LAW OF CAUSE & EFFECT
THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT: EVERY EFFECT HAS ITS CAUSE AND EVERY CAUSE HAS ITS EFFECT.
This law pervades the three planes, the physical, mental, and Spiritual. It is a law which has its root in the Spiritual plane because there is the First Great Cause, the Principle, the Basis of everything. But there also is the effect, the Universe. On the Spiritual plane cause and effect are simultaneous and instantaneous; there they are so blended together that they cannot be separated; but on the other planes there is always a certain time, a period of space between cause and effect, due to the human concept in our present state of consciousness, of Time and Space. That law is operating in this way; every time we start something, be it thought, word, or action, we create a certain cause which will some day materialize in a corresponding effect. If we start a positive cause, a right cause, there will be in due time a positive effect, and vice versa. Just when that effect will take place, no one can tell; it depends upon many circumstances; but it is unavoidably due, like a logical result in a mathematical problem. Whenever we have started a cause, we are powerless over its effect; we can never change the effect. Yet human beings do not realize that at all, as in indicated in the common belief that if people will regret their sins, they will be forgiven and ushered into Heaven. That is an utter impossibility because it is against the Law. If a person regrets a mistake, a sin, it is forgiven in the sense that there is always the possibility to make it right, to start a new positive cause. But the penalty for the wrong is also always there, and that penalty is impossible to avoid because it is our own creation, the effect of the cause we started coming back to us. And there we have the explanation of those words of Jesus in the Bible, when He said: “WHOESOEVER SOWETH THE WIND SHALL REAP THE WHIRLWIND.” He knew the law of Cause and Effect and He stated it, but naturally He could not explain that law to the people who were living at that period as scientifically as it can be explained now. He presented it in another way. He used the allegorical form, yet it was the same law. When we know that law and apply that knowledge to our daily life, we can shape our own destiny exactly as we wish it. Naturally, we CANNOT straighten out past mistakes, but we CAN TAKE THEM AS LESSONS.
When those mistakes, those negative causes, materialize into our lives as negative effects, those who are wise profit by the experience of their mistakes, which then become for them good lessons to not repeat those mistakes. In order to use that law successfully in our lives, we must learn to handle it properly. The first and most important thing to do is TO LIVE IN THE EVER PRESENT NOW. What does that mean? Are we not living right now? Yes and no. To live in the present NOW means always to do the best we can to start right causes NOW. Illogical and impractical as it is, yet most people live in the Future, with their hopes pinned to that Future. On the other hand, some people live with the remembrance of the Past; they are tied to their dead Past. That also is not living NOW. “NOW is the appointed time,“ do we read in the sacred Books. NOW we must do everything which is to be done; NOW is the very wonderful and only moment for us to live in-- a moment which very often is
not at all understood by some, even of the great philosophers. They entirely disregard the NOW. They claim that NOW does not exist because everything continually changes, is in a condition of perpetual becoming, and that therefore it can never be NOW, but is either the Past or the Future. If that were really so, we could never use constructively the laws of Cause and Effect, as the Future would be always beyond our control. Therefore, we would never be able consciously to build and direct our lives; we would always be slaves of Fate. In living NOW, in performing NOW our duties as they come to us, we place ourselves in the following position. We are, so to speak, standing on a line of demarcation, on one side of us the Past, on the other side the Future, and in front of us the Present. In the Past we have experience, in the Future all possibilities, but NOW is the time for us to act, to plant the good seed, to start positive causes, taking advantage of lessons of the
Past in order to create the Future we desire. Some day TOMORROW will become TODAY, the Future will become Present, as time is moving along. We alone are immovable in that ever present NOW. Events are passing before our eyes as a film on a screen. It is the film of our own life which we witness NOW. We are both the audience and the actors, and our state of consciousness is the screen on which we perceive everything. NOW is so marvelous because we perform in it simultaneously two actions; we reap the Past and sow the Future. These two actions we can perform continually only NOW. That is why NOW is so important and why NOW holds for us the key to our destiny. The Past cannot be changed; we have to take it as it is. But our Future is completely in our hands, and, if we start the right causes, should never cause us any worry, as it will take care of itself because of the law of Cause and Effect. When Jesus said: "Take therefore no thought for the marrow, for the marrow will take thought for the things of itself; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," He meant that we must NOW do the right thing and then the Future will take care of