head on, they annihilated each other in a blinding flash of light. The Genesis story says it more simply: "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth . . . And God said 'Let there be light' and there was light." (1:1,3). John's gospel restates the same message from the Christian perspective: "In the beginning was the Word [Greek, Logos] and the Word was with God , , , In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (1:1,4-5). Even in that famous equation formulated by Albert Einstein, e=mc², there are three elements (energy, matter and the velocity of light) but they are all inextricably related by the equal sign. Nor is it a coincidence that light itself is an "electromagnetic" vibration composed of both a particle and an invisible, magnetic component.

You may also recall that my "Eureka" experience at age 36, around which all of my essays have been fashioned, occurred while reading The Unobstructed Universe by Stewart Edward White. In fact you were kind enough to send me a copy of it for my library several years ago with the comment that it contained "some good stuff". (So good was it for me that in many ways it was a life changing experience.) To refresh your memory -- the book was about a transmission from the author's wife, Betty White, who had recently "died". Over many years she had developed her psychic faculties and was able to receive a number of transmissions from discarnate entities. (Credo, 1925; Why be a Mud Turtle?, 1928; The Betty Book, 1937; and Across the Unknown, 1938). Her friend and fellow psychic, Joan, was the medium through which she delivered the description of the world she now inhabited and the parallels with the one we mortals are living in. She called her world an "unobstucted" universe, which also contains the one we are familiar with, as contrasted with our "obstructed" universe where we keep bumping into things. She claims that her new perspective was the true or "orthic" way of perceiving things while our perspective, although a partial reflection of hers, was incomplete. She goes on through forty or so sessions to contrast our familiar trilogy of time, space and motion with her corresponding "trilogia" of receptivity, conductivity and frequency, which she calls the co-existent essences of "orthos", In spite of the different perspectives of the two realms, Betty kept insisting that "There is only one universe." And by changing our concepts of time, space and motion we can come closer to understanding what the "true" essences of these three concepts are at her newly acquired level of consciousness.

I'm not sure at what point in reading this book the first time that the "light" suddenly dawned, but it came in a flash and was overpowering not only intellectually but even more so emotionally. Joy! Joy! Joy! It was literally weeks before I could get my feet back on solid ground. In fact, there would be no returning to the same ground I had known before. There followed a period where I read all the metaphysical books I could get my hands on -- Edgar Cayce, the Filmores that founded Unity, Emmett Fox, Gurdieff, Ouspensky, Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Plotinus, Plato, Jung, etc., etc. I even joined the Tulsa Theosophical Society, primarily because they had the best metaphysical library in town. I didn't quit my day job (having the responsibility for feeding and clothing six of us as the sole breadwinner in those days), but I did end up teaching an adult education program for a couple of years at the Downtown YMCA entitled, "Realize Your Potential".

One of the things I discovered with all this background reading was that the divulgence by Betty White of two trinities was not unique -- far from it! Perhaps different words were used but others previously had expressed the same fundamental idea: that there is a subjective trinity at work as well as an objective trinity and that they work together to produce our phantasmagorical, three-dimensional reality. One of the first Westerners to express this insight was the philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Simply stated, he believed that space is the form of our outer (i.e., objective) experience while time is the form of our inner (i.e., subjective) experience. Much earlier was the Hindu depiction of their trimurta of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma with tripartite attributes of the latter two members which were called gunas.

Several parallels are quite striking with this Hindu depiction and the ideas suggested by both Kant and by Betty from the world beyond this one. Betty insisted that in order to get a glimpse of time in her realm we must start not with our ordinary clock time (which she called "sidereal" time) but with psychological time, which was more malleable. In other words the true nature of her time was subjective just as conceived by both Kant and the Hindus. Space for us is defined in terms of distance between objects and hence is closely associated with the world of matter and things "out there" -- a parallel again with the objective world of both Kant and the Hindu god of creation, Brahma. The relative position of objects over a given period of time gives rise to our perception of motion. Betty says this is only apparent and not the true essence of motion, which she defines as frequency. The Hindus agree that all perceptions in the phenomenal universe are only apparent and label them maya, or illusion. The interaction of energy and matter as we know from Einstein's famous formulation is governed by a very simple equation or law. Remarkably, the three gunas or attributes of Brahma can be translated in English by matter, energy and law.

The triangle representation of the physical world shown with its apex pointing downward to tamas (matter) emphasizes the lowest possible level of consciousness in this world. (Incidentally, the symbol of the YMCA is also an inverted triangle which indicates that institution's emphasis on the physical body of man and not on his mental or spiritual nature.) The three gunas of Vishnu, on the other hand, are depicted as a triangle pointing upward indicating the spiritual orientation of the second member of their trinity. Man, a being created in the image of God, partakes of both the upper and lower triangles which by including his mind or consciousness at the midpoint gives him not only a trinitarian nature but also a septenary one. These two intertwined triangles, one pointing upward and the other downward, form what is known as "The Star of David" , which is also displayed prominently on the Israeli flag. A variation of this symbol in which the upper triangle is outlined in white with the lower one shown in solid black and both then enclosed in a circle, is known as the Seal of Solomon. (This is the symbol I used as the logo of my "Realize Your Potential Course. In order to emphasize the unseen point at the center of the circle, which stands for the God above all gods, I added the symbol of infinity to show that the potential of mankind, like his creator, is ultimately without limits. .I am enclosing a copy of this logo since one picture they say is better than a thousand words.)

