Theosophy - Karma - by Annie Besant- Theosophical Manual No.4 - Sixth Edition,1959
Theosophical
Manual No 4
KARMA
by Annie
Besant
First Edition in 1895; Others in 1897, 1905, London, 1947 and this one the Sixth
Edition,
1959;
The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai, India
PREFACE
FEW
words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is
the fourth of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple
exposition of theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature
is
at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader,
and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is
a
very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps
among
those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings,
there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its
philosophy,
its
science, and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's
zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these manuals are not written for the eager
student,
whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and
women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of [Page vi] the great truths that render life easier to bear
and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder
Brothers of our race, they can have
no
other object than to serve our fellow-men.
KARMA
EVERY
thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world, and becomes
an active entity by associating itself, coalescing we might term it,
with an elemental — that is to say, with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the
kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence — a creature of the mind's
begetting — for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original intensity
of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus a good thought is perpetuated
as an active, beneficent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon. And so man
is
continually peopling his current in space with a world of his own, crowded
with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and passions; a current
which re-acts
upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it,
in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls it his “Skandha”; the Hindu
gives it the name of “Karma”. The Adept evolves these shapes consciously; other
men throw them off unconsciously. [The Occult World, pages 89- 90, Fourth
Edition] [Page 2]
No more graphic picture of the essential nature of Karma has ever been given
than in these words, taken from one of the early letters of Master K. H. If these
are clearly understood, with all their implications, the perplexities which surround
the subject will for the most part disappear, and the main principle underlying
karmic action will be grasped. They will therefore be taken as indicating the best
line of study, and we shall begin by considering the creative powers of man. All
we need as preface is a clear conception of the invariability of law, and of the
great planes in Nature.
1.
THE INVARIABILITY OF LAW
That
we live in a realm of law, that we are surrounded by laws that we cannot break,
this is a truism. Yet when the fact is recognized in a real and vital way,
and when it is seen to be a fact in the mental and moral world as much as in the
physical, a certain sense of helplessness is apt to overpower us, as though we
felt ourselves in the grip of some mighty Power, that, seizing us, whirls us away
whither it will. The very reverse of this is in reality the case, for the mighty
Power, when it is understood, will obediently carry us whither we will: all forces in Nature
can be used in proportion as they are understood [Page 3] — “Nature is conquered by obedience” — and
her resistless energies are at our bidding as soon as we, by knowledge,
work with them and not against them. We
can choose out of her boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in
momentum, in direction, and so on, and their very invariability becomes the
guarantee of our success.
On
the invariability of law depends the security of scientific experiment,
and all power of planning a result and of predicting the future. On this the
chemist rests,
sure that Nature will ever respond in the same way, if he be precise in putting
his questions. A variation in his results is taken by him as implying a
change
in his
procedure, not a change in Nature. And so with all human action; the more it
is based on knowledge, the more secure is it in its forecastings, for all “accident” is
the result of ignorance, and is due to the working of laws whose presence was
unknown or overlooked. In the mental and moral worlds, as much as in the
physical, results can be foreseen, planned for, calculated on. Nature never
betrays us; we are betrayed by our own blindness. In all worlds increasing
knowledge means increasing power, and omniscience and omnipotence are one.
That
law should be as invariable in the mental and moral worlds as in the physical
is to be expected, since [Page 4]
the universe is the emanation of the ONE, and what we call Law is but the
expression of the Divine Nature, As there is one Life emanating all, so there is
one Law sustaining all; the worlds rest on this rock of the Divine Nature as on a
secure, immutable foundation.
2 . THE PLANES OF NATURE
To
study the workings of Karma on the line suggested by the Master, we must gain
a clear conception of the three lower planes, or regions, of the universe,
and
of the Principles [See, for these MANUAL 1] related to them. The names given
to them indicate the state of the consciousness working on them. In this a
diagram may help us, showing the planes with the Principles related to them, and
the vehicles in which a conscious entity may visit them. In practical Occultism
the student learns to visit these planes, and by his own investigations to
transform
theory into knowledge. The lowest vehicle, the Gross Body, serves the
consciousness for its work on the physical plane, and in this the consciousness
is limited within the capacities of the brain. The term Subtle Body covers
a variety
of astral bodies, respectively suitable to the varying conditions of the very
complicated region indicated by the name psychic plane. On the [Page 5] devachanic
plane there are two well-defined levels, the Form Level and the Formless
Level; on the lower, consciousness uses an artificial body, the Mãyãvi
Rûpa, but the term Mind Body seems suitable as indicating that the matter of
which it is composed belongs to the plane of Manas. On the formless level
the Causal Body must be used. Of the Buddhic plane it is needless to speak.
Now
the matter on these planes is not the same, and speaking generally, the
matter of each plane is denser than that of the one above it. This is according
to the analogy of Nature, for evolution in its downward course is from rare
to dense, from subtle to gross. Further, vast hierarchies inhabit these planes,
ranging from the lofty Intelligences of the spiritual region to the lowest sub-conscious
Elementals
of the
physical world. On every plane Spirit and Matter are
conjoined in every particle — every particle having Matter as its body, Spirit as its
life — and all independent aggregations of particles, all separated forms of every
kind, of every type, are ensouled by these living beings, varying in their
grades according to the grade of the form. No form exists which is not thus
ensouled,
but the informing entity may be the loftiest Intelligence, the lowest Elemental,
or any
of the countless hosts that range between. The entities [Page 6]
|
|
|
Vehicle |
|
|
ATMA |
|
Sushuptic |
|
Buddhi |
Spiritual Body |
Devachanic |
|
Manas |
1-Mind Body
2-Causal Body |
Psychic or Astral |
Higher Psychic |
Kama-Manas |
Subtle Body |
Lower Psychic |
Kama |
Physical |
|
Linga-Sharira |
1-Etheric Double |
|
Sthula-Sharira |
2-Gross Body |
[Page
7]
with
which we shall presently be concerned are chiefly those of the psychic plane,
for these give to man his body of desire (Kãma Rûpa) — his body of
sensation, as it is often called — are indeed built into its astral matrix and vivify his
astral senses. They are, to use the technical name, the Form Elementals
(Rûpa Devatãs) of the animal world, and are the agents of the changes which
transmute vibrations into sensations.
The
most salient characteristic of the kãmic Elementals is sensation, the power
of not only answering to vibrations but of feeling them; and the psychic
plane is crowded with these entities, of varying degrees of consciousness,
who receive
impacts of every kind and combine them into sensations. Any being who
possesses, then, a body into which these Elementals are built, is capable of
feeling, and man feels through such a body. A man is not conscious in the
particles of his body or even in its cells; they have a consciousness of their
own,
and by this carry on the various processes of his vegetative life; but the man
whose body they form does not share their consciousness, does not consciously
help or hinder them as they select, assimilate, secrete, build up, and could
not at
any moment so put his consciousness into rapport with the consciousness of a
cell in his heart as to say exactly [Page 8]
what
it was doing. His consciousness functions normally on the psychic plane;
and even in the higher psychic regions, where mind is working, it is mind
intermingled with Kãma, pure mind not functioning on this astral plane.
