Life Response

Life Response is the capacity to attract or create favorable circumstances and events from the world around us that appear to occur by 'chance' or 'luck' rather than as a direct result of our own physical actions.

In 1972, an American businessman visited India and offered to raise a bank loan of $100 million for an Indian fertilizer company. On returning to the USA, he contacted Bank of America for this purpose and was told that two days earlier the bank had set up a new division to finance petro-chemical plants in South Asia. The Indian proposal was the first one they received. Within a few weeks, they issued a preliminary letter approving the loan.

The apparently independent action of the bank was a life response to the businessman's initiative. Common sense tells us the acts are unrelated, but fortuitous. A deeper insight into life reveals they are directly related to one another. A knowledge of life response gives one the capacity to evoke such favorable events in one's own life.

Chance, Luck and Coincidence

In pursuit of an important work, we want to meet a friend whom we have not met for a few years.Before leaving our house, in a pleasant surprise, he enters our house. Life is full of such strange events. Literature too is teeming with such incidents. History has the same character. I call this phenomenon of ready help coming in an inconceivable fashion 'Life Response'. "Thank God, you have come," we exclaim. We also feel we are in luck. We are right.

This is not merely the caprice of Life. There is a law behind such occurrences. Some half a dozen such events described in detail and the laws underlying explained will make it clear that such phenomena follow their own rules. One who knows such rules will always discern how such events come to pass. There is more.

Make Life Respond

Those who do not submit to life, but rise above the social average and evoke the power of higher consciousness can make Life Respond. Life Response is a known phenomenon that almost everyone observes at one time or another. But the capacity to evoke a Life Response is something more, but it is not totally unknown in life. Extraordinarily courageous people say, "Well, I have never been let down." Optimistic persons, when their hopeless project comes round, say, "I know it will come round." Life can come round to anyone who relies on a higher power of consciousness in life.

Life's Equilibrium

As material things on earth are held in equilibrium by gravitation; events, persons, and movements are held in equilibrium in life by the emotions of people. People in countries such as India are quite conscious of this truth, but they tend to impute MORAL intention to life and see it as an expression of universal justice or karma. There is a truth in this view, but it is only a partial truth.

Life is amoral. We often see a dishonest person succeeding. In these moments we attribute his success to his money power or social influence, all of which are true, but each of them represents a partial truth. The complete Truth of this phenomenon is the emotional equilibrium in Life. Life seeks to maintain a balanced equilibrium of its energies. When that balance is disturbed, it seeks to restore the balance.

Eight tons of expensive imported machinery was to be unloaded in a small Indian port where the maximum capacity of the cranes was only four tons. The owner of the machinery decided to utilize two four ton cranes in unison. The cranes seemed to work. The machinery was hoisted halfway through the air and then the cranes failed. The owners of the machine standing on the pier were watching their property sink down before their eyes. They all cried out from the very depths of their beings, calling the God they worship. There was a huge noise. The cranes seemed to crash violently. But again they started to work and lowered the machinery onto the pier! For decades the owners recited this story to hundreds of people. The captain of the ship who witnessed the miraculous event asked in surprise what happened. He was told their prayers had been answered. What the religious explain as God's response to their prayers can also be explained as life's response to the intense emotional energy they generated. It was not wise for them to have tried unconventional methods to unload expensive machinery. The deeply felt intense emotions, neutralized the unwisdom of the decision. When the equilibrium of emotions or energies was restored, Life acted, fulfilling one rule of Life Response.

Life Response in Pride & Prejudice

The rules to which Life responds are as many as there are ways of life. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Darcy was a wealthy aristocrat. Elizabeth was a daughter of a fairly rich gentleman with no dowry of her own. On seeing Elizabeth at a ball, Darcy said in her hearing that she was not only tolerably good looking, but not beautiful. She was mortally offended. But soon Darcy began to feel an uncontrollable and passionate attraction toward Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Darcy effectively prevented the excellent marriage of Elizabeth's sister Jane to his own wealthy friend Bingley.

A few months later Darcy met Elizabeth at his aunt's estate and proposed to her, couching his proposal in unpardonably offensive language. Elizabeth rejected the proposal violently, abusing Darcy and accusing him of heinous crimes. Darcy explained his actions in a letter to her. After a prolonged inner struggle, Elizabeth realised that she had been mistaken about Darcy's character and actions and she began to regret she had so violently rejected his proposal.

Several months later, Elizabeth's aunt and uncle take her on a holiday tour and propose a visit to Darcy's magnificent family estate, Pemberley. Elizabeth agreed to visit on learning that Darcy was away in London. While they were touring mansion, she learned from the housekeeper much that confirmed Darcy's good character. Admiring the wonders of his home, she thought to herself that she could have been the mistress of that palace. All her dislike of him vanished. As she was leaving the mansion, she is shocked to encounter Darcy who had returned from London a day early! This is the turning point of the story that results in their marriage. The reversal of her emotions at Pemberley brought an immediate instantaneous response from life. That is the process of Life Response.

An American Darcy

A handsome and wealthy American engineering student was a favourite of many beautiful girls at the university he attended. But his mind was set on one girl who excelled all the others in beauty. Dozens of other men were also after her. The girl did not find it easy to make up her mind, as many of her admirers were above average in looks, personality and social prospects. Many times the student spoke to the girl about his aspiration to marry her. She could not make up her mind among all her suitors.

The student could not stand to remain in this uncertain state any longer. One day he returned home from class dejected without trying to meet this girl. Who could get this girl for him? Was there such an earthly power or divine influence? Suddenly he became an ardent believer and addressed a warm deep prayer to God, "If it is true that there is a Divine Hand presiding over human destinies, certainly it is obligatory on that power to make this elusive girl marry me." Scarcely had he finished his prayer of love, when the phone rang. It was she. She called to accept his proposal. They married soon after.

What is Life?

Life is a living conscious field of experience and action. We are an inseparable part of the field, linked in our consciousness to everything and everyone else in the universe. Our consciousness is not separate and isolated. It is in active relationship with the world around us. Whatever we think or decide, aspire for, love or hate, desire and fear is in active relationship with us through our thoughts and feelings.

The Secret builds on this truth and tells us we can invoke the Law of Attraction by concentrating the power of our consciousness on whatever it is we want to happen or come to us in life. In other words we have the power to make life respond to us.

In fact, life is responding to us all the time, bringing into our environment people and circumstances that correspond with the vibrations of consciousness that we are emanating. Thus, our whole life is a mirror reflection of what we are inside, but often that reflection is inverted or refracted in a manner that we do not see the correspondences. To discover the relationship between our inner and outer lives is a great spiritual knowledge which can be acquired by careful, patient, dispassionate study.

Once we understand the relationship between inner and outer, we have the power to make life respond to us by consciously pressing the inner keys. Then our lives become a conscious journey toward higher accomplishment, greater fulfillment and ever higher consciousness.

For further explanation and examples, see Life Response