Ask Lewis: 7 Tips On What Is Natural Law?
A serious inquiry
As my students, mentees, and associates expand their personal growth practices they are often drawn to ask the question “what exactly is Natural Law?”
There are many ways to approach this question. For me, anyway the answers provided by Essential Zen (EZ) and Mystic Taoism (MT) are the most satisfying.
According to these traditions, Natural Laws are the only real laws based on principle and truth. Natural Laws are:
- universal,
- eternal,
- … and immutable.
They are harmonized with wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Unlike laws of man which are social constructs or a reflection of dogmatic beliefs. Human created laws are illusions that people abide by because of a need for social order, or out of fear of punishment.
To understand Natural Law requires meditation, contemplation, and introspection. From these, hopefully comes wisdom concerning the subtle aspects of Natural Law.
Lao Tzu, the Taoist sage often speaks of Natural Law, telling us that we need to be in alignment with it in order to be Awakened. Of course, reading the Tao te Ching you soon realize that like Tao, the Natural Laws that can be described are not really the essence of what Natural Law “Is”.
You can’t accurately describe Natural Law other than as mechanical physics, or through generally subjective mystic knowledge. This later you access by reflecting on it in thought, word, and action. This includes being free of regret, expectation, and unnecessary want and desire.
In Zen the idea of simply doing what needs to be done with joy and celebration is a way to be in alignment with Natural Law.
Then there are the 7 Pillars of Natural Law. These are essential practices one can intentionally engage in to be ever closer to the essence of Natural Law.
These 7, which I practice daily are…
1. Meditation, and contemplation,
2. Introspection,
3. Exploring your beliefs, assumptions, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies,
4. Doing what needs to be done,
5. Living through love while serving others,
6. Singing, dancing, laughing, and communicating clearly,
7. Being silent. This includes surrendering opinions, biases, and assumptions.
These 7, are not rigid or dogmatic practices, yet they do create a framework for putting an understanding of your Life Journey into action. The Seven Pillars of Natural Law help us merge what has been called the left and right brain functions. These 7 are an authentic, grounded, spiritually based approach (drawn from my work in Essential Zen and Mystic Taoism).
To illustrate this idea of never fully understanding Natural Law let’s explore the concept of Absolute Zero. Absolute Zero is the lowest temperature that is theoretically possible. Here the motion of particles that constitutes heat would be minimal. It is zero on the Kelvin scale, equivalent to –273.15°C or –459.67°F. Absolute Zero had never been achieved by humans and as close as scientists have come to creating that condition, it is still elusive.
This is how we can understand Natural Law. It can never be fully experienced, nor understood, though the Awakened individual may get to an understanding that is 99.999999999999999999999999999999…% PEEPPASA (that which is Practical, Effective, Efficient, Productive, Precise, Accurate, and Self-aware).
Language and Natural Law
Most humans use language in some form to communicate. This we might say that the ability to communicate is an expression of Natural Law. It is an extension of another Natural Law — That humans are social creatures.
One of the great explorers of Natural Law as reflected in language and social intelligence was Ludwig Wittgenstein. I teach that thoughts are consciously composed (primarily) through words. Thus, how we choose to think and speak effects our sense of reality.
Wittgenstein’s ideas are important for the person seeking to understand Natural Law. He proposes that the logical structure of language provides the limits of meaning, and one of the most important inquiries to the Awakened life is the Search for Meaning. The limits of language, for Wittgenstein, are the limits of what we can know concerning the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, existence, and Natural Law, especially when considered within a serious inquiry. Much of our meditation, contemplation, and introspection involve attempts to say the unsayable. Wittgenstein states, “What we can say at all can be said clearly.” This is a key truth for anyone in an Awakened state.
In a serious intellectual inquiry in the essence of Natural Law and how humans think, speak, and act are the concepts of Genotype and, Phenotype.
- Genotype: the genetic constitution of an individual organism.
- Phenotype: the set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment. In genetics, the phenotype (from ‘to appear, show’, and ‘mark, type’) is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism’s morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior. An organism’s phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism’s genetic code (its genotype) and the influence of environmental factors. Both factors may interact, further affecting the phenotype.
Phenotypes, Human Laws and Natural Law?
- Can you think of human laws that are proper extensions of the Natural Law? Explain how this is so
- Can you think of other human laws that violate the Natural Law? Explain how this is so.
There have been several attempts to argue that behavior is “natural,” when the human thing to do is to manipulate nature for our benefit.
And so we do. We don’t catch fish with our paws, as bears do. We weave nets. We make hooks and lines and attach them to poles.
We build houses to keep nature out and build a safer and more comfortable place inside. We grow crops — then preserve them, cook them, and manipulate the shelf life so they are fresher and usable longer.
