KARMA
Mar 24, 2006 06:15 AM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
What rules the UNIVERSE ?
Here is an interesting survey offered in THEOSOPHY .
What is the power of the FREE-WILL in man ?
Best wishes
Dallas
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THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT -- COMPENSATION
KARMA is a Sanskrit word, and is a name adopted by Theosophists for one of
the most important of the laws of nature.
Ceaseless in its operation, it bears alike upon planets, systems of planets,
races, nations, families, and individuals. It is the twin doctrine to
REINCARNATION. So inextricably interlaced are these two laws that it is
almost impossible to properly consider one apart from the other.
No spot or being in the universe is exempt from the operation of Karma, but
all are under its sway, punished for error by it yet beneficently led on,
through discipline, rest, and reward, to the distant heights of perfection.
It is a law so comprehensive in its sweep, embracing at once our physical
and our moral being, that it is only by paraphrase and copious explanation
one can convey its meaning in English. For that reason the Sanskrit term
Karma was adopted to designate it.
Applied to man's moral life it is the law of ethical causation, justice,
reward and punishment; the cause for birth and rebirth, yet equally the
means for escape from incarnation.
Viewed from another point it is merely effect flowing from cause, action and
reaction, exact result for every thought and act. It is act and the result
of act; for the word's literal meaning is action.
KARMA: LAW of an INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
Theosophy views the Universe as an intelligent whole, hence every motion in
the Universe is an action of that whole leading to results, which themselves
become causes for further results. Viewing it thus broadly, the ancient
Hindus said that every being up to Brahma was under the rule of Karma.
It is not a being but a law, the universal law of harmony which unerringly
restores all disturbance to equilibrium.
But as there is plainly, indeed painfully, evident to every human being a
constant destruction going on in and around us, a continual war not only
among men but everywhere through the whole solar system, causing sorrow in
all directions, reason requires a solution of the riddle.
The poor, who see no refuge or hope, cry aloud to a God who makes no reply,
and then envy springs up in them when they consider the comforts and
opportunities of the rich. They see the rich profligates, the wealthy fools,
enjoying themselves unpunished.
Turning to the teacher of religion, they meet the reply to their questioning
of the justice which will permit such misery to those who did nothing
requiring them to be born with no means, no opportunities for education, no
capacity to overcome social, racial, or circumstantial obstacles, "It is the
will of God."
Parents produce beloved offspring who are cut off by death at an untimely
hour, just when all promised well. They too have no answer to the question
"Why am I thus afflicted?" but the same unreasonable reference to an
inaccessible God whose arbitrary will causes their misery.
KARMA AND JUSTICE
Thus in every walk of life, loss, injury, persecution, deprivation of
opportunity, nature's own forces working to destroy the happiness of man,
death, reverses, disappointment continually beset good and evil men alike.
But nowhere is there any answer or relief save in the ancient truths that
each man is the maker and fashioner of his own destiny, the only one who
sets in motion the causes for his own happiness and misery. In one life he
sows and in the next he reaps.
Thus on and forever, the law of Karma leads him. Karma is a beneficent law
wholly merciful, relentlessly just, for true mercy is not favor but
impartial justice.
"My brothers! each man's life
The outcome of his former living is;
The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes,
The bygone right breeds bliss. . . .
This is the doctrine of Karma."
How is the present life affected by that bygone right and wrong act, and is
it always by way of punishment? Is Karma only fate under another name, an
already fixed and formulated destiny from which no escape is possible, and
which therefore might make us careless of act or thought that cannot affect
destiny? It is not fatalism.
Everything done in a former body has consequences which in the new birth the
Ego must enjoy or suffer, for, as St. Paul said: "Brethren, be not deceived,
God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."
For the effect is in the cause, and Karma produces the manifestation of it
in the body, brain, and mind furnished by reincarnation. And as a cause set
up by one man has a distinct relation to him as a center from which it came,
so each one experiences the results of his own acts.
We may sometimes seem to receive effects solely from the acts of others, but
this is the result of our own acts and thoughts in this or some prior life.
We perform our acts in company with others always, and the acts with their
underlying thoughts have relation always to other persons and to ourselves.
THOUGHT AND CHOICE PRODUCES KARMA
No act is performed without a thought at its root either at the time of
performance or as leading to it. These thoughts are lodged in that part of
man which we have called Manas -- the mind, and there remain as subtle but
powerful links with magnetic threads that enmesh the solar system, and
through which various effects are brought out.
The theory put forward earlier, that the whole system to which this globe
belongs is alive, conscious on every plane, though only in man showing
self-consciousness, comes into play here to explain how the thought under
the act in this life may cause result in this or the next birth.
The marvellous modern experiments in hypnotism show that the slightest
impression, no matter how far back in the history of the person, may be
waked up to life, thus proving it is not lost but only latent.
Take for instance the case of a child born humpbacked and very short, the
head sunk between the shoulders, the arms long and legs curtailed. Why is
this? His karma for thoughts and acts in a prior life. He reviled,
persecuted, or otherwise injured a deformed person so persistently or
violently as to imprint in his own immortal mind the deformed picture of his
victim. For in proportion to the intensity of his thought will be the
intensity and depth of the picture.
