Change Your Life,
Change the World
A Spiritual Guide to Living Now
by
Ryuho Okawa
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
IRH Press on Smashwords
Change Your Life, Change the World
A Spiritual Guide to Living Now
Copyright © 2010 by Ryuho Okawa
English Translation © 2010 IRH Press
The material in this book is selected from various talks given by Ryuho Okawa to a live audience.
IRH PRESS
New York * Tokyo
Cover Design © 2010 Yoori Kim
Cover Image © Dale Odell/Getty Images
Chapter Opener Graphic © Elena Andreeva – Fotolia.com
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Change Your Life, Change the World
A Spiritual Guide to Living Now
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Unlocking the Door to A New World
Soul Siblings and Reincarnation
Souls Connected by Spiritual Bonds
Overcoming Hatred
Material vs. Spiritual Perspective
The Compensations for Choosing Faith
Chapter 2: Eternal Life and Reincarnation
The Risks You Took for the Sake of Life
Life Is Like a School
Finding the Treasure Buried in Trials
Your Soul Is Who You Are
Finding the Theme of Your Life
Life Is a Series of Lessons
The World through the Eyes of God
Breaking through Your Limits
You Can Change Your Fate
Moderation Is the Key to Success
Seeing Yourself the Way Other People See You
Chapter 3: The Spiritual Foundation of Life
Education of the Soul
The True Distinction between Good and Evil
Living with Faith
Chapter 4: The Pursuit of Happiness
Part 1: Exploration of the Right Mind
Receiving God’s Energy
The Ultimate Rightness
Part 2: The Fourfold Path to Happiness
The First Path – The Principle of Love
The Second Path – The Principle of Wisdom
The Third Path – The Principle of Self-Reflection
The Fourth Path – The Principle of Progress
Chapter 5: Creating Heaven on Earth
Personal Happiness and Public Happiness
Happiness Comes from Enlightenment
Quiet Happiness and Active Happiness
The Universal Truth, the Truth of God
The Creation of Souls
The Mission of Humankind
The Principle of Progress – Acquiring Truth and Practicing Altruism
The Principle of Harmony – Tolerance and Forgiveness
Chapter 6: The Moment of Truth
Faith – Believing in God’s Laws
Love – Becoming God’s Messengers
Enlightenment – Knowing Who You Are
Utopia – Bringing Heaven to Earth
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I will never forget what happened to me on the memorable day of March 23, 1981.
It was a fine afternoon in early spring. The air was warm and the promise of the season was all around as I relaxed in a low chair, simply enjoying the day. All at once, an indescribable warmth welled up from deep inside my body. I instinctively knew that I was not alone and that another being was trying to communicate with me in some way. The feeling was so strong that I looked around immediately for something to write on. My hand fell on a card that lay on the table.
No sooner had I picked up the card and placed it in front of me, than the strangest thing imaginable happened. Of its own volition, without any conscious effort on my part, my right hand picked up a pencil and began to write. It felt absolutely as though someone else was controlling my hand. That presence wrote the words “Good News, Good News” in Japanese script. This was the way in which the first Divine Spirit to make contact with me announced his presence. I learned subsequently that the spirit’s name is Nikko and that he was one of the six senior disciples of the thirteenth-century priest Nichiren.
The automatic writing continued and for perhaps ten days the messages I received all came from Nikko. Then, another being started to control my hand and to transmit messages. This was Nikko’s master, Nichiren. At first, Nichiren did not make his true identity known to me and referred to himself by the name of one of his disciples. Before long, however, I was able to discern that the spirit was actually Nichiren himself.
I wondered why Nichiren had come to me. Perhaps, I thought, I was a student of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism in a past life. After communicating with Nichiren for some time, I learned that my father, Saburo Yoshikawa, in one of his own past incarnations, had been one of Nichiren’s favorite disciples. This, I learned, was the connection that had led Nichiren to me.
Eventually, he began to contact me every day. In the initial stages, our communications were conducted almost entirely through automatic writing. My hand, uncontrolled by my will, would begin to write sentences and would continue to do so for some time. Nichiren’s communications began toward the end of March 1981 and continued until the beginning of July.
It was around that time that I began to wonder if some other form of communication with Nichiren might be possible. Sudden and unexpected ideas would occasionally pass through my mind and I would hear silent voices speaking at the very core of my being, so it occurred to me that Nichiren and I might be able to communicate verbally.
Sure enough, the spirits that had communicated with me through automatic writing now began to speak to me by way of my own vocal chords. Now, instead of simply receiving the written messages, I was able to have oral discussions with the spirits. The situation would have seemed very odd to any onlooker because it would have seemed that I was talking to myself.
The importance of my experiences during that memorable first half of 1981 was that I gradually gained an understanding of the spiritual world that exists around us. At the time I began to receive messages, I thought I already had a good grasp of what lies beyond us after death, in the afterlife. But when my deeper abilities became apparent, when I could convey the words of spiritual agencies through speech, it caused me to make a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn in my life and in my understanding.