The ancient Chinese system of divination, found in their I Ching, is also based on two interrelated triangular symbols which they call trigrams. Each trigram is composed of solid and/or divided lines representing the fundamental duality in all nature (male-female, strong-weak, assertive-passive, etc.) which they designate as either yang (undivided) or yin (divided). In each three line configuration therefore there are eight possible combinations (two times two times two) and in each six line configuration (composed of two trigrams) there are eight times eight or sixty-four possible combinations of strong and/or weak lines. Both Confucius and Lao Tsu were familiar with this ancient depiction of the nature of things and both used it in their teaching and writings. Over time (very much like the enantiodromia concept of Heraclitus) a yang line turns into a yin line and vice versa. The universe thus is in a perpetual state of flux or motion. As Pascal expressed it: "Our nature consists in motion. . . . complete rest is death."

One last analogy and I'll let you off the hook on symbolism. At the bottom of page 13 is my own symbol for our three dimensional universe in perpetual motion -- the tuned circuit (the elementary principle of radio, radar and television transmission and reception. (No, I didn't read about this analogy in any book, but rather it is an insight born of my training as an electronic technician while in the navy during and after WWII.) Shown in the diagram is a simple oscillator composed of three elements (Surprise! Surprise!): (1) A source of electromotive force (or EMF) coming into the system from an external source such as a transformer or battery); (2) a capacitor, which is a receptacle for accumulating charged electrical particles, represented by the two parallel lines and the letter C; and (3) a conductor of electricity usually wound in the shape of a coil and represented by the letter L which stands for the coil's power of "self-inductance". Once an EMF is injected into the system it begins to oscillate at a frequency which is reflective of the values for C and L. Electrons (the fundamental particles of electricity) flow around the closed circuit until the reach the capacitor. At that point they can go no farther because there is a layer of insulating material between the top and the bottom of the two (or more) surfaces of the capacitor. This results in a transfer of the initial EMF to the capacitor and the electrons now try to escape their entrapment on the plate where they have accumulated by moving in the opposite direction. All goes well until they encounter the coil, which sets up a counter EMF by self-inductance from which the poor electrons also try to flee by reversing direction. Except for the fact that there is always some resistance in the circuit, which eventually dissipates the initial EMF, the electrons would forever oscillate back and forth between the polar duality inherent in the nature of capacitors and coils. . ( In the real world, of course, there is an inexhaustible spiritual source of energy to re-supply and overcome any and all encountered resistances.) Please note the similarity in both function and names between Betty's description of the three fundamental elements in her unobstructed universe --receptivity, frequency and conductivity -- and the three elements of the tuned circuit.

Now finally ("Thank God!" I can hear you saying) what does all this have to do with man and his responsibility in the production of Evil? Simply this -- By man's free-will choices, to a large extent over time, he creates his own environment. What about God's and the Devil's role? By now I suspect you know my answer ( a paraphrase of that provided by Omar Khyyam) We ourselves are both heaven and hell. If you counter by saying that man is a puny nothing compared with the majesty of God, I would agree with you; but man is becoming the lord and master of this little sphere whirling around a rather ordinary star along with more than 100 billion others in a galaxy which is only one of billions of others in the universe. (Remember my attraction to the concept of Deism way back on page 2?) Wherever God is, He doesn't seem to be much of a factor around this planet (for the last few thousand years at least). Since we have been taught that man is created in the image of God, he is given wide latitude here on earth. In the words of the psalmist:

Just who was Melchizedek? He is introduced to us in the Book of Genesis as the priest whom Abraham meets returning from his defeat of Chedolaomer and the kings who fought with him. More of his biography is told by the author of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament:

"If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade - the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element and forcing it on our distant notice- we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie - an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins when it would be something of itself." [Emphasis added]

With this last quote from Emerson we are zeroing in on the real culprit of the cause of evil in the world. Not only are we still suffering from those trying to dominaate and subdue their neighbors, but even more from those who think they can rape, plunder, pillage, rob, torture, starve and otherwise abuse their fellow man without fear of reprisal from either man or God, whether in this life or in the one to come. This trait in man is part and parcel of those inherited from our primitive ancestors when self- preservation, clan preservation and perpetuation of the species were very real and pressing concerns. We must remember that the species homo sapiens has been around at least 500,000 years while civilization, measured by the ability to think reflectively and express ideas with written symbols, hieroglyphics, or pictographs is scarcely 9,000 years old (as far as we have records to substantiate it at least).

