The body is born, lives and dies in this world. There is a force that sustains it, with its unique attributes, character and skills. Together, these qualities form a being in our world that is no different from a beast. Animals live amongst themselves, separated from one another, but not as much as people, because they are not as well developed. The level of development is determined by the amount of the variations in that creation.
One’s character is predetermined by nature, and it certainly has no relevance to the essence of man. It is the same for animals; they all have their unique predetermined characteristics. Anyone who works with animals knows that they have just as complex a character as humans.
Even though today’s society is egoistic, it is quite prepared to advance toward following Nature’s law of altruism. Education and culture have always been established on altruistic principles. In our homes and at school, we teach our children to be compassionate, kind, friendly. We want our children to be nice to others, and we feel that such an attitude toward others is the proper way, and that it protects those who follow it. Hardly anyone would declare opposition to these values.
There are two types of interaction: individual and general. In what instances is a person obliged to accept the opinion of society as mandatory and in what instances does he have to submit to the opinion of an individual?
In our life within the framework of our world, in everything that has to do with our body and our five senses, we have to accept the opinion of society. Let’s emphasize, the opinion of society. In my body, I have to live the way all people do. Where we are dealing with the soul’s development, I have to listen to a single individual, and not society’s opinion. What does society understand in relation to the soul’s development? Rather, we have to listen to someone who is knowledgeable in this.
If we see, that a person is not evolving, perhaps he is in a state where all he cares about is soccer, going to the bar and just his friends, or whatever. Perhaps he’s not evolving because he’s already given up on evolution and that’s why he doesn’t want to learn it. That’s why he doesn’t want anything in life. He agrees to something life compels him to do, to go and do something in which he doesn’t have a choice, only to live. So superficially you can’t say about a person that his will to receive is still developing and he is at the level of an ordinary worker, or that he hasn’t activated his mind more than that, or maybe he’s already given up on all those big things, and is already at the level of the worker. He just carries on in life.
In the material world, we imagine merging, or adhesion, as shortening the distance between bodies, and understand separation as moving away from one another. However, the spiritual realm lacks such concepts as time, space, and motion. This is why the equivalence of properties between two spiritual objects draws them closer to one another, and the difference in properties moves them apart.
There can be no adhesion or separation (in contrast to the adhesion or separation in space) because the spiritual object itself takes no place.
The difference between human beings and animals, is that we are given a will to transcend nature, which we come to recognize by seeing our opposition to it.
In other words, the more we evolve, the more our egoism increases; when we want more, we suffer more. Couple this suffering with the recognition caused by our innate nature, and we humans are given a place for free choice: We can voluntarily welcome ourselves into the laws of nature – something animals have no option of doing. Realizing our opposition to nature’s laws and working toward them will bring unprecedented collective spiritual consciousness in our earthly existence:
If nature’s laws were disclosed, we would be like animals. But since these laws are hidden, it enables us to reach the spiritual degrees. For the time being, we are neither one nor the other. We are more afflicted than animals, we suffer more than animals can ever suffer, and it is because we haven’t reached the spiritual level.