The astral plane is thronged with Elementals similar to those which enter into the
desire-body of man, and which also form the simpler desire-body of the lower
animal. By this department of his nature man comes into immediate relations with
these Elementals, and by them he forms links with all the objects around him
that are either attractive or repulsive to him. By his Will, by his emotions,
by his
desires, he influences these countless beings, which sensitively respond to all
the thrills of feeling that he sends out in every direction. His own desire-body
acts as the apparatus, and just as it combines the vibrations that come from
without into feelings, so does it dissociate the feelings that arise within into
vibrations.
3. THE GENERATION OF THOUGHT-FORMS
We,
are now in a position to more clearly understand the Master's words. The mind,
working in its own region, in the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, [Page 9]
generates
images, thought-forms. Imagination has very accurately been called the creative faculty
of the mind, and it is so in a more literal sense than many
may suppose who use the phrase. This image-making capacity is the
characteristic power of the mind, and a word is only a clumsy attempt to partially
represent a mental picture. An idea, a mental image, is a complicated thing, and
needs perhaps a whole sentence to describe it accurately, so a salient incident
in it is seized, and the word naming this incident imperfectly represents the whole;
we say“ triangle”, and the word calls up in the hearer's mind a picture, which
would need a long description if fully conveyed in words; we do our best thinking
in symbols, and then laboriously and imperfectly summarize our symbols into
words. In regions where mind speaks to mind there is perfect expression, far
beyond anything words may convey; even in thought-transference of a limited
kind it is not words that are sent, but ideas. A speaker puts into words such part
of his mental pictures as he can, and these words call up in the hearer's mind
pictures corresponding to those in the mind of the speaker; the mind deals with
the pictures, the images, not with the words, and half the controversies and
misunderstandings that arise come about because [Page 10]
people
attach different images to the same words, or use different words to represent the
same images.
A
thought-form, then, is a mental image, created — or moulded — by the mind out
of the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, in which, as above said, it works.
This form, composed of the rapidly vibrating atoms of the matter of that region,
set up vibrations all around it; these vibrations will give rise to sensations
of sound and colour in any entities adapted to translate them thus, and as
the
thought-form passes-outward — or sinks downward, whichever expression may
be preferred to express the transition — into the denser matter of the lower
psychic regions, these vibrations thrill out as a singing-colour in every direction,
and call to the thought-form whence they proceed the Elementals belonging to
that colour.
All
Elementals, like all things else in the universe belong to one or other of
the seven primary Rays, the seven primeval Sons of Light. The white light
breaks forth from the Third LOGOS, the manifested Divine Mind, in the seven Rays,
the “Seven Spirits, that are before the Throne”, and each of these Rays has its
seven sub-rays, and so onwards in sequential sub-divisions. Hence, amid the
endless differentiations that make up a universe, there are Elementals [Page 11] belonging
to the various, sub-divisions, and they are communicated with in a colour-language,
grounded on the colour to which they belong. This is why the
real knowledge of sounds and colours and numbers — number underlying both
sound and colour — has ever been so carefully guarded, for the will speaks to the
Elementals by these, and knowledge gives power to control.
Master K. H. speaks very plainly on this colour language. He says:
How
could you make yourself understood, command in fact, those semi-intelligent
Forces,
whose means of communicating with us are not through spoken words, but through
sounds and colours, in correlations between the
vibrations of the two? For sound, light and colour are the main factors in forming
those grades of intelligences, those beings of whose very existence you have no
conception, nor are you allowed to believe in them — Atheists and Christians,
Materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing forward their respective arguments
against such a belief — Science objecting stronger than either of these to such a
degrading superstition. [The Occult World, p.100]
Students
of the past may remember obscure allusions now and again made to a language
of colours; they may recall the fact that in ancient Egypt sacred [Page 12] manuscripts were written in colours, and that mistakes made in the copying were
punished with death. But I must not run down this fascinating by-way. We are
only concerned with the fact that Elementals are addressed by colours, and that
colour-words are as intelligible to them as spoken words are to men.
The
hue of the singing-colour depends on the nature of the motive inspiring the
generator of the thought-form. If the motive be pure, loving, beneficent in its
character, the colour produced will summon to the thought-form an Elemental,
which will take on the characteristics impressed on the form by the motive, and
act along the line thus traced; this Elemental enters into the thought-form,
playing to it the part of a Soul, and thus an independent entity is made in
the astral
world, an entity of a beneficent character. If the motive, on the other hand,
be impure,
revengeful, maleficent in its character, the colour produced will summon to the
thought-form an Elemental which will equally take on the characteristics
impressed on the form by the motive and act along the line thus traced; in this
case also the Elemental enters into the thought-form, playing to it the part
of a
Soul, and thus making an independent entity in the astral world, an
entity of a maleficent character. For example, an angry thought will cause
a flash of red, the thought-form vibrating so as to produce red; that flash
of red is a
summons to the Elementals and they sweep in the direction of the summoner,
and one of them enters into the thought-form, which gives it an independent
activity of a destructive, disintegrating type. Men are continually talking in
this colour-language quite unconsciously, and thus calling round them these
swarms
of Elementals, who take up their abodes in the various thought-forms provided;
thus it is that a man peoples his current in space with a world of his own,
crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and, passions.
Angels and demons of our own creating throng round us on every side, makers
of weal and woe to others, bringers of weal and woe to ourselves — verily, a
karmic host.
Clairvoyants
can see flashes of colour, constantly changing, in the aura that surrounds
every person: each thought, each feeling, thus translating itself in the
astral world, visible to the astral sight. Persons somewhat more developed than
the ordinary clairvoyant can also see the thought-forms, and can see the effects
produced by the flashes of colour among the hordes of Elemental [Page 14]
4.
ACTIVITY OF THOUGHT-FORMS
The life-period of these ennobled thought-forms depends first on their initial
intensity, on the energy bestowed upon them by their human progenitor; and
secondly on the nutriment supplied to them after their generation, by the
repetition of the thought either by him or by others. Their life may be continually
reinforced by this repetition, and a thought which is brooded over, which forms
the subject of repeated meditation, acquires great stability of form on the psychic
plane. So again thought-forms of a similar character are attracted to each other
and mutually strengthen each other, making a form of great energy and intensity,
active in this astral world.
