Theos-Talk Archives (February 2003 Message tt00329)

2 Law -- Karma


THREE FUNDAMENTALS

Questions and Answers are an Informal OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY class

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"Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from
the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the present work, it is
absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few
fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system
of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are
few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends the
understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required
for asking the reader to make himself familiar with them first, before
entering on the perusal of the work itself ."
--H.P.B., The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 13.



It was the conviction of Robert Crosbie that a proper comprehension of
the three fundamental propositions was necessary for the aspirant to
Theosophical service. It has also become the conviction of almost all
who have been assuming responsibility for the propaganda through the
U.L.T.

At its study classes these fundamentals are regularly considered,
repeated and explained. At one such study-class, with The OCEAN OF
THEOSOPHY as its text book, these fundamentals were Question and
Answer form.

It should be said that the answers here presented were originally
given extemporaneously, and this quality will serve to remind the
reader that the statements made are suggestive rather than
authoritative. The obvious intent of the speaker was to turn inquirers
to the recorded teaching it whence they might derive "an inspiration
of their own to answer their deeper questions, and to guide them
across the ocean of Theosophy.


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2

The SECOND FUNDAMENTAL at an Informal "Ocean" Class


LAW -- KARMA


"Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from
the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the present work, it is
absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few
fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system
of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are
few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends the
understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required
for asking the reader to make himself familiar with them first, before
entering on the perusal of the work itself ."
--H.P.B., The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 13.




It was the conviction of Robert Crosbie that a proper comprehension of
the three fundamental propositions was necessary for the aspirant to
Theosophical service. It has also become the conviction of almost all
who have been assuming responsibility for the propaganda through the
U.L.T.

At its study classes these fundamentals are regularly considered,
repeated and explained. At one such study-class, with The OCEAN OF
THEOSOPHY as its text book, these fundamentals were Question and
Answer form.

It should be said that the answers here presented were originally
given extemporaneously, and this quality will serve to remind the
reader that the statements made are suggestive rather than
authoritative. The obvious intent of the speaker was to turn inquirers
to the recorded teaching it whence they might derive "an inspiration
of their own to answer their deeper questions, and to guide them
across the ocean of Theosophy.


===========================================================

2

THE SECOND FUNDAMENTAL

Law -- Becoming



Q.-What is the distinction between reincarnation and metempsychosis?

Ans.-The distinction lies in the definitions and misconceptions given
to those terms by man. H.P.B. says that "metempsychosis" means, in the
first instance, the changes which go on metaphysically in any and
every being; that is, the very word "metempsychosis" - the
transformation of soul - leaves matter out of consideration
altogether. Every time, for example, we change a bad feeling to good
feeling, there is a metempsychosis. Every time we change from courage
to fear, there is a metempsychosis: it is temporary, but it is a
transformation, no matter how
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short a time it lasts. It goes on in our own souls. So metempsychosis
refers to man as a spiritual and psychological being, without regard
to the world he may occupy, or the form that he might inhabit, or the
state of consciousness in which he may at any given moment be.
Metempsychosis deals with the changes through which the soul goes.

Now what is reincarnation? The word literally means "going into flesh
again." This psychological and spiritual being may enter a body of
matter such as is known to us, that we call flesh; that would be it
incarnation If it came a second time into a body of flesh, that would
be its reincarnation. H.P.B. originally used, in Isis Unveiled the
word 'metempsychosis"; she refused to employ the word "reincarnation,"
be cause that word had already been pre-empted by the followers of
Allan Kardec, who was an exceedingly well-known French Spiritualist,
author of great numbers of text-books used in the French public
schools. Kardec got interested in Spiritualism through two of his
little nieces; he performed many experiments with them, and with
others, and evolved a kind of philosophy. In this philosophy of his,
he took that which we call the personality - that is, the human
consciousness - to be the real being, and he thought that that human
consciousness returned to earth again-that a man could be reincarnated
in his own son or his own grandson. This return of the personality to
a body on earth again he called "reincarnation."

The confusion of Kardec's teaching with H.P.B.'s gave rise to one of
the great misconceptions that finally split the Theosophical Society.
Some of H.P.B.'s students - among them Col. Olcott himself - thought
that because she discarded Kardec's doctrine, she knew nothing about
reincarnation, or else that she changed her mind after she went to
India. Yet in Isis the distinction is made perfectly clear.

"Reincarnation" means the return of Atma-Buddhi-Manas to an animal
body on this earth. "Metempsychosis" means the changes that go on in
Buddhi-Manas as the result of the experiences gained through repeated
reincarnations.


Q.-Isn't it also metempsychosis that takes place in the units of life
going from one kingdom to another?