Unless we are emotionally, and spiritually Awakened, our material lives are unlikely to be extensions of “Natural Law.” Indeed, we have created an exception for ourselves, and we often suffer for it.
Common Thinking and Natural Law
Human laws are a rather contradictory and convoluted set of ideas about society and how we should live. Many of them are for convenience. For example, you follow traffic laws to enhance the flow of traffic and avoid accidents. There isn’t any “Natural Law” to this, because movement in nature is rather haphazard and random. But, we still have a common sense purpose, by having traffic laws.
The natural world doesn’t have “laws” against theft or killing. One gets away with what one can, and pays the penalty if one gets caught. There is no morality attached. But in a civil society, we set up a structure so there will be some official sanction against criminal behavior. This is not based on survival of the fittest, what many might see as a reflection of Natural Law.
We even have concepts of justice and injustice that allow us to contemplate changes in society to make life better for more people.
If someone attempts to use the intellect to argue using “Natural Law,” as a talking point they probably don’t know what they are talking about.
- The key questions here for a serious “seeker” are:
- What’s the difference between human law & Natural Law?
- What exactly is Natural Law?
- What is the difference between human rights and Natural Law?
- What is a law of nature?
Matshona Dhliwayo, a philosopher, and leadership expert, offers 25 Laws of Nature, we may wish to contemplate:
1. It is impossible to separate heat from light.
2. It is impossible to separate air from water.
3. It is impossible to separate space from matter.
4. It is impossible to separate force from motion.
5. It is impossible to separate order from harmony.
6. It is impossible to separate sound from movement.
7. It is impossible to separate growth from maturity.
8. It is impossible to separate silence from stillness.
9. It is impossible to separate error from confusion.
10. It is impossible to separate momentum from energy.
11. It is impossible to separate calmness from rest.
12. It is impossible to separate thoughts from actions.
13. It is impossible to separate distance from acceleration.
14. It is impossible to separate truth from knowledge.
15. It is impossible to separate reason from clarity.
16. It is impossible to separate curiosity from observation.
17. It is impossible to separate certainty from conviction.
18. It is impossible to separate need from desire.
19. It is impossible to separate chance from fate.
20. It is impossible to separate reality from experience.
21. It is impossible to separate nature from awareness.
22. It is impossible to separate science from creation.
23. It is impossible to separate life from activity.
24. It is impossible to separate time from eternity.
25. It is impossible to separate the cosmos from the universe.
Ultimately, Natural Law is “written” into human nature and creation as attributes and qualities. Human law is really just “remembered tradition” and written down in the form of statutes. Human law is that which, if violated, is regarded as “criminal.” Natural Law, if violated, is not criminal but de-humanizing, and ultimately leads to struggle and suffering.
So, nature allows a living creature to freely act, but Natural Law decides the consequences of this action.
So, in life we have the active executive power to act freely. Even to ignore or override Natural Law. In that moment, Natural Law has the passive but decisive power to produce the consequences of this action. Natural Law responds automatically to produce the fate of the organism that carried out this action.
We may decide what to do by our own will, yet nature decides the consequence of this action. According to Natural Law we can say without bringing God into the conversation, “Humans propose, and Natural Law disposes.”
So, the relation between human law and Natural Law is that: human law has the administrative power to override Natural Law in the execution of human action, but Natural Law passively but decisively decides the result of this human action.
Human power is the active execution power but nature’s power is the passive decisive power. Any human action that contradicts Natural Law is meaningless. You can do as you please, nature doesn’t care. You chose initiative action, while nature responds to it. (I am not going to discuss pre-determination here, especially not in the context of Natural Law.
Life, Physics, and Natural Law
Natural Law, as illustrated by what we call “natural science” is both a living and non-living “matter existenc”e based thermodynamic rules. Here existence depends on closed thermodynamic processes to maintain a balanced continuation.
Final Thoughts
- A law is a structure that must be followed either consciously or intuitively.
- Natural Law is the law presented that ultimately determines the processes of all organisms.
- Natural Law is given to the organism before the organism even has the ability to consciously create its own laws through the use of symbols.
- Natural Law is Truth.
- The truth you ignore will come to bite you on the ass!
Other of my stories in a similar vein:
Before you go…
I am Lewis Harrison, an Award Winning author of over twenty books on personal growth and strategic thinking. For over a decade I was the producer and host of the show “What’s Up” on NPR affiliated WIOX FM in New York.
Now, aside from writing on Medium, and connecting personally with my readers, I teach seminars and speak on personal development, and life strategies throughout the world.
I write full time for Medium, Ask Lewis, RealUGuru, and The International Association of Healing professionals. If you enjoy my stories and would like to support my work please donate at https://asklewisharrison.com/ — Just click on the “Support the Project Button”
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