Theos-Talk Archives (June 2003 Message tt00112)

Monday, June 16, 2003

Part I Karma Answers OCEAN Capt. XI


Karma And to Quest OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY Ch. 11

by R Crosbie
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CHAPTER XI KARMA


DEFINITION of the word.
An unfamiliar term.
A beneficent law.
How present life is affected by past acts of other lives.
Each act has a thought at its root.
Through Manas they react on each personal life.
Why people are born deformed or in bad circumstances.
The three classes of Karma and its three fields of operation.
National and Racial Karma.
Individual unhappiness and happiness.
The Master's words on Karma.

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Part I KARMA Answers by Robert Crosbie

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Q. With regard to "the persistence of savagery"; are those in
savage tribes souls of lesser experience?

A. In the nature of evolution-an unfolding from within
outwards-there must be souls of lesser experience, whose bodies
and environment correspond to their so-far acquired nature. On
the other hand there are diminishing physical tribes of which the
Australian aborigines are an example, where the more advanced
egos have incarnated in other races, leaving the use of that
physical line to the less advanced. As the latter in due course
leave the physical race, those remaining, being less capable,
cause the physical strain to deteriorate, so that only the lowest
class of intelligences of that tribe or race occupy such bodies.
Finally, the physical race dies out through sterility, the egos
connected with it having incarnated in other races.


Q. What about the Mexicans?

A. There are many classes of egos among the Mexicans as there are
in every present-day race; the families are mixed, and races are
mixed. In Mexico there are to be seen the results of a mixture of
European blood with that of the decadent remains of ancient
American civilizations; necessarily under karma, those who came
from European strains and mixed with the native ones, are caught
in the lines of their own causations and have to work it out by
either eliminating the defects of the strain, or going down with
it from bad to worse.


Q. But the Mexicans show strong patriotism?

A. In that respect they are no different from people of other
races. Patriotism does not come from mere birth into any race,
but from the karmic affinity of the ego for that race; the
feeling is there in all such cases, hut the actions that flow
from that feeling are not often understood, not wisely applied;
the sense of separate ness rules there, as in all more or less
ignorant "personalities" of every race.


Q. Is there then such a thing as Intelligent Patriotism ?

A. There must be, as the opposite to unintelligent patriotism
which can he seen on every hand.


Q. Could a definition of Intelligent Patriotism be given?

A. The question is one of Intelligence as applied to patriotism.
A very ignorant man may have a strong patriotic feeling which may
be aroused to inconsiderate action by himself or through the
incitement of others. A more intelligent man would have a wider
range of perception and action and yet concur in national
sentiment and action against other nations with what he as an
individual would consider wrong as against another individual;
both of these cases are basically wrong. A truly intelligent
patriotism would consider the individual as an integral part of
the nation to which he belonged; the nation as an integral part
of the assemblage of nations which constitute humanity as a
whole. As every individual is born into a physical body through
parents of some race or nation, and thus into the world of men,
the karma of each such birth indicates the opportunity of one so
born to eradicate in himself the defects of the family through
which he came, and through the family the defects of the nation,
for national defects are the sum total of all the individuals
composing it, and the eradication of these defects begins and
ends with the individual. Intelligent patriotism would therefore
consist in doing our whole duty in that station where our karma
has placed us, to our family, and to humanity as being made up of
individuals, families and nations, while recognizing all as being
the same in kind and differing only in degree. If our family
duties are well and wisely per formed, our duties to tile nation
and to humanity would to a great extent take care of themselves.
By "family duties" and "national duties" is not meant false
attachments to family or nation as a means of pride,
pleasure-hunting or sensuality, but cultivating and elevating the
higher sentiments and emotions of ourselves and of our family and
utilizing them for the performance of our duty to tile nation and
humanity in general.


