Theosophy - Elementary Lessons on Karma by Annie Besant - Adyar Pamphlets No. 13
Adyar
Pamphlets No. 13
ELEMENTARY LESSONS ON KARMA
by Annie Besant
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai (Madras),
India
March 1912,
Reprinted August 1919
FEW questions, perhaps,
puzzle students more, whether the students be old or young, than that of
Karma. What is it ? when did it begin ? how far does it limit us ? are
we its servants or its masters ? must we fold our hands meekly before it,
or struggle vigorously against it ? if today grows out of yesterday, and
yesterday out of the day before, and so on, backwards and backwards, how
can the bad man ever become good ? are we not really compelled by an iron
necessity, are we not " dumb, driven
cattle," who cannot become heroes, whatever poets may say ?
We may spend a little time usefully in thinking over these questions and
others resembling them, for here, as elsewhere, " a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing ". Karma is but too often a crippling fetter instead of being,
as it ought to be, a strength, a guide, a force, enabling us to act wisely and
well. Like all other laws in nature, it binds the ignorant and gives power to
the wise.
Here is our first step: Karma
is a Law of Nature. We might go further, and say: It is the law. For
it is everywhere and always — omnipresent, all-pervasive. Other names
are given to it in the West, and the names are useful, because they are not
surrounded by all the traditions and discussions which blur the meaning of
karma in the East. The Western philosopher calls it The Law of Causation.
He [Page
2] sees in every
happening a double fact — it is both an effect and a cause; it is an effect,
for it has a cause; something went before and made this thing to happen; it
is also a cause; for it will generate a new happening, another thing will
arise from it. As a man is a son of his father, and is also the father of his
son; as his father was a son to his own father, and as his son will be a
father to his own son in turn, so is it with causes and effects; each event
is at once an effect and a cause — an effect of the past, a cause of the
future. This observed succession, this invariable relation, is generalized under
the term, the law of causation. The human intellect recognizes this law as
fundamental, and sees in it the assurance of stability and order as well as
of human progress.
We are continually causing effects, unconsciously and consciously. The
more we understand our power and nature's conditions, the more can we
bring about the effects we desire, and prevent the events we dislike.
The Western scientist calls karma, The
Law of Action and Re-action, and
he also sees it as a fundamental law. Action and Re-action are equal
and
opposite, he says. You push an object; its resistance is its re-action
against your push; you fling an elastic ball against a board; it springs back
to you with a force proportional to that of the impact. Everywhere in nature
he finds this law, and he counts on it with certainty in his manipulations of
objects.
In both these Western terms the
word Law appears. What is a Law — a
Law of Nature ? It is the statement of an observed succession, of an
invariable sequence; it may be put as a formula; wherever A and B are,
there C follows. Hence it is a statement of conditions, and the result which
arises from [Page
3] them. It is not a command; it does not say "Do this, or Do
not do this," like a human enactment. It does not say: " You must
have A and B, and therefore C; " but rather: " If you want C, you
must bring A and B together; if you do not want C, you must take care
that A and B do not come together; if you keep A away from B,
you will not have C." Hence a law of nature is truly said to be not a
compelling but an enabling force; it tells you the conditions which enable
you to produce or avoid a particular thing, and is only compulsory in
this sense, that if you make the conditions you must have the
result. Because of this inevitable sequence ignorant people are helpless
in the grip of natural laws; they ignorantly produce conditions, and
the results hurtle around them, confuse and crush them. As we gain
knowledge, we take care as to the conditions we produce, and thus avoid
undesirable results.
A law of Nature is said to be inviolable, for this
relation between cause and effect cannot be altered. We can disregard
natural laws as much as we please, but the law breaks us; we do not
break it. If you slip off the top of a building and fall heavily
to the ground, you do not break the law of attraction, or gravitation; you
disregard it, and your fall proves its truth; a well known formula gives
the velocity with which you will strike the ground.
We partly answer, then, our first question, " what is karma?" by the
statement: karma is a law of nature of universal validity, called in the
West the law of causation, or the law of action and re-action.
The remainder of the answer
to the question, " what is karma ? "
is very closely connected with the second question: " When did karma
begin ? " A general law of nature cannot be said to have either a
beginning, or an ending; wherever there is any [Page
4] manifestation, any
universe, any world, there, general laws are also present, inherent in the
very nature of things. Attraction of one mass of matter to another cannot be
said to begin; wherever there are masses of matter, there, attraction
is working; gravitation does not begin, it is ever manifested where the
conditions for its working are present. Hence karma, being, a general Law,
is said to be eternal; it is a condition of manifested existence, and
wherever existence is manifested, there is karma.
