...This passage is from Chapter III of Gaelic. Upon reading this, I thought of the age-old conflicts between cultures and nations, and I saw that the conflicts are there so that the people can work out the group "karma." Karma is not the correct word exactly, but it gives the idea. Just as the conflict in Northern Ireland lasted until the women stepped in and said, "Finally! Enough!" so will the other conflicts exist until some of those within it - NOT directed by some outside political force - decide that they just aren't going to do it any more.
From Gaelic:
5. A MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD HIS GROUP
This seemed good, as far as it went, and quite cleared up a number of people with 'Uncle Peters' of one sort or another in their immediate families. But Gaelic was not through with the subject. At the next opportunity he continued with it.
"The individual man is a member of, not one narrow group only, such as the family, but also of a succession of ever more inclusive groups until he is to be considered finally, as far as your earth life is concerned, a member of that which comprises the sum-total of earthly incarnations. Each of these groups has its own type of problems, good and evil, to be worked out, all of which have the same characteristics of being beyond the power and scope of individual solution, but which may eventually be worked out by individual contribution toward solution.
"They have also the characteristic in common that they are individual problem and responsibility.
"The exact form in which, and the exact manner in which, they are proposed are dependent upon the individual circumstance. The human being is born upon your planet and conditioned by its limitations because his state of being fits those limitations. He is born Chinese or Arabian or African or Caucasian, and conditioned by the peculiar limitations which inhere racially, because his state of being fits more or less accurately those limitations. He is born into a family and is conditioned by the heredity of physical makeup, because his state of being finds a comfortable fit within those limitations. He is born with certain physical qualities of body which limit him in his possibilities, because his state of being does not, at that state of development, press beyond the bounds thus set for him.
"So, while one may say that an incarnate is by the fact of incarnation unable to reach the same powers of perception as the discarnate; while we may say that a man born, bred and educated in the criminal slums cannot by that fact be responsibly aware of higher ethics; while we say that a man born with certain glandular secretions cannot attain a normal balance, we must not therefore conclude that fatal circumstance is to bear the entire burden as an explanation. The state of being has not actually formed the outside envelope, as some schools of your thought would have you believe; but it has come by a sort of magnetic attraction of appropriateness to that circumstance which most nearly clothes it.
"Now the hope and the release come through the vital and intelligent working out by the individual according to his capacity and the opportunity of his own progress, toward harmony and enlightenment. Just as each embryo passes in review the whole biological history before it arrives at that point where it is to function as an independent human being; so, as a member of the group, will the human entity live through the spiritual history of that group before arriving at the point where it can function as an independent worker on its destiny. As the embryo wholly and completely lives its life as cell, reptile, fish, tailed animal, and so on; so the child lives wholly committed to the outlooks, the points of view, the beliefs, prejudices, temperamental vices of its own group, the family. It has the family attitude; it has the family loves and hates, tastes and religion, politics, sympathy, hardness, courtesy, rudeness, which is the atmosphere of its little group.
"So the youth in his larger group is provincial, ignorantly arrogant toward what he lumps together as 'foreigners,' ineptly patriotic without thought that patriotism means aught but self-assertion, and blandly indifferent to the peoples beyond his border.
"Only a little broader is the Caucasian within his race, is the Arabian, proud and self-centered beneath his desert stars, is the African, convinced that whatever powers of magic the white man possesses - he alone is the great man of earth. And so the Chinese, secure within the age-old serenity, looks with contempt upon the 'foreign devil.' And so the human race in its youth bends its eyes downward towards its speck of earth and cries out against the few who raise their eyes.
"But as the child grows to manhood, just as when the embryo grows to human form, it begins to appraise and utilize what has been unthinkingly a part of itself. It is knowledged in the family temper or the family pride, the family point of view toward human kind, the family religion and the family politics, the family traits of all kinds that make a group. He does one of two things: he controls and utilizes them by the alchemy of his personality: or he continues, unresisting, their tradition.
"If he does the former, there is either that much more or that much less of this particular impetus, which had originated far back in that particular group. If he does the latter, responsibility in his case has been passed on and must be worked out by others who follow. Furthermore, he has, by his indifference, so accentuated these certain qualities in himself that his magnetic attraction toward this type of limitation in the future is greatly intensified.
"On the other hand, if he has, by even ever so little, worked out a portion or a phase of this group impetus, he has not only removed just so much limitation from the world, but he has also lightened the human burden for his successors on this particular job and, naturally, qualified for a wider field himself.
"This can only be done according to his knowledge and his capacity. The child is not responsible for storming at the servants. It is the family habit, and he thinks it is the only way. The man who has literally never realized cannot be responsible for what he does not know. But intellect and the perceptions come into contacts outside the group, and they cannot fail to bring the seeds of enlightenment through comparison."
For the full Gaelic text, at no charge, please respond here to this post, or go to this link The Gaelic Manuscripts. I have put it all on one .pdf file, so it is easier to read in my copy. (And it is way too long to post in its entirety here.)
