THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER IX

RE-EXISTENCE

Section 8

The doers now on earth came from a prior earth age. Failure of the doer to improve. The story of feeling-and-desire. The spell of the sexes. The purpose of re-existences.

Doers now on earth and those of whom tradition and history tell, were embodied in some of the people of these past ages. The doers that appeared in the past ages continue to re-exist, though not all of them can be here today. The leading doers in the past may not be here now.

The majority of the doers known of in historical times belong to an earth age. This started after the obliteration of the people of a former cycle of four ages. There are now also many who belonged to water, air and fire peoples. But they were not the ones who made those ages great. They were then in a position like that of the people today who while they receive telegraphic and wireless communications and ride in electric cars, know little about electricity. It is likely that the few men who have changed conditions on the earth in the last hundred and fifty years by their inventions and applications of the sciences belong to the water, air and fire people, but they played a part more prominent than the mere populace, and some of them probably helped to develop great achievements. However, some here today who are under a cloud were yet in the past among the makers of the great civilizations of the earth, water, air and fire people.

The changes the doers have undergone while they have passed through all these rises and falls in the Fourth Civilization, were changes in feelings and desires. The cultural phenomena in the different ages were expressive of these changes. The doers thought outwardly and the changes were outward. Even the highest civilizations were outward. They developed to satisfy sensuous perceptions. They were nature civilizations. The human beings had after all little more than glorified bodies and trained senses. At no time during these civilizations could the people, except those who attained freedom, use more than the body-mind, with the feeling-mind and desire-mind as aides. For it is necessary to feel and to desire something beyond the four senses, in order to call upon more than the body-mind. The body-mind works for nature only.

The doers are old in experience, very old, but young in learning and infants in knowledge. Rightness and reason have been disregarded by feelings and desires. What the doers felt and desired was considered right, and the thinking served in building up the ages accordingly. Often doers had reminiscences of their origin, their happy state and of the innate ideas of truth, justice, immortality and happiness which had been once with them. They desired them again and then they worked toward that which they felt. So they built that desire out into a civilization thinking that this would bring them back their happy state. Their desires reached out to lofty ideals. But as they sought for them outwardly they failed to realize them and soon lapsed. The desires of the doers have changed many times from grosser to finer objects, which were sought as means of satisfaction. The thinking of the feeling-mind and the desire-mind, dominated by the body-mind, has not changed much. These three minds were and are servitors of the senses. Though their thinking was often brilliant in accomplishments, there was still no great change in what the doer learned. Outward things it mastered, but it learned little thereby, because its activities were turned outwardly to nature, and not to itself as being part of its Triune Self and under the Light of the Intelligence. Often when doers had reminiscences of the presence of the Light in which they once had stood, and often when they remembered the warning of the Light, they were afraid, and worshipped the nature gods all the more in their religions. But often the reminiscences aided some doers to turn inward and to look for the Light there. Some advanced, but most fell back into the arms of nature, which was always reaching for the Light they had. So some doers went ahead and then fell back from time to time. The majority, however, were in nature and were afraid to think of leaving it, so strong was the domination of the religions or of worldly objects. How small the result of all the changes has been in this vast period can be seen from the state in which the run of human beings are today. Human nature has changed little in millions of years, because those who continue to re-exist are the ones who have learned little.

The background of all that the human beings have done was their noetic destiny. Each time a doer lived in a flesh body it drew upon the Light in its noetic atmosphere. It drew by its thinking and subsequent actions which were caused by feelings and desires for outward things. The four senses beat in on the doer, awoke feeling and that aroused desire, which started thinking, and this furnished the means of outward satisfaction. The Light of the Intelligence showed the way and went out with the thoughts and acts into nature. Though much Light was redeemed automatically, not enough was saved or redeemed to bring about a change sufficient to cause the doers in human beings to improve their desires.

