by Ernest L. Norman

There is, as of today, a generally acknowledged legal concept that ignorance of the law is not a legitimate excuse which can be used by any person who has committed some transgression against moral and legal codes of his community; and to those who have and are being daily tried for various crimes which they claim were innocently perpetrated, there is a feeling of frustration and injustice when sentence is passed upon them.

In more general spiritual classifications, it must also be borne in mind that here again ignorance of various moral and spiritual values, codes or ethics does not necessarily relieve any person from the commission of an overt act, and can generally be presumed to have certain deleterious consequences in the progressive evolution of the person who so commits overt acts, or in the general commission of such daily expressions as can be considered negative or destructive in nature. For here this person is being tried and judged in a different court, one which is completely impersonal in its relationship to him and which functions solely in a manner of delicate equilibriums and balances which can be considered esoterical in nature and not immediately apparent to any person at any given time.

A crime, therefore, as it is posed negatively or destructively must be assumed as a motion or intent which is contradictory to a pure forward dynamic motion in which the normal impedances of daily life reactions can be realized and that this contradictory motion therefore, so far as this individual is concerned, upsets his own equated position in the various balances and equilibriums which sustain him through his evolutionary progress.

There is also no justifiable excuse that this person may be so inclinated at the time of commission that he assumes a constructive position even if his position is political, religious or any other customary channels of human relationship; and should he assume some self-styled evangelical position, he is much more dangerous than the foulest murderer who slinks about in the jungles of our great cities. For in his extruded sense of proportions so reflecting contrary motions in normal evolutionary values, this person can become a Genghis Khan or a Hitler; or he can assume a host of various other different dispensations including priesthood in a temple.

No attempt is being made at this time to go into various differences which may be considered psychic or psychological in nature. It can be assumed briefly for purposes of introspection that such extrusions, small or large, can and always do have as their creative and motivating power the various insecurities inherited in various earth lives and in which every individual lives largely by the primitive law, survival of the fittest.

Yes, even in our highest echelons of our modern civilizations, we find this same jungle law functioning as the subversive dominant driving force in everyone‘s life and which is only being partially temporized by various codes of ethics. To any person who has reached a certain threshold of consciousness whereby he begins to realize that certain factors and elements in his life must be more properly evaluated and understood, he must view his past not as a compelling influence in shaping his future but rather, a platform of introspection whereby he is viewing a more constructive future evolution.

In his analysis, this person may also be confronted by other obvious facts; he may be suffering from one or many of the various illnesses and derelictions in his daily life. He may even be overwhelmingly impressed with the extreme urgency for some corrective action and which he has not found in various therapeutic institutions.

This will be a point of great psychic stress and in the moment of these various stresses, his past may be super abundantly imposed in consciousness as combining all known and unknown elements of evil. This, too, is a point of great and delicate equilibrium and one in which almost everyone makes the same inevitable mistake. They attempt to justify themselves in various ways; they didn’t know any better or that living conditions mandated certain evils, etc; and always these excuses seemed to relieve the seriousness of his various offenses, so he has accomplished nothing in this moment of psychic stress but rather, hardened and crystallized criminal propensities which make it possible for even greater violation.

He may even further temporize himself in various religious beliefs, confessionals, etc., not realizing the destructive maliciousness of these practices intended only to enslave any believers. Yet somehow or another, inevitably every person will reach a more ultimate threshold where no personal excuses or vindication, religious panaceas or other moral dodges can be used by the individual to circumvent an inevitable conclusion that he, and he alone, is responsible for his past and present.

This particular point is also a position of great psychic stress, even greater than many of the other almost countless times he has approached this threshold. This is biblically depicted as the point of repentance, and in ecclesiastical dispensations, he has been falsely taught that he will be saved; and in the weakness of this moment, he succumbs to the apparent escape. Again he has entered into that dimension of personal perspectus which must always be inevitably included: that the present and past are a personal responsibility; it cannot be justified on various grounds of ignorance, pressurizations, etc. Neither can it be relieved or expiated by some supposed deity when this person has entered into this final stage of repentance and analysis and he may ask, “How then can the psychic pressures of the past, as sin, be relieved? How can I remove the moral stigma of their commission and how can I insure for myself a better and more progressive future?”

The answers here are comparatively simple. First, a sustained consciousness that all personal acts—either physical or mental—all forms of consciousness reside as participating elements and values in the great Infinity which is all-inclusive and all-encompassing. When this fact is discovered, it can be immediately correctly assumed that each individual should be selective in these various values, that such selections should always be constructive. They should be made without pressurization from various physical or material values. This selective process is not necessarily a function of the conscious mind, but this conscious mind becomes only an adjutant to selection; nor can the selective process be likened to the housewife who is buying groceries in a supermarket. Correct selection comes about when a proper and true evaluation of function is attained, a true science, not as a metaphorical value as posed in some religion or philosophy.

Learning of the Infinite becomes a process of spiritual insemination, a millennium of gestation lived in the untold lives within the womb of time. Neither can any spiritual birthday be presupposed by the individual when he becomes completely emancipated from the process of selection, learning proper usage as oscillating repercussive and reproductive elements in Infinite expression.

The moment of repentance is always at hand. Simple in principle, it resolves upon one mental element: admission of personal responsibility in the scale of human evolution. Yet, as each man knows he can live the moment of the present, procrastination becomes an odious thief which steals away his future life. So with the blessing of repentance comes the light of dedication, and following this bright beacon of purpose, we achieve the upward way. We have become selective and always do we turn a fresh and hopeful face to the future, our eyes and cheeks always brightened by the rising sun of countless new days born from out the experiences we have selected from the Infinite. This we have done knowing of the Infinite, knowing its function and of all ultimate purposes which are best served in our personal evolution.

Excerpt from Tempus Procedium