Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00202)

Jan 9 2004



Karma and its distribution



Can Karma be mitigated, changed or lessened?





(13) The effects may be counteracted or mitigated by the thoughts and acts
of oneself or of another, and then the resulting effects represent the
combination and interaction of the whole number of causes involved in
producing the effects. [ from: Aphorisms on Karma]





Here is an answer that has appeal:



Best wishes,



Dallas



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THOUGHTS ON KARMA




EVERY day in life we see people overtaken by circumstances either good or
bad and coming in blocks all at once or scattered over long periods of time.
Some are for a whole life in a miserable condition, and others for many
years the very reverse; while still others are miserable or happy by
snatches. 

I speak, of course, of the circumstances of life irrespective of the effect
on the mind of the person, for it may often be that a man is not unhappy
under adverse circumstances, and some are able to extract good from the very
strait lines they are put within. Now all this is the Karma of those who are
the experiencers, and therefore we ask ourselves if Karma may fall in a lump
or may be strung out over a long space of years. And the question is also
asked if the circumstances of this life are the sum total result of the life
which has immediately preceded it.

There is a little story told to a German mystic in this century by an old
man, another mystic, when asked the meaning of the verse in the Bible which
says that the sins of the father will be visited on the children to the
third and fourth generation. He said

"There was once an Eastern king who had one son, and this son committed a
deed the penalty of which was that he should be killed by a great stone
thrown upon him. But as it was seen that this would not repair the wrong nor
give to the offender the chance to become a better man, the counsellors of
the king advised that the stone should be broken into small pieces, and
those be thrown at the son, and at his children and grandchildren as they
were able to bear it. 

It was so done, and all were in some sense sufferers yet none were
destroyed." It was argued, of course, in this case that the children and
grandchildren could not have been born in the family of the prince if they
had not had some hand in the past, in other lives, in the formation of his
character, and for that reason they should share to some extent in his
punishment. In no other way than this can the Christian verses be understood
if we are to attribute justice to the God of the Christians.

Each Ego is attracted to the body in which he will meet his just deserts,
but also for another reason. That is, that not only is the body to give
opportunity for his just reward or punishment, but also for that he in the
past was connected with the family in which the body was born, and the
stream of heredity to which it belongs is his too. It is therefore a
question not alone of desert and similarity, but one of responsibility. 

Justice orders that the Ego shall suffer or enjoy irrespective of what
family he comes to; similarity decrees that he shall come to the family in
which there is some characteristic similar to one or many of his and thus
having a drawing power; but responsibility, which is compounded of justice,
directs that the Ego shall come to the race or the nation or the family to
which its responsibility lies for the part taken by it in other lives in
forming of the general character, or affecting that physical stream of
heredity that has so much influence on those who are involved in it. 

Therefore it is just that even the grandchildren shall suffer if they in the
past have had a hand in moulding the family or even in bringing about a
social order that is detrimental to those who fall into it through
incarnation. I use the word responsibility to indicate something composed of
similarity and justice. It may be described by other words probably quite as
well, and in the present state of the English language very likely will be. 

An Ego may have no direct responsibility for a family, national, or race
condition, and yet be drawn into incarnation there. In such an event it is
similarity of character which causes the place of rebirth, for the being
coming to the abode of mortals is drawn like electricity along the path of
least resistance and of greatest conductibility. 

But where the reincarnating Ego is directly responsible for family or race
conditions, it will decide itself, upon exact principles of justice and in
order to meet its obligations, to be reborn where it shall receive, as
grandchild if you will, physically or otherwise the results of its former
acts. This decision is made at the emergence from Devachan. It is thus
entirely just, no matter whether the new physical brain is able or not to
pick up the lost threads of memory.

So to-day, in our civilization, we are all under the penalty of our
forefathers sins, living in bodies which medical science has shown are sown
with diseases of brain and flesh and blood coming in the turbid stream of
heredity through the centuries. These disturbances were brought about by
ourselves in other centuries, in ignorance, perhaps, of consequences so
far-reaching, but that ignorance lessens only the higher moral
responsibility and tends to confine the results to physical suffering. This
can very well lead, as it often does, to efforts on the part of many
reincarnating Egos in the direction of general reform.