You might ask what sort of special training I underwent in order to take part in the automatic writing and the direct, verbal communication that followed, but the truth is that it all happened quite naturally. I did not have to spend years meditating under a waterfall or retreat into the solitude of the mountains. Nor did I have to live for decades in a cave or take part in any specific techniques, special meditation, or complicated esoteric practices. All that was necessary was for me to look deep inside my mind and try to correct any wrong thoughts that lay there.
I was twenty-four years old at the time and was reviewing my life so far. In looking back, I realized I had already made many mistakes. I carefully examined these errors and repented the times I had thought or acted wrongly. In doing so, I was preparing myself to open the window of my soul.
Although I was still fairly young, I was somehow able to see quite clearly where I had gone wrong. I saw how, on so many occasions in my past, I had thought only about myself and believed I was the only person who mattered. Success, respect from others, a higher social status, and the acclaim of the world had been the only real components of my life. I found myself deeply embarrassed about the way I had lived up to that point.
As I continued the process of purifying and refining my heart in this way, although without realizing that this was what I was actually doing, I achieved the next necessary stage. A strong determination to devote my life to others sprang from the very depths of my being and became my state of mind.
When I asked myself to what extent I had put myself out for others or how much I had selflessly devoted myself to helping them, it became obvious that I could no longer go on living in the way I had. So absolute and overwhelming was the process I underwent, it could be said that, at only twenty-four, I experienced my first death. And it really was a death because I had laid to rest the false self I had been until that time.
Although the result of this change in my thinking gave me a strong desire to work on behalf of humanity, I had no idea how to proceed because I was only in my early twenties and lacked the life experience that could guide me to the concrete steps to take to fulfill my desire. I did not want to commit myself only to small acts of kindness because, as important as these are, I did not feel this was my true mission. I knew that I had to find a way to use my abilities and talents to the fullest and for the sake of others. But the burning question was, “How?” This was how my life review and my subsequent determination to express my gratitude and give to others in return for what I had been given represented a major turning point in my life.
It was then, that Nichiren began speaking to me. Any thought of publishing books or passing on Nichiren’s words to others was far from my mind because the messages I was receiving seemed to be directed specifically at me. They were of a personal, rather than a public nature. My conversations with Nichiren took place at various times and in different places, for example, on the train to and from work or while I was on my lunch break.
When Nichiren contacted me while I was traveling on a train or in some other inconvenient place, I could obviously not speak out loud in reply, so I would generally write replies with my finger, as if it were a pen. This form of automatic writing, without the need for a pen and paper, worked well and allowed me to have all manner of conversations wherever I happened to be.
One of the phrases I remember most clearly from my early communications with Nichiren was “love, nurture, and forgive others.” This was part of his response, in the form of automatic writing, when I asked him what my mission on Earth was – what I had been sent here to do. Nichiren told me that the words of his reply were to form the core of my philosophy. He did not go into detail, but added, “Believe in people, the world, and God.” Thereafter, I contemplated these two messages frequently.
With regard to the message “believe in people, the world, and God,” I think it can be explained as follows: “Believe in people” suggests that we should believe in the divine nature that sleeps within all individuals, and that the true essence of people is that they are children of God. “Believe in the world” springs from a belief in the divine nature of others. It means that we should not look upon this world as evil. This world is a society created by children of God, and therefore it should be a utopian society. We need to create the kind of ideal world here on Earth that exists in the spirit world, in Heaven. This is how we need to think, as human beings, about this world and our society. Finally, “Believe in God” is the foremost, as well as the concluding, ultimate message, as this is the starting point of faith.
The message “love, nurture, and forgive others” is a teaching that everybody is capable of understanding. My personal philosophy is largely summed up in this message. It was six years, however, before it surfaced in my life in any public sense. In the intervening period, I considered these words very carefully, until it became clear to me that the phrase was connected with the developmental stages of love, a model that emerged from my thinking about the message. At that point, I wrote about it in the context of those stages in my book The Laws of the Sun.
Buddhism traditionally focuses on the stages and the development of enlightenment, while Christianity places its greatest importance on love. The search to achieve enlightenment and the posture of trying to offer love to people, are two approaches that appear to be quite different and it could be why the two religious movements have sometimes seemed incapable of merging. However, I discovered, to the contrary, that love and enlightenment are not only compatible ideas but are actually closely related to each other. The developmental stages of love reconciled the gap between these two ideas and showed that, at each level of love, there are corresponding stages of enlightenment, revealing a united model of Buddhist and Christian ideas.
I came to understand the developmental stages of love after contemplating Nichiren’s message for six years. I realized that the first stage of human love is the type of love you feel for your parents, relatives, friends, and others you meet in the course of your life. This kind of love is for those you love quite naturally. I call this stage “fundamental love.” For all people, this is the starting point of love.