Thought-forms
are connected with their progenitor by what — for want of a better
phrase — we must call a magnetic tie; they re-act upon him, producing an
impression which leads to their reproduction, and in the case mentioned above,
where a thought-form is reinforced by repetition, a very definite habit of
thought may be set up, a mould may be formed into which thought will readily
flow — helpful if it be of a very lofty character, as a noble ideal, but for the most
part cramping and a hindrance to mental growth. [Page 15]
We
may pause for a moment on this formation of habit, as it shows in miniature,
in a very helpful way, the working of Karma. Let us suppose we could take ready-made
a mind, with no past activity behind it — an impossible thing, of course, but
the supposition will bring out the special point needed. Such a mind might
be imagined to work with perfect freedom and spontaneity, and to produce
a
thought-form; it proceeds to repeat this many times, until a habit of thought
is made, a definite habit, so that the mind will unconsciously slip into
that thought,
its energies will flow into it without any consciously selective action of
the will. Let us further suppose that the mind comes to disapprove this
habit
of thought, and
finds it a clog on its progress; originally due to the spontaneous action of
the mind, and facilitating the outpouring of mental energy by providing
for it a ready-made
channel, it has now become a limitation; but if it is to be gotten rid
of, it can only be by the renewed spontaneous action of the mind, directed
to
the exhaustion and final destruction of this living fetter. Here we have
a little ideal
karmic cycle, rapidly run through; the free mind makes a habit, and is then
obliged to work within that limitation: but it retains its freedom within the
limitation and can work against it [Page 16] from
within till it wears it out. Of course, we never find ourselves initially
free, for we come into the world encumbered with these fetters of our own past
making;
but the process as regards each separate fetter runs the above round — the mind
forges it, wears it, and while wearing it can file it through.
Thought-forms may also be directed by their progenitor towards particular
persons, who may be helped or injured by them, according to the nature of the
ensouling Elemental; it is no mere poetic fancy that good wishes, prayer, and
loving thoughts are of value to those to whom they are sent; they form a
protective host encircling the beloved, and ward off many an evil influence and
danger.
Not
only does a man generate and send forth his own thought-forms, but he also
serves as a magnet to draw towards himself the thought-forms of others from
the
astral plane around him, of the classes to which his own ennobled thought-forms
belong. He may thus attract to himself large reinforcements of energy from
outside, and it lies within himself whether these forces that he draws into his
own being from the external world shall be of a good or of an evil kind.
If a man's
thoughts are pure and noble, he will attract around him hosts of beneficent
entities, [Page 17] and
may sometimes wonder whence comes to him the power for achievement that
seems — and truly seems — to be so much beyond his own. Similarly a man of
foul and base thoughts attracts to himself hosts of maleficent entities, and
by this added energy for evil commits crimes that astonish him in the retrospect. “Some
devil must have tempted me”, he will cry; and truly these demoniac forces, called
to him by his own evil, add strength to it from without. The Elemental ensouling
thought-forms, whether these be good or bad, link themselves to the Elemental
in the man's desire-body and to those ensouling his own thought-form, and thus
work in him, though coming from without. But for this they must find entities
of
their own kind with which to link themselves, else can they exercise no power.
And further, Elementals in an opposite kind of thought-form will repel them,
and the good man will drive back by his very atmosphere, his aura, all that
is foul
and cruel. It surrounds him as a protective wall and keeps evil away from him.
There
is another form of elemental activity, that brings about widespread results,
and cannot therefore be excluded from this preliminary survey of the forces that
go to make up Karma. Like those just dealt with, [Page 18] this is included in the statement that these thought-forms people the current
which re-acts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact
with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. To some extent it must affect almost
everyone, though the more sensitive the organization the greater the effect.
Elementals have a tendency to be attracted towards others of a similar
kind — aggregating together in classes, being, in a sense, gregarious on their own
account — and when a man sends out a thought-form it not only keeps up a
magnetic link with him, but is drawn towards other thought-forms of a similar
type, and these congregating together on the astral plane form a good or evil
force, as the case may be, embodied in a kind of collective entity. To these
aggregations of similar thought-forms are due the characteristics, often strongly
marked, of family, local and national opinion; they form a kind of astral
atmosphere through which everything is seen, and which colours that to which
the gaze is directed, and they re-act on the desire bodies of the persons included
in the group concerned, setting up in them responsive vibrations. Such family,
local or national karmic surroundings largely modify the individual's activity,
and limit to a very great extent his power of expressing the capacities he
may possess. Suppose an [Page 19] Idea should be presented to him, he can only see it through this atmosphere that
surrounds him, which must colour it and may seriously distort. Here, then, are
karmic limitations of a far-reaching kind, that will need further consideration.
The
influence of these congregated Elementals is not confined to that which
they exercise over men through their desire-bodies. When this collective entity,
as
I have called it, is made up of thought-forms of a destructive type, the
Elementals ensouling these act as a disruptive energy and they often work much
havoc on
the physical plane. A vortex of disintegrating energies, they are the fruitful
sources of “accidents”, of natural convulsions, of storms, cyclones, hurricanes,
earthquakes, floods. These karmic results will also need some further
consideration.
5. THE MAKING OF KARMA IN PRINCIPLE
Having
thus realized the relation between man and the elemental kingdom, and he
moulding energies of the mind — verily, creative energies, in that they call into
being these living forms that have been described — we are in a position to at
least partially understand something of the generation and working-out of Karma
during a single life-period. A “ life-period”, [Page 20] I
say, rather than a “life”, because a life means too little if it be used
in the ordinary sense of a single incarnation, and it means too much if it be
used
for the whole life, made up of many stages in the physical body, and of
many stages
without it. By life-period I mean a little cycle of human existence, with its
physical, astral and devachanic experiences, including its return to the
threshold of the
physical — the four distinct stages through which the Soul passes, in order to
complete its cycle. These stages are retrodden over and over again during the
journey of the Eternal Pilgrim through our present humanity, and however much
the experiences in each such period may vary, both as to quantity and quality,
the period will include these four stages for the average human being, and
none others.
It is important to realize that the residence outside the physical body is far more
prolonged than the residence in it; and the workings of karmic law will be but
poorly understood unless the activity of the Soul in the non-physical condition be
studied. Let us recall the words of a Master, pointing out that the life out of the
body is the real one.
The
Vedãntins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial
and the spiritual, point to the latter as [Page 21] an
undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability
and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the
spiritual
spheres must be thought an actuality, because it is there that lives our endless,
never-changing, immortal I, the Sûtrãtmã ... This is why we call the posthumous
life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the personality itself,
only imaginary.
[Lucifer October 1892, art. “Life and Death”.]
During
earth-life, the activity of the Soul is most directly manifested in the creation
of the thought-forms already described. But in order to follow out with
any approach to exactitude the workings of Karma, we must now analyse further
the term “thought-form”, and add some considerations necessarily omitted in the
general conception first presented. The Soul, working as mind, creates a Mental
Image the primary “thought-form” [See Chapter: The Generation of Thought Forms]; let us take the term
Mental Image to mean exclusively this immediate creation of the mind, and henceforth
restrict this term to this initial
stage of what is generally and broadly spoken of as a thought-form. This Mental
Image remains attached to its creator, part of the content of his consciousness:
it is a living, vibrating form of subtle matter, the Word thought but not yet [Page 22] spoken,
conceived but not yet made flesh. Let the reader concentrate his mind for a
few moments on this Mental Image, and obtain a distinct notion of it,
isolated from all else, apart from all the results it is going to produce on other
planes than its own, It forms, as just said, part of the content of the
consciousness of its creator, part of his inalienable property; it cannot be
separated from him; he carries it with him during his earthly life, carries it
with him through the gateway of death, carries it with him in the regions beyond
death; and if, during his upward travelling through those regions, he himself
passes into air too rarefied for it to endure, he leaves behind the denser matter
built into it, carrying on the mental matrix, the essential form; on his return
to the
grosser region the matter of that plane is again built into the mental matrix,
and the appropriate denser form is reproduced. This Mental Image may remain
sleeping, as it were, for long periods, but it may be re-awakened and revivified; every fresh impulse — from its creator, from its progeny (dealt with below), from
entities of the same type as its progeny — increases its life-energy, and modifies
its form.