Q. It seems to be a hopeless task?

A. It seems hopeless because individuals will not apply the
remedy in themselves; we would like to wait until the race has
improved and then we would fail into line with it, but never has
a race or people improved without strong and continued efforts by
individuals who have seen a better way and exemplify and impart
it. It was said of old that "a little leaven soon leaveneth the
whole lump ;" those who have the "leaven" must first apply it in
themselves before it can begin to work in others.


Q. The chapter speaks of a deficient or bad ego; what does that
mean?

A. There are many classes of egos. We should remember all the
time that egos are evolving; that some Were self-conscious beings
when this world of ours began, and that others have become human
beings since that beginning and up to the middle point of the
Third Race. Besides, the fact that there are bad and deficient
men in physical existence points to badness and deficiency in
egos, for it is the egos who incarnate.


Q. I have understood that the ego is immortal and spiritual in
nature!

A. The ego is spiritual and immortal in essential nature, but as
he possesses the power to perceive and to act and exemplifies the
law of action and reaction in himself, as he works from higher to
lower planes of substance he becomes involved in the lower planes
through attachment to them and suffers accordingly until he
overcomes his unwisdom and asserts and uses his real nature on
the lower planes. As egos, we are only partially operative in
bodies; Manas is not yet fully employed by us as a race; each
incarnation is but one aspect of our past existences, we have to
make the link between higher and lower, while we are in a body.


Q. What would be the outcome if an ego while in a body continued
a course of degeneracy and evil for life after life!

A. In such a case, the force of the tendencies set in motion
would in time break the link between the ego and his instrument
during some life-time, and the instrument with the momentum given
it would be an entity without a human soul. There are such
creatures in the world, human in form, but soul-less.


Q. Are we drawing on all our Karmic store during any one life!

A. In the life of worlds, races, nations, and individuals, Karma
cannot act unless there is an appropriate instrument for its
action, and until such instrument exists, that Karma related to
it remains unexpended.

While a man is experiencing phases of his past karma through
body, conditions and environment, his other unexpended karma is
held reserved until body, conditions and environment permit the
unexpended karma to operate. Lapse of time does not cause any
lessening of the force of karma, nor does it change its nature.


Q. Must each life express only one phase or class of Karma?

A. Not necessarily. Changes may occur in the instrument during
one life so as to make it appropriate for a new class of karma.
This may take place in two ways; (a) through intensity of thought
and the power of a vow to think and do differently, and (b)
through natural alterations due to the complete exhaustion of old
causes.


Q. What determines the karmic tendency of any one life?

A. Birth into any sort of body to obtain the results of any sort
of Karma is due to the preponderance of tendencies existing.


Q. When one is born into the world with certain tendencies that
are seen to be undesirable, what can be done to change them and
what would be the e of such effort?

A. Measures taken by an Ego to repress tendency, eliminate
defects, and to counteract by setting up different causes, will
alter the sway of Karmic tendency and shorten its influence, in
accordance with the strength or weakness of the efforts expended
in carrying out the measures adopted.


Q. Different sorts of Karma were spoken of; what was meant by the
statement?

A. Karma may be of three sorts; (a) that which is presently
operating in this life through the appropriate instruments; (b)
that which is being made or stored up to be exhausted in the
future; and (c) that which is held over from past lives and not
operating yet because inhibited by the inappropriateness of the
instrument in use by the Ego, or by the force of the Karma now
operating.


Q. Is the body and its circumstances the field of operation of
Karma?

A. There are three fields of operation of Karma, (a) the body and
the circumstances; (b) the mind and intellect; and (c) the
psychic and astral planes. As body, mind and soul have each a
power of independent action, any one of these may exhaust,
independently of the others, some Karmic causes more remote from
or nearer to the time of their inception than those operating
through other channels.


Q. Are any beings free from Karma?

A. None whatever; Karma operates on all things and all beings
from the minutest conceivable atom up to the highest being. No
spot in the manifested universe is exempt from its sway, for
manifestation means action, and action brings its exact results.
Karma is the inherent law of power to act in every being of every
grade; in each case the power to act is exercised according to
the degree of intelligence acquired. The Universe is embodied
Consciousness.