Ans.-When units of life go from one kingdom to another - that is,
dying in one kingdom, losing their bodies and getting new bodies in
another kingdom - that is re-embodiment. If it should be rebirth in
bodies of flesh, it would be reincarnation; but if we refer to the
changes that go on in the soul, then another term is used. If the
soul, the reincarnating ego, has not reached the human stage, the
process of re-embodiment is called transmigration. "Transmigration,"
properly speaking, as the word is ordinarily used, does not apply to
the reincarnating ego. When H.P.B. came to write the S.D., Kardec's
word "reincarnation," because it was a materialistic term, become
popular and the Theosophists and Spiritualists were all using it.
So H.P.B., in The Secret Doctrine had to employ the word in common
usage. She adopted term "reincarnation," but gave it an altogether
different sense from the Kardec meaning or the Hindu meaning. We would
do well to remember that Karma as H.P.B. taught it, is not known in
the world at all; that reincarnation as H.P.B. taught it is not known
in any religion.
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Q.- "A Perfected Being operating through a physical body would not be
subject to reincarnation.

Ans.-Let us observe that sentence. How could perfected beings operate
through a physical body if they were not subject to reincarnation?
"All beings up to Brahma" - which there means simply all life up to
the life which is not manifested - "are subject to rebirth again and
again." The highest being is as much subject to rebirth as we are, but
rebirth is quite a different thing with them. They choose the time,
place and circumstances of their birth; they are conscious throughout.
The opposite is the case with us.

The question goes on to say, "He might, however, choose to
reincarnate." He does not choose to reincarnate, but he chooses the
time, place and circumstances of his reincarnation. Then the question
is asked, "Does pre-existence, then, necessarily involve
reincarnation?" It doesn't necessarily involve reincarnation here, but
so long as any being has any thing to do with manifested life, if he
doesn't reincarnate here, he must incarnate in some other place.


Q.-Is there no way of getting free from Reincarnation?

Ans.-Well, consider what the opposite of freedom is. The opposite of
freedom means that we are the victims of forces over which we have no
control. Freedom means we are in the same world, with the same forces,
but we have control over them.


Q.-One of the Aphorisms on Karma states that effects may be counter
acted or mitigated by the thoughts and acts of oneself or of another.
The question is, how can an individual be affected except by his own
thoughts and actions?


A. We must remember that nature's method of accounting is
double-entry. We do not have a thought except in connection with
someone else; we do not perform an act except in connection with
someone else. Our thoughts and our acts produce an immediate change in
us, but that is in the beginning of things. Since they are visited
upon another, they produce a modification in him, willingly or
unwillingly; and then, in the course of time, that which we sowed with
other beings we reap from other beings.

If a man visited evil on us, and we knew it was evil but did not
resent it; if we did not have any condemnation or blame for him,
knowing how it came that we suffered at the hands of this person -
then that Karma is done so far as we are concerned. Since one half of
the problem has already been solved, it is immediately an amelioration
of circumstances for the other half, although not always to his
consciousness. Other wise, why should Buddha have said, for example,
"Let the sins of the whole world fall on me"?

We come down to this statement, that there is no such thing as the
Karma of any one, exclusive of the Karma of all. I might hurt my foot,
which is one member of my body, and then I could counteract or
mitigate the injury to my foot by using my hand. There is nothing hard
to understand about that when we realize that self-consciousness is
Buddhi-Manas - and there is only one Buddhi-Manas in manifestation.
That Buddhi-Manas is the whole of humanity, not this individual or
that individual. From the standpoint of enduring consciousness, there
is only one man-consciousness here on earth; that is the consciousness
of all humanity. So each physical personal being stands in relation to
the collective consciousness of mankind - Buddhi-Manas - as, say, one
of the members of the body stands to the whole body.
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Each one of us is a portion of the body corporate of humanity, and any
part of the body corporate - physically or metaphysically - and be
used to injure other portions, or it can be used to ameliorate,
mitigate or counteract any injury inflicted on, or about to be
inflicted on, the rest. We know that is so. Here is an unconscious
man who would die if someone didn't staunch the flow of blood. Isn't
the effect of the collision by which this man was knocked unconscious
and so wounded that his life - blood was ebbing away - isn't this
Karma mitigated by the action of the one who stays the flow of blood?
Here one of us has his rent coming due tomorrow, and is about to be
thrown out on the street. A neighbour lends us the money, or the
landlord gets a change of heart: isn't this Karma ameliorated?

Take our meeting here. Some of us get a strength from the collective
mind, from the collective motive, which of ourselves we could not
muster. That is a mitigation, a mitigation through others of the
individual Karma. Otherwise, what is the sense of any association? All
associations are either for good or for evil, and that means they can
make good bad; or bad worse - or they can make good better; and evil
less bad.


Q.-Given a certain situation, we say, it's "Karmic." Does duration
depend upon Karma, or has the individual some choice in the matter? Is
he the helpless victim of that situation, or can his will operate to
change it?

Ans.-Don't we know that he has a choice? If you want to read a
psychological study of the subject from the stand-point of Theosophy,
it would be worth while to read a very short story by Edgar Allan Poe,
"The Pit and the Pendulum." There was a man in a situation so awful
that it's almost unbelievable and unimaginable. He reconciled himself
to it. The story doesn't show him the victim - that is, the loser - in
the struggle.