Hence the question: " When did
karma begin ? " shows a misconception of
the very nature of karma; it is a perpetual condition of existence in matter,
neither beginning nor ending, but eternal. If the form of the question be
modified, and it is asked: " When did the karma of a particular creature
begin ? " then the answer is: "At the time at which that particular creature
came into manifestation." When the unborn, undying Spirit takes to himself
a vesture of matter, then he steps into conditions, and comes under the law
of karma. His stepping into the conditions begins his particular karma. At
first it will be the karma of a mineral, the play upon him of surrounding force
and matter, and the re-action from him on his surroundings. These actions
and re-actions weave the links of his karma, and the chain draws him into
one or another type of the vegetable kingdom. In that, as his re-action
becomes more complex, the web of karma attaching to him becomes more
complicated, and ultimately lifts him into some animal type. In the animal
kingdom his increasing sentiency enters into karmic causes, and pains
inflicted by him re-act as pains on him. But the feeling of pain is due to the
evolution of the power to feel in him; it is still action and re-action, but
where in the mineral these were unaccompanied by [Page
5] feeling, in the
animal, feeling results in pleasure and pain: the law is the same; the
creature is different, and so the result on the creature is different. As
reason develops, another stand is added to the karmic web, and the action
in the thought world is added to that in the acting and feeling worlds, and
hence another powerful factor is added to the reaction. But once again, the
law of action and reaction is working on the same lines.
If the student will constantly
bear in mind that karma is action and re-action, and that this works on every
plane of nature, works everywhere and always, and is inherent in the nature
of things, many of his difficulties will disappear; he will understand that
karma begins for him when he descends into the universe of matter, because
he has come into the conditions in which karma is perpetually working, and
that the re-actions on him are exactly equal to his actions, containing more
or fewer factors according to those which have gone out from himself.
Another thing that will become
clear to him is that the re-action must be of the same nature as the action;
hence when a man commits a mistaken act with a good motive, his action is on
three planes, the physical, the astral and the mental; the re-action must also
be on three planes; the mental re-action will be on his character, which will
be improved by the impact of good upon it; the astral re-action will make
for him future opportunity of exercising right desire; both these will be good;
but the re-action upon the physical plane of the mistaken act will be misfortune
to himself. Thus the law works with perfect accuracy and inviolability, and
the re-action upon each action follows in unvarying succession.[Page
6]
The idea of rewards and punishments ought not to be allowed to
enter into the workings of karmic law. We have results, consequences, but
neither rewards nor punishments. Pain is the outcome of wrong activity on
any plane, not because anyone inflicts pain upon us as a punishment, but
because we have flung ourselves against the law and are bruised against
its unyieldingness. The result of virtuous thought or feeling is an increase
of the capacity to be virtuous; it is not prosperity, either in this world
or another. If we tell a lie, the result is the increased tendency to falsehood,
the lowering of our character, and this is an invariable result, not affected
by the discovery or otherwise of our falsity by those around us; their want
of trust is the re-action from their discovery of our lie; the re-action on us
of the increased tendency to falsehood is independent of this secondary
result.
"How far does the law of karma
limit us?" — such is the question now to
be considered, and it falls naturally into two parts: (1) The limiting action
of laws of nature, of which karma is one; (2) The limiting action of the special
karma which each one of us has generated in the past.
1. We have already seen that a
law of nature is a sequence of conditions, and the conditions among which we
find ourselves impose upon us certain limitations. Thus a man cannot fly under
ordinary conditions, and if he desires to travel through the air he must supply
himself with some apparatus by which he can rise into the air and move therein.
The more we know of the natural forces around us, the greater is our freedom
of movement amongst them, for we can balance one against the other,
neutralizing those which are opposed to any course which we wish [Page
7]
to take. If we wish to descend from a tower to the ground by jumping
from the top, the conditions are such as to result in the fracture of our bones
if we merely jump into the air; but if we arm ourselves with a parachute of
sufficient size, we may safely launch ourselves into the air, and float
gradually down to the earth. Again, we cannot rise above the atmosphere,
and long before reaching its upper regions we should find the air too rare to
be respirable; here is a limiting condition; but, on the other hand, we could
overcome this limitation by taking with us a supply of respirable air. The
power of natural conditions to limit us can very largely be overcome by
knowledge, and the larger our knowledge the more freely can we act.
