The dust settles outside while the man grows calm inside.

The lesson dawns on the seeking mind that the echo of cosmic laws are everywhere the same. What applies — in its own way — to the universe, applies in equal measure to the solar system, to a planet or even to a man himself. What is true above is true below, or so the Emerald Tablets of Hermes ‘the thrice greatest’ proclaims to the able reader. If a man finds in himself certain laws and rules, he should not be surprised to find such a reality to be true in the starry worlds above or the misty ones below.

On the other hand, if like the typical sort of fellow, a man is accustomed to pointing his finger at everything outside and external to himself, he is doomed to blind ignorance of anything worth knowing. The psychological world, the natural one and whatever supernatural realms exist beyond our sight and senses, must all be bound by the same principles — or so the aphorism leads us to believe. Such a principle can explain the phenomenon of psychological projection, as men who are, for example, excessively irritable or violent with themselves are precisely the ones who are excessively irritable and violent towards others.

But let’s move on from the trodden path of such talk and take a different route in applying this idea. If a man seeks to better himself, it would seem, he would need to work to better humanity, and the world at large, at the very same time. That is to say, if one world is bound to another at an intrinsic level, then efforts towards a common aim would need to proceed from all of the various levels a man is interconnected to. For the mass of humanity, with all of its various colours, hues, aspects and qualities, will be a macro-cosmic reflection of a man in and of himself.

From this point of view, a man who is bent on self-development will need to be outwardly altruistic in order to satisfy his consciously selfish aim. He performs his duty for the sake of necessity, and not merely from a desire to be of use to others. And yet it very often does seem to happen that organs of emotion, such as empathy, begin to grow within a man as he goes through the mere motions of what a genuine altruist, should such a man exist, would do in the same situation. ‘Fake it till it’s real’, or so they say.

One could look upon the current state of the world, weigh all of the positive features against the negative ones, and by this measure the quality of the average human being, as they are inside themselves. The elite live comfortably, the poor suffer through the mainstays of poverty, but taken all together, the psychological quality of all the men, women and children of this world brings us to the conclusion that we are all dramatically connected by the sheer depravity of our current common state.