If we accept the testimony of those who claim to be able to explore the remote past of the planet as well as its future, we learn that a highly evolved homo sapiens was around more than 100,000 years ago on the continent of Atlantis. (No bones or other artifacts have been discovered to substantiate such claims, however, since the entire continent supposedly subsided in a world-wide deluge around 12,000 years ago. Some fascinating evidence is presented though in a book published in 1882 by a several term congressman from Minnesota.⁶) Many traditions, however, as outlined in my last essay, report that we are the descendants of godlike beings. (Prometheus in Greek mythology being a familiar example). Not only were we created in their image (in the Old Testament it was in the image of Elohim, translated as God, which is the plural form of Eloha, meaning a god with a small "g") but they also incarnated ("the fall", so called) here on earth and dwelt among us. They were our instructors and even taught us the fundamentals of speech and written language. For example, you may recall it was the god Saturn, after he was hurled down to earth by Jupiter, who reputedly founded Latium, The Kingdom of the Latins, and ruled in a Golden Age when freedom and equality prevailed. Other creation myths tell about the gods descending (or incarnating) on earth to instruct men. You may recall in my last Essay the how the god Osiris became a human king in Egypt and was a good and wise ruler. A golden age then followed, when all the laws, ethics, institutions, etc. were first established.

Unlike the current worldview many mythologies teach that mankind has not progressed since the gods walked amongst us. Rather, as the Greek poet, Hesiod, recounts in his Works and Days: the Golden race was followed by four others, wherein he presents mankind in continuous decline. The current race is the Iron race in which man is "never resting from labor, born to trouble, sorrow and death, but with some good mingled with its evils. [Similarly, in Hindu mythology] the first age was the Golden Age, when virtue prevailed and man lived on the fruits of the garden of earth. After a steady decrease in both virtue and lifespan during the second and third ages, we find ourselves in the present era [the Kali Age, the last and worst of the four ages of the world, which is filled with] sin, disease and heresy."⁷ According to Hindu beliefs this fourth and final age will be succeeded by a return to the first age (called the satya yuga or krita yuga - an age of purity) but not before a cataclysmic end to the present one.

;So whether you accept the prevailing worldview that we have only recently descended from savage, warlike prototypes or that we have fallen to our present level after once having lived among the gods themselves, we find ourselves in a world where man's inhumanity to man, to his fellow creatures and to the earth itself is portrayed daily in our newspapers and hourly in our electronic worldwide media. We are not only appalled at what we see going on all around us, but cry out to ourselves, like the savior on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" We can but agree with Father Teilhard de Chardin when he concludes that "the human epic resembles nothing so much as a way of the Cross", with the Buddha's first noble truth that "All life is sorrowful", and with Thoreau's observation that "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation".

As you probably have already guessed, I subscribe to the latter view, viz, that we are descended from godlike beings. Yet unlike the philosophy of inevitable progress growing out of Darwin's theory of evolution, we find ourselves in many ways still bent not only on killing each other but with the aid of modern technology having the capacity not only to be able to destroy all mankind but quite possibly much of the other life on the planet as well. To comprehend why we have arrived at our present situation after such a glorious beginning it is necessary to understand three principles that are largely outside the belief systems inherent in our present scientific, philosophic and religious worldviews. These are the principles of: (1) the circularity of time; (2) the pre-existence and reincarnation of human souls; and (3) the law of universal cause and effect (in sanskrit, karma).

The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes (like the book of Job, known as "wisdom" writings) poetically expresses the principle of this circularity of time:

                     "The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up,
                    at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there
                    were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped,
                    before the hills, I was brought forth; . . .when he marked out the
                    foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman."
                                                                                                Proverbs 8:22-30

One of Edgar Cayce's readings confirms that "All souls were created in the beginning, and are finding their way back whence they came."¹⁰ Not only were we created as spiritual beings in the beginning of creation, but we have had numerous experiences here on earth since that time. As Lord Krishna (an incarnation of the god Vishnu) tells his protege, Arjuna in The Bhagavad-Gita:

                    Worn-out garments are shed by the body;
                    Worn-out bodies are shed by the dweller within the body;
                    New bodies are donned by the dweller like garments.

Similarly, the Egyptian mystical Books of Hermes confirm that:

However, a belief in the principle of the pre-existence of the soul and reincarnation does not negate or diminish a Christian's belief in a continued existence beyond the grave. It merely enlarges the belief and gives it a universal perspective. Every entity that has been created since the beginning of time has a life cycle. At the small end of the scale an individual virus or bacterium has a very short life cycle. The lives of some subatomic particles are measured in minute fractions of a second. Even combinations of atoms into molecules within organisms are continually being created and destroyed. Nearly all cells in our body are born, die and regenerate every few years. Birth death and regeneration are universal principles in the constant flux of the material universe. Even stars are now known to have life cycles (although fortunately our own star, the sun, should continue to shine for a few more billion years before burning up all of its hydrogen fuel.). Death and regeneration are witnessed by us every year in the plant kingdom. It is no accident, therefore, that Christians celebrate the resurrection of their savior every year shortly after the spring equinox when flowers, bushes and trees are putting forth their new life after having been dormant during the cold and bleak winter season.

A rapprochement between the Christian belief in only one life on earth and the older belief in multiple sojourns in a body of flesh can be made by considering what I referred to in my last essay as the Great Chain of Being.¹² This principle is the essence of what was called by Leibnitz the philosophia perennis (the perennial philosophy) As Aldous Huxley defined it in his book by the same name, the perennial philosophy is "the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being." The poet, Alexander Pope, succinctly expresses the same principle when he says,

"All are parts of one stupendous whole whose body Nature is and God the soul."

