Theos-Talk Archives (January 2004 Message tt00423)

Jan 27 2004

Friends::


Re: Justice and Law -- With or without Karma ?


Some few days ago an inquiry was made as to whether contemporary law and
justice related in any way to the doctrine of Karma.

Here are some interesting notes from Theosophical literature that seem
to answer this important question.

Best wishes,

Dallas

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JUSTICE and LAW

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



"Every Western Theosophist should learn and remember, especially those
of 
them who would be our followers - that in our Brotherhood all
personalities 
sink into one idea - abstract right and absolute practical justice for 
all. And that, though we may not say with the Christian, "return good
for 
evil" - we repeat with Confucius, "return good for good; for evil - 
JUSTICE." ... A dutiful regard for these rules in life will always
promote 
the best interests of all concerned."     
Mahatma Letters, p. 401, Let # 85 [ No 120 ], January 1884 


"Abolish the Courts themselves, for if you would follow the Commandments
of 
Christ, you have to give away your coat to him who deprives you of your 
cloak, and turn your left cheek to the bully who smites you on the
right."
Key on p. 55.


"Enq: But if by so doing, he risks to injure, or allow others to be
injured? 
What ought he to do then?

Theo: His duty; that which his conscience and higher nature suggests to 
him; but only after mature deliberation. Justice consists in doing no 
injury to any living being; but justice commands us also never to allow 
injury to be done to the many, or even to one innocent person, by
allowing 
the guilty one to go unchecked."	Key, p. 251



"A man has no right to starve himself to death that another man may have

food, unless the life of that man is obviously more useful to the many
than 
is his own life."	Key, p. 239


[H P B In SECRET DOCTRINE, Vol. II]

"Shall we be answered to this, in Congreve's words: -- 
"But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?" 

Logic and simple common sense, we answer: if we are made to believe in
the "original Sin," in one life, on this Earth only, for every Soul, and
in an anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for
the pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell-fire (and this whether
they are good or bad, says the Predestinarian), why should not every man
endowed with reasoning powers condemn in his turn such a villainous
Deity? Life would become unbearable, if one had to believe in the God
created by man's unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in human dogmas,
and in the unhealthy imagination of some poets, .

Truly a robust "faith" is required to believe that it is "presumption"
to question the justice of one, who creates helpless little man but to
"perplex" him, and to test a "faith" with which that "Power," moreover,
may have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens
sometimes. 
Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every
reasonable evidence and life-experience, in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law of
Retribution. 

This Law -- whether Conscious or Unconscious -- predestines nothing and
no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY
itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it
cannot be said to act, for it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which
drowns a man, but the personal action of the wretch, who goes
deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws
that govern the Ocean's motion. 

Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and
creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is
not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original
position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with
corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to
bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it is the bough
which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? 

Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty,
like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its
decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it punish him
who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils
through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on
those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to
their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his
fellow-men. KARMA is an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of
manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal
ever present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or
materialists -- still less as fatalists:" for Karma is one with the
Unknowable, of which it is an aspect in its effects in the phenomenal
world. 

Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the
law of re-birth, or of the re-incarnation of the same spiritual
individuality in a long, almost interminable, series of personalities.
The latter are like the various costumes and characters played by the
same actor, with each of which that actor identifies himself and is
identified by the public, for the space of a few hours. 

The inner, or real man, who personates those characters, knows the whole
time that he is Hamlet for the brief space of a few acts, which
represent, however, on the plane of human illusion the whole life of
Hamlet. And he knows that he was, the night before, King Lear, the
transformation in his turn of the Othello of a still earlier preceding
night; but the outer, visible character is supposed to be ignorant of
the fact. [ see Key, p. 34]

In actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real.
Nevertheless, the permanent individuality is fully aware of the fact,
though, through the atrophy of the "spiritual" eye in the physical body,
that knowledge is unable to impress itself on the consciousness of the
false personality. "	S D II 304 - 6

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W Q J -- HOW SHOULD WE TREAT OTHERS ?
W Q J Articles, Vol. II, p. 357



The subject relates to our conduct toward and treatment of our fellows,
including in that term all people with whom we have any dealings. No
particular mode of treatment is given by Theosophy. It simply lays down
the law that governs us in all our acts, and declares the consequences
of those acts. It is for us to follow the line of action which shall
result first in harmony now and forever, and second, in the reduction of
the general sum of hate and opposition in thought or act which now
darkens the world.


