Why does our colleague, who we consider to perform no better than us, or not even as well, receive promotion ahead of us? Why do your parents give your brother preferential treatment? Why does the person who shares your school desk obtain higher marks than you in biology, even though he is always copying your work? Why does your colleague, who always does as little work as possible, always get away with it? Why did my father, a wonderfully kind man, die of cancer at an early age while a gangster boss is able to celebrate his 90th birthday?
Why is there so much suffering, pain, sickness, natural disaster and war in the world? Why do so many innocent young children have to die? If there is a (beneficent) God, how can he allow Auschwitz to happen? *
Why are you scarcely able to make a living and your neighbour wins a million? You have cared for your sick old grandmother for ten years, but when she dies her property goes to another relative who has never shown his face.
Real or supposed injustices lie in wait for us everywhere.
Nothing is as energy-sapping and harmful to our immune system, and therefore to our health, as an affront to our sense of justice. The feeling of being treated unjustly is one of the most bitter and painful human disappointments – we feel underestimated, overlooked and humiliated. Our self-esteem takes a knock, and our view of the world comes unstuck. Everything we believed in – reward for doing good and punishment for the bad – is called into question. Doubts about our own self-worth increase, creating aggression or giving way to resignation and depression.
If this condition persists, an offended sense of justice can develop into habitual mistrust of others, obsessive paranoia and destructive envy. We suffer because we are subject to the illusion that life on this earth can be fair and just. We are disillusioned whenever we encounter what we perceive as an injustice. However, we can only be dis-illusioned if we were previously ”illusioned”. And the assumption that life on earth operates according to our human ideas of justice is just such an illusion.
Life on earth cannot be just, as we cannot be aware of the overall plan – if there is one.
According to Gödel‘s mathematical-logical theorem, we can only know if an order exists if we can see it. But we cannot know that no order exists just because we cannot see it. We are not aware of the inter-relationships.
Everything has a cause, but not everything has a purpose. We do not even know the purpose of our own life, the reason why we exist in the first place. We know that the earth is not the centre of the universe, but each individual grossly overestimates his own importance by considering himself the centre of the world. Everybody considers himself to be the most important, and the reference point for everything that happens around him.
In fact many of the injustices we perceive as such do not arise because somebody made a personal decision against us, but because there are circumstances, relationships and compelling factors which neither we nor the person to whom we assign the blame are able to influence.
Cosmologically speaking, the further we earth-dwellers are away from the origin, the will of creation, the more laws we become subject to. I am certain that the structures that apply to the world, the macrocosm, also apply to man, the microcosm. As inside, so outside; as above, so below.
So what is the nature of man as a microcosm? Let us take man as an absolute. To what extent does his will hold sway within his own body? He is able to control his own movements. His limbs and even his breathing are subject to his will.  If he concentrates on the palm of his hand, he can even feel it to some extent, and Grandmaster Leung Ting is able to increase the blood flow through his hand so that it takes on a purple/red hue. But there are always limits. The human will does not extend to the body cells, for example. These are subject to laws which man cannot influence, and indeed they are a mystery to him. The lower the level of command, and the lower down we find ourselves, the more laws and relationships we are subject to, and the more uncontrollable injustices take place which have nothing to do with the original plan, but still happen.
The situation is similar for the macrocosm: the spark of creation extends from the absolute (Brahma in Hindu terminology) across all worlds, all suns, our sun and the planets to the earth.
This cosmological point of view, which we can also gain by looking into a starry night sky, very quickly robs us of any illusion that we are something special. Our role in the universe is completely insignificant. The great, wide world will not find its salvation in man, for it has managed very well without us for hundreds of millions of years. At most we are capable of destroying the world, but without any overall cosmological effects. Our position in the universe is rather unimportant and very disadvantaged, as we are subject to too many laws.
Looking at the number of (sometimes very well educated) people who read horoscopes and partly lead their lives accordingly, one might get the idea that there is something to it after all, and that certain moods and annoyances, and perhaps even large-scale epidemics and psychoses such as warmongering and aggression might be due to the influences of the cosmos.
But let us leave the macrocosm before you take me for a fantasist. The sports association of which you are a member is also a cosmos like this, and so is the company where you work or the school where you are learning. Here too, you are bound to experience your share of injustice again and again. The larger the relevant cosmos, the more the unknown factors, inter-relationships and compelling circumstances in whose daily grind you might inadvertently become involved. The further away you are from the origin of the creation of a cosmos, the more things are haphazard, the more things confront you and the more things happen without being directed at you personally. If there is such a thing as justice at all, it may be found in a very immediate circle such as a small family: mother, father and children. As soon as there are grandparents, uncles and aunts etc. as well, there is no chance of justice.
Once we recognise this as a given truth and have accepted it, we will take supposed injustices less personally and cease to feel mobbed, disadvantaged or humiliated as individuals.
Where in nature do we find justice? The magpie steals eggs from the blackbird’s nest. The cat eats mice.
Complaining about an injustice for even one second is a waste of energy, and there is hardly any negative emotion that wastes as much precious life energy as an offended sense of justice. This is precious energy that we urgently need to wake up, to concentrate and to stop forgetting ourselves all the time ... by becoming more awake and aware, we take our personal evolution into our own hands and can reach a higher level of consciousness by seeing things around us more clearly and understanding them better.
And understanding is accompanied by more tolerance towards others. How can we expect others to behave justly if we are not really capable of it ourselves?
If somebody is not really awake, but is always in a somnambulant state and responds like an automaton, can we expect him to behave justly? Can somebody who perceives things through sleepy, half-closed eyes as if looking through a curtain really act responsibly? Can an automaton be just?
The word ‘just‘ itself contains deep wisdom within it. A just person is upright, does not sway to and fro in all directions and is not constantly changed by external circumstances. A person who is fully in line with evolution, well balanced and well-adjusted, because he has developed his movements and instincts, emotions, urges and intellect in a balanced, harmonious manner. Only an individual who has used his potential to the full, and is therefore far from our own condition, can think, feel and act justly.
What an unbalanced person who is not at rest in his centre calls justice may be seen as injustice by another. What benefits me is just, and what harms me is unjust. We like to see things as just that recognise our worth, but not so much what we deserve as punishment. Punishment is only seen as just if we do not suffer it ourselves.
Not a single enlightened person could really be just, as he too is subject to the above laws, though too a lesser degree. We never become really free, we only enter another dependence, but this time from a higher level.