The American philosopher, Arthur Lovejoy, defines this "great chain of being" as an immense "number of links ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest kind of existents, which barely escape nonexistence, through every possible grade up to the ens perfectissimum [the most perfect being, i.e., God]." This principle was explained by Pythagoras, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, van Helmont, Leibnitz and others as the ubiquitous monads which lie in the heart of all creation. The same idea is expressed by St. Luke in the Book of Acts when he says that God "is not far from each one of us for in him we live, move and have our being. (17:28). (We only have to add that this applies not only to us but to all creation, invisible as well as visible.)

This principle also relates to our earlier discussion of the universality of cycles in that there is a hierarchy of cycles as well as a hierarchy of being. The smaller cycles are incorporated in and form part of the being of the larger cycles. For a twentieth century example consider the reception of sound and pictures from a television station. The sound is composed of audio cycles from about 25 to perhaps 10,000 cycles per second. The visual images we see are composed of 200,000 or so pixels which are scanned every 1/30 of a second for a total frequency of 6,000,000 or more cycles per second. Both audio and visual cycles are then imposed on a very high frequency carrier wave that ranges from 54 to over 200 million cycles per second and transmitted through various means to your TV set. At the receiving end the signal is identified by its carrier frequency (i.e. its channel) and the sound and picture elements are captured by demodulating the sound and video signals carried in one of the sidebands of the carrier frequency. The higher the frequency of the carrier wave the more the information and intelligence it can transmit. Fiber optic cable, which uses light itself as the carrier, has an enormous capacity for carrying information. Light has a frequency between 400 and 900 million, million cycles per second or more than 2 million times greater than the highest VHF radio frequency used to broadcast TV signals from a transmitter station

Now for the punch line: All creation (visible and invisible) can be represented by the concept of frequency. Plants, animals, men, angels and demons, even minerals have frequencies. (What is our most accurate measure of time? - the frequency of an atomic clock!!! A cesium-133 atomic clock measures time within plus or minus one second in a million years.) Another way of expressing this is to think of all creation possessing consciousness. (Remember my description of reality as composed of the threefold essences of Spirit, Mind or Consciousness and Matter back on page 11.) Does this mean that the entire universe is in some sense alive? You bet!!! (Shades of animism and the earth goddess Gaia.) Remember that at the heart of all creation are those ubiquitous monads. That is the spiritual component. Their outer garment is their form (i.e., matter on the physical plane) and their degree of awareness or consciousness is represented by the interplay of the inner and outer duality that produces their characteristic frequency. Note the parallel between light and the nature of consciousness. Light is the interplay of an invisible, magnetic component with its outer particle called a photon that produces the electromagnetic frequency we call light. Since life is the essence of consciousness, recall John's gospel where he says, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." (John 1:4), and his quote of Jesus saying, "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not live in darkness, but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

Just as the carrier frequency is at a much higher frequency than its audio and video components, so are we at a much higher frequency than the organs, cells and other components of our bodies. When the life principle (called by Bergson, the elan vital) leaves the body, all of its component parts cease "to live, move and have their being." However, the spiritual man has a number of frequencies above those that make up our physical body. So when death, so-called, in this world occurs, a simultaneous birth occurs on the next higher frequency (or plane) above the physical (called the astral by those who have developed their "second sight"). Although astral matter through which we express our feelings and emotions on earth is invisible (to most of us at least) while in the physical body, it becomes the outer garment of the body (called by some the kama rupa) in the realm we enter after death. Descriptions of that realm are becoming almost commonplace with reports from those who have had "near death esperiences (NDE's) or "out of body experiences (OBE's).¹³

Reports of a different kind of astral experience were common in the '60's with the widespread experimentation (mostly among the younger generation) with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD. Ex-Harvard professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, advised people to "turn on, tune in and drop out". Aldous Huxley, the well-known author, wrote the book, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, in 1954 after his own experience with mescaline, a chemical obtained from the peyote cactus. More recently the focus of consciousness changing experiences seems to have shifted to those who have reportedly been abducted (usually in the dark of night) by beings connected with UFO, crop circle and animal mutilation phenomena. Interestingly, some of those who have either had near death experiences , ingested hallucinogenic drugs or have been abducted by aliens have had life changing experiences. More traditional methods of altering states of consciousness such as meditation, yoga, hypnosis and psychotherapy have at times produced similar results. Not all of these mind-altering experiences are ecstatic or pleasurable, however. It is not uncommon to read reports and even see television shows about those who have had frightening, even terrifying, experiences in the altered state of consciousness.¹⁴

Since many of our moods range from "down" to "up", it is not surprising that the lower particles of astral matter correspond to the darker and lower levels in the lower regions of the astral plane while the lighter and brighter particles are found in the upper regions. The Sanskrit name for the dimension we enter after death, in dreams, after ingesting hallucinogenic drugs and so on is kamaloca, the place of animalistic desires and passions. In its lower levels it is what the Greeks called Hades, the ancient Semites, Sheol and the Anglo-Saxons, Hell. Although there may be some souls who remain in such a dark, dismal and forsaken place for extended periods, most of us hopefully will not have to spend any time there.