The great law which Theosophy first speaks of is the law of karma, and
this is the one which must be held in view in considering the question.
Karma is called by some the "law of ethical causation," but it is also
the law of action and reaction; and in all departments of nature the
reaction is equal to the action, and sometimes the reaction from the
unseen but permanent world seems to be much greater than the physical
act or word would appear to warrant on the physical plane.

This is because the hidden force on the unseen plane was just as strong
and powerful as the reaction is seen by us to be. The ordinary view
takes in but half of the facts in any such case and judges wholly by
superficial observation.

If we look at the subject only from the point of view of the person who
knows not of Theosophy and of the nature of man, nor of the forces
Theosophy knows to be operating all the time, then the reply to the
question will be just the same as the everyday man makes. 

That is, that he has certain rights he must and will and ought to
protect; that he has property he will and may keep and use any way he
pleases; and if a man injure him he ought to and will resent it; that if
he is insulted by word or deed he will at once fly not only to
administer punishment on the offender, but also try to reform, to
admonish, and very often to give that offender up to the arm of the law;
that if he knows of a criminal he will denounce him to the police and
see that he has meted out to him the punishment provided by the law of
man. Thus in everything he will proceed as is the custom and as is
thought to be the right way by those who live under the Mosaic
retaliatory law.
But if we are to inquire into the subject as Theosophists, and as
Theosophists who know certain laws and who insist on the absolute sway
of karma, and as people who know what the real constitution of man is,
then the whole matter takes on, or ought to take on, a wholly different
aspect.

The untheosophical view is based on separation, the Theosophical upon
unity absolute and actual. Of course if Theosophists talk of unity but
as a dream or a mere metaphysical thing, then they will cease to be
Theosophists, and be mere professors, as the Christian world is today,
of a code not followed. 

If we are separate one from the other the world is right and resistance
is a duty, and the failure to condemn those who offend is a distinct
breach of propriety, of law, and of duty. But if we are all united as a
physical and psychical fact, then the act of condemning, the fact of
resistance, the insistence upon rights on all occasions - all of which
means the entire lack of charity and mercy - will bring consequences as
certain as the rising of the sun tomorrow.

What are those consequences, and why are they?

They are simply this, that the real man, the entity, the thinker, will
react back on you just exactly in proportion to the way you act to him,
and this reaction will be in another life, if not now, and even if now
felt will still return in the next life.

The fact that the person whom you condemn, or oppose, or judge seems now
in this life to deserve it for his acts in this life, does not alter the
other fact that his nature will react against you when the time comes.
The reaction is a law not subject to nor altered by any sentiment on
your part.

He may have, truly, offended you and even hurt you, and done that which
in the eye of man is blameworthy, but all this does not have anything to
do with the dynamic fact that if you arouse his enmity by your
condemnation or judgment there will be a reaction on you, and
consequently on the whole of society in any century when the reaction
takes place. 

This is the law and the fact as given by the Adepts, as told by all
sages, as reported by those who have seen the inner side of nature, as
taught by our philosophy and easily provable by anyone who will take the
trouble to examine carefully. 

Logic and small facts of one day or one life, or arguments on lines laid
down by men of the world who do not know the real power and place of
thought nor the real nature of man cannot sweep this away. After all
argument and logic it will remain. The logic used against it is always
lacking in certain premises based on facts, and while seeming to be good
logic, because the missing facts are unknown to the logician, it is
false logic. Hence an appeal to logic that ignores facts which we know
are certain is of no use in this inquiry. And the ordinary argument
always uses a number of assumptions which are destroyed by the actual
inner facts about thought, about karma, about the reaction by the inner
man.