Since only people on a certain level of consciousness – let us call them awake or more awake individuals – can understand each other, there can only be tentative attempts at justice between such people, within their small, close circle.
So let us stop referring to injustice as if it were the exception. In fact it is justice that is the exception in this world! Whether we like it or not, we must accept this as something we cannot change and live with it. If we cannot push an opponent away, we push ourselves away from him, i.e. we establish a distance. We cannot change things, so let us change our reactions to events. Anything else is stupid, and a senseless waste of energy!
Although the world cannot be just, this does not necessarily mean that you should not try to make it a little more just and humane. This is where pretending makes sense: pretend you are an awakened or enlightened individual, and make the lives of others easier for them!
The recognition that the world and life going on around us cannot be just should not lead us to draw the wrong conclusion that it is not worth acting justly ourselves. This would be just another illusion.
In fact a just individual is rewarded for his fair, ethical actions. 2500 years ago, philosophers were already teaching that acting justly makes us happy as individuals. And now brain research has provided evidence which is aptly expressed by Prof. Detlef Linke:
The areas of the brain which are decisive for controlling our behaviour, and can provide a balance between the various impulses, are themselves equipped with biological mechanisms which have something to do with happiness. This means that treating other people justly serves to activate those brain mechanisms which are inevitably involved in feelings of happiness. These are the prefrontal areas of the cerebral cortex which use serotonin as a transmitting agent.

So let us not succumb to the belief that the unjust and immoral get away with everything, while decent people are fools who always end up as the losers.
It is not true, even though it seems to be the case on the surface, and for a short time.
According to the life principle of resonance, we are helped in life if we help others. Particularly if we do this secretly without caring about the effect on others, for in this case Matthew VI, 1-4 says “… and thy father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.“

Acting justly ensures its own reward through health in the external world and through a feeling of happiness in the internal world.
According to many wise men, the external world is the world of illusion; it is the inner world that really counts, in which we really reside, and only this world decides whether we feel good or bad.

And if this does not comfort you, perhaps Plato will do the trick:
„... and as for the unjust, I say that the majority of them, even if they prevail during their youth, will eventually be found out and stand there as fools at the end of their travels. And when they have become old and miserable, they will be mocked by both strangers and neighbours; they will be beaten, and then things will be heard that are not intended for sensitive ears ...“

Keith R. Kernspecht

PS: I already published this editorial for a smaller circle of reeders a long time ago, and have now revised it for WTW-online readers.