The astral experience can also be breathtakingly beautiful and awe-inspiring. Aldous Huxley describes these higher reaches as seen through the eyes of the Irish poet AE (George Russell) as a world "illumined by 'an intolerable luster of light'; of finding himself looking a 'landscapes as lovely as a lost Eden'; of beholding a world where the 'colors were brighter and purer, and yet made a softer harmony'. Again, 'the winds were sparkling and diamond clear, and yet full of color as an opal, as they glittered through the valley, and I knew the Golden Age was all about me, and it was we who had been blind to it, but that it had never passed away from the world.'" ¹⁵

Whether one has a delightful and incredibly beautiful experience or a frightful and terrifying one depends primarily on one's emotional state at the time. Since the matter of the astral plane is the medium through which all our desires and emotions are expressed, it permits expression from the most base and vile emotions imaginable to those most uplifting and noble. Analogies can be made with our experiences with both sound and color. It is today a common occurrence to be waiting at a stoplight and be assaulted by the low vibrational sounds coming from a "boom box "or radio from the car sitting next to you. How this qualifies as music I'll never know, but the vibrations are not only audible but visceral. At the other end of the spectrum of sound we have music which literally transports you into a higher realm of being ( e.g., Handel's Halleluia Chorus and the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's 9th symphony among many other examples). In the spectrum of visual phenomena we typically associate dark colors with depression and sadness (Mood Indigo) and the lighter, brighter shades at the higher frequencies of light with joy and well-being. Red at the lower end of the spectrum often equates with lust and the lower emotions while the higher frequency greens, blues and purples are more often associated with beauty and the higher emotional feelings.

After the loss of the physical body (i.e., death) the nature of one's desires and thoughts that predominated during life determines the length of time that is spent between incarnations in the astral plane (i.e., kamaloca) and the length of time spent in the heavenly realms (called in Sanskrit, devachan or the dwelling of the gods). The heavier and baser elements of astral material are retained in the astral body immediately after departing this life. Before progress can be made to the lighter and more joyous realms these elements must first be shed by the astral body (i.e., the kama rupa). This is the process of purgation or purification described by those with spiritual sight (like Dante and Swedenborg, for example) and the basis for the dogma of purgatory by the Roman Catholic Church. In order to shed these outer, baser elements from the astral body (one of the seven original "coats of skin" given by God to Adam and Eve) it is necessary to relive those experiences which produced them. Typically this is not a painless process. As St. Paul explained it:

Every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built upon [the foundation of Christ], he shall receive a reward [in the heavenly realms]. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself [the spiritual man] shall be saved; yet so as by fire. - Corinthians 3:13-15¹⁶

There are also souls, perhaps millions, who remain trapped in the levels of kamaloca close to the earth. This is particularly true of those who have been killed suddenly whether by their own hand, by an accident or in wartime.¹⁷ This accounts for the many reports of hauntings in which discarnates relive over and over the unhappy events that resulted in their sudden departure from this world. Sooner or later, however, memories of such traumatic events fade, and perhaps with assistance from those still on the earth or from those descending from a higher level souls so trapped advance to the higher levels of the astral experience. As delightful as these upper regions are with beautiful scenes and delightful music, the heavenly levels have not yet been reached. In order to advance into those realms all astral matter, both the grosser and the lighter, must drop away leaving behind an astral shell analogous perhaps to the shedding of the physical body at it's death. The astral shell however retains a residue of the person who inhabited it and is sometimes brought back to "life" by mediums or seances purported to prove contact with the spiritual world. Eventually these shells also disintegrate into their constituent elements and are recycled just as our earthly remains are. ("Thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return." - Genesis 3:19)

It should be apparent by now that it is not the earthly personality that survives in devachan. It is one's higher self, the spiritual man, who, however, participates to a lesser or greater degree in a given incarnation (mostly as the voice of conscience). "For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God," (John 3:20-21). "No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven." (John 3:13). Still it is those who sacrifice on earth for the sake of the kingdom that shall have their reward in heaven. "Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn." (Matthew 13:30).

Now to discuss the subject of rewards and punishments further let us introduce that universal law known as karma (Sanskrit, action). To begin with it is necessary to put away images of a judge sitting on a throne somewhere or other who weighs all our deeds on a balance scale and condemns some to eternal damnation and rewards others with eternal life in heaven - A story perhaps for children or one told by preachers of "hell fire and damnation", who instill fear into the hearts of their followers rather than the joys in discovering the "Christ within you the hope of glory". In truth we are the artificers of all

that which befalls us, both individually and collectively. In order to make sense of such a possibility we not only have to understand the truth about reincarnation but also the interconnectedness of all life. The law of karma could well be thought of not only as the inevitable results that follow our own desires, thoughts and actions but as the working of a law that applies to all levels of reality.