itself because of the law. It is unavoidable and yet we realize it so little that we continually worry about the Future. Whenever we do anything, we wonder, "How will it come out?" Why should we worry? If we do the right thing, leave it alone and it will come out all right, through the operation of the law of Cause and Effect. Worry is a leak through which energy is wastefully dissipated in the unknown void of the Future instead of being constructively applied in the Present. We can perform real action only on the plane on which we are living NOW in body, mind, and Soul. For the Great Principle, there is only one plane, that of the EVER PRESENT NOW. There is no Past or Future for the Absolute, because It is all-inclusive, and when we reach the highest state of consciousness there will be the most complete sense of the EVER PRESENT NOW, as Past and Future will be One with it. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna is recorded as saying: "Do you think about the fruit of your action; but perform action." That is the same as when Jesus told us not to worry about the next day. Do the right thing today and the next day will take care of itself. That does not mean that we should cease planning. Naturally we should plan things; but when we plan them as well as we can, when we have prepared the seed, if we have prepared a good seed and planted it rightly, it will grow well. Never worry about the result; there is the law back of it. That is why we must be satisfied with today and not try to imagine or make certain calculations that it will work out this or that way. Usually our calculations will be upset because in worrying about the Future we do not give enough attention to the Present. We cannot have the Great Law operating in the Future, the Great Law being a Law of the ever present NOW. Neither the Past nor the Future can exist for that Great Law, because like the Great Principle Itself, it is an all-embracing Law, and is therefore always operating NOW.
We make certain mistakes periodically, and then say, "Next time I am not going to do that," but when next time comes, we do it again. Why? Because of that law of Cause and Effect. Each time we make a mistake we start a new cause for that mistake to be repeated, and usually, if we watch these periodical mistakes, we can see that we make them at certain times, or in meeting a certain kind of people, or on being confronted with certain similar conditions. So, when ever we feel that moment approaching and the ground begins to be slippery, there we have to watch, and, being determined not to yield to that mistake again, we will, through the conscious application of that law of
Cause and Effect, destroy the negative causes and stop the re-petition of the negative effects. Instead, we have started a positive cause which will some day culminate in a positive effect. If we keep to that decision to overcome imperfections, the law will carry us through with harmonious results, and we will be able to correct by and by all our mistakes. They will never occur again because we are setting up new causes, harmonious causes, which will be then continually expressed in corresponding new effects.
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On our life paths we very often stumble, we may even fall, yet we should never worry about our stumbling or our falling. We should always bear in mind that it does not matter so much that we have fallen over an obstacle. The important fact is that we are on the other side of the obstacle, that we have advanced in spite of it. This is the main point to always be remembered by us, and then the fall itself will not appear to be so hard.
The law of Cause and Effect, in its present aspect of a transitory, material law, is not harmful to us if we know how to use it properly. If we only do the right thing, we can use it in such a way that it will always work with positive results. That law explains also what is called Reincarnation. Why do some individuals come to this Earth to suffer and others to enjoy? If for some reason they could not get all they deserved for their good or evil deeds in one incarnation, in one life on Earth, then they must come back to this plane again in order to get it in another life. In other words, they come to this Earth as children go to school; it is indeed the School of Life, where all lessons must be learned and all mistakes corrected. Only then are we ready for some higher and greater work. This explanation is the only logical one which completely does away with that seeming injustice in the destiny of human beings. In any case, it certainly is more acceptable than the theory of eternal bliss and eternal punishment.
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This last law of Cause and Effect closes the cycle of the Seven Laws. These Laws, along with the Law of Love and the Law of Evolution make nine Laws (this includes all Immutable and Mutable Laws). Although direct emanations from, and comprehended in, the first of the Laws of the Absolute, the Law of Love and the Law of Evolution, are given separately, in order to emphasize the fact that no matter how strong the Negative, with its transitory laws, may appear to us, the Positive, with its Eternal Laws, is nevertheless Supreme. It is the Beginning and the End of everything.
Teachings on the fourth of the Mutable Laws, the law of Cause and Effect, from the book Science of Being 7 Lessons, by Eugene Fersen. For the complete instructions on the Universal Laws, refer to the Science of Being 7 Lessons, book.