It is exactly similar to the exposure of the sensitive photographic plate,
whereby, just as the exposure is long or short, the impression in the plate
is weak or deep. So this thinker and actor -- the Ego -- coming again to
rebirth carries with him this picture, and if the family to which he is
attracted for birth has similar physical tendencies in its stream, the
mental picture causes the newly-forming astral body to assume a deformed
shape by electrical and magnetic osmosis through the mother of the child.
And as all beings on earth are indissolubly joined together, the misshapen
child is the karma of the parents also an exact consequence for similar acts
and thoughts on their part in other lives. Here is an exactitude of justice
which no other theory will furnish.
But as we often see a deformed human being -- continuing the instance merely
for the purpose of illustration -- having a happy disposition, an excellent
intellect, sound judgment, and every good moral quality, this very instance
leads us to the conclusion that karma must be of several different kinds in
every individual case, and also evidently operates in more than one
department of our being, with the possibility of being pleasant in effect
for one portion of our nature and unpleasant for another.
KARMA IS OF THREE SORTS:
FIRST -- that which has not begun to produce any effect in
our lives owing to the operation on us of some other karmic causes. This is
under a law well known to physicists, that two opposing forces tend to
neutrality, and that one force may be strong enough to temporarily prevent
the operation of another one.
This law works on the unseen mental and karmic planes or spheres of being
just as it does on the material ones. The force of a certain set of bodily,
mental, and psychical faculties with their tendencies may wholly inhibit the
operation on us of causes with which we are connected, because the whole
nature of each person is used in the carrying out of this law.
Hence the weak and mediocre furnish a weak focus for karma, and in them the
general result of a lifetime is limited, although they may feel it all to be
very heavy. But that person who has a wide and deep-reaching character and
much force will feel the operation of a greater quantity of karma than the
weaker person.
SECOND -- that karma which we are now making or storing up
by our thoughts and acts, and which will operate in the future when the
appropriate body, mind, and environment are taken up by the incarnating Ego
in some other life, or whenever obstructive karma is removed.
This bears both on the present life and the next one. For one may in this
life come to a point where, all previous causes being worked out, new karma,
or that which is unexpended, must begin to operate.
Under this are those cases where men have sudden reverses of fortune or
changes for the better either in circumstances or character.
A very important bearing of this is on our present conduct. While old karma
must work out and cannot be stopped, it is wise for the man to so think and
act now under present circumstances, no matter what they are, that he shall
produce no bad or prejudicial causes for the next rebirth or for later years
in this life. Rebellion is useless, for the law works on whether we weep or
rejoice.
The great French engineer, de Lesseps, is a good example of this class of
karma. Raised to a high pitch of glory and achievement for many years of his
life, he suddenly falls covered with shame through the Panama canal scandal.
Whether he was innocent or guilty, he has the shame of the connection of his
name with a national enterprise all besmirched with bribery and corruption
that involved high officials. This was the operation of old karmic causes on
him the very moment those which had governed his previous years were
exhausted.
Napoleon I is another, for he rose to a very great fame, then suddenly fell
and died in exile and disgrace. Many other cases will occur to every
thoughtful reader.
THIRD -- that karma which has begun to produce results. It
is the operating now in this life on us of causes set up in previous lives
in company with other Egos. And it is in operation because, being most
adapted to the family stock, the individual body, astral body, and race
tendencies of the present incarnation, it exhibits itself plainly, while
other unexpended karma awaits its regular turn.
These three classes of karma govern men, animals, worlds, and periods of
evolution. Every effect flows from a cause precedent, and as all beings are
constantly being reborn they are continually experiencing the effects of
their thoughts and acts (which are themselves causes) of a prior
incarnation. And thus each one answers, as St. Matthew says, for every word
and thought; none can escape either by prayer, or favor, or force, or any
other intermediary.
KARMA OPERATES ON THREE PLANES OF OUR BEING
Now as karmic causes are divisible into three classes, they must have
various fields in which to work.
They operate upon man in his :
1 mental and intellectual nature, in his
2 psychical or soul nature, and in his
3 body and circumstances.
The spiritual nature of man is never affected or operated upon by karma.
One species of karma may act on the three specified planes of our nature at
the same time to the same degree, or there may be a mixture of the causes,
some on one plane and some on another.
Take a deformed person who has a fine mind and a deficiency in his soul
nature. Here punitive or unpleasant karma is operating on his body while in
his mental and intellectual nature good karma is being experienced, but
psychically the karma, or cause, being of an indifferent sort the result is
indifferent. In another person other combinations appear. He has a fine body
and favorable circumstances, but the character is morose, peevish,
irritable, revengeful, morbid, and disagreeable to himself and others. Here
good physical karma is at work with very bad mental, intellectual, and
psychical karma. Cases will occur to readers of persons born in high station
having every opportunity and power, yet being imbecile or suddenly becoming
insane.
NATIONAL and RACIAL KARMA
And just as all these phases of the law of karma have sway over the
individual man, so they similarly operate upon races, nations, and families.
