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Lesson IX: More About Dharma.399
of feeling and acting which we passed, and accordingly may have seemed
to our minds at that time as the voice of the higher self beating down upon
the lower consciousness. These things are comparative, you must remember.
But, now that we have passed beyond the stage in which these things were
the highest good, and have unfolded sufficiently to take advantage of higher
conceptions of truth, these old things seem quite “bad” and “wrong” to
us, and when they come into the field of consciousness from these lower
regions of the mind, we shudder at the thought that we have so much of the
brute still in us. But there is no need to feel that we are “wicked” because
these thoughts and impulses arise within us. They are our inheritance from
the past, and are reminiscences of the “brute” stage of our unfoldment.
They are voices from the past. If you feel the struggles of the brute within
you to be unleashed, do not be disturbed. The fact that you can see him
now as something different from your normal self, is encouraging. Formerly
you were the brute—now you see him as only a part of you—a little later on,
you will cast him off altogether. Read what we have said on the subject in
Lesson i of the present series of lessons. In other pages of the present lesson
we will take up the subject of the comparative nature of “right” and “wrong,”
so that you may see how it is that a thing that was once “right” may now be
“wrong”—how what seems to be very “good” and “right” just now will appear
“bad” and “wrong” later on in our unfoldment (that is speaking relatively, for
when we unfold we begin to see that “right” and “wrong” and “good” and
“bad” are relative terms, and that there is no such thing as “bad” viewed from
the Absolute. And yet, as we progress, the things we outgrow are “bad,” and
those into which we are growing seem “good” until they too are discarded).
All that we wish to do now is to point out to you that “temptation” is merely
the urge of some past experience for repetition, because the tendency is
not entirely dead. It raises its head because of the flickering of expiring life,
or because the dying thing has been aroused by some outside suggestion
or circumstance. Let the beasts die, and do not become alarmed at their
struggles.