The Master "K.H.," once writing to Mr. Sinnett in the Occult World, and
speaking for his whole order and not for himself only, distinctly wrote
that the man who goes to denounce a criminal or an offender works not
with nature and harmony but against both, and that such act tends to
destruction instead of construction. 

Whether the act be large or small, whether it be the denunciation of a
criminal, or only your own insistence on rules or laws or rights, does
not alter the matter or take it out of the rule laid down by that Adept.
For the only difference between the acts mentioned is a difference of
degree alone; the act is the same in kind as the violent denunciation of
a criminal. 

Either this Adept was right or wrong. If wrong, why do we follow the
philosophy laid down by him and his messenger, and concurred in by all
the sages and teachers of the past? If right, why this swimming in an
adverse current, as he said himself, why this attempt to show that we
can set aside karma and act as we please without consequences following
us to the end of time? I know not. I prefer to follow the Adept, and
especially so when I see that what he says is in line with facts in
nature and is a certain conclusion from the system of philosophy I have
found in Theosophy.

I have never found an insistence on my so-called rights at all
necessary. They preserve themselves, and it must be true if the law of
karma is the truth that no man offends against me unless I in the past
have offended against him.

In respect to man, karma has no existence without two or more persons
being considered. You act, another person is affected, karma follows. It
follows on the thought of each and not on the act, for the other person
is moved to thought by your act. Here are two sorts of karma, yours and
his, and both are intermixed.

There is the karma or effect on you of your own thought and act, the
result on you of the other person's thought; and there is the karma on
or with the other person consisting of the direct result of your act and
his thoughts engendered by your act and thought. This is all permanent. 

As affecting you there may be various effects. If you have condemned,
for instance, we may mention some: 

(a) the increased tendency in yourself to indulge in condemnation, which
will remain and increase from life to life; 

(b) this will at last in you change into violence and all that anger and
condemnation may naturally lead to; 

(c) an opposition to you is set up in the other person, which will
remain forever until one day both suffer for it, and this may be in a
tendency in the other person in any subsequent life to do you harm and
hurt you in the million ways possible in life, and often also
unconsciously. 

Thus it may all widen out and affect the whole body of society. Hence no
matter how justifiable it may seem to you to condemn or denounce or
punish another, you set up cause for sorrow in the whole race that must
work out some day. And you must feel it.

The opposite conduct, that is, entire charity, constant forgiveness,
wipes out the opposition from others, expends the old enmity and at the
same time makes no new similar causes. Any other sort of thought or
conduct is sure to increase the sum of hate in the world, to make cause
for sorrow, to continually keep up the crime and misery in the world.
Each man can for himself decide which of the two ways is the right one
to adopt.

Self-love and what people call self-respect may shrink from following
the Adept's view I give above, but the Theosophist who wishes to follow
the law and reduce the general sum of hate will know how to act and to
think, for he will follow the words of the Master of H.P.B. who said:
"Do not be ever thinking of yourself and forgetting that there are
others; for you have no karma of your own, but the karma of each one is
the karma of all." 

And these words were sent by H.P.B. to the American Section and called
by her words of wisdom, as they seem also to me to be, for they accord
with law. They hurt the personality of the nineteenth century, but the
personality is for a day, and soon it will be changed if Theosophists
try to follow the law of charity as enforced by the inexorable law of
karma. 

We should all constantly remember that if we believe in the Masters we
should at least try to imitate them in the charity they show for our
weakness and faults. In no other way can we hope to reach their high
estate, for by beginning thus we set up a tendency which will one day
perhaps bring us near to their development; by not beginning we put off
the day forever.

William Brehon, F.T.S.