It
evolves, as we shall see, according to definite laws, and the aggregation of
these Mental Images [Page 23] makes
the character; the outer mirrors the inner, and as cells aggregate into the
tissues of the body and are often much modified in the process, so do these
Mental Images aggregate into the characteristics of the mind, and often undergo
much modification. The study of the working out of Karma will throw much light
on these changes. Many materials may enter into the making of these Mental
Images by the creative powers of the Soul; it may be stimulated into activity by
desire (Kãma), and may shape the image according to the prompting of passion
or of appetite; it may be Self-motived to a noble Ideal, and mould the Image
accordingly; it may be led by purely intellectual concepts, and form the Image
thereafter. But lofty or base, intellectual or passional, serviceable or mischievous,
divine or bestial, it is always in man a Mental Image, the product of the creative
Soul, and on its existence individual Karma depends. Without this Mental Image
there can be no individual Karma linking life-period to life-period: the mãnasic
quality must be present to afford the permanent element in which individual
Karma can inhere. The non-presence of Manas in the mineral, vegetable, and
animal kingdoms has as its corollary the non-generation of individual Karma,
stretching through death to rebirth. [Page 24]
Let us now consider the primary thought-form in relation to the secondary
thought-form, the thought-form pure and simple in relation to the ensouled
thought-form, the Mental Image in relation to the Astro-mental Image, or the
thought-form in the lower astral plane. How is this produced and what is it ? To
use the symbol employed above, it is produced by the Word-thought becoming
the Word-outspoken; the Soul breathes out the thought, and the sound makes
form in astral matter; as the Ideas in the Universal Mind become the manifested
universe when they are outbreathed, so do these Mental Images in the human
mind, when outbreathed, become the manifested universe of their creator. He
peoples his current in space with a world of his own. The vibrations of the Mental
Image set up similar vibrations in the denser astral matter, and these cause the
secondary thought-form, what I have called the Astro-mental Image; the Mental
Image itself remains, as has been already said, in the consciousness of its
creator, but its vibrations passing outside that consciousness reproduce its form
in the denser matter of the lower astral plane. This is the form that affords the
casing for a portion of elemental energy, specializing it for the time that the
form persists, since the mãnasic element in the [Page 25] form gives a touch of individuality to that which ensouls it. [How marvellous and
how illuminating are the correspondences in Nature!] This is the active entity,
spoken of in the Master's description, and it is this Astro-mental Image that
ranges over the astral plane, keeping up with its progenitor [See Chapter: “The Generation of Thought Forms”, and also
diagram page 6] the magnetic tie
spoken of, re-acting on its parent, the Mental Image, and acting also on others.
The life-period of an Astro-mental Image may be long or short, according to
circumstances, and its perishing does not affect the persistence of its parent;
any fresh impulse given to the latter will cause it to generate afresh its astral
counterpart as each repetition of a word produces a new form.
The
vibrations of the Mental Image do not only pass downwards to the lower astral
plane, but they pass upwards also into the spiritual plane above it. [These words downwards and upwards are very misleading; the planes of course
interpenetrate each other] And as the vibrations cause a denser form on the
lower plane, so do they generate a far subtler form — dare
I call it form ? it is no form to us — on the higher, in the ãkãsha, the world-stuff emanated from the
LOGOS Itself. The ãkãsha is the store-house of all forms, the treasure-house [Page 26] whereinto
are poured — from the infinite wealth of the Universal Mind — the rich
stores of all the Ideas that are to be bodied forth in a given Cosmos; thereinto
also enter the vibrations from the Cosmos — from all the thoughts of all
Intelligences, from all the desires of all kãmic entities, from all the actions
performed on every plane by all forms. All these make their respective
impressions, the to us formless, but to lofty spiritual Intelligences the formed,
images of all happenings, and these Âkãshic Images — as we will henceforth call
them — abide for evermore, and are the true Karmic Records, the Book of the
Lipika, [The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Pages 157-159] that may be read by any who possess
the “opened eye of Dangma”, [Ibid, stanza 1, of the Book of Dzyan, and see
Conclusion] It is the reflection of these Âkãshic Images that may be thrown upon
the screen of astral matter by the action of the trained attention — as a picture
may be thrown on a screen from a slide in a magic-lantern — so that a scene from
the past may be reproduced in all its living reality, correct in every detail of
its far-off happening; for in the Âkãshic Records it exists, imprinted there once for all,
and a fleeting living picture of any page of these Records can be made at
pleasure, dramatized on the astral [Page 27] plane,
and lived in by the trained Seer. If this imperfect description be followed
by the reader, he will be able to form for himself some faint idea of Karma
in its
aspect as Cause. In the Âkãsha will be pictured the Mental Image created by a
Soul, inseparable from it; then the Astro-mental Image produced by it, the active
ensouled creature, ranging the astral plane and producing innumerable effects,
all accurately pictured in connection with it, and, therefore, traceable to it
and through it to its parent, each such thread — spun as it were out of its own
substance by the Astro-mental Image, as a spider spins its web — being
recognizable by its own shade of colour; and however many such threads may
be woven into an effect, each thread is distinguishable and is traceable to its
original forth-giver, the Soul that generated the Mental Image. Thus, for our
clumsy earth-bound intelligences, in miserably inadequate language, we may
figure forth the way in which individual responsibility is seen at a glance by
the great Lords of Karma, the administrators of karmic Law; the full responsibility
of
the Soul for the Mental Image it creates, and the partial responsibility for its
far-reaching effects, greater or less as each effect has other karmic threads entering
into its causation. Thus also may we understand why [Page 28]
motive
plays a part so predominant in the working out of Karma, and why actions are so relatively
subordinate in their generative energy; why Karma works out on
each plane according to its constituents, and yet links the planes together by
the
continuity of its thread.
When
the illuminating concepts of the Wisdom Religion shed their flood of light
over the world, dispersing its obscurity and revealing the absolute Justice
which
is working under all the apparent incongruities, inequalities and accidents of
life, is it any wonder that our hearts should go out in gratitude unspeakable
to the
Great Ones — blessed be They! — who hold up the Torch of Truth in the murky
darkness, and free us from the tension that was straining us to breaking-point,
the helpless agony of witnessing wrongs that seemed irremediable, the
hopelessness of Justice, the despair of Love?
Ye are not bound! the Soul of Things is sweet,
The Heart of Being is celestial rest;
Stronger than woe is will: that which was Good
Doth
pass to Better — Best.
........................................
