Laws. As humanity has evolved it has developed a great fascination for laws. Every aspect of daily life is now governed or organised by laws, regulations and rules of some kind in increasing complexity. And as the human mind has awakened to the global nature of humanity, laws have been created to organise the flow of life all over the world. The latest attempt at global law can be seen in the on-going struggle to agree on a body of laws that will govern the quality of the entire environment of the planet.
But where does this fascination for law come from? Is it an impulse we are born with? Is it programmed in our DNA? Perhaps. It is obviously an impulse that emerges quite spontaneously from our consciousness. If we see a wrong, we want to make it right; we want justice when faced with injustice; we want to bring harmony out of conflict. There is something deep within human nature that looks to law to build an ordered and secure life.
A previous World View article, "The Spirit of the Law", offers a clue. The last line of that article observes: "Midst the complexity of world affairs and the suffering of its peoples, the signs are there that humanity is awakening to the spirit of the one great law--the simple law to love one another". We don't usually think of love as being a law. Yet, it is. It doesn't seem to be a man-made law even though it was enunciated by Christ two thousand years ago. But it is a law that mankind responds to and obeys quite easily and willingly. Spiritual teachings of course refer to it as the great law of God. God is love.
God bestows this power of love upon us. But in the bestowing process there is a vital intermediate stage between God and His creation that is "closer to us than hands and feet"--the human soul. The soul is that projected reflection of the divine Being which gives us life, consciousness and vitality. And since the soul responds to the laws of God it, in turn, bestows upon us the impulse of law. So when we spontaneously create laws and regulations we are simply responding to an urge from deep within, the soul. If that impulse, for example, urges us to apply the energy of goodwill when dealing with a situation of conflict in order to improve relations, then that is the soul speaking through us, like a "voice of the silence". It gives us the uplifting power to override our more combative nature.
There are many other Laws of God which also become Laws of the soul, which then become impulses which we willingly respond to in our daily life. Service is one such law. To serve selflessly is a basic quality of the soul; this impulse is, in turn, passed on to its outer expression--the human personality. The urge to serve others, selflessly without reward, is very strong in some, less so in others. How we respond to these soul impulses depends largely on where our focus of consciousness lies, i.e., is our response tinged and conditioned by emotions and feelings, or is our mind exerting a stronger influence over our actions?
In esoteric writings service is defined as "the spontaneous effect of soul contact". It's a contact so definite and strong that the life of the soul pours through into the outer personality expression. When such a strong urge to serve is present, it is expressed as a life directive; one moulds his or her life around this deep, inner urge. He or she acts more as a soul than a separated personality. A person may feel an urge to serve, but he may also want some recognition for his service. Not always so with acts of more spontaneous service. Whether selfish or unselfish, both are in response to the Law of Service, but with different motivation.
In a similar manner, service is related to another Law of the Soul--the Law of Sacrifice. Sacrifice is "the impulse of giving". The ability and willingness to sacrifice comes very naturally to most human beings. We may think that our willingness to make to make small sacrifices for our family, loved ones and friends is a quality that originates in our personality nature. But as with the Law of Love it originates not just in the soul but even beyond in Deity Himself. The soul being a law-abiding being willingly gives of itself to help further the great Plan of redemption that the Creator is working out on earth. That impulse to give selflessly, to sacrifice, is passed on via the soul to the personality life and emerges as the little acts, and sometimes significant acts, of sacrifice that human beings make every day.
The significant thing about the impulse of love, service and sacrifice is that they represent evidence of the very existence of the soul. These impulses don't originate in the brain cells. The originating source lies outside the physical body in the spiritual dimensions of the soul and beyond. The spiritual impulses (Laws) filter through the mind and are then processed by the brain cells and work out in the personality life as love, desire, service and a willingness to spontaneously give of ourselves and our material wealth when the need arises. These impulses are "evidence of things unseen". The more the mind awakens and becomes sensitive to the rarified energies of the higher mind, the more we are sensitive to the ever-present soul, and the more the soul qualities and Laws govern what we think, do and say. In effect we become as law-abiding in the spiritual sense as we are in the physical plane world.
And there is ample evidence that humanity is responding extensively to these spiritual Laws. They are the deep impulses behind the motivation to create the United Nations and the many service agencies of the UN (like the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, UNICEF, the agency for Refugees), and to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The UN also negotiated the Law of the Seas Treaty which governs and protects the shipping lanes, seabed minerals, and the boundaries of the oceans of the world. Then of course all the thousands of charitable organisations and foundations that have sprung up in just the past fifty years are more evidence that the spiritual Laws of the Soul are making a direct impact on human consciousness, proving that the heart of humanity is indeed sound and is hearing the sound of goodwill. The soul exists in every law-abiding human being because they love and serve and give.