Q. Race-Karma, National Karma, and Family Karma have been spoken
about; what do these terms mean?

A. As all beings are the same in kind-that is, spiritual in
essence and source-all are connected on inner planes, and each
one affects all the rest in a helpful or hindering way. Race
Karma influences each unit in the race through this law of cause
and effect by distribution. National Karma operates on the
members of a nation through the same law more concentrated.
Family Karma governs only with a nation where the families have
been kept pure and distinct; for in any nation where there is a
mixture of family
-as obtains in every Kali Yuga period-family karma is in general
distributed over a nation. All men, flaying
the same principles as constituents of their nature, are
connected by both inner and outer principles of their being; they
therefore affect each other in subtle and unperceived ways, as
well as by the external ways which are ordinarily perceived.


Q. If all beings of every grade are affected by the dynamic power
of human thought and feeling, we, as human beings, must a the
lower kingdoms which constitute the earth upon which we live?

A. Such is the teaching. Cataclysms of nature are brought about
by the separative and destructive effects of selfish and wrong
thinking by human beings. A cataclysm may be traced to a physical
cause such as internal fire and atmospheric disturbance, but
these have been brought on by the disturbance created by the
dynamic power of human thought. Some hint of this is to be found
in the writings of St. Paul when he speaks of the whole of
creation groaning in travail because of the iniquities of man.


Q. Do all bunion beings have to suffer in such cataclysms?

A. No. Egos who have no Karmic connection with a portion of the
globe where a cataclysm is coming on, are kept without the
latter's operation in two ways:
(a) by repulsion acting on their inner nature which induces them
to move elsewhere, or (h) by being warned by those who watch the
progress of the world.


Q. How can the actions of men produce convulsions of nature (p.
96)?

A. Through their cumulative effect upon the psychic nature of
elemental beings. Karma is the key-note of all conditions, for it
governs the smallest atom as well as the highest spiritual being.
The elementals of the mineral kingdom, and of the kingdoms below
that (the elementals proper) are psychic embryos." Every thought
of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world, and
becomes an active entity by coalescing with an elemental-that is
to say, with one of the semi-conscious forces of the kingdoms. It
survives as an active intelligence-a creature of the mind's
begetting. Thus a good thought is perpetuated as an active,
beneficent power; an evil one as a maleficent demon. The
automatically acting brain stores up only brute energies, and
begets correlations that are unfruitful of benefit, at last
bringing about convulsions in nature. It is analogous to
combinations of chemicals produced by scientific
minds-antagonistic elements held in leash, which at last a spark
suffices to release and bring about terrific explosions.


Q. And similarly, man's actions or Karma can bring about
beneficial effects in the lower kingdoms of nature?

A. It is man who is the real motive and directing power in this
universe, for he is at the head, being self-conscious, with the
power of acquiring qualities, of understanding the natures of all
beings, and of manipulating the lower natures. It devolves on him
so to use those natures as to bring about the best results for
all the beings concerned in the stream of evolution which makes
up this earth and solar system. Man has produced many
combinations and transformations in the lower kingdoms, not
possible to them of their un aided powers, which are beneficent.


Q. Then man is a creator in a far wider sense than We are
accustomed to think

A. Undoubtedly. The impulse to action in the lower kingdoms
originally proceeds from him. The conscious action of the lower
kingdoms all proceeds from man. After the action there is always
the reaction. The elements, the "air, water, fire and earth," or
any portion or combination of these, all have their reactions
upon us. We experience those reactions from the elements because
of our attitude towards them and use of them, for we are the ones
who induce them to act whether in a beneficent or maleficent way.
Tornadoes, earthquakes, sufferings of any kind such as wars or
strife, either in the elements or amongst men, are all produced
by man.


