A Question on the Focus of One’s Life
John Garrigues
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Editorial Note:
The following article
was first
published by “Theosophy” magazine
in the edition of February 1928, p. 177.
It had no
indication as to the name of the
author. An
analysis of its contents and style
shows it was
written by John Garrigues (1868-1944).
(CCA)
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Question:
We are taught that the only way to learn is by
experience, and that we have to go through all experiences. Does it mean that
we have to go through every
experience we see in life - even the harrowing and revolting ones - in order to
learn sympathy, and their opposites?
Answer:
We are not only taught, but each one of us for himself
knows that the only way to learn is
through experience and observation.
There are three phases of experience:
(a) By
inflicting it on others;
(b) By
having it inflicted on ourselves; and
(c) By
observing the experience itself, whether undergone by ourselves or another.
What we have to learn is the meaning of that Life
which each one of us is and which all of us are - its powers, its
potentialities, their development, use, and purpose.
Under the theory of Karma and Reincarnation we should
understand that each one of us has already undergone countless times every
possible experience in matter from its highest to its lowest states, from its
simplest to its most complex forms.
No man, therefore, needs any further experience in the
sense in which the word is employed in the question asked. What every man does
need is to understand those
experiences. Understanding comes by contrast, by comparison, by reason, by
reflection, and, above all, by perception of the identical nature and law of
all Life. After the middle of the Fourth Round no man can have a new experience. He only can have the
repetition of old experiences, good, bad or indifferent, until he understands
that they are effects, and begins to live as well as act upon the plane of
causes.
This is a question that is often asked. It cannot be
answered, nor the answer perceived, through any number of
experiences. What we perceive is effects and these we name experiences, but the
world of Spirit, or pure Being, and the world of Causation, or mental
existence, are also worlds of experience quite as much as, and more so than,
the world of mere effects.
Incarnated man lives in three worlds: the world of
being, the world of causation, and the world of effects. Experience, in the
full sense, means the harmonious realization of the unity of these three worlds. So long as any experience appears to
us as “harrowing” or “revolting”, we cannot understand it, because the
experience is then perceived only through our psychic nature. When experience
of any kind is regarded as experience and not as either good or bad, pleasant
or painful, we begin to be able to make intelligent spiritual distinctions and decisions. Realization comes from
understanding the Unity of Life, not from any imaginable amount of experiences
of its manifestations.
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First publication
of the above article in our associated websites: March 2012.
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In September 2016, after a careful analysis of the state of the
esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided to form the Independent Lodge of Theosophists,
whose priorities include the building of a better future in the different
dimensions of life.
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