More generally, the law of karma could be better defined as the law of compensation or as the restoration of balance and harmony when there is a movement away from the center of equilibrium. For example, in the physical world Isaac Newton discovered a law of motion (published in 1687 in his Principia) that states: "To every action there is always an equal and contrary reaction, or, the mutual actions of two bodies [or forces] are always equal and oppositely directed." Every action in turn is the result of a prior cause or causes. In the case of homo sapiens his actions, if traced back to their source, begin with a desire or thought. As the poet-philosopher, Goethe, expresses it:

who are the recorders throughout the universe of the karmic "ledgers". Not only are good and bad deeds recorded, however on the skeins of time. A residue of attributes (Sanskrit, skandhas) is left behind after each incarnation. These unite at one's next physical embodiment and constitute the basis for personality traits. Every tendency of our future character, good, bad or otherwise that is accumulated from past lives is included in these attributes. Included, therefore, are all the skills and talents that have been acquired in past lives, although only some of them will be manifest in a given incarnation.

The Christian belief, of course, is that those who do not receive their "just desserts" in this life will receive them afterwards in either heaven or hell. They also believe in the forgiveness of sins as a result of Jesus' death on the cross. As St. John expresses it: "If any one sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." (1John 2:1-2) This "taking away the sins of the world" is available for any Christian who confesses his sins and promises to "go and sin no more." As the General Confession is recited by the Anglicans from their Book of Common Prayer.

"Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred and strayed from they ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those who confess their faults. Restore thou those who are penitent; According to they promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen."

In addition to a general confession of sins Roman Catholics have the one-on-one confessional to a priest available for absolution as well as the nearly universal practice by Christians of receiving the bread, and by some also the wine, in a re-enactment of Jesus' last supper with his disciples before being crucified. Also it is almost a universal practice by Christians to recite together what is known as the Lord's prayer wherein they ask the Father to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". This Christian belief in the ability of God through Christ to forgive sins, known as the doctrine of "vicarious atonement", is thus central to their faith. The question naturally arises then of how is it possible to square a belief in reincarnation and the action of karma with that of forgiveness of sins through the merits of the "Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world".

that it is a mystery, a paradox. The rational mind doesn't like to leave mysteries and paradoxes unresolved. One therefore must apparently weigh the evidence for and against each point of view and then choose between them in order to resolve the difficulty. Before having to make a "Hobson's choice", however, it is well to recall that the very nature of reality is composed of antinomies: spirit-matter, God-Devil, good-evil, mortal-immortal, etc. Recall conflicting claims of science and religion, evolution versus creationism, absolutism versus relativism, among scientists themselves arguing about whether the nature of light is wavelike or corpuscular, between Einstein and Bohr arguing about determinism versus Heisenberg's uncertainty principal. Recall also the stanza from one of my favorite poems, The Blind Men and the Elephant who were disputing about the nature of this strange beast: "And so these men of Hindustan disputed loud and long; though each was partly in the right, all were in the wrong". Also you may remember the observation by Neils Bohr that "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." ¹⁸

Our present dilemma, between the truth of either karma and its inevitable actions and reactions or the Christian doctrine of vicarious atonement and the forgiveness of sins, is very similar to the one faced by early Christians between their beliefs and those of orthodox Jews. The most zealous of the orthodox Jews was the sect of the Pharisees. They endeavored to live not only by the ten commandments given by God to Moses but by the hundreds of laws and observances that were included in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). Their focus was on the outward observance of the law and consequently often neglected to recognize its original source in an inward revelation to Moses. It was to these "holier than thou" Pharisees therefore that Jesus often addressed his most scathing accusations:

Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel."¹⁹

The most ardent and articulate spokesman for the new faith of Christianity was the apostle Paul. Before his life-changing conversion on the road to Damascus he was a devout Pharisee and one of the most severe critics of the followers of Jesus. After his conversion he attempted to convert his fellow Jews to the new way of thinking, but he was not very successful. He therefore told them "It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles."²⁰ It was in no small part the results of his journeys, preaching and letters to the non-Jews that led to the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean and formed the basis for much of the later doctrines of the Christian faith.

It was not only the outer observance of the laws of Moses that was necessary for salvation but the changing of a man's heart. "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. .That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."²¹ So to be a believer of the New Covenant it wasn't necessary to make an either-or decision, between the law and grace because by changing one's heart (his very being) the obedience of the law followed naturally. However, the new teaching was that Christians were not bound by outward observations of the law, but by the higher law of love in the inner man. "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law."²²Similarly, when a lawyer asked Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus asked him what was written in the Jewish law. The lawyer replied: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself" and Jesus replied: "You have answered right; do this, and you will live."²³ So the written law and the inward love for God and your neighbor are not contrary beliefs but complementary. Neither one is complete without the other.

So it is the same with the law of karma and the forgiveness of sins by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. They are not contradictory but complementary. Remember that it is our higher self, the Christ within us, that is the real actor on the stage of physical manifestation. The personality is merely the role that the actor is playing for a limited engagement. To the extent therefore that the personality identifies with this immortal self the sins of the player on the stage are truly forgiven because they are seen from a different perspective. (e.g., "Behold, I make all things new." -Rev. 21:5 and "It is no longer I [St. Paul] who lives but Christ which liveth in me." - Galatians 21:20) The word atonement is derived from "at-one-ment" - meaning the reconciliation of opposites. Fear is replaced by joy and love. As St. Paul reminds us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law."²⁴; and St. John confirms that "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love."²⁵