I call the next stage “nurturing love.” If you look at the world around you, you see numerous leaders. What is it that makes them so? The answer is that the best among them share a desire to nurture others; these are people who possess this greater, more highly developed form of love and make it their guiding principle. These are people who become leaders naturally. Leaders must not only love those whom it is natural to love, but due to their position, they must also love many others. They must give others the love that is known as leadership. Such people really do exist and they are outstanding individuals.
An even higher form of love, one that even the best leaders may not possess, is the stage I refer to as “forgiving love.” This is love from a religious perspective. People may excel in earthly terms and nurture others, but to reach the stage of forgiving love requires more. It calls for a high degree of enlightenment, a great awakening. This spiritual awakening brings you into a state of mind close to that of God. It became obvious to me that this higher stage of love – forgiving love – exists, and that this love dissolves the need for distinction between good and evil in its purifying embrace. I came to know that this is the love that a truly religious or spiritual person possesses. These are the thoughts that occupied my heart after Nichiren started contacting me.
While I was receiving many spiritual messages from Nichiren and other Divine Spirits, I was holding down a full-time job at a large Japanese trading company where I was often quite overwhelmed by the work.
In the midst of such a frenetic life, I felt my heart waver many times, and despite the fact that I had already achieved what was clearly the first stage of enlightenment, I began to develop new worldly attachments. I think that part of the problem stemmed from my desire to achieve success in the company. It was still important to me to win recognition from others and be better than my colleagues. I strove relentlessly to become one of the elite, and as a result, created all kinds of grief for myself. When situations in my career did not go the way I wanted, my internal suffering increased. Numerous obstacles appeared that adversely affected the relationship I had with my boss and my colleagues. I had not encountered these kinds of problems in my student days and they created tremendous conflict in my heart.
In Japanese society, new recruits or employees are treated as if they are second-class, like privates in an army. The system of promotion by seniority is typical of all Japanese corporations, but I questioned the validity of assessing people simply on the grounds of the number of years they had worked for the same company. I found it very frustrating that an individual’s worth should be judged in terms of years served rather than by their spiritual advancement, the state of their mind, or the level of their enlightenment.
Although we should not view or judge people as solely good or evil, when looked at through the spiritual eye, it cannot be denied that there are some people who have definite tendencies towards good, while others display a predisposition towards evil. When I looked through the eyes of God and in accordance with Truth, it became apparent to me that people with an inclination towards evil, who were motivated by egotism and displayed a strong desire to achieve in a material sense, were generally well received by the world. This astonished me.
As a result of these observations, I became determined to create a workplace in which employees were judged not by the length of their service but by the stage of development of their minds. It was my overriding hope and desire to see companies, organizations, and even the world based on true values.
Working in one of the leading trading companies in Japan, however, there seemed to be very little chance that I would be able to achieve my objectives. I decided that the only course of action left to me was to do my job to the best of my ability, while at the same time showing the people around me as much love as possible. This was not the sort of love that had any definite form but rather which supported others both openly and discreetly. I could do no more than this at the time.
During this period, I suffered significantly from conflicts caused by personal relationships. Even though I was able to open the window of my heart and to continue to speak with the Divine Spirits, as I had now been doing for some time, I encountered a variety of distractions. These often disturbed my equilibrium. Unfortunately, with my mind plagued by the emotions that ran through it, days sometimes passed without me being able to concentrate on my meditation.
When your mind is rocked by the desire for personal advancement and feelings, even of the most natural kind, towards the opposite sex, it is sometimes possible for the Devil to take this opportunity to attempt to enter your heart. Like many of the religious leaders of the past, I was forced to fight several Devils. Among the Devils that are famous from history are Lucifer, the ruler of Hell, and Beelzebub, the Devil who tempted Jesus during his forty days of solitude in the desert. Both these presences also came to attack me, in addition to another Devil of vast spiritual power, a well-known figure from esoteric Buddhism. One after another, I met these Devils face-to-face.
They would target my weakness and take advantage of my spiritual sensitivity, which is present in those who naturally possess spiritual abilities. So, on days when I was not feeling particularly well or when my mind was disturbed, the various Devils would appear and say things designed to turn me from my true, chosen path. When I had attachments, the Devils would do their best to amplify them, filling my mind with thoughts to which I was attached, and making it virtually impossible for me to think about anything else. As a result, I became exhausted and found myself unable to sleep at night.
As the situation continued, I had no option but to confront the Devils. Of course, I learned eventually that the true source of my distress lay within my own being. The Devils themselves were not outside of me, but were in my own heart. I realized that they had been able to creep in through the weaknesses that existed in my mind. Ultimately, it was my pride that had allowed them to exercise their power.
On many occasions, I weakened at the thought of following the path of Truth, and there were times when I wanted to rid myself of my ability to receive spiritual messages. It was in these moments of weakness that the Devils came to visit and taunt me. They told me that if I did not cease my communications with the Divine Spirits and abandon my enlightenment, if I would not abandon my plans to preach the Truth to others, I would never find happiness. I was falsely promised that if I discarded the Truth, abandoned my enlightenment, and gave up all thoughts of teaching others, I would soon achieve a promotion at work, enjoy a greater status, and earn a higher income. In these and many other ways, they attacked my weaknesses, constantly tempting me and trying to prevent my enlightenment with promises of worldly success.