Everything that happens to us is Karma, and that's our usual view of
Karma; we don't think of Karma except in terms of effects experienced.
Yet there is the other side to it - the causes of those effects. Now,
when anything happens to us, it is the ego who feels, whether in the
body or out of the body. Out of the body, the ego knows the causes of
those effects, and so he struggles, even unwittingly, when he is back
in the body and no longer can perceive the causes. He struggles,
although he does not understand why he struggles, against these bad
effects.
An old school of Philosophy all down the ages has taught that. man is
the creature of the environment; that is, in fact, the philosophy of
materialism. Now, notice the philosophy of religion. A man is just as
much a creature in religion as he is in materialism. In one case, he
is the creature of matter, of his environment, of his birth. In the
other, he is the creature of "God." The materialist - the genuine
one - knows that it is no use to struggle. He believes in Kismet,
fate, destiny, no free-will. Yet he goes right on struggling, and does
not perceive the contradiction in himself. So, the religious man
believes that everything that happens to him happens to him by the
will of his God, but he is as busy as a bee all the time: he does not
perceive the logical absurdity of his own position.

Higher Manas is perception on the plane of causes; lower Manas is
experience on the plane of effects. In other words, the teaching of
The Secret Doctrine is very simple. H.P.B. puts it in these identical
words:

Whenever the immortal ego incarnates, it becomes a compound unity of
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spirit and matter, which together act on seven distinct planes of Life
and Consciousness. If we regard matters from that point of view, the
problem begins to clear up.

We enter into union with our brother lives of lower grades of
intelligence than ourselves. Now, while in union with them, we see
through their eyes, on their plane. How else could we see? In other
words, we become for the time being the other fellow - the animal
self, the astral self, the Kamic self, the physical self. Not until
the combination is loosed, whether by sleep, or by death, or by the
regaining while in the body of Manasic knowledge, are we able to live
free from the contingencies of the environment.

We could put it, according to the Seventh Chapter of the Ocean in some
such fashion as this: call what H.P.B. otherwise calls the immortal
ego, or the reincarnating ego, by the name of Manas without
qualification. The moment that Manas enters into union with the forms
of life on a lower plane than its own, Manas is modified by the union.
Lower Manas is the modification of higher Manas; higher Manas is that
part of Manas which is not modified by contact with matter. What part
is that? What else than the part of Manas which is in contact with
Buddhi?

If we regard lower Manas and higher Manas not as two separate things
or as two separate beings, but think of lower Manas as a modification
induced in Manas by its union with matter-that's what the word
"incarnation" means - then we can understand the distinction. Mr.
Judge goes on to show that the modification of this Lower Manas - the
original modification - is subject to four further modifications: That
modification in lower Manas induced by the body alone; that
modification induced by the astral body; and the modification induced
by the principle of Kâma, or the intelligence which belongs in the
astral and physical natures. Those are three of the modifications,
arid Mr. Judge says they are all due to memory. When we study our
body, our body is seen to be a product of memory; our astral body is a
product of memory; passions and desires are the product of memory -
these are nothing but the reanimation of the three forms of memory in
matter. What reanimates them? Our incarnation.

And what is the fourth modification of Manas? Lower Manas is still
integral with Manas, and so there is some Manasic action, even in that
part of Manas which is present in the body and intoxicated, as we
might say, by incarnation. But we want to know why. That's Manas.
Whenever we are trying to find out the cause of a condition that
afflicts us or others - not trying to dodge it, but trying to find out
what caused it; whenever we are trying to cure the bad effects we are
experiencing by admitting our share in bringing them about, and are
determined to set up better causes; there is the action of Manas in
the body - pure Manas.


Q.-Why should the important changes in a man's life come every seven
years?

Ans.-It isn't strange at all; it's the most natural thing in the
world. All the events of Nature move in just those cyclic orders. It
is the Law of the whole universe. It pertains just as much to the atom
as to ourselves and to the sun, This very universe we live in-in a
state of intense activity now-will have a rest, retire into silence
and secrecy, and then after that emerge again into another new mode of
activity. It is the same way with ourselves. We are living here on
this earth now, intensely active, and we are going to die; we will
have our rest, and we will come back again to earth. We will
reincarnate, as Theosophists say,
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because we have left unfinished business here. There are beings acting
here that we were acting with before; we do not act at all alone; we
all act together, and every time we act mentally, or morally, or
physically, we involve the whole universe in our actions, some, of
course, more remotely and some more immediately.

Just as a seed in the vegetable kingdom grows to a certain kind of
fruitage and no other, so it is with us. "Causes sown each hour bear
each its harvest of effects, for rigid Justice rules the World." There
isn't any accident; there isn't any miracle, and there isn't any God
that brings these things to pass in our lives. We have set up the
causes for them; we have brought about these events. So we can
actually be the makers of our own destiny for good and bad, and we are
making that destiny every minute. So long as we work for the good of
all beings in the universe, we are acting for our divine destiny; but
if we act for self, then for an infernal destiny.

If we really come to know this Law, we shall be more intelligent
beings, and we shall bring to bear upon this earth that Law of Harmony
and translate it into what we all would love to see-Universal Brother
hood. That's not only a name to Theosophists-that is what they are
making all the time.


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Extracts from POINT OUT THE WAY [U L T Phoenix ]

DTB