Furthermore, many, if not most, of the effects manifested by karma in an individual's earthly life are caused by karma he (or she) inherits from one's group, nation, race and ancestors. This is called "distributive karma" and can be long lasting indeed. One only need read the daily newspapers or watch world-wide news on television to see that many current conflicts between some groups started hundreds, and in some cases

thousands, of years ago (e.g., Jews and Palestinians, Croats and Serbs, Shiites and Sunnis, Hindu Indians and Muslim Pakistanis, etc.). I find it interesting that those who stand on the side of the inexorable law of karma admit that "no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part."²⁶ Also the enclosed excerpt admits the possibility of concentrating or collecting distributive karma in such a way as to reduce "all this protracted suffering". Isn't this what the Christian's belief is all about - viz, the sinless, pure "Lamb of God" being sacrificed on the cross for the sins (i.e, the karma) of the whole world?

In fact, it seems to me that the Theosophists, Buddhists, etal have largely overlooked the dual nature of their parabrahm (the God above all gods). God is not only transcendent and therefore unknowable and without any anthropomorphic attributes but is at the same time immanent, personal and very much knowable. As Luke reminds us, "he is not far from each one of us for in Him we live and move and have our being."²⁷ Not only therefore is God's nature "awful" (i.e., full of awe) but also tender, loving and full of mercy. As Job's friends reminded him, the Almighty "wounds but he binds up, he smites but his hands heal". Similarly Jesus tells his followers, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser."²⁸ and "This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."²⁹ Thus in order to be whole (same etymology as "holy") one must seek to have what the philosopher Goethe calls a "united dual nature".

This has been a longish, not too well organized, answer to what is basically an unanswerable question: How do we account for all the evil in this world? I have some sympathy with one of Aldous Huxley's observations that "Perhaps this world is some other planet's hell." Of course, it has an admixture of heaven as well as hell, which I think is designed to help us humans define the choices we have been given the freedom to make each day between good and evil. ("I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that you and your descendents may live."³⁰) Whether you subscribe to the current worldview that we have only recently evolved from more primitive ancestors or the orthodox religious view that we were kicked out of paradise by God for disobeying his commandment not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it is plain that we are at a considerable remove from the status of godlike beings or from that example of the perfect man set for us in the life of Jesus 2,000 years ago. According to esoteric sources, man first made an "appearance" on earth in ethereal form some 18,000,000 years ago in what is now our fourth planetary round in a cycle of seven rounds before humanity as a whole will be able to graduate to the status of gods. The bottom ( i.e., the most material level) of this fourth round on the fourth planet (i.e., earth) was reached by the fourth root race known as the Atlantean several hundred thousand years ago. We are now approaching the end of the fifth root race (the Aryan) which has as its keynote the development of the mind (Sanskrit, manas). (I'm sure you don't want any more detail about these esoteric notions.) Therefore, don't expect to enjoy a dreamless sleep in nirvana for a long, long time.

Of course many of us will have a foretaste of that ultimate release from the "Cycle of Necessity" (i.e., karma) by a more or less extended stay in devachan (the heaven world, "the Isles of the Blest", "the Elysian Fields", etc.) Just as night follows day, as the heart's active, systolic contraction is followed by its diastolic expansion and relaxation, as inhalation of air into the lungs is followed by its exhalation of deoxygenated air, so does rest follow activity in rhythmic oscillation. I have discussed the cyclical nature of time and how the frequency of a cycle depends on an entity's position in the hierarchy (from the minute fraction of a second pulse from an atomic clock to the incredibly long billions upon billions of years cycle between the "big bang" creation of the universe to its inevitable collapse in the "big crunch" described by Hindus as the Day and Night of Brahman). Throughout the hierarchy of Nature a period of birth, expansion and activity is followed by one of contraction, assimilation and rest. The periodic appearance of the spiritual man in a body of flesh (i.e., reincarnation) is only another example of this universal principle. I have also discussed (perhaps ad nauseam) about the constant movement and circulation of opposites (the "enantiodromia" of Heraclitus), the circulato in alchemy, the angels ascending and descending Jacob's ladder, the upward movement of the "yin" lines and the downward movement of the "yang" lines portrayed in the Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes), of the involution or fall from spirit into matter and the ascending arc of evolution from matter back again into spirit, etc, etc. So , therefore, a life of activity and challenge here on earth is followed eventually by a period of well-deserved rest (for most of us I hope). As the Old Testament avers: "Return O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you."³¹; "In returning and rest you shall be saved"³²; And in the New Testament we are told it is possible to achieve a state of rest ( i.e., equipoise) while still in the flesh: "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."³³ and as the writer of the Book of Hebrews admonishes us: just as God rested on the seventh day from all his works, "Let us therefore strive to enter that rest."³⁴ Of course, we have a preview of that state for eight hours or so every night when we enjoy a good night's sleep, seldom remembering any dreams in detail but awakening refreshed and ready to face another day with its set of problems and opportunities to be of service to others.