During this period, I often found life difficult, but I remained true to my desire to improve myself. I had no way of knowing what would happen in the future. Even though I felt pressured to achieve personal success quickly, I could not see where it would lead. Although I had been given the message to love, nurture, and forgive people, I did not know how to apply the message in my own life. Nevertheless, I remained confident that my mission would be made clear to me in the fullness of time and that the day would arrive when I would be of genuine use to the world.
Until then, all I could do was to accept that I had started my journey as a person of ordinary ability. I must remain humble and continue to aim at self-improvement. I realized that it was wrong for me to think of myself as a special person just because I was able to communicate with the spirit world. I was an ordinary person and so I should do my best to live my life as an average citizen and a good member of society. I reasoned that, even if I lost my spiritual abilities and had my gift taken from me, I should still constantly strive to become the sort of individual whom others looked up to. I determined to try and make myself shine in the way I lived my everyday life, within the common and ordinary.
To achieve this, I consciously cast off all pretensions of greatness – the pride I had felt regarding my ability to communicate with the spirit world and also the idea that I must be someone very special. Instead I resolved to become simply the sort of person others would be happy to know. I would try to be like a refreshing spring breeze in May and become as near as I could get to a perfect example of an ordinary individual. For a while, to achieve this goal, I abandoned the spirit world and concentrated instead on re-examining myself and the way I was living, and checking that I was not mistaken in my actions.
The Devils had tried to gain control of my mind because of my feelings of superiority over others. I now know that Devils find it easy to enter into the hearts of people who seek psychic ability in order to become personally sublime. What ultimately drove them away in my case was not a stern rebuke or my powerful spiritual abilities. It was my constant resolve to make myself shine as a normal person. I constantly told myself: “There is nothing at all wrong with living an ordinary life. I will live a normal life and achieve accomplishments as a result of it. I don’t even need to produce something great because something small will do. What is most important is to live the sort of life I can be proud of, to live in a way that other people would acknowledge and say, ‘I am glad that we have someone like him.’ This is the nature of the life I wish to live. From now on, I will build up my achievements gradually.” I realized the importance of these words and began to carry them out in practice. It was then that the Devils left because they no longer had the power to accompany me. When I discovered how to shine like a warm light while living an ordinary life, the Devils finally left me alone.
I am sure that many of you reading this are interested in spiritual matters. Some of you may already possess spiritual abilities. If this is the case, you must not see these as a way to become extraordinary. You must realize that to do so will put you on the edge of a fearful precipice. A longing to become a famous or extraordinary human being brings with it a craving for prestige, and thoughts of this sort provide food for the Devils. When you know you have made these mistakes, strive for an ordinary life – seek light within that ordinariness. In other words, start afresh as a normal person.
It is important to ask yourself: If I should suddenly be stripped of my spiritual abilities, would I still be an admirable and good individual? When my days in this world are over, will my life have been meaningful? If the answer to both questions is a truthful “yes,” you have learned how to overcome the Devil who finds a home within you.
In my confrontation with the Devils, I spent almost six years engaged in strict training of my soul. I struggled to polish myself, always by way of a normal and unassuming life. Then, as I approached the age of thirty, something quite extraordinary started to develop from my ordinary accomplishments.
Throughout this period, my father, Saburo Yoshikawa, was a great source of strength to me and worked hard at compiling the spiritual messages I received. He arranged them into book form and found a publisher for them. We began to publish a compilation every two months. First came The Spiritual Messages of Nichiren, followed by The Spiritual Messages of Kukai, and then The Spiritual Messages of Jesus Christ.
Despite the successful publication of the messages, this was an extremely painful time for me. I had reached the point in my career at which I was approaching middle management. The path to future promotion lay before me. I retained a strong ambition to advance in the business world and to achieve personal success as a result, but I also realized that I could not allow things to go on the way they were. I had to find some way of accomplishing the special mission I knew I had been given in this world. The two paths were not compatible and they caused a conflict within me.
Part of the problem was fear of the unknown. Even during the time I was receiving messages from the Divine Spirits, I struggled with the problem of how to go about spreading this knowledge to the world and to create some kind of organization based on all I had been told.
The situation came to a head shortly before my thirtieth birthday. The Divine Spirits had been talking to me for six years and the message I received from them at this pivotal juncture of my life was, “Now is the time to move.” Hearing this and taking note of it, I finally made up my mind to hand in my notice to the company for which I had worked. I was determined to stand on my own feet and live in the Truth.
Up until that time, I had intended to continue working to earn a living while simultaneously carrying out my spiritual activities. I came to the conclusion, however, that I did not need an income. In fact, I did not need anything. From that point on, my mind was clear. I did not care what happened to me as I dedicated my life to spreading the Truth. It did not even matter to me if I should lose my very life.