Q. You spoke of the "automatically acting brain"; is there
another kind of action possible with our brains?

A. Certainly. In the one case there is but brute force stored up
and flung out without any transmutation of that brute energy into
higher forms of dynamics. In the other, the intellection of the
truly scientifically occupied brain, there is the evolution of a
sublimated form of spiritual energy which, cosmically speaking,
is productive of illimitable results for good. The human brain
may be used as an exhaustless generator of higher forms of energy
from lower. The adept does not create anything new; he only
transforms the materials in nature The one wastes and debases the
creative power; the other conserves and elevates the natures of
all.


Q. There would seem to be no limit to any one's responsibility

A. There isn't. Whenever and whatever any one thinks or does, he
cannot do so without affecting other beings, whether human beings
or beings below or above, as every action is felt throughout the
whole of the universe in some degree. He gets the reaction in his
own moral nature from the lines of his mental action; and at the
same time he will he physically acting along the same lines,
affecting others for good or evil both on the inner and the outer
planes of action; then he gets the physical reaction.


Q. Then there is never any injustice?

A. There is no injustice. What we see as apparent injustice seems
so because we do not see the causes which have produced the
present ill effects. If we have no knowledge of our own real
nature and the Law of Karma that is inherent in it, then the
feeling can only be that we have received injustice, and we
harbor hatred and resentments. What prevents our understanding
these things is mainly that we do not know what we are here for.
We look at things from a one-life basis, and finding ourselves in
this life we imagine it is something we had nothing to do with.
Seeing others, according to our view, more fortunate than
ourselves, we want to know why, and no answer being possible on
the basis we have assumed, we assume that we are receiving
injustice. If Karma is the doctrine of responsibility,
Reincarnation is the doctrine of hope. The two go together. The
reason we are on earth, according to the Occult teaching: we are
not here because of our virtues; we are here because of our
defects. The "personality" is really the working off of defects.
If we do not learn what the object of life is, and don't do the
work, then we are only creating more defects to adjust, and more
trouble for ourselves.


Q. Who is to be the judge of a man's motives in what he feels and
what he does?

A. The man himself. But he must forget himself if he is to judge
truly. No judge can be impartial if he has any self-interest in
his own decisions. So if we have any self-interest in our
decisions we cannot judge our motives; we can only judge them
aright when we seek nothing for ourselves. The best guide and the
greatest protection any man can have is a firm desire to benefit
humanity and seek nothing for himself.


Q. By punishing those who have earned punishment, do we not aid
Karma, and become an agent of justice?

A. No. The Bible has many occult sayings. You know the one which
says, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord (Law). The
Law takes care of its own. We do not have to make ourselves
instruments of vengeance. We have in our modern civilization our
means of taking vengeance; but as a matter of fact our means are
errant, imperfect, and injurious. The taking of the life of a
fellow being for having killed another, is no more justified when
done by a number of men than was the first murder. That is wrong,
but to sequester the murderer so that he can not continue to
injure others, is quite another story.


Q. Do we injure others with our hatred?

A. No man can feel hatred and not injure others.


Q. But if our own thoughts are such that there is no hatred in
us, we would not be affected by the hatred of another?

A. That is the whole story. If a man thinks and feels toward his
fellow-men without either hatred or revenge in him, nothing of
that kind can touch him.


Q. If one affected by the action of another has no desire to
injure that other, does that mitigate the action for that other?

A. Of course it does. But there are two propositions there. The
one who has been injured is reaping what he has sown or he could
not have been injured. But he may, by his change of nature and
attitude and his desire to cease injuring others, refuse to do
any evil in return. But the one who inflicts or still holds the
injury gets all the reactions that flow from that attitude. He
has not changed; he is still the same nature; still has the same
desire. Oftentimes when one does injury to another and gets no
return in kind, he is more incensed than ever. You cannot make
another feel differently unless he wants to. So, while we may be
thinking kindly of another, we cannot change his feelings. He
alone can do that. So we might help him and we might not; hut at
all events we get the benefit of the effect of our own beneficent
attitude. If we do not affect the other favorably it is because
he is so infected (not affected) that we cannot help him. It all
depends on the nature of the recipient; on the "nature of the
beast." Take a rattlesnake. No man, however kind his feelings,
could change that snake's nature.