Such is the Law which moves to righteousness,
Which none at last can turn aside or stay;
The heart of it is Love, the end of it
Is Peace and Consummation sweet. Obey. [Page 29]
We may perhaps gain in clearness if we tabulate the threefold results of the
activity of the Soul that go to the making up of Karma as Cause, regarded in
principle rather than in detail. Thus we have during a life-period:
Man creates on |
Plane |
Material |
Result |
Spiritual |
Akâsha |
Akâshic Images forming Karmic Records |
Psychic |
Higher Astral |
Mental Images, remaining in creator's consciousness |
Lower Astral |
Astro-mental Images, active entities on psychic plane |
The results of these will be tendencies, capacities, activities, opportunities,
environment, etc., chiefly in future life-periods, worked out in accordance with
definite laws.
6. THE MAKING OF KARMA IN DETAIL
The
Soul in Man, the Ego, the Maker of Karma, must be recognized by the student
as a growing entity, a living individual, who increases in wisdom and in [Page 30] mental
stature as he treads the path of his aeonian evolution; and the fundamental
identity of the Higher and Lower Manas must be constantly kept in
mind. For convenience sake we distinguish between them, but the difference is
a difference of functioning activity and not of nature: the Higher Manas
is Manas
working on the spiritual plane, in possession of its full consciousness of its
own past; the Lower Manas is Manas working on the psychic or astral plane,
veiled in
astral matter, vehicled in Kãma, and with all its activities intermingled with and
coloured by the desire-nature it is to a great extent blinded by the astral matter
that veils it, and is in possession only of a portion of the total mãnasic
consciousness, this portion consisting — for the vast majority — of a limited
selection from the more striking experiences of the one incarnation then in
progress. For the practical purposes of life as seen, by most people, the
Lower Manas is the “I” and is what we term the Personal-Ego; the voice of
conscience, vaguely and confusedly regarded as supernatural, as the voice of
God, is for them the only manifestation of the Higher Manas on the psychic
plane, and they quite rightly regard it as authoritative, however
mistaken they may be as to its nature. But the student must realize that the
Lower
Manas is one with [Page 31] the Higher, as the ray is one with its sun; the Sun-Manas shines ever in the
heaven of the spiritual plane, the Ray-Manas penetrates the psychic plane; but
if they be regarded as two, otherwise than for convenience in distinguishing their
functioning, hopeless confusion will arise.
The
Ego then is a growing entity, an increasing quantity. The ray sent down is like
a hand plunged into water to seize some object and then withdrawn, holding
the object in its grasp. The increase in the Ego depends on the value of the
objects gathered by its outstretched hand, and the importance of all its work
when the ray is withdrawn is limited and conditioned by the experiences gathered
while that ray has been functioning on the psychic plane. It is as though a
labourer went out into a field, toiling in rain and in sunshine, in cold and
in heat, returning home at night; but the labourer is also the proprietor, and
all the results
of his labour fill his own granaries and enrich his own store. Each Personal-Ego
is the immediately effective part of the continuing or Individual-Ego, representing
it in the lower world, and necessary more or less developed according to the
stage at which the Ego, as a totality or an Individual, has arrived. If this
be
clearly
understood the sense of injustice to the [Page 32] Personal-Ego
in its succession to its karmic inheritance — often felt as a difficulty
by the young student of Theosophy — will disappear; for it will be realized that the
Ego that made the Karma reaps the Karma, the labourer that sowed the seed
gathers in the harvest, though the clothes in which he worked as sower may
have worn out during the interval between the sowing and the reaping; the Ego's
astral garments have also fallen to pieces between seed-time and harvest, and
he reaps in a new suit of clothes; but it is “he” who sowed and who reaps, and if
he sowed but little seed or seed badly chosen, it is he who will find but a poor
harvest when as reaper he goeth forth.
In
the early stages of the Ego's growth his progress will be extremely slow, [See
Birth and Evolution of the Soul ] for he will be led hither and thither by desire,
following attractions on the physical plane; the Mental Images he generates will
be mostly of the passional class, and hence the Astro-mental Images will be
violent and short-lived rather than strong and far-reaching. According as mãnasic
elements enter into the composition of the Mental Image will be the endurance
of the Astro-mental. Steady, sustained thought will form clearly defined Mental
Images, and correspondingly strong and enduring [Page 33] Astro-mental Images, and there will be a distinct purpose in the life, a clearly
recognized Ideal to which the mind is constantly recurring and on which it
continually dwells: this Mental Image will become a dominating influence in the
mental life, and the energies of the Soul will be largely directed by it.
Let
us now study the making of Karma by way of the Mental Image. During a man's
life he forms an innumerable assemblage of Mental Images; some are
strong, clear, continually reinforced by repeated mental impulses; others are
weak, vague, just formed and then as it were forsaken by the mind; at death the
Soul finds itself possessed of myriads of these Mental Images, and they vary in
character as well as in strength and definiteness. Some are of spiritual
aspirations, longings to be of service, gropings after knowledge, vows of self-dedication
to the Higher Life; some are purely intellectual, clear gems of thought, receptacles
of the results of deep study; some are emotional and passional,
breathing love, compassion, tenderness, devotion, anger, ambition, pride, greed;
some are from bodily appetites, stimulated by uncurbed desire, and represent
thoughts of gluttony, drunkenness, sensuality. Each Soul has its own
consciousness, crowded with these Mental Images, [Page 34] the outcome of its mental life; not one thought, however fleeting, but is there
represented; the Astro-mental Images may in many cases long have perished,
may have had strength enough to endure but for a few hours, but the Mental
Images remain among the possessions of the Soul, not one is lacking. All these
Mental Images the Soul carries away with it, when it passes through death into
the astral world.
The
Kãma Loka, or Place of Desire, is divided into many strata as it were, and
the Soul just after death is encumbered with its complete body of desire, or Kãma
Rûpa, and all the Mental Images formed by Kãma-Manas that are of a gross and
animal nature are powerful on the lowest levels of this astral world. A poorly
developed Soul will dwell on these Images and act them out, thus preparing itself
to repeat them again physically in its next life; a man who has dwelt on sensual
thoughts and made such Mental Images will not only be drawn to earth-scenes
connected with sensual gratifications, but will constantly be repeating them as
actions in his mind, and so setting up in his nature stronger and stronger
impulses towards the future commission of similar offences. So with other Mental
Images formed from material supplied by the desire-nature, that belong to other
levels in Kãma [Page 35] Loka.
As the Soul rises from the lower levels to the higher, the Mental Images
built from the materials of the lower levels lose these elements, thus becoming
latent in consciousness, or what H. P. Blavatsky used to call “privations of
matter”, capable of existing but out of material manifestation. The kãma-rûpic
vesture is purified of its grosser elements as the Lower Ego is drawn upwards,
or inwards, towards the devachanic region, each cast-off “shell” disintegrating in
due course, until the last is doffed and the ray is completely withdrawn, free
from all astral encasement. On the return of the Ego towards earth-life, these
latent
images will be thrown outwards and will attract to themselves the appropriate
kãmic materials, which make them capable of manifestation on the astral plane,
and they will become the appetites, passions and lower emotions of his desire-body
for his new incarnation.