Exactly the same is true with regard to the universal conditions called
karma; we are limited by them as by the other conditions found in nature,
but can neutralize or transcend these to a great extent by knowledge.
Hence the enormous importance of studying and understanding the
general karmic conditions, since our freedom is proportionate to our
knowledge.
2. Of more pressing and immediate
importance is the limiting action of the special karma which each one of us
has generated in the past, and an understanding of this is vital for the welfare
of our life and the control of our conduct. This understanding will best be
gained by a study of the working of karma along the three lines of character,
opportunity and circumstances, generated by the three aspects of consciousness — thought,
desire, and activity. In the whole of this study it must be remembered that
we, who created this karma by our thought, desire and activity in the past,
are the same thinking, desiring and acting consciousness in the present; people
think too much of karma as reaction on them, and not [Page
8] sufficiently of
their own action upon karmic conditions; we modify the outcome of past
thinkings by present thinking, of past desires by present desire, of past
actings by present acting. Kârmic action is not on an inert wall, but
on a living consciousness, which reacts on karma and modifies it by that
reaction. The passive endurance of karma is seen, and not the active
impact upon it; thus a one-sided and inadequate view is taken, and man is
paralyzed when he ought to be energizing.
An examination of each of the lines above-mentioned will enable us clearly
to see how far karma limits us.
Thought makes character,
such is the familiar and true statement. "As a
man thinks, so he becomes." The character built up by thought in past lives
is born with us in the present life. That we cannot escape, and it is a clear
limitation. Let us say that we are born with poor mental abilities; these limit
our capacity for acquiring knowledge, and we find ourselves compelled to
spend two or three hours in mastering a lesson that our clever neighbour
learns in ten minutes. There is a fact, a limitation, which undoubtedly
exists. How can we deal with it ? For the present we acquiesce in the fact;
it is our karma. But, if we know the law, we shall at once begin to exercise
our faculties, such as they are, to the full : we shall exert ourselves to the
utmost, making up in time what we lack in power. Gradually the limits begin
to widen out; thought is exerting its creative power, and our faculties
improve under our strenuous cultivation. Accepting the limitation imposed
by our poor thinking in the past, we sedulously work at its extension by
better thinking now, and thus build up gradually an improved mental
equipment for use in the future. Or we may have [Page
9] been born with an
irritable temper; contrasting ourselves with a sweet-tempered neighbour,
we are keenly conscious of our inferiority; again we feel our karmic
limitation. But again we decline to sit down passively within it; we
determinedly think patience, until at last we have created it as a faculty,
and it becomes our habitual self-expression. Karma may hand on to us our
wages for the past in the form of limitations, but karma cannot keep us
within that area if we resolutely determine to break them down; within
those limits we must begin, but we can change them by the very force
which created them.
Desire, makes opportunity: such
is the second familiar law. We may have been born clever, but opportunity to
show our ability may be lacking; or we may make efforts which fail of success
through bad luck rather than
through defective workmanship. Clearly we are here hemmed in by a
limitation; karma is frustrating our endeavours. Here, again, we must meet
the limitation by resistant and persevering effort; we must back up our effort
by strong desire, and will the success which eludes our grasp. Gradually
we shall create opportunities and conquer our fate, and the limitations will
widen out and the obstacles disappear.
Action makes circumstances is
the third law. Most difficult of all are the limitations imposed by circumstances;
but these also may slowly be changed. The best way is to accept them cheerfully
and bravely, adapting ourselves within the limitations from which at first
we cannot escape, but keeping up against them a quiet steady pressure, which
slowly modifies them. Above all, we should try to increase the happiness of
those around us, thinking little of our own, for past selfishness has made
present misfortune, and the changing of the cause will bring about a changed [Page
10] effect. Within the present evil live sow the seed of future
good, and within the limitations made by the past we create freedom for the future.
We will next consider the bearing on this question of Bhîshrna's famous
phrase : Exertion is greater than Destiny.
Past exertions have made present destiny,
present destiny may be changed by fresh exertions. A study of the conditions
of such changing will complete our answer to the question: " How far does the
law of karma limit us ? "
We have seen that thought makes
character . We look at our own
character, and we see that we are deficient in truth, courage and
gentleness. How shall we supply this deficiency since it is our karma to be
untruthful, timid, and irritable. Thought is our tool for building up what we
lack. Every morning we sit down quietly for five minutes and we think about
truth. We say to ourselves: "Truth is Brahman; everything rests on truth. In
my real Self I am truth, for I am divine. My mind, my body, must express
my real Self. Today, I will think truthfully and accurately. I will say nothing
untrue. I will do nothing that makes a false impression. 0 Thou who art
Truth, and art my Self, shine out in me as Truth, and help me to be true."
