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Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism196
to the example of the child and the stove. A child who wants to touch the
stove will do so as soon as he finds an opportunity, notwithstanding the
commands of the parent, and in spite of threatened punishment. But let
that child once experience the pain of the burn, and recognize that there is
a close connection between a hot stove and a burnt finger, and it will keep
away from the stove. The loving parent would like to protect its child from
the result of its own follies, but the child-nature insists upon learning certain
things by experience, and the parent is unable to prevent it. In fact, the
child who is too closely watched and restrained, usually “breaks out” later in
life, and learns certain things by itself. All that the parent is able to do is to
surround the child with the ordinary safeguards, and to give it the benefit
of his wisdom, a portion of which the child will store away—and then trust
to the law of life to work out the result.
And so the human soul is constantly applying the test of experience to all
phases of life—passing from one incarnation to another, constantly learning
new lessons, and gaining new wisdom. Sooner or later it finds out how
hurtful certain courses of action are—discovers the folly of certain actions
and ways of living, and like the burnt child avoids those things in the future.
All of us know that certain things “are no temptation to us,” for we have
learned the lesson at some time in some past life and do not need to relearn
it—while other things tempt us sorely, and we suffer much pain by
reason thereof. Of what use would all this pain and sorrow be if this one life
were all? But we carry the benefit of our experience into another life, and
avoid the pain there. We may look around us and wonder why certain of
our acquaintances cannot see the folly of certain forms of action, when it
is so plain to us—but we forget that we have passed through just the same
stage of experience that they are now undergoing, and have outlived the
desire and ignorance—we do not realize that in future lives these people
will be free from this folly and pain, for they will have learned the lesson by
experience, just as have we.