“Nothing is together in any texture or effect which was not successively introduced; and everything is therein, according as order itself introduces it:  wherefore simultaneous order derives its birth, nature and perfection from successive orders, and the former is only rendered perspicuous and plain by the latter....  What is supreme in things successive takes the inmost place in things simultaneous:  thus things superior in order super-involve things inferior and wrap them together, that these latter may become exterior in the same order:  by this method first principles, which are also called simple, unfold themselves, and involve themselves in things posterior or compound:  wherefore every perfection of what is outermost flows forth from inmost principles by their series:  hence thy beauty, my daughter, the only parent of which is order itself.”

This passage, like a proffered dish full of rare fruit, tempts the metaphysical appetite by the wealth and variety of its appeal; but not to weary the reader, the author will content himself by the abstraction of a single plum.  The plum in question is simply this (and the reader is asked to read the quotation carefully again):  may not every act, incident, circumstance in a human life be the “uncoiling” of a karmic aggregate?  This coil of life may be thought of most conveniently in this connection as the character of the person, a character built up, or “successively introduced” in antecedent lives.  The sequence of events resultant on its “unwinding” would be the destiny of the person—­a destiny determined, necessarily, by past action.  This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning to the phrase “Character is destiny.”  If we carry our thought no further, we are plunged into the slough of determinism—­sheer fatality.  But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act and event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of determination—­is therefore self-determined.  We may not control the event, but our acceptance of it we may control.  Moreover, each “unwinding” of the karmic coil takes place in a new environment, in a world more highly organized by reason of the play upon it of the collective consciousness of mankind.  Though the same individual again and again intersects the stream of mundane experience, it is an evolving ego and an augmenting stream.  Therefore each life of a given series forms a different, a more intricate, and a more amazing pattern:  in each the thread is drawn from nearer the central energy, which is divine, and so shows forth more of the coiled power within the soul.

X GENIUS

IMMANENCE

The greatest largess to the mind which higher thought brings is the conviction of a transcendent existence.  Though we do not know the nature of this existence, except obscurely, we are assured of its reality and of its immanence, through a growing sense that all that happens to us is simply our relation to it.