Q. But if it is our Karma to have bad and revengeful feelings and
thoughts, then we cannot help acting that way?

A. Yes we can. Karma is present action as well as the present
effect of former acting. While we may not always be able to
affect the attitude of another, we can, as just said, always
affect our own attitude. If we could not we would be mere
machines, mere creatures of our past, not Creators in the
present. We ought to know that, for anybody knows better than to
inflict injury. He recognizes what is harmful to another, but if
he is so selfish that he does not care, he becomes a destructive
force, not a creative one; and must take the reaction. "Evil must
be in the world, but woe to him by whom evil comes." Woe to those
who make themselves the agent through whom evil Karma acts,
because it is their own nature that is played upon in that case.


Q. What does it mean to be Karma-less?

A. All that is Karma-less is that in us which lives and thinks,
the Perceiver, the Real Man. He is the institutor and the
experiencer of all Karma. There is no Karma unless he makes it.
He is not changed by Karma, neither made greater nor less; but
while attached to action (Karma) or in a body and circumstances
created by him, he experiences all that flows from the actions to
which he is attached, until he ceases from the attachment to that
kind of action. He gets whatever experiences his actions in that
body bring him.


Q. The OCEAN says that certain entities through wickedness are
annihilated. Does that refer to the Eco?

A. How could it, if the Ego, the real Man, is not affected
permanently by action? Let us look at it in this way: An Ego, or
spiritual being, has been so wholly wicked in his actions for
many incarnations that there is not a kind thought or feeling of
any kind; nothing but brutal and selfish thoughts, producing only
pain and suffering in the world. His works are destroyed: the
personality built up by that kind of thought and feeling. Nothing
of that personality can be attached to or assimilated by the
spiritual being. His attitude having been wholly against the
rest, the motion of the whole must at last crush that kind of
works (Karma) out of existence. That does not destroy the Ego,
but it destroys his works, his accumulation of experiences. It
throws him out of his place, and he has to start again from where
he was before his evil courses began, for that is where he be
longs. The Ego cannot be annihilated; but his incarnations may be
of such a nature as to be lost and he be thrown out of a certain
stream and have to go back to the place where he left the line
and begin again. But the real Man remains and his real works;
that is, the acquired wisdom and the acquired experience. He may
lose a lot of leaves out of the Book of Life, but He remains.


Q. But there must be Karma to bring that Ego back' again?

A. He gets the Karma of having to go back to the mental deposits
stored up in long previous incarnations, whether on this globe or
some other, and starting afresh on a line based on those mental
de posits. He has lost a vast amount of time and effort, and
experienced a vast amount of fruitless suffering- fruitless of
good, that is, its only effect being destructive of all his
works. And he has to overcome the tendencies he has engendered,
when he comes into incarnation again-the tendencies to repeat.


Q. This seems somewhat confusing.

A. There should be no confusion if you keep in mind the idea of
the Individuality-the permanent spiritual being, the
reincarnating Ego, which is the Triad of Atma-Buddhi-Manas. Lower
Manas-the personality- is the outlook upon physical existence
which Higher Manas has, as the result of his thought and action
on the physical plane of life. He may change that outlook, or he
may lose it, and begin a new series of efforts; or in some cases
he may be thrown out for that incarnation or for a great period
and have to incarnate in a new period, under conditions of
ignorance instead of knowledge. That, too, is his Karma; the evil
results engendered by his own former actions. The only basis he
would have would be the tendencies he had en gendered; and these
he would have to conquer.


Q. Cannot this fate be avoided?

A. Only by a change of basis; the adoption of a better course of
action. Any attempt to "avoid" the re suits of our own actions
only results in a stronger re action; because by attempting to
avoid, we merely store up or hold back that force which would
naturally have exhausted itself in its own period.


End of PART 1 -- Karma Answers Robert Crosbie



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