When I left my career behind, I had enough money saved to support myself for only one year. I was resolute, however, that even if I starved once that money ran out, I would simply try to do what I could in the time available. I would do what I wanted to do and I would avoid worrying about what would happen in the future. All I knew for certain was that this was the course I needed to take. I no longer found it possible to avoid what I knew was my duty and my vocation. I wanted to embark fully on the path of Truth and walk straight along that path. My career and my reputation were suddenly of no importance, and I did not care if people thought I was bad or mad. Henceforth, I might be referred to as a guru, or I might be called crazy, but it didn’t matter. I gave up everything and I was even prepared to surrender my earthly life.
This moment marked the birth of Ryuho Okawa. Until this time, I had a different name written in the official family register, but I decided to cast that old name aside along with everything else and to live my future life under my holy name of Ryuho Okawa.
I had undergone my first “death” at the age of twenty-four. At the age of thirty, I experienced my second “death” as I cast off everything belonging to my past. In addition to leaving my work, I broke off many of my personal relationships; I stopped seeing my old friends, my former colleagues, my superiors, and the people who had worked under me. I abandoned my old life entirely and was also content to give up all hope for the future. I discarded everything and started afresh. With this mindset and to fulfill my mission, I set out to create an organization that would become Happy Science.
Discarding everything in this way, including myself, allowed me to be truly reborn. The first few months were hard because I had no income and no prospects. All I had to keep me going were the words of the Divine Spirits and my own determination. By getting rid of my old self, however, I came into possession of the key to a great step forward. And having “died” twice, I was no longer scared of anything. Those who are not afraid to abandon everything they own have nothing left to fear. Even now, as I am preaching the Truth, I am quite prepared to lose everything if necessary and to stand empty-handed once again. I remain ready to start once more from the beginning, and as a result, I have no fear.
Achieving this state of mind is the first step in becoming an awakened one, someone who has attained enlightenment. Shakyamuni Buddha went through this experience, and although the details of his life and the environment in which he lived were different from my own, our minds were in the same state. We both determined to live for the sake of Truth and we both discovered our true selves and were awakened to a spiritual perspective of life. It remains my dearest wish that many more people will have this experience in the future.
It is my intention to continue to preach and spread the Truth and I am confident that these activities will expand both in quality and quantity. As my work becomes more intense, it is inevitable that I will be misunderstood and mocked. In fact, there are already people who claim our work at Happy Science is undertaken for the sake of personal glory and financial gain. People who make such accusations probably do so because the criticisms they voice actually refer to the state of their own minds. Having died twice, I remain unperturbed by their criticism. This is thanks to an indomitable spirit that can only be experienced by casting away the old self, undergoing that necessary “death.” This state of mind can only be discovered by those who have cast everything aside, including their pride and their future.
I am not remotely interested in personal glory, nor do I crave worldly success. I content myself with simply doing what needs to be done and what I want to do. I am tilling the soil. If people accuse me of doing it the wrong way, I do not care. I will continue my mission until every inch of earth has been ploughed.
I will remain happy as long as I can live for others. I am devoted to people alive in the world today and those who are to come. If possible, I would like to be able to leave something enduring, something that will still be of use to people two or three thousand years into the future. I want to create something that will act as nourishment to the soul of many. I remain filled with a wish to become like the cool water of a desert oasis – water that is inexhaustible, no matter how much is drawn off. It is my ardent desire to become a fount and source of the spiritual laws.
It does not matter in the least that I started my journey as an ordinary person. It is my mission to continue spreading the Truth to the world at large as long as I live. No doubt the accumulation of ordinary efforts will be transformed into an extraordinary love that will rise majestically and will shine out across the world when I finish my mission on Earth. I began my task with a pure mind and that is how I intend to finish it.
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UNLOCKING THE DOOR TO A NEW WORLD
To begin our quest, we need to contemplate the meaning of life and the truth of who we really are. Have you ever stopped to look at yourself – at the very essence of your personal identity? You probably consider yourself to be a fully independent entity, a single individual among countless others in the world. It seems logical and right to assume that this is the case because we have separate bodies and each of us has a totally unique identity. As sensible as this assumption may seem, however, I want you to consider whether this way of viewing yourself in isolation is really a complete and truly fulfilling outlook on life and whether it is even correct.
In the world of religion and myth, and from a time so long ago we cannot know its beginning, there has been an enduring belief. People from all over our planet have told and retold stories about a huge tree that exists in the universe. Although this tree has many names and different cultures have depicted it in various ways, it was deeply important to all our ancestors, wherever they lived. Scandinavians called it the World Tree, and the ancient Mesopotamians called it the Tree of Life. It features in the mythologies of ancient China, India, and Mesoamerica. No matter by what name it has been called, the Cosmic Tree stands at the very center of human religious belief and countless millions have revered it through many millennia.
You could take the world’s most advanced telescope and gaze at the heavens until you had observed every part of the material universe, but you could never see the great Cosmic Tree through the telescope’s eyepiece. The Cosmic Tree can only be perceived with your spiritual eye.