Then, during the day, we try to be on our guard against thinking, speaking,
or acting untruthfully.
If we exaggerate anything, our morning thought will come up in the mind,
and we shall at once feel that we have been untruthful. In such a case, we
should deliberately and openly correct the false statement, though we shall
feel a little bit ashamed of ourselves in doing so, and this will make us more
careful next time. Thus we should go on, day after [Page 11] day, week after
week, until we have established a habit of truthfulness in thought, word and
deed, and we find, to our delight, that we are instinctively truthful, and the
deficiency has vanished, the virtue of truth is ours.
Then we begin, all over again,
to build up courage. We think about it in the morning, we practise it during
the day. When we feel timid we say to ourselves: "Brahman is fearless, my
Self is fearless; my mind and body must be brave." We read about brave people,
and dwell on the value of courage. If we see a child or an animal ill-used,
we do not slink out of the way, and say: "It is not my business." We go boldly
up, and speak gently but firmly to the cruel person, and try to protect the
helpless creature he is ill-using. After a time we find that timidity has disappeared,
and we have become courageous.
Then we begin again once more to
substitute gentleness for irritability; we think on gentleness every morning,
we practice it during the day. If a person speaks to us sharply, and our irritable
temper starts up all aflame, we force ourselves to be silent, not to answer
back; when we can do this without effort, then we begin to answer gently, to
soothe the ruffled feelings of the other, until at last we can bear any annoyance
without impatience or irritation.
Another very good way of thinking
in the morning, is to imagine ourselves perfectly truthful, or perfectly brave,
or perfectly gentle. The imagination creates, and we become the model of the
virtue which we have imagined ourselves to be. We think of ourselves as the very
perfect knight, truthful,
brave and gentle, and we become that which we think. By this use of the
law of thought we have created new karma, and it has become our karma
to be truthful, courageous, gentle. We have established this as our [Page
12]
settled character, and we shall be born with it when we return
to earth next time. Karma may compel us to bring with us into the world a nature
which is untruthful, timid and irritable, but it cannot compel us to keep that
nature. We can what we will, and karma will give a truthful, brave
and gentle nature, if we set going the causes which produce it; karma is merely
result, and as the one character is the inevitable result of certain causes,
so is the other character the equally inevitable result if we choose to set going
the appropriate causes.
We have seen that desire makes opportunity. We think carefully and quietly
of the things which will be really useful to us, choosing the more permanent
as against the less permanent, the intellectual and emotional as against the
physical. Then we deliberately set ourselves to desire the most desirable
objects. We desire them steadily, perseveringly, and we watch for the
opportunities which our desire is making for us, and seize them as they
present themselves. But let us remember that the law works unswervingly,
and that we shall inevitably find falling into our hands the opportunity we
have resolutely created, bringing with it the desired object. If ill-chosen, it
will bring disappointment not satisfaction, sorrow not joy. Nature pays over
results, indifferent to their nature, and it is for us to choose as we will.
Hence the warning : Take heed how ye pray.
We have seen also that action
makes circumstances, and that we lie in
beds of our own making. A careful consideration of the relation between
our character and our circumstances will teach us how best we may utilize
the environment from which we cannot escape. While we diligently try to
spread happiness round us, we should take advantage of the conditions to [Page
13] develop qualities we lack. From ill-health we may cull the
sweet flowers of cheerfulness and patience; from household cares we may learn
tenderness, and develop executive ability; from the drudgery of daily toil
we may learn endurance; from anxiety we may evolve fortitude and
serenity. The knower of karma turns everything to account and, like a
strong and skillful workman, he shapes his future. Karma conditions us, but
we are its creators, and in proportion to our knowledge is our control.
The little group of questions remaining
is really answered in essence by what has been said, but we may run over certain
additional details. " Are
we the servants of karma, or its masters ? Must we fold our hands meekly
before it, or struggle vigorously against it ? If today grows out of yesterday,
and yesterday out of the day before, and so on, backwards and backwards,
how can the bad man ever become good ? are we not really compelled by
an iron necessity ? "
The first question of this group
we may pass as already answered: we are partly servants, partly masters — servants
by what remains in us of ignorance, masters by all the powers we gain by knowledge.