Each race has its karma as a whole. If it be good that race goes forward. If
bad it goes out -- annihilated as a race -- though the souls concerned take
up their karma in other races and bodies. Nations cannot escape their
national karma, and any nation that has acted in a wicked manner must suffer
some day, be it soon or late.
The karma of the nineteenth century in the West is the karma of Israel, for
even the merest tyro can see that the Mosaic influence is the strongest in
the European and American nations.
The old Aztec and other ancient American peoples died out because their own
karma -- the result of their own life as nations in the far past -- fell
upon and destroyed them.
With nations this heavy operation of karma is always through famine, war,
convulsion of nature, and the sterility of the women of the nation. The
latter cause comes near the end and sweeps the whole remnant away.
And the individual in race or nation is warned by this great doctrine that
if he falls into indifference of thought and act, thus molding himself into
the general average karma of his race or nation, that national and race
karma will at last carry him off in the general destiny. This is why
teachers of old cried, "Come ye out and be ye separate."
With reincarnation the doctrine of karma explains the misery and suffering
of the world, and no room is left to accuse Nature of injustice.
The misery of any nation or race is the direct result of the thoughts and
acts of the Egos who make up the race or nation. In the dim past they did
wickedly and now suffer. They violated the laws of harmony.
The immutable rule is that harmony must be restored if violated.
So these Egos suffer in making compensation and establishing the equilibrium
of the occult cosmos. The whole mass of Egos must go on incarnating and
reincarnating in the nation or race until they have all worked out to the
end the causes set up.
Though the nation may for a time disappear as a physical thing, the Egos
that made it do not leave the world, but come out as the makers of some new
nation in which they must go on with the task and take either punishment or
reward as accords with their karma.
Of this law the old Egyptians are an illustration. They certainly rose to a
high point of development, and as certainly they were extinguished as a
nation. But the souls -- the old Egos -- live on and are now fulfilling
their self-made destiny as some other nation now in our period.
They may be the new American nation, or the Jews fated to wander up and down
in the world and suffer much at the hands of others. This process is
perfectly just. Take, for instance, the United States and the Red Indians.
The latter have been most shamefully treated by the nation. The Indian Egos
will be reborn in the new and conquering people, and as members of that
great family will be the means themselves of bringing on the due results for
such acts as were done against them when they had red bodies. Thus it has
happened before, and so it will come about again.
INDIVIDUAL UNHAPPINESS IN ANY LIFE IS EXPLAINED:
(a) It is punishment for evil done in past lives; or
(b) it is discipline taken up by the Ego for the purpose of
eliminating defects or acquiring fortitude and sympathy. When defects are
eliminated it is like removing the obstruction in an irrigating canal which
then lets the water flow on.
Happiness is explained in the same way: the result of prior lives of
goodness.
ETHICS and MORALS
The scientific and self-compelling basis for right ethics is found in these
and in no other doctrines. For if right ethics are to be practised merely
for themselves, men will not see why, and have never been able to see why,
for that reason they should do right.
If ethics are to be followed from fear, man is degraded and will surely
evade; if the favor of the Almighty, not based on law or justice, be the
reason, then we will have just what prevails today -- a code given by Jesus
to the west professed by nations and not practised save by the few who would
in any case be virtuous.
On this subject the Adepts have written the following to be found in the
Secret Doctrine:
"Nor would the ways of karma be inscrutable were men to work
in union and harmony instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of
those ways -- which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence dark
and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism, and
a third simple chance with neither gods nor devils to guide them -- would
surely disappear if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause.
With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our
neighbors will no more work harm to us than we would think of harming them,
two-thirds of the world's evil would vanish into thin air.
Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to
work for nor weapons to act through. . . .
We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands,
while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of
respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways beings so intricate
and so dark.
We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making and the riddles of
life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring
us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day or
a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or
another life. . . .
Knowledge of Karma gives the conviction that if --
'virtue in distress and vice in triumph
Make atheists of Mankind',
it is only because that mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth
that man is himself his own saviour as his own destroyer; that he need not
accuse heaven and the gods, fates and providence, of the apparent injustice
that reigns in the midst of humanity.
But let him rather remember and repeat this bit of Grecian wisdom which
warns man to forbear accusing That which
'Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring
Through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment'
-- which are now the ways and the high road on which move onward the great
European nations. The western Aryans had every nation and tribe like their
eastern brethren of the fifth race, their Golden and their Iron ages, their
period of comparative irresponsibility, or the Satya age of purity, while
now several of them have reached their Iron age, the KALI YUGA, an age black
with horrors.
This state will last . . . until we begin acting from within instead of ever
following impulses from without . . . Until then the only palliative is
union and harmony -- a Brotherhood in actu and altruism not simply in name."
These statements are extracted from Mr. W. Q. Judge's The OCEAN OF
THEOSOPHY
(Available at Theosophy Company, Los Angeles
http://www.ULT.org <http://www.ult.org/>
or
http://www.ult-la.org <http://www.ult-la.org/>
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Best wishes,
Dallas
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