From its massive, ancient trunk, the branches of the Cosmic Tree stretch out in all directions forming a canopy that inhabits all parts of creation in the universe. A branch of the Cosmic Tree reaches out to Earth. When seen through your spiritual eye, this massive branch looks like the huge trunk of a tree, with more branches that extend to connect all creation on Earth. The name of this immense tree is El Cantare and it is the origin of all life on Earth. What is more, all spiritual energy flows through and from El Cantare.
As the boughs of El Cantare extend farther and farther from the trunk, they divide into smaller branches. The many branches springing from El Cantare represent the different religious and ethnic groups that have flourished in various places in the world throughout history. Each branch may represent a new country, but it is equally likely that it extends beyond nationhood to include various regions, for example areas in Asia or Europe. In other cases, particular branches extend throughout the world to various ethnic groups where people can be found who share a particular way of thinking.
The differences between the groups are, in reality, just differences in religious beliefs and practices. Religion has existed throughout time as the fundamental basis of culture and civilization. Each ethnic group was originally formed from the followers of one of the many religious leaders who appeared in the world and preached new messages, but all come from the same source. Over perhaps thousands of years, a particular ethnic group develops specific practices and characteristics. Individuals reincarnate in the same civilization several times and repeatedly experience the culture of that specific region.
This view of life may seem extraordinary, but it represents the ultimate Truth of existence. It is quite different from the worldview you acquired in school or even that you absorb from reading books and magazines, or watching television. Many people think of themselves as living their own lives, responsive only to their own will, and divorced from their fellow human beings. Although individual souls exist independently, they cannot avoid also being part of the greater whole and all are attached to the great Tree of Life. The ultimate Truth is that human beings are reborn on many occasions in an endless cycle of reincarnation within the structure of the Tree of Life.
Once you begin to accept this as the true perspective on life and reality, your attitude towards many situations will reverse completely. At the moment, you may be looking at yourself and thinking, “But this is my real self. This individual who exists now, who has my name and personality, is my real and only self.” If you are thinking this, you may not have perceived the other world, the world of spirit, and you may not have heard of individuals who have visited that realm and returned to tell about it. Like many people who have not developed an awareness of the spirit world, you may have no idea what happened to you before you were born into this life or where you will go when it is over.
This is all quite normal and understandable on the material plane we presently inhabit. We seldom, if ever, gain any other view of life, even in our education systems. Although we can learn a great deal from the experiences we have in the world, we need something further to assist us in seeing in a different way. Only religions that offer a correct perspective and a true understanding can teach us the real and most rewarding view of life and the world.
So, despite what seems apparent, don’t be fooled into thinking that your physical body as it exists at this moment in time is your true self. You are merely a traveler who happens to be temporarily visiting this little planet we call Earth, which is really only a tiny spot in an infinitely vast universe. As a visitor you will remain here for a few decades and then return to the true reality of the spirit world. The whole purpose of living an earthly existence is to learn new lessons and to gain knowledge.
Soul Siblings and Reincarnation
Now, visualize the boughs of the Tree of Life dividing into smaller branches and the branches splitting to create twigs in full leaf. Looking closely, you see that each twig has six leaves attached to it. Think of every group of six leaves as representing a single life form – the soul. We can refer to the leaves in such a grouping as “soul siblings.”
Under most circumstances, a group of soul siblings is responsive to one core soul. This represents the central point, the command center of the soul, which shares its essence with five other soul siblings. All the soul siblings experience life, one after another. Each takes its turn at being born on Earth, where it lives out a material existence in human form. Each soul sibling carries with it about one-sixth of the energy of the soul when it is born into a human body. While you are living in the material world, the rest of your soul, represented by your five soul siblings, remains in the spirit world, and one member of your soul sibling group acts as a guardian spirit. So, even though it may sometimes seem that you are alone, this is never the case.
After a lifetime of spiritual training on Earth, the soul sibling returns to the spirit world with a new personality gained during its life. When soul siblings return to the spirit world after death, most tend to retain the appearance they had during their time as corporeal beings. The experience gained by each soul sibling on Earth is not restricted to a single lifetime. Each soul sibling returns, time and again, reincarnated into different lives, thereby acquiring different personalities. When the soul siblings eventually come together, however, they still represent one complete soul. Each soul sibling knows that it is one component of the whole and that it and the other siblings together form one unique human soul.
The soul therefore has a multitude of memories and experiences supplied by each component part overlapping and converging. As an example, and using Japanese eras, let us say you were born into three periods: the Heian Period (794–1185), the Kamakura Period (1185–1333), and the Edo Period (1603–1867). You would retain the life experiences from your reincarnations into the world in all these periods of history. In those lifetimes, you would have encountered many different circumstances, met countless other incarnated souls, and played various roles in the earthbound incarnations that are part of the development of the soul.