PATH, February, 1896
 

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K A R M A 


K A R M A - W.Q.Judge	Judge Art. I, p. 112

=========================================================
PAGE	KEY WORD	COMMENTS	SUMMARY
REFERENCES
=========================================================


112	JUSTICE	- measure for measure
- as ye sow, so shall ye reap : of well
or ill

QUESTIONS	1.- How do past life's acts affect this one ?
2.- Does "Nemesis" ever relent ?
3.- Does the eternal law of cause and effect.
unmoved
by sorrow or regret, always deal out its
measures
based on the past?	- see ANUGITA
Ch. III
4.- Must yesterday's sin darken today ?
5.- Is Karma fate ?
6.- Does the child unfold the "Book of Life"
already
fully written
without any escape possible ?
7.- How does Karma interact with our present
lives ?
8.- Can man do better than use the already
marked
threads of past 
lives in this one ?


112	GOOD RESOLVES & EVIL TENDENCIES	- can sweep over our
natures with resistless force: Is this true ?


KARMA OF VARIOUS KINDS:	1- good - bad - 
112-3	2- old Karma can be exhausted
113	3- new Karma can be accumulated
4- HIDDEN and MANIFEST


EACH ACTION	- is a cause from which evolve countless 
ramifications of effects in time and space.


KARMA	= CONTINUANCE OF THE NATURE OF THE ACTION  	
PAST and FUTURE - are contained in every act

TIME is illusory.


EFFECT	- IS THE NATURE OF THE ACT and cannot be
distinct from its cause



113	THAT WHICH ALREADY EXISTS is brought out by the action of Karma
- the same action from another point of view in
time
ML 29 193-4 SD I 224

- Karma relates solely to the individual who
generated it is
not that of another 
EGO. (Each Ego is responsible for its own Karma.)

113	DEFECTS - which are realized from an act must be implicit in
it
MIND	
- is the source of all acts ( Thought comes
before act )

113	DESIRE - is the basis of all acts	( Plane of desire or 
egotism is itself action and the basis of all
acts.

114	- both act and consequences are effects.

CAUSAL PLANE - the plane of desire is causal.

[ MOTIVE	-Then "motive" is to be found in "desire ?" ]

DESIRE	- determines the continuation of the act in its karmic
relation to the individual

PLANES - of cause/effect and of non-manifestation

EFFECTS - effects are limited by the boundaries when there is no
longer a base or medium in which they can
inhere. (Ex.: ripples DO NOT affect side of
pond.)

114	LIMITS - although Karma begins by a personal act it is not 
limited by that personality, nor dependent upon the 
present personality for the effect to manifest
in
full. EXAMPLE: seed needs cooperation from
water, 
soil and culture to germinate and fructify. If
no
seed, no plant. The other three need the seed.

114	INCARNATION	- first product of "held-over" Karma

TENDENCIES - Ruling tendencies determine this ( desires, 	
tendencies, affinities, etc...) fresh birth of 
the entity Ego
			
FAMILY - surroundings most in harmony with KARMIC tendencies is
selected = PLACE OF BIRTH

LIMITATIONS	- governed are: station in life, sex,
childhood's years of personal irresponsibility,
constitution 	
with diseases inherent in it, 
"heredity," and "national characteristic."


115	LAW OF LEAST RESISTANCE	- operates in selecting family
and nation of birth - special characteristics


115	NATIONAL KARMA	- the resultant of masses of individuals with
similar Karmic characteristics and tendencies
into life at
one time

115	FAMILY & CASTE KARMA	- similar on a reduced scale

115	END OF KARMIC TENDENCY	- may abruptly occur after any
special
set of conditions mandated by past causes are
satisfied

- the life then takes an entirely fresh bent

115	END OF KARMA - after observing personal life taking such a
change:
- occasionally there are lingering effects that
may be
observed, giving obstacles and obstructions to 
progress or success in the rest of the life.