The story of feeling-and-desire is strange. The story shows that the world is governed by law, but that man allows himself to be governed by feeling and desire under the direction of the senses, and which are opposed to law. Feeling and desire govern in so far as past destiny will permit. When the doer first took up its abode in the physical body, feeling-and-desire were stainless and without fear, free, without worry or trouble. They were innocent, without a taint of evil. The doer enjoyed everything without questioning, under the Light of the Intelligence. It seemed to know everything though it had no knowledge of its own. The Light of the Intelligence revealed everything to it. The Light was in the feeling and the desire, and everything desire wanted it had. Everything that was good for desire was made apparent to it by the Light. Feeling-and-desire were not blind to the Light as they now are, and they were not afraid of it. But as soon as the Light was shut out from the psychic atmosphere when the doer had disregarded the warning of the Light, the doer left that interior and happy state and journeyed toward the outer crust of the earth. There everything was different. The doers no longer had revealed to them the knowledge which the Light had given. Slow reasoning took the place of direct revelation. The happy state was replaced by unhappiness, freedom by coercion, and stainlessness by lust. Worry, disease, oppression, want and death were the lot of those outside who were governed by their four senses. Pleasure and the gratification of the appetites came to give relief to feeling-and-desire. But there never is enough to satisfy them. Feeling-and-desire cannot be satisfied by anything on earth. They are a portion of the doer which was satisfied in its original state. Of that condition desire is vaguely aware and wants it again, and therefore is turbulent in its search for satisfaction. The doer seeks this in outward things and reaches outward into nature. It has been doing this ever since the Light of the Intelligence was withdrawn from it after desire fell under the spell of the sexes.

The spell of the sexes is over all of human life. The power of the spell is exercised by nature. The thoughts of the doers have given to nature the sexes which are now its keynote. Since it has been keyed to the sexes, nature pulls by them on the doers for the Light it needs. The feelings and the desires of the doer have gone out into nature, and the doers are under the spell of their own feelings and desires, which nature works against them. Nature is not to be blamed, for the doers have made it what it is. That the doers lose the Light which is loaned to them is their noetic destiny. Nature was lowered, unbalanced, by feeling-and-desire through the sexes and must be redeemed, balanced, by feeling-and-desire; this too is the noetic destiny of the doer. Some doers feel this in a vague manner. They feel they are guilty of something, though they do not know of what. This feeling begets a vague fear, which is sometimes presented in poetic form as dread of the anger of the gods, or the wrath of God. The power of the spell, however, has usually been greater than the fear.

This fear has been a companion of feeling-and-desire since the doers came to the outer earth. They have been afraid of the Light ever since they did not heed its warning. The vague apprehension that misfortune would fall on them was but a form of that fear. Seeking and fearing are two aspects of desire. The doers have built and destroyed the civilizations of the past which all grew up as expressions of their feeling-and-desire.

Even the highest civilizations of a people of a fire age were outward developments; the inner natures of the people were little developed. This is why the doers will continue to re-exist. Fear, and desire to get satisfaction, drive them. Their thoughts and acts are in response to these impulses. Another aspect of desire is rebellion against the Light, which takes the form of rebellion against existing things. The rebellion arises from the fact that desire is not satisfied; it never can be satisfied by anything outside. It opposes all existing order. It is ungoverned. It cannot do without the Light of the Intelligence, yet it rebels against it. It rebels against control. It wants to get back to the original state of happiness and cannot do it without the Light.

It is no wonder that feeling-and-desire are restless. It is their sensual feelings and desires compelled by the body-mind, that have controlled the doers, their beliefs, their thoughts and their actions for all these years since the doers came to the outer earth. Every embodied doer has had all the experiences it needs, more experience than is represented by all the experiences which the present age offers, all experiences possible. What the doers lack is the learning they should have from the experiences they have had. The turmoil will go on until the doer distinguishes itself as feeling and as desire and realizes that the satisfaction it seeks it can never get outside itself; that desire must desire to be under the rule of rightness and reason and to be guided by the Conscious Light within.

In order to understand the purposes of re-existences and the length of time they must continue, it is necessary to keep in mind the origins of the Triune Selves as primordial units in the fire sphere and the history of their doers up to their present re-existences. In view of the duty of human beings to desire that they be ruled by the thinkers of their Triune Selves and by their destiny to be conscious as Triune Selves it is well to observe how little they have developed in all the ages they have passed on earth, even though some of the civilizations were great beyond fancy.