Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00061)

THE KARMA OF THE NATIONS


When the masses of humanity finally awake to the truth of the inexorable law of Karma, the law of cause and effect-and that law is made the basic principle of all forms of Government-there will be no more making of war by one nation against another, or of revolutions within their own borders. The certainty of reprisal would be so fixed in the minds of the masses of humanity that they would not countenance such action under any circumstances. If that portion of the French people that instigated the French Revolution and carried out its bloodthirsty programs could have known that for every head that fell by their action into the basket of the guillotine the life of another French man or woman would be sacrificed when the corresponding point in the same cycle rolled around, as it did roll around during the recent war with Germany, they would have hesitated in precipitating such a revolution.

Likewise if the people of the Belgian race and nation could have known that the wanton cruelty to and murder of the native Africans by the soldiery and, at the instigation of King Leopold may have been primarily responsible for the fate that has overwhelmed the Belgians of the present cycle they could have better understood what befell them. We cannot prove this all to be true, but if the law of Karma is inexorable it is not difficult to see the reasonableness of the belief, as we can also see that in the squaring of karmic accounts the English nation may have paid the debts contracted by the killing of numberless non-combatant East Indians by the soldiery of another era. The lives of many Americans may have been sacrificed in payment for the lives of the American Indians taken by American soldiers of an earlier date. The closing of the cycle during the recent great war in which these karmic debts were made, may have created the conditions which were taken advantage of by the Lords of Karma to fulfill the Law.

It is very difficult to reconcile the belief of the Christian in the forgiveness of sin by Christ with the action of karmic law, but the difficulty will be overcome when man understands what the founder of Christianity meant by the words "Forgiveness of sin." The Christ in man may forgive the sin against the Spiritual Self, even while punishment is inflicted by the Law upon the personality responsible for the sin.

It appears to be an evident fact that so long as man believes that forgiveness may be had for broken Law he will not make a very . strong effort to keep from breaking that Law. It is so natural for the lower self to rebel against control by the Higher Self.

It is strange that any historian of wide experience can fail to see the working out of the law of Karma in view of the innumerable instances available in the history of any of the older nations wherein the evil effect of the causes set up by humanity during past ages has been so much in evidence. As far back as sacred or profane history can take us we may find that as day follows night every nation's evil cause set up by man has been followed by some act of forced expiation. The interference of cyclic law may defer the expiation of that act for a time but it is inevitable in the end. The extremes of life when brought into conjunction invariably produce friction-heat, energy. That energy of itself is impersonal and when mankind is wise enough always to turn the energy set free by friction, usually resulting from opposition, into constructive channels instead of destructive channels, or letting it go to waste as is now so frequently the ease, the human race will have made a great advance. For instance, when the qualities of Love and Hate coalesce in a human mind, as they often do in spite of their opposition, there is produced a friction within the mentality which may generate the power to render service to the objects of Love or Hate hitherto unsuspected by the producer and quite possibly a long karmic debt may be so paid.

With the karmic results of long past upheavals in government, social and religious life which are made so noticeable at the present time, and which the great war has made provision for, it is difficult to see how a thinker can deny the existence of karmic law. The causes back of the terrible events which have occurred since the year 1814 are not far to seek. 

June 1920


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