One final note on the subject of eschatology: In spite of the fact that East and West differ on the subject of reincarnation and the process of becoming "perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect"³⁵ both agree on our ultimate destiny to return to that sinless state which we as newly created souls enjoyed in the beginning. Many traditions agree that we are approaching the "end times" whether they be conceived as a great final battle between good and evil on the plains of Jezreel (i.e., Armageddon), the second coming of Jesus to judge the world and take his chosen ones bodily to heaven, or the coming of the Zoroastrian savior, Saoshayant, at the end of their 12,000 year cycle. Prophesies abound about the events which will precede or accompany these momentous changes to the earth and to all life upon it. Even esoteric sources tell about changes accompanying the end of a major cycle presaged by the movement from one to another sign of the zodiac every 2,000 years. As stated earlier, it is claimed by astrologers and others that we are now in the transition between the Age of Pisces (symbolized by a fish, used by the early Christians to identify themselves) and the Age of Aquarius (the water carrier or water man). I must tell you then about a dream I had recently which I had trouble interpreting. It was about a paddle similar to the type used by my fraternity back 50 years ago at MIT. However, instead of having the Greek letters of the fraternity carved on it was the single word "Wassermann". Now for the uninitiated pledges the paddles carried by each of us were for chastising us periodically for failing in one or more of our duties as pledges. Our punishment was to go through the gauntlet of initiated brothers and be administered a number of swats on the buttocks. The word "Wassermann", on my paddle was perplexing though. The only association I had with the name was the German scientist who devised a well-known test for syphilis. Then it finally dawned on me that "Wasser" was German for "water" and "mann" of course was "man". So the plain translation of the name was "water man" and its association with the paddle was one of punishment or chastisement. The translation from "water man" to "water carrier" was rather obvious and hence to the symbol of the sign of Aquarius. Then to my book on symbols where I read that: "The sign of Aquarius symbolizes the dissolution and decomposition of the forms existing within any process, cycle or period; the loosening of the bonds; the imminence of liberation through the destruction of the world of phenomena."³⁶ Need I say more?

Footnotes

1 . John A. Hardon, S.J., Religions of the World, Volume I, Image Books, 1968, page 208

2 . HPB, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2, p. 487

3 . Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament,
2nd Edition, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1966, p.518

4 . This is an oversimplification. For example, as noted previously, the Zoroasterians' One and Only God, Ahura-Mazda, was "Himself issued [or emanated] from Zeruna Akerne (Boundless Time or the Unknown Cause.)"

5 . Bernhard W. Anderson, Op.Cit. p.488

6 . Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, modern edition by Dover Publications, NY, 1976

7 . Mythology, an Illustrated Encyclopedia, edited by Richard Cavendish, Barnes & Noble, 1993, p.123

8 . From his Summa Contra Gentiles as found in Joseph Campbell's, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p.269

9 . Eight major civilizations have arisen, flowered and decayed since the beginning of the Sumero-Babylonian in the fourth millenium BC according to Oswald Spengler in his Decline of the West

10 . Selections from the Edgar Cayce Readings, A.R.E. Press, Virgina Beach, VA. 1981, p.11

11 . For an update on scientific evidence though see Ian Stevenson's Reincarnation and Biology, 1997

12 . My essay, The Problem of Evil, p.22

13 . For example, Dr. Raymond Moody's Life after Life and Dannion Brinkley's Saved by the Light describe experiences of those who have been pronounced "clinically dead" but who have been restored to physical life after a brief journey through a tunnel of darkness into the light. There typically they meet relatives and friends who have passed over or radiant beings that they describe as angelic or Christ-like.

14 . On those having had bad experiences with extraterrestrial entities, for example, read Whitley Strieber's Confirmation: The Hard Evidence of Aliens Among Us or his Communion, A True Story. Also Budd Hopkins reports the experiences of scores of those who have been abducted in his Missing Time and several more recent books. If you really want chapter and verse on cover-ups by the government on UFO's and contacts with extraterrestrials, read Linda Moulton Howe's Glimpses of Other Realities, Volumes I and II), the last of which was published in 1998.

15 . Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, Harper & Row, Perennial Library Edition, 1990, p.94-95

16 . In Dannion Brinkley's book, Saved by the Light, he describes the rolling up of one's life history on passing through the portal of death; and then not only having to re-experience all the unkindnesses and brutal acts he had done to others (and there were many), but even more agonizing was having to experience the pain, both physically and emotionally, of those he had mistreated during his lifetime.

17 . A detailed description of those so trapped can be found in Gordon Michael Scallion's, Notes from the Cosmos, chapters entitled, Crisis in the Borderland and Reincarnation. An update of those still trapped can be found in the May/June 2000 issue of his Intuitive Flash where he describes those souls in the first and second levels of the "Shadowland" (i.e., kamaloca).

18 . As found in my essay, The Problem of Evil, page 2.

19 . Matthew 23:23-24

20 . Acts 13:46

21 . John 3:6

22 . Romans 13:8

23 . Luke 10:27-28

24 . Galatians 5:22

25 . 1 John 4:18

26 . HPB, The Key to Theosophy, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, CA, 1995, p.203

27 . Acts 17:27-28

28 . John 15:1

29 . John 17:12-13

30 . Deuteronomy 30:19

31 . Psalm 116:7

32 . Isaiah 30:15

33 . Matthew 11:28

34 . Hebrews 4:11

35 . Matthew 5:48

36 . J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, Philosophical Library, New York, 1962, p.15