115-6	INJUSTICE	- to be accounted for demands understanding that

Karma is unerring. The sequence to the original
cause
is true, "streaks of fortune" are the result of
such
changes (but the source remains unknown in this

life.)

116	AFFECTING ONE'S OWN KARMA	
- the Karma of action works through many planes:

PLANES OF KARMIC ACTION -

1.	PHYSICAL PLANE - body, senses and organs,

2.	INTELLECTUAL - memory which binds and unites 
impressions into one organized whole
- reason puts in order its storehouse
of thoughts.

3.	EMOTIONAL PLANE- preferences of one, over others
- 4th principle of man [KAMA-DESIRE ]
			
These 3 planes deal with objects of perception
- the great battle field of Karma (Kurukshetra)

4.	ETHICAL PLANE - "To do, or "Not to do."

5.	DISCRIMINATION- harmonizes the intellect & emotion with
the MIND as the basis for desire
116
6	MIND	- alone initiates actions on the various planes

- alone through Mind can effects of rest or
action
be received.

ENTERING INCARNATION	Karmic energy from past existences
also enters intact - awaiting development as effect



117	KARMA ON EACH OF THE 3 PLANES - is always in harmony
with the
basis of the original nature of the act.
Unbroken
continuity with the past.

117	KARMIC ENERGY AT BIRTH	- is a definite quantum - 

1. cause of rebirth environment  
2. It awaits period of life when new Karma can begin.
117

MOMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY - THE FRESH
PERSONALITY 
THEN BECOMES RULER 
[ around age 7-14 ]

KARMA CAN BE AFFECTED ACTIVELY	


UPPER and LOWER NATURE OF MAN


117	LOWER DESIRE/PLANE GRATIFICATION	
- debases the higher energy from the superior
planes 
- a "fire" or center of attraction 

LOWER PLANE is established and superior energy is exhausted 
trying to


UPPER PLANE CENTER OF ATTRACTION	
= all the needed energy goes there,
resulting in an increase of spirituality


117	TRANSMUTATION
- if detached from plane of sense gratification by 
a constant effort to fix the mind on the
attainment
of the highest ideal, karma will have no basis
to fix in 
the physical, and manifesting in harmony with 	
118	the desire plane it exhausts itself in a higher 
plane and thus becomes transmuted in its
effects.

NO ATTACHMENT - for objects not thought of.


IDEALISM	- cleanses the mind and the desire principles

- when thought-interest ceases the link breaks
and
karmic attachment between an "object" and the
individual ceases.

REPENTANCE AN ERROR. Thought returns to error or sin and 
maintains the links.

SIN	- originates in the mind as an idea-desire

	
KNOT OF THE HEART = MANAS

MIND ATTITUDE - draws links of desire to the "soul"
(Kama-Manas)
aspirations imprisoned by difficulties and 
obstructions

118
DESIRE	- causes reincarnation, building of personality

NON-ATTACHMENT	- allows the soul to burst through the walls 
of pain

CHANGE OF MIND	- enables Karmic burden to be lifted.

118
FREE WILL - WHEN ASSERTED MAKES MAN HIS OWN
SAVIOR

KARMA - to the Worldly man	- a stern Nemesis


119	- to the Spiritual Man	- unfolds in harmony with his
highest aspirations
					
EQUAL MINDEDNESS	- is thus achieved

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


Some additional articles on Justice, Karma & Reincarnation



The first two are in "Setting the Stage" in the 12-part 

"Arguments on Reincarnation" series:

(41) Arguments on Reincarnation--VIII: Law and Justice

http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting/justice.html

(42) Arguments on Reincarnation--IX: Memory and Justice

http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting/memoryjustice.html

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

The third article is found alphabetically listed
on the "Collated" articles index page:

REINCARNATION AND JUSTICE:

http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/ListOfCollatedArticles/Reincarnati
on-Justice.html

http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/ListOfCollatedArticles/index.html

http://www.wisdomworld.org/additional/index.html#12

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




Dallas