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een able to efface in later incarnations. By suffering we have learned humility, at the same time with
indulgence and compassion for all those about us who succumb to low instincts, as we once did.
It is not, then, by vengeance that the law strikes us, but because it is good and profitable to suffer,
since suffering liberates us, while it executes the verdict of the conscience. We hear much of the law of
retaliation, but reparation does not always present itself in the form of the act committed. Social conditions and
historic evolution oppose that. With the torments of the Middle Ages many scourges have disappeared.
Nevertheless, the sum of human suffering under various forms remains proportionally the same. In vain
progress is realized, civilization extended – hygiene and well-being developed; new maladies appear which
man is powerless to cure. We must recognize in this that superior law of equilibrium of which we have spoken.
Suffering will be necessary as long as man does not think and act in harmony with eternal law. It will
cease s soon as the accord is established. All our evils come from what we do in opposition to the currents of
divine life. If we enter into this current, pain will disappear with the causes which gave it birth. For a long time
to come, earthly humanity, ignorant of these superior laws, unconscious of duty, will have need of sorrow to
stimulate it on its way and to transform its primitive and gross instincts into pure and generous sentiments. For
a long time man must pass through the bitter initiative before arriving at knowledge of himself and his goal. At
present he thinks only of using his faculties to combat physical suffering – to augment riches and well being
on the material plane, and to render earthly conditions of life agreeable. But this is all in vain. Suffering
changes its aspect as the conditions of earth change, but it is no less suffering, and while selfishness and
personal interests govern earthly society – while the human thoughts turn away from profound subjects, just so
long the flowers of the soul will not bloom. All the social and economic doctrines of the world will be
powerless to reform it, or to alleviate the woes of humanity, because their foundation is too narrow, and they
place on one brief earth life the reason of being, the end and aim of this existence, and of all our efforts.
To extinguish the evil in society we must elevate the human soul to the consciousness of its role, make
it understand that its fate depends upon itself, and that its felicity will be always proportional to the extent of
its triumphs over itself and its devotion to others. Then will the social question be resolved by the substitution
of altruism for narrow and exclusive personalism. Men will feel themselves to be brothers, and equal by divine
law, which gives to each the good and bad experiences necessary to his evolution, as the means of hastening
his ascension. Only when that day comes will sorrow diminish its empire. Fruit of ignorance and selfishness,
and of all the animal passions which still agitate the human soul, it will vanish with the causes which produced
it, thanks to a higher education, and the realization in us of moral justice and love.
Moral evil is in the dissonance of the soul with divine harmony. In the degree that it mounts to a
clearer view, toward a larger truth, toward a more perfect wisdom, the causes of suffering attenuate, at the
same time that vain ambitions and material desires vanish. And step-by-step, from life to life, the soul
penetrates into the great light and the great peace, where evil is unknown, and where good only reigns.
* * *
Often I have heard people whose lives have been sorrowful, say: ‘I do not wish to be reborn on earth’.
When one has been shaken by the violent storms of life, it is natural to long for repose. I understand how such
a soul shrinks from the thought of recommencing this battle of life, where it has received wounds which are
still bleeding! But law is inexorable, and to mount up in the hierarchy of worlds, it is necessary to leave here
all the baggage of appetites and passions which attach us to earth. Souls that carry those desires beyond the
grave are delayed, and tied to lower regions. Often those who believe themselves worthy of attaining high
altitudes find themselves riveted to this planet by their tastes. They have not understood love in its divine
essence, nor sacrifice for humanity, wherein one life not for self, but for all. To render themselves ripe for the
higher worlds, they must re-descend into the crucible – into the furnace where the hardness of the heart melts
like wax. And when the dross of the soul has been rejected, and the divine essence extracted, then God calls
them to a higher life and a more beautiful task.
Above all, it is necessary to measure at their just value the cares and the sorrows of this life. For us
these things are very cruel; but they dwarf and vanish when the spirit, elevated above the details of existence,
embraces in a large outlook the perspective of its destiny. It alone knows how to weigh and measure events,
and how to sound the depths of the two oceans of time and space – the immensity of Eternity.
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