We may remark in passing that some of the Mental Images encircling the newly
arrived Soul are the source of much trouble during the earlier stages of the
postmortem life; superstitious beliefs presenting themselves as Mental Images
torture the Soul with pictures of horrors that have no place in its real
surroundings. [ See The Astral Plane, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 45, 46] [Page 36]
All the Mental Images formed from the passions and appetites are subjected to
the process above described, to be remanifested by the Ego on its return to
earth-life, and as the writer of the Astral Plane says:
The
LIPIKA, the great Karmic deities of the Kosmos, weigh the deeds of each personality
when the final separation of its principles takes place in Kãma Loka,
and give as it were the mould of the Etheric Double exactly suitable to its Karma
for the man's next birth.[See The Astral Plane, C.W. Leadbeater, page 86]
Freed for the time from these lower elements, the Soul passes on into Devachan,
where it spends a time proportionate to the wealth or poverty of its Mental
Images pure enough to be carried into that region. Here it finds again every one
of its loftier efforts, however brief it may have been, however fleeting, and here it
works upon them, building out of these materials powers for its coming lives.
The
devachanic life is one of assimilation; the experiences collected on earth
have to be worked into the texture of the Soul, and it is by these that the
Ego
grows; its development depends on the number and variety of the Mental Images
it has formed during its earth-life, and transmuted into their appropriate and
more permanent types. Gathering together all the Mental Images of a special
class, it
extracts from them [Page 37] their
essence; by meditation it creates a mental organ, and pours into it as faculty
the essence it has extracted. For instance: a man has formed many Mental
Images out of aspirations for knowledge and efforts to understand subtle and
lofty reasonings; he casts off his body, his mental powers being of only average
kind; in his Devachan he works on all these Mental Images, and evolves them
into capacity, so that his Soul returns to earth with a higher mental apparatus
than it before possessed, with much increased intellectual powers, able to
achieve tasks for which before it was utterly inadequate. This is the
transformation of the Mental Images, by which as Mental Images they cease to
exist; if in later lives the Soul would seek to see again these as they were, it
must seek them in the Karmic Records, where they remain for ever as ãkãshic
Images. By this transformation they cease to be Mental Images created and
worked on by the Soul, and become powers of the Soul, part of its very nature.
If then a man desires to possess higher mental faculties than he at present
enjoys,
he can ensure their development by deliberately willing to acquire them,
persistently keeping their acquirement in view, for desire and aspiration in one
life become faculty in another, and the will to perform becomes the capacity [Page 38]
to
achieve. But it must be remembered that the faculty thus built is strictly limited
by the materials supplied to the architect; there is no creation out of nothing,
and if the Soul on earth fail to exercise its powers by sowing the seed of aspiration
and desire, the Soul in Devachan will have but scanty harvest.
Mental Images which have been constantly repeated, but are not of the aspiring
character, of the longing to achieve more than the feeble powers of the Soul
permit, become tendencies of thought, grooves into which mental energy runs
easily and readily. Hence the importance of not letting the mind drift aimlessly
among insignificant objects, idly creating trivial Mental Images, and letting them
dwell in the mind. These will persist and form channels for future outpourings
of mental force which will thus be led to meander about on low levels running
into
the accustomed grooves, as the paths of least resistance.
The
will or desire to perform a certain action, such will or desire having been
frustrated, not by want of ability but by want of opportunity, or by circumstances
forbidding accomplishment, will cause Mental Images which — if the action be of a
high and pure nature — will be acted out in thought on the devachanic plane, and
will be precipitated as actions on returning to [Page 39] earth.
If the Mental Image was formed out of desire to do beneficent actions, it would
give rise to the mental performance of these actions in Devachan; and this
performance, the reflection of the Image itself, would leave it in the Ego as an
intensified Mental Image of an action, which would be thrown out on to the
physical plane as a physical act, the moment the touch of favourable opportunity
precipitated this crystallization of the thought into the act. The physical act
is inevitable when the Mental Image has been realized as action on the devachanic
plane. The same law applies to Mental Images formed out of baser desires,
though these never pass into Devachan, but are subjected to the process before
described, to be reformed on the way back to earth. Repeated covetous desires,
for instance, out of which Mental Images are formed, will crystallize out as acts
of
theft, when circumstances are propitious. The causative Karma is complete, and
the physical act has become the inevitable effect, when it has reached the stage
at which another repetition of the Mental Image means its passing into action.
It must not be forgotten that repetition of an act tends to make the act automatic,
and this law works on planes other than the physical; if then an action be
constantly repeated on the psychic plane it [Page 40] will become
automatic, and when opportunity offers will automatically be imitated on the
physical. How often it is said after a crime, “It was done before I
thought”, or “If I had thought for a moment I would never have done it”. The
speaker is quite right in his plea that he was not then moved by a deliberate thought-out idea, and he is naturally ignorant as to preceding thoughts, the train
of causes that led up to the inevitable result. Thus a saturated solution will solidify
if but one more crystal be dropped into it; at the mere contact, the whole passes into
the solid state. When the aggregation of Mental Images has reached saturation
point, the addition of but one more solidifies them into an act. The act, again,
is inevitable, for the freedom of choice has been exhausted in choosing over and
over again to make the Mental Image, and the physical is constrained to obey the
mental impulsion. The desire to do in one life reacts as compulsion to do in
another, and it seems as though the desire worked as a demand upon Nature, to
which she responds by affording the opportunity to perform.[See the later
section on the working out of Karma]
The
Mental Images stored up by the memory as the experiences through which the
Soul has passed during its earth-life, the exact record of the action upon
it of [Page 41] the
external world, must also be worked on by the Soul. By study of these, by meditation
upon them, the Soul learns to see their inter-relations, their value as
translations to it of the workings of the Universal Mind in manifested Nature;
in a sentence, it extracts from them by patient thought upon them all the lessons
they
have to teach. Lessons of pleasure and pain, of pleasure breeding pain and
pain breeding pleasure, teaching the presence of inviolable laws to which it must
learn to conform itself. Lessons of success and failure, of achievement and
disappointment, of fears proving groundless, of hopes failing realization,
of strength collapsing under trial, of fancied knowledge betraying itself as
ignorance, of patient endurance wresting victory from apparent defeat, of
recklessness changing into defeat apparent victory. Over all these things the
Soul ponders, and by its own alchemy it changes all this mixture of experiences
into the gold of wisdom, so that it may return to earth as a wiser Soul, bringing to
bear on the events which meet it in the new life this result of the experiences
of the old. Here again the Mental Images have been transmuted, and no longer
exist as Mental Images. They can only be recovered in their old form
from the Karmic Records. [Page 42]
It
is from the Mental Images of experiences, and more especially from those which
tell how suffering has been caused by ignorance of Law, that Conscience
is born and is developed. The Soul during its successive earth-lives is constantly
led by Desire to rush headlong after some attractive object; in its pursuit it
dashes itself against Law, and falls, bruised and bleeding. Many such
experiences teach it that gratifications sought against Law are but wombs of
pain, and when in some new earth-life the desire-body would fain carry the Soul
into enjoyment which is evil, the memory of past experiences asserts itself as
Conscience, and cries aloud its forbiddance, and reins in the hurrying horses of
the senses that would plunge heedlessly after the objects of desire. At the
present stage of evolution all but the most backward Souls have passed through
sufficient experiences to recognize the broad outlines of “right” and “wrong”,
i.e., of harmony with the Divine Nature, and of discord, and
on these main questions of ethics a wide and long experience enables the Soul to
speak clearly
and definitely. But on many higher and subtler questions, belonging to the
present stage of evolution and not to the stages that lie behind us, experience
is
still so restricted and insufficient that it has not yet been worked up into [Page 43] Conscience, and the Soul may err in its decision, however well intentioned its
effort to see clearly and to act rightly. Here its will to obey sets it in line with the
Divine Nature on the higher planes, and its failure to see how to obey on the
lower plane will be remedied for the future by the pain it feels as it blunders up-against the Law: the suffering will teach it what before it knew not, and its
sorrowful experiences will be worked into Conscience, to preserve it from similar
pain in the future, to give it the joy of fuller knowledge of God in Nature, of self-conscious accord with the Law of Life, of self-conscious co-operation in the work
of evolution.
