Now, that persistent effort must have a beginning, and
granted the beginning, the persistence is not improbable. Within our
own observation of ordinary life, good habits, even though they may not
be so readily formed as bad ones, are not difficult to maintain in
proportion to the difficulty of their commencement. For a moment it may
be asked how this may be applied to a succession of lives separate from
each other by a total oblivion of their details; but it really applies
as directly to the succession of lives as to the succession of days
within one life, which are separated from each other by as many nights.
The certain operation of those affinities in the individual Ego which
are collectively described in the esoteric doctrine by the word Karma,
must operate to pick up the old habits of character and thought, as life
after life comes round, with the same certainty that the thread of
memory in a living brain recovers, day after day, the impressions of
those that have gone before. Whether a moral habit is thus deliberately
engendered by an occult student in order that it may propagate itself
through future ages, or whether it merely arises from unintelligent
aspirations towards good, which happily for mankind are more widely
spread than occult study as yet, the way it works in each case is the
same.
Pages:
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310