The second question, however, raises an important point. Suppose we find ourselves
in the grip of an overwhelming force and any struggle against it is doomed
to failure, is there any use in struggling ? Every use, as a little thought
will show. Let us take a bad physical habit, brought over from the past —
drunkenness or sexual sensuality. The man who does not understand
karma, says despairingly: "I cannot help it," and he yields without a
struggle, and thus weaves another strand into the rope of vice that binds
him, making it stronger than before. The man who understands karma says: "It
may be that [Page
14] I cannot help it, but I am going to fight against it for
as long as I can, even if I have to succumb in the end." He makes a gallant
fight against his enemy; beaten at last by the overwhelming force of his
past, he sinks again into the vice; but his noble struggle has broken many
strands of that strong rope of evil karma, and when again his foe assails
him, the rope will bind him less securely, and he will be able to make a
better fight, until — even though it be after many struggles and many
defeats — the rope will snap, his limbs will be free, and he will slay
his enslaver. When a man has created a vice by evil desire, evil thought, and
evil act, he, its creator, can also be its destroyer, by good desire, good
thought, and good act. Thread by thread the rope of karma is twisted;
thread by thread the rope of karma may be untwisted; none but man
himself creates his destiny, none else compels . Take courage, then,
all ye who find your present tied and bound by your past; fear not, be of good
courage, exert to the very utmost all the strength you have; and you shall
inevitably free yourselves, and stand erect as masters where now you
crawl as slaves. For law is law, and by the same law by which we bound
ourselves shall we now assuredly free ourselves; the law remains the
same, and that which in ignorance we wrought by it shall we now through
knowledge undo by it, and none can say us nay.
The third question of this group
is one which often seems to disturb the mind of the student; must not a vicious
man, who continues to live viciously, come back in another life yet more vicious,
and so on and on ? There are certain counteracting forces which have to be
considered. In the first place unhappiness follows on vice, to some extent
in this world, to a [Page
15] great extent in the next. The drunkard, the sensualist,
develop a bloated, coarsened body, with shaken nerves and ruined health. How
often may such an one be heard to regret his folly, and to declare that if he
could live his life over again, he would live it differently. Experience
teaches, in spite of our wilfulness, and the disregarded law bruises
the evildoer. The suffering grows keener on the other side of death,
as the scorpion of evil desire stings its nurturer, and the man is
forced to recognize that he is living in a world of law, where he may dash
himself against the barriers but cannot break them. When he passes
from the intermediate world into the heavenly, every seed of good he
has within him grows into flower; all that there is of pure and loving in him
develops and increases: when the heaven-life is over, the good side of him
is strengthened, his faculties are improved. On his return to earth he also
brings with him the result of his sad experience as a shrinking from the
evil in which before he delighted. The memory of suffering endured,
burnt into the soul, has become a cause for avoidance of the evil which
induced it, and thus, by the action of law, is a change brought about
in the attitude of the man towards that particular vice. Again, humanity
as a whole is slowly carried forward in the great current of evolution, and
the evil-doer is carried with it, though he may retard his own progress, almost
to the point of stationariness; but this wilful setting of a part
against the whole, the insolent setting of the individual will against the
universal, causes a friction that becomes intolerably painful, and at last
ceases by the strong compulsion of this pain. Or again, the evil-doer
reads a book, hears a discourse, meets a person, that arouses
in him a recognition of the folly of the course he is pursuing,
opens his eyes to the suffering he is creating for himself, [Page
16] and
stirs his intelligence and his will into an effort to change. Or again, the
disapproval of those he loves and honors, the wish to gain affection instead
of incurring dislike, these act upon him as a new cause to cease from evil
and to do good. Or yet again, the mere fact of his own growth, the
unfolding, however slow, of the divine Spirit which is his deepest Self,
inevitably quickens the inborn tendency to good and causes a struggle
against evil. Man's tendency is upwards not downwards, and only by doing
violence to his own nature can a man grovel in a dust-heap instead of
walking with face uplifted to the sun.
"Are we not really
compelled by an iron necessity?" There is but one
necessity which binds the universe — the loving Will of its Emanator to
raise it to perfection and bliss. As God's very Life is the life in His worlds,
that Life lifts them ever to higher and fuller expression of Beauty, of Good,
of Happiness. Evolution is the essence of that Will, and sooner or later, as
the magnetized needle sets itself to the Pole, so must man's will set itself
to the divine, whereof it is indeed a part. Man is at strife with himself, and
hence the turmoil and the pain. When he sees his lasting happiness, the
substance instead of the shadow, then will he be at one with himself and
one with Divinity, and enter into the Peace,
|