Theos-Talk Archives (March 2002 Message tt00174)

<<<Reincarnation is a purely religious belief, yet Dallas cals it a "LAW OF NATURE" without providing any evidence or logical reasoning.>>>

Theosophists, by and large, do not understand the difference between belief, fact, and law. I have been arguing this for years and seem to have gotten nowhere. There are some logical reasonings, but certainly no "proof."


<<<Indeed dictatorial Theosophists are emphatic that Karma does not only "ad just all our relationships," but also "keeps the stars on their courses and every atom in being. "( "Karma and Reincarnation," 
in V, Hanson and R. Stewart, Karma,The Universal Law of Harmony, p, 52.)>>>

This line of thought is identical to the Christian concept of God's will (not a leaf falls without the will of God, everything is in God's hands, etc). Theosophical fundamentalists simply change the word "God" to the word "karma" and think that some kind of improvement has been made. THe whole idea of a spiritual path is to eliminate karma, not worship it. 


<<<All such claims are open to the criticism that, if they are interpreted in a straightforward way, they are simply absurd and, if they are interpreted in such a way as to avoid absurdity, they say 
absolutely nothing. If it is maintained that the lawful behavior of molecules, mountains, or planets are instances of rewards and punishments, this is plainly absurd, since molecules, planets, 
and mountains cannot perform good or evil deeds. If, to avoid this absurdity, "Karma" is taken in a broader sense in which it is simply a synonym for "lawfulness" or "regularity," then calling the various laws of nature instances of Karma is saying nothing at all. It is plain that we do not understand the regularities of the world any 
better and nothing whatever has been added to the content of any known law. Calling natural regularities instances of Karma is about 
as enlightening as describing them as manifestations of the Absolute Mind or as instances of the dialectical interplay of Being and Non-
Being.>>>>

Agreed. HH the Dali Lama says that karma should refer to acts of good or evil that carry human moral value to them, not to causality itself. I wish that Theosophists would be more honest with themselves.


<<<Annie Besant saw the need for introducing divine karmic administrators. In The Ancient Wisdom, her best known work, she first insists that "in no case can a man suffer that which he has not deserved."(The Ancient Wisdom (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1897), p. 293.)>>>

Again, a simple replacement of God with karma. This fools no one.


<<<She then speaks of the "Lords of Karma" who are "great spiritual intelligences" keeping "the karmic records" and adjusting "the complicated workings of karmic law." They know the karmic record of every man and with their "omniscient wisdom" they "select and combine portions of that record to form a plan of a single life." (The 
Ancient Wisdom, London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1897, p. >>>

These are personifications and reifications of impersonal forces.


<<<<This means primarily that they select the race, the country, and the parents of the soul or Ego in its next incarnation. Thus an Ego with highly developed musical faculties will be "guided to take 
its physical body in a musical family"; an Ego of a ,'very evil type" will be guided "to a coarse and vicious family, whose bodies were built of the coarsest combination"; while an Ego who yields to 
drunkenness will be led to a "family whose nervous systems were weakened by excess," and he will be born from "drunken parents who would supply diseased materials for his physical envelope."' I It is 
in this way that the Lords of Karma "adjust means to ends," ensure the doing of justice, and see to it that the Ego can carry his "karmic possessions and faculties" into his next life.>>>

Again, replacing karma for God, and thinking they are no longer in a religious situation. It is all faith and personifications, and will lead nowhere.


This solution of the "administration" problem calls for two comments. In the first place, the lords of Karma have not been seen by anybody 
recently and, even during the decades when Mrs. Besant flourished, they were, as far as I know, not perceived by anybody other than 
Besant, not even by Blavatsky. Second, Mrs. Besant did not have an adequate grasp of the scope of the problem. To solve it we not only need an explanation of how the Lords of Karma secure appropriate bodies for Egos in subsequent incarnations. >>>

Agreed. There is no "solving" of this problem because the problem doesn't exist.


<<<Events involving massive deaths in a fairly small area such as earthquakes or genocide are particularly difficult to explain in 
terms of just punishments and rewards. It is farfetched, to put it very mildly, to suppose that all the people who perished in Lisbon or 
all the Jews murdered by the Nazis deserved exactly the same treatment. Common sense rebels against this notion especially if we have concrete knowledge of the enormous differences between different 
members of these groups. >>>

I have tried to explain such things by positing a collective karma as well as a personal karma. Our collective human karma brings us under the influences of nature, chaos, and the fact that "shit happens."

Good post Bri

Jerry S.


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