Course XXXVI - Teaching 12: Destiny

A being has to undergo innumerable experiences and trials; he has to be born many times, to know many things, to be a man, a woman, great, little, to go on forward in the path to liberation.
Just by conceiving of life subject to a plan of evolution, we can explain the reason of a variety of human destinies.
Any event is a vibration materialized and later reintegrated again to its primary state; an event of today is a result of yesterday, and labor, present thought will yield fruit tomorrow. Misery, sorrow experienced today by a man, has been experienced or will be experience by others. There is no injustice, but variability.
All men undergo the same experiences; they descend from God to matter, and from matter they return to the spirit.
This evolutive plan is called Law of Consecutive Predestination. This Law is triple, and divided into:

• Personal Law
• Causal Law
• Collective Law
  The Personal Law just relates to man and his evolution. In his thought, in his intimate consciousness, his desires are forged and drive him to act in certain way; so, his future life will depend on his action.
  A man of today is a desire of yesterday, and a man of tomorrow is the effect of causes of today.
  A being can change his destiny; his preparation to a life of happiness depends on him.
  He achieves a happy future destiny by thinking properly, by acting righteously and not becoming a slave of his own desires. So, all religious instructors had urged so much on establishing pure and healthy habits in peoples.
  The Causal Law ties a man and causes him to atone for actions not directly linked with his will but dictated by race, place and time in which he had to live. For instance: in a people where usually death penalty is in force, those who sentence to death participate in the Causal Law, not in the Personal Law. Another instance: meat-eaters are responsible for the slaughter of animals; but, since this remains circumscribed to the plane of present evolution and development of the race to which they belong, their responsibility is only causal.
  To live in a society, and in agreement with conventions of the time, demands the same sacrifice.
  Collective Law ties by actions that influenced the masses. A bad ruler prepares his own destiny of sorrow, because the antipathy he arose will endure in other lives; instead, if he acts with justice and good judgment, a good karma waits for him.
  The Collective Law is also a Law assumed by a whole people, a whole nation, a whole community, and a whole family. When a country wages war, peoples become collectively responsible for this war.
  If it is proper to know that human suffering is fruit of past actions, we must not work looking for a happy destiny, because this selfishness would create us heavier ties. We liberate ourselves just by acting righteously, without ties to the fruit of the work, work for the sake of work.