Thus far we see as definite principles of Karmic Law working with Mental Images
as Causes, that:
|
BECOME |
Aspirations and Desire |
Capacities |
Repeated Thoughts |
Tendencies |
Wills to perform |
Actions |
Experiences |
Wisdom |
Painful Experiences |
Conscience |
Karmic Law working with Astro-mental Images seems better considered under
the head of the working out of Karma, to which we will now turn. [Page 44]
7. THE WORKING OUT OF KARMA
When the Soul has lived out its devachanic life, and has assimilated all that it can
of the material gathered during its last period on earth, it begins to be drawn
again towards earth by the links of Desire that bind it to material existence. The
last stage of its life-period now lies before it, the stage during which it re-clothes
itself for another experience of earthly life, the stage that is closed by the
Gateway of Birth.
The
Soul steps over the threshold of Devachan into what has been called the plane
of Re-incarnation, bringing with it the result, small or great, of its
devachanic work. If it be but a young Soul, it will have gained but little; progress
in the early stages of Soul-Evolution is slow to an extent scarcely realized by
most students, and during the babyhood of the Soul life-day succeeds life-day in
wearying succession, each earth-life sowing but little seed, each Devachan
ripening but little fruit. As faculties develop, growth quickens at an ever-increasing
rate, and the Soul that enters Devachan with a large store of material, comes
out of it with a large increase of faculty, worked out under the general
laws before stated. It issues from Devachan clothed only in that body of the Soul
that [Page 45] endures and grows throughout the Manvantara,, surrounded by the aura that
belongs to it as an individual, more or less glorious, many-hued, luminous,
definite, and extensive, according to the stage of evolution reached by the Soul.
It has been wrought in the heavenly fire, and comes forth as King Soma. [A
mystic name, full of meaning to the student who understands the part played by
Soma in some ancient mysteries]
Passing
on to the astral plane on its earthward journey, it clothes itself anew in
a Body of Desire, the first result of the workings out of its past Karma.
The Mental
Images formed during the past “from materials supplied by the desire nature,
that had become latent in consciousness, or what H. P. Blavatsky used to call
'privations of matter', capable of existing, but out of material manifestation”, are
now thrown outwards by the Soul, and immediately attract to themselves from
the matter of the astral plane the kãmic elements congenial to their natures, and “become the appetites, passions, and lower emotions of his [the Ego's] desire
body for his new incarnation”. [Ante, page
34] When this work is accomplished — a
work sometimes very brief, sometimes one that [Page 46] causes
long delay — the Ego stands in the karmic vesture he has prepared for
himself, ready to be “clothed upon”, to receive from the hands of the agents of
the Great Lords of Karma the etheric double [Formerly called the Linga Sharîra,
a name that gave rise to much confusion] built for him according to the elements
he has himself provided, after which shall be shaped his physical body, the
house which he must inhabit during his coming physical life. The individual and
the personal Ego are thus immediately self-built, as it were — what he thought on,
that he has become; his qualities, his “natural gifts”, all these appertain to him as
the direct results of his thinking; the Man is in very truth self-created, responsible,
in the fullest sense of the word, for all that he is.
But
this man is to have a physical and etheric body that will largely condition
the exercise of his faculties; he is to live in some environment, and according
to it this
will be his outward circumstances; he is to tread a path marked out by the causes
he has set going, other than those which appear as effects in his faculties;
he has to meet events joyful and sorrowful, resulting from the forces he has
generated. Something more than his individual and personal nature [Page 47] seems here to be needed: how is the field to be provided for its energies? How
are the conditioning instruments and the re-acting circumstances to be found
and
adapted?
We
approach a region whereof little may be fitly said, in that it is the region
of mighty Spiritual Intelligences, Whose nature is far beyond the scope of
our very
limited faculties, Whose existence may indeed be known and Whose workings
may be traced, but towards Whom we stand much in the position occupied by
one of the least intelligent lower animals towards ourselves, in that it may
know that we exist but can have no conception of the scope and workings of our
consciousness. These Great Ones are spoken of as the Lipika and the Four
Mahãrãjahs. How little we can know of the Lipika may be seen from the following;
The
Lipika, a description of whom is given in Commentary 6 of Stanza IV, are
the Spirits of the Universe . . . [They] belong to the most Occult portion
of
cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts — even the
highest — know this angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees, or only
the lower one connected with the records of our world, is something which the
writer is unprepared to say, and she would rather incline to the latter supposition.
Of its highest grade one thing only is taught, the Lipika are connected with
Karma — being its direct Recorders. [The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 153] [Page 48]
They
are the “ Second Seven”, and They keep the Astral Records, filled with the
Âkãshic Images before spoken of. [Ante page 25] They are connected  
  With
the destiny of every man, and the birth of every child. [The Secret Doctrine
Volume 1, Page 131]
They
give “the mould of the Etheric Double”, [Ante page 35] which will serve as the
type of the physical body suited for the expression of the mental and passional
faculties evolved by the Ego that is to dwell therein, and They give it to “The
Four” — to the Mahãrãjahs, Who
Are
the protectors of mankind and also the agents of Karma on Earth. [The
Secret Doctrine, Volume 1, Page 151]
Of these H. P. Blavatsky, writes further, quoting the Fifth Stanza of the Book of
Dzyan;
Four
“Winged Wheels at each corner ... for the Four Holy Ones and Their Armies
(Hosts)”. These are the “Four Mahãrãjahs”, or Great Kings of the Dhyãn
Chohans, the Devas, Who preside over each of the four cardinal points. . .