Each person who is alive now will gain new experiences in the present era of the twenty-first century. You will study new material, encounter new situations, and eventually return to the spirit world with renewed nourishment gained from your earthly lives. Once you are reintegrated there, your soul siblings will share your new memories and gain from your experience. Within the entire soul are memories that go way back into much earlier lives and eras, but such remembrances gradually fade away as each soul sibling is born time and again. Each new life refreshes the soul’s pool of experience as new knowledge and experience are gained.
The concept of the soul “leaves” on the Tree of Life might be difficult to grasp at the moment because you look at the world only from the perspective of your present earthly life. To understand and to gain a new perspective on your life, focus your mind on a single twig of the Tree of Life, where six leaves grow. Think of yourself as one of these leaves.
Leaves flourish and grow, before turning red, orange, or yellow then brown and eventually falling. At a human level, this is equivalent to passing through the peak of life, old age, and death. As the years go by, you think, “These days I am less vigorous. My body is weaker and my back is bent.” You may notice that you have more wrinkles, begin to lose your hair, and are more susceptible to sickness. This is the time you become like the withered brown leaf. And as surely as the leaf is eventually detached from the tree by the late autumn winds, so you will eventually leave your human body behind and return to the spirit world. Fallen leaves carpet the forest floor, passing their nutrients back to the soil, where they are reabsorbed by the tree, offering nourishment to new leaves. This is the life of the individual when seen from the perspective of the Tree of Life. The analogy is sound because, as a result of your many incarnations, you amass experiences that nourish and feed the Tree of Life.
Souls Connected by Spiritual Bonds
I want to carry our contemplation of the Tree of Life a little further. I have explained that the six leaves that grow on a single twig of the tree represent your soul group, which consists of you and your five soul siblings. Close to you are other twigs that developed from the same branch as yours. The souls occupying these adjacent twigs are related souls, having developed from the same common branch. The souls adjacent to you came into existence at about the same time as you did and they have close connections with you. For this reason, they are often called soul mates. Even though these nearby souls are not your soul siblings, they are part of the group with whom you will always undergo soul training on Earth.
You will generally be born into the same periods as your soul mates. In life, they will become your family members, more distant relatives, good friends, or perhaps colleagues you meet on a regular basis. This applies to your own parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, children, and grandchildren. It also applies to friends with whom you share a commonality and a destiny, as well as to people with whom you feel an affinity for no particular reason.
People with whom you are now associated at many levels have been important to you in past incarnations, and you have shared many different relationships with them. For example, even though you may be husband or wife to a particular individual now, the two of you could have been father and daughter in a previous incarnation. Sometimes an older brother you love dearly was your father in a past life, or the aunt for whom you feel a special love and who has always offered you useful advice may have been your mother at some time in the past. Even those who become your rivals could once have been your dearly loved brothers or sisters.
Your relationships with those who are part of your spiritual group will vary from lifetime to lifetime as you repeatedly reincarnate. You and your soul mates undertake your life training through many kinds of associations and relationships. In trying to understand the meaning of your life, it is essential to contemplate your existence at a much deeper level than is generally done in our material world.
These days, with better nutrition and health care, people often live as long as eighty or ninety years, leading to rich experiences across a long period of time. Under such circumstances, changes in relationships are inevitable. As circumstances alter, however, there are always going to be people around whom you recognize as soul mates. Fate is not something that is fixed or unchangeable. So even if specific relationships with family members, friends, or business associates collapse or fade away, there will always be soul mates or soul friends with whom you have special ties, and they will appear among the new relationships you make. These soul mates and soul friends will step up to help you when needed.
Today, in the unsettled flow of modern society, there are many divorces and remarriages especially in Europe and North America. The concept of a single thread of fate connecting husband and wife for all eternity may make little sense. In Christian societies, when two people marry, they pledge that no one will ever separate a relationship that has been sanctified by God. They may feel guilty when things go wrong and they find it necessary to break the oath and to remarry. The Church cannot rescue believers from the feelings of guilt that arise. As a result, many individuals search for a different perspective and try to ensure their religious salvation through other means.
Spiritual counselors and other kinds of practitioners offer consultations to advise such people on marital matters and to answer questions about whether their marriage partners are connected to them by fate. Many counselors offer readings relating to past lives in order to establish whether their new partners may have been close to them in past incarnations. When spiritual counselors say that the potential marriage partners were connected to each other in previous incarnations, the information serves to lessen their feelings of guilt. In fact, there are many instances in which these past life relationships were significant to the parties concerned. Even if you are forced by circumstance to go through divorce and remarriage, please do not torment yourself about the fact. The person you subsequently marry more than likely had a spiritual tie with you in previous lives.
In every era in which you incarnate in the world, a number of closely related souls come to Earth at the same time as you and share your spiritual training. The population of the world now numbers more than six billion individuals and it is growing towards seven billion. It is almost certain that people who were born in different eras of the past are being born simultaneously at this time. Among these people, there are many who belong to your spiritual group, that is, those from nearby twigs of the Tree of Life.
