Monday, April 15, 2019
Gentlemen, yesterday you said a phrase that struck me: “freeing his will from his karma (so to speak.”)
You don’t want to put that conversation out for everyone to see, but there isn’t any reason why you can’t quote a part of it.
[But there’s a point to be made here: Biography makes history. Personal interactions with oneself and with others spill over into what you might be tempted to think of as the “external” world. The better you deal with your own demons – or say problems, if that less dramatic phrasing suits you better – the greater the effect you may have on society.
[You can’t be saying that only the more balanced and mature and self-aware rise to the top! We have a lot of evidence to the contrary!
[No, it isn’t a matter of social position, but of effectiveness. Herman Hesse made no attempt at a political career – why on earth should he have done? – but had a much greater effect upon world thought and culture after he went into analysis with Jung than before. In freeing his will from his karma (so to speak) he vastly increased his effectiveness as a writer, which was only a side-effect of increased effectiveness as a man.]
Although I think I know what you mean by “freeing his will from his karma,” I get the feeling there’s more to be seen.
Here is a simple way to put it. (We’ll say “you” rather than “one,” as it will sound less formal, but we mean, anybody, everybody, not any one person.)
One way to see any individual is as a present-day personality comprising many previous individuals. Your living your life is them getting to know each other more intimately. They are cohabiting a new structure (you) rather than being the new structure, as when they were containers themselves.
I understand you to say that each of our strands is, in another time, a 3D individual in the driver’s seat; the ring holding together its own group of strands. So, when I die, that’s it for me being the holder of the ring; when (if) I return to 3D life, it will be as a strand in some new 3D individual.
Although that description contains a few distortions, it is close enough to be serviceable.
Now, you all know from personal experience that you are born with certain contradictions within yourself. A horoscope describes the angles and cross-purposes and reinforcements and oppositions within you. We don’t intend to hare off into a discussion of astrology. We use it merely to show external evidence of the fact that no one is born an empty slate. Everyone is born with patterns of inner behavior built into the structure.
I think that would be better phrased, we are born with certain automatic reaction-patterns, and what we are born with obviously can’t have been caused by events and our reaction to events (our choices) that haven’t yet occurred. The pattern we bring into life is brought forth by the intermingling of whatever traits comprise us. If they all fit together harmoniously, we will have one kind of temperament. If they don’t, we’ll have a different temperament.
So in a way you could say that an individual’s karma is formed of the unfinished business of its strands, plus the interaction of its strands. This forms patterns of automatic behaviors, which interacts with events.
You are a personality, interacting with a world that you experience “around you” as “external.” Nothing wrong with that; that’s the design, only there isn’t any harm in seeing more deeply. That personality that expresses you is not exactly you. It is more like a ratio between you and your life in the world. It is a necessity, but it should not be mistaken for what it is not. (One use of meditation is that it helps some people to realize for the first time that they are not the personality they have always assumed themselves to be, but are distinct from it and prior to it.)
Your personality expresses your internal tendencies in various circumstances. This is one reason to choose your circumstances, including your associates, your media-driven mental environment, your aspirations. If you wish to be conscious, the way to do so is to choose rather than drift. And choosing is done within limits. (One goal of your choice may be to widen the limits!) Those limits are, initially, the baggage you bring into your life by who your strands were.
That initial pattern may be called your karma. It is your inventory as you enter into a 3D life. It is at the same time a valuable resource and a source of difficulties, depending on what is happening. But you are not helpless, here, if you choose not to be.
Which takes us back to my initial request for clarification.
It is obvious now, surely? Herman Hesse was being driven by his inherited (call it) tendencies, conflicts, passions, contradictions, etc. In analysis, he learned how to make conscious (and hence malleable) what had been unconscious (and hence out of his control). In learning who he was, he gained the freedom to choose rather than be buffeted by the winds. And haven’t we been stressing the duty and value of choosing, from the beginning?
The more you gain control of unconscious forces within you, the wider your areas of choice; the freer you are to choose to be this rather than that. We have talked about this in terms of values, but it is at least equally true in terms of personal evolution. And your own personal evolution cannot be separated from any larger abstraction like “humanity as a whole,” or “the greater good,” or whatever. Your personal task is always conducted within the context of everything you are connected to, which, if you look at it widely enough, is everything.