It was through a belief in this that the ancients attempted to form and keep
up in India a pure family stream such as the highest caste of Brahmin. For
they knew that if such a clean family line could be kept existing for many
centuries, it would develop the power of repelling Egos on the way to
rebirth if they were not in character up to the standard of that stream of
life. Thus only teachers by nature, of high moral and spiritual elevation,
would come upon the scene to act as regenerators and saviors for all other
classes. But under the iron rule of cyclic law this degenerated in time,
leaving now only an imitation of the real thing.

A variation of the Eastern story told above is that the advice of the kings
counsellors was that the broken stone should be cast at the prince. This was
done, and the result was that he was not killed but suffered while the
pieces were being thrown. 

It gives another Karmic law, that is, that a given amount of force of a
Karmic character may be thrown at one or fall upon one at once, in bulk, so
to say, or may be divided up into smaller pieces, the sum of which
represents the whole mass of Karmic force. And so we see it in life. 

Men suffer through many years an amount of adverse Karma which, if it were
to fall all at once, would crush them. Others for a long time have general
good fortune that might unseat the reason if experienced in one day; and the
latter happens also, for we know of those who have been destroyed by the
sudden coming of what is called great good fortune.

This law is seen also in physics. A piece of glass may be broken at once by
a single blow, or the same amount of force put into a number of taps
continuously repeated will accomplish the same result and mash the glass. 

And with the emotions we observe the same law followed by even the most
ignorant, for we do not tell bad news at once to the person who is the
sufferer, but get at it slowly by degrees; and often when disaster is
suddenly heard of, the person who hears it is prostrated. In both cases the
sorrow caused is the same, but the method of imparting the news differs.
Indeed, in whatever direction we look, this law is observed to work. It is
universal, and it ought to be applied to Karma as well as to anything else.

Whether the life we are now living is the net result of the one just
preceding is answered by Patanjali in his 8th and 9th aphorisms, Book IV.

"From these works there results, in every incarnation, a manifestation of
only those mental deposits which can come to fructification in the
environment provided. Although the manifestation of mental deposits may be
intercepted by unsuitable environments, differing as to class, place, and
time, there is an immediate relation between them, because the memory and
the train of self-reproductive thought are identical," and also by other
doctrines of the ancients. When a body is taken up, only that sort of Karma
which can operate through it will make itself felt. This is what Patanjali
means. 

The "environment" is the body, with the mind, the plastic nature, and the
emotions and desires. Hence one may have been great or the reverse in the
preceding life, and now have only the environment which will serve for the
exhaustion of some Karma left over from lives many incarnations distant.
This unexhausted Karma is known as stored-up Karma. It may or may not come
into operation now, and it can also be brought out into view by violent
effort of the mind leading to such changes as to alter the bodily apparatus
and make it equivalent to a new body. 

But as the majority of men are lazy of mind and nature, they suffer
themselves to run with the great family or national stream, and so through
one life make no changes of this inner nature. Karma in their cases operates
through what Patanjali calls "mental deposits." These are the net results
stored from each life by Manas. For as body dies, taking brain with it,
there can be no storage there nor means of connecting with the next
earth-life; the division known as Kama is dissipated or purged away together
with astral body at some time before rebirth; astral body retains
nothing--as a general rule for the new life, and the value or summation of
those skandhas which belong to Kama is concentrated and deposited in Manas
or the mind. So, when the immortal being returns, he is really
Manas-Buddhi-Atma seeking a new environment which is found in a new body,
prana, Kama, and astral double. 

Hence, and because under the sway of cyclic law, the reincarnation can only
furnish an engine of a horsepower, so to say, which is very much lower than
the potential energies stored in Manas, and thus there remain unexhausted
"mental deposits," or unexhausted Karma. 

The Ego may therefore be expending a certain line of Karma, always bringing
it to similar environments until that class of Karma shall be so exhausted
or weakened as to permit another set of "mental deposits" to preponderate,
whereupon the next incarnation will be in a different environment which
shall give opportunity for the new set of deposits to bring about new or
different Karma.

The object that is indicated for life by all this is, to so live and think
during each life as to generate no new Karma, or cause for bondage, while
one is working off the stock in hand, in order that on closing each
life-account one shall have wiped off so much as that permits. 

The old "mental deposits" will thus gradually move up into action and
exhaustion from life to life, at last leaving the man in a condition where
he can master all and step into true consciousness, prepared to renounce
final reward in order that he may remain with humanity, making no new Karma
himself and helping others along the steep road to perfection.

EUSEBIO URBAN 
Path, August, 1892

_____ 





DTB



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