You may meet one or several people during your life who especially captivate you and lift your heart. These sorts of relationships not only develop between men and women but also between people of the same gender. You may develop such a close affinity that they feel as though they are family members, even though in a relationship sense they are not. Some friendships are so strong they seem to be destined. You may meet a special person with whom you actively choose to spend the rest of your life. These are the people who have a spiritual connection with you. If you reflect on your own life, it will be obvious that soul mates do exist.
There is apt to be a group of about twenty to thirty people close to you with whom you have very special spiritual ties. This group of people will most likely determine the happiness and sorrow of your life. In almost all cases, these are the people you are supposed to meet in this lifetime because you previously made plans to meet them in your present incarnation.
During your life, people will appear whom you are absolutely required to meet because what they offer you is part of the training of your soul. You may encounter these people once or on many occasions during your time here. Some of these individuals will treat you with the warmest kindness, but others will be less appealing and will provide you with some of the trials that are inevitable in life. Nevertheless, these are people you simply have to experience. Think of your life as a workbook that is assigned to you. Meeting with particular individuals is part of your workbook, so that you can resolve issues you had with them in previous lives. You carried over these assignments from past incarnations.
As an example, in a past life, you may have had a great relationship with someone as a parent and child, brother and sister, or husband and wife. Yet, in the course of your life, something happened that caused you to hate each other. In such cases, it is vital that you and that person meet again on the earthly plane, though in a different sort of association, to test how you will treat each other now.
Where love–hate problems arise in relationships, especially when the connections are with people who have a deep influence on your life, these are most likely difficulties that have been carried over from a past life. Each problem from the workbook of life is something you must solve, and it is part of God’s plan for you. Please do not assume that suffering is simply a matter of bad luck. It is far better to approach difficulties as tests from your workbook of life rather than as random chance events. Many things that happen to you occur because they are necessary and inevitable.
You and your soul mates have come together in countless periods and regions, especially in the present era when new teachings of the Truth are available. You were all born into numerous civilizations in the past, including ones that have become mere legends in modern times. You have met each other repeatedly in different situations and your relationships to each other have altered. You switched genders and roles within families across countless centuries and now you have come face-to-face with the same individuals in your present life. Within the vast sea of life, there have been and will be many dramas, but I want you to know that you have a deep connection with the people you meet.
Now that you are aware of this Truth, I ask that when you meditate, you think of a person that has made a strong impression on your life and contemplate the possibility that this specific individual has a deep spiritual connection with you and may be tied to you as a soul mate.
Overcoming Hatred
Many people follow the western value of individualism, believing that people who compete and win in life are somehow superior. This brings a “defeat or be defeated” attitude. Such competition can lead to your mind seesawing between a heavenly state and a hellish state, depending on the outcome in each competitive encounter.
When you find yourself stuck in this situation, I would like you to think again about the great Tree of Life, visualizing it spreading through space and extending its branches far beyond the realms of Earth, stretching on to far-flung planets where other life forms exist. This single massive tree ultimately connects all of the souls in creation throughout the universe. You may win or lose in our competitive world, but remember that the people who are your opponents now are not your absolute enemies or rivals. These are people you have met many times before across a host of lifetimes. In a spiritual sense, everyone is connected by way of the Tree of Life.
This is why I am teaching everyone to love each other. I am saying, “Please love one another. You must love one another.” You are not strangers. Every single person is associated, and everyone’s life energy connects to the same spiritual root.
When individualism becomes overly dominant, it causes people to develop excessive envy, jealousy, possessiveness, and ultimately, hatred. Such behavior goes against the laws of life, and it will ultimately be judged as a negative deed that requires self-reflection.
The people with whom you share close relationships are all connected to you on the same branch of the Tree of Life. It is a sin to hate or loathe individuals with whom you come into contact because, in so doing, you damage or even sever a branch that is connected to the same bough as yours.
This is the message I want to impart: Stop hurting each other. Stop speaking ill of others. Don’t be jealous of those around you; instead, bless them. In this way, you develop your own soul.
Jealousy and hatred exist as an opposition to love, but the difficulties that arise as a result of wrong thinking can be overcome by being aware of the Truth. You compete with others and grow jealous of them because you see yourself as being totally separate from them, but these same individuals are actually your soul mates.
So much hatred and conflict arises today due to differences in ethnicity or religion, but this is only because people do not fully understand the Truth. This is why contemplation of the Tree of Life is so important. If we come to realize absolutely that we are all born of branches that form part of the same tree, war and strife will disappear from our world. The purpose of our movement at Happy Science is to teach this to everybody. By so doing, we are trying to bring peace and abundance to the world and unite the world as one.
Material vs. Spiritual Perspective
Today, many individuals tend to analyze everything from a narrow perspective, much like an ant walking around a tiny patch of earth and trying to observe the whole world. This takes place in education, in business, and in the mass media. Because people fail to see the greater perspective, they adhere to a value system that is based only on the material world and base their thoughts on logic amassed only from the specialized knowledge of their limited earthly vision.