. These Beings are also connected with Karma as the latter needs physical
and
material agents to carry out its decrees. [Ibid Volume 1, Page 147]
Receiving
the mould — once more the “privation of matter” — from the Lipika, the
Mahãrãjahs choose [Page 49] for
the composition of the etheric double the elements suited to the qualities
that are to be expressed through it, and this etheric double thus becomes a
fitting karmic instrument for the Ego, giving it alike the basis for expression
of the faculties it has evolved, and the limitations imposed upon it by its own
past
failures and wasted opportunities. This mould is guided by the
Mahãrãjahs to the country, the race, the family, the social surroundings, which
afford the most suitable field for the working out of the Karma allotted to the
particular life-span in question, that which the Hindu calls the Prârabdha, or beginning, Karma; i.e., that
which is to be worked out in the opening life-period. In no one life can the
accumulated Karma of the past be worked out — no one
instrument could be formed no surroundings could be found, suitable for the
expression of all the slowly evolved faculties of the Ego, nor affording all the
circumstances necessary for reaping all the harvests sown in the past, for
discharging all the obligations contracted towards other Egos with whom the
incarnating Soul has come into contact in the course of its long
evolution. So much then of the total Karma as can be arranged for in one life-period,
has a suitable etheric double provided for it, the mould of that double
being [Page 50]
guided
to a suitable field. It is placed where the Ego may come into relations with
some of such Egos, with whom it has been related in its past, as are present in,
or are coming into, incarnation during its own life-period. A country is chosen
where the religious, political and social conditions can be found which are
suitable to some of its capacities, and afford the field for the occurrence of
some of the effects it has generated. A race is selected — subject, of course, to the
wider laws affecting incarnation in races, into which we cannot here enter — of
which the characteristics resemble some of the faculties which are ripe for
exercise, of which the type befits the incoming Soul. A family is found in which
physical heredity has evolved the kind of physical materials which, built into
the etheric double, will adapt themselves to its constitution; a family of which
the
general or special physical organization will afford play to the mental and
passional natures of the Ego. Out of the manifold qualities existing in the Soul,
and out of the manifold physical types existing in the world, such can be selected
as are adapted to each other, a suitable casing can be built for the waiting Ego,
an instrument and a field in which some of his Karma can be out-worked.
Fathomless to our short plummet lines as may be the knowledge and the [Page 51]
power
required for such adaptations, we can yet dimly see that the adaptations can
be made, and that perfect Justice can be done; the web of a man's destiny
may indeed be composed of threads that to us are innumerable, and that may
need to be woven into a pattern of to us inconceivable complexity; a thread may
disappear — it has only passed to the under side to come to the surface again
presently; a thread may suddenly appear — it has only re-emerged on the upper
side after a long transit underneath; seeing but a fragment of the web, the pattern
may to our short sight be indistinguishable. As was written by the sage
lamblichus:
What appears to us to be an accurate definition of justice does not also appear to
be so to the Gods. For we, looking to that which is most brief, direct our attention
to things present, and to this momentary life, and the manner in which it subsists.
But the Powers that are superior to us know the whole life of the Soul, and all
its former lives. [On the Mysteries, iv 4. See new edition of Thomas Taylor’s
translation published by the T.P.S., pages 209-210]
This
assurance that “perfect Justice rules the world”. finds support from the
increasing knowledge of the evolving Soul; for as it advances and begins to see
on higher planes and to transmit its knowledge to the waking consciousness, we
learn with ever-growing certainty, and therefore with ever-increasing joy, that [Page 52] the
Good Law is working with undeviating accuracy, that its Agents apply it everywhere
with unerring insight, with unfailing strength, and that all is therefore
very well with the world and with its struggling Souls. Through the darkness
rings out the cry, “ All is well”, from the watchmen Souls, who carry the lamp of Divine
Wisdom through the murky ways of our human city.
Some of the principles of the working out of the Law we can see, and a
knowledge of these will help us in the tracing out of causes, the understanding of
effects.
We have already seen that Thoughts build Character; let us next realize that
Actions make Environment.
Here
we have to do with a general principle of far-reaching effect, and it will
be well to work it out a little into detail. By his actions man affects his
neighbours on
the physical plane; he spreads happiness around him, or he causes distress,
increasing or diminishing the sum of human welfare. This increase or diminution
of happiness may be due to very different motives — good, bad or mixed. A man
may do an act that gives widespread enjoyment from sheer benevolence, from a
longing to give happiness to his fellow-creatures; let us say that from such
a motive he [Page 53] presents
a park to a town, for the free use of its inhabitants; another may do a similar
act from mere ostentation, from desire to attract attention from those who
can bestow social honours (say, he might give it as purchase money for a title);
a third may give a park from mixed motives, partly unselfish, partly selfish.
The motives will severally affect these three men's characters in their future
incarnations, for improvement, for degradation, for small results. But the effect
of the action in causing happiness to large numbers of people does not depend
on
the motive of the giver; the people enjoy the park equally, no matter what may
have prompted its gift, and this enjoyment, due to the action of the giver,
establishes for him a karmic claim on Nature, a debt due to him that will be
scrupulously paid. He will receive a physically comfortable or luxurious
environment, as he has given widespread physical enjoyment, and his sacrifice
of physical wealth will bring him his due reward, the karmic fruit of his action.
This
is his right; but the use he makes of his position, the happiness he derives
from his wealth and his surroundings, will depend chiefly on his character, and
here
again the just reward accrues to him, each seed bearing its appropriate harvest. [Page 54]
Service rendered to the full measure of opportunity in one life will produce, as
effect, enlarged opportunities of service in another; thus one who in a very limited
sphere helped each who came in the way, would in a future life be born into a
position where openings for giving effective help were many and far-reaching.
Again, wasted opportunities re-appear transmuted as limitations of the
instrument, and as misfortunes in the environment. For instance, the brain of the
etheric double will be built defectively, thus bringing about a defective physical
brain; the Ego will plan, but will find itself lacking in executive ability, or
will grasp an idea, but be unable to impress it distinctly on the brain. The
wasted
opportunities are transformed into frustrated longings, into desires which fail
to find expression, into yearnings to help blocked by the absence of power to
render
it, whether from defective capacity or from lack of occasion.
This
same principle is often at work in the cutting away from tender care of some
well-loved child or idolized youth. If an Ego treats unkindly or neglects one to
whom he owes affectionate duty and protection, or service of any kind, he will
but
too likely again find himself born in close relationship with the neglected [Page 55] one,
and perhaps tenderly attached to him, only for early death to snatch him
away from the encircling arms; the despised poor relation may re-appear as the
much-honoured heir, the only son, and when the parents find their house left
unto them desolate, they marvel at the “unequal ways of Providence” that
deprive them of their only one, on whom all their hopes have been set, and leave
untouched the many children of their neighbour. Yet are the ways of Karma
equal, though past finding out, save for those whose eyes have been opened.
Congenital
defects result from a defective etheric double, and are life-long penalties
for serious rebellions against law, or for injuries inflicted upon others.
All
such arise from the working of the Lords of Karma, and are the physical
manifestation of the deformities necessitated by the errors of the Ego, by his
excesses and defects, in the mould of the etheric double made by Them. So
again from Their just administration of the Law come the inwrought tendency to
reproduce a family disease, the suitable configuration of the etheric double,
and the direction of it to a family in which a given disease is hereditary,
and which
affords the “continuous plasm” suitable to the development of the appropriate
germs. [Page 56]
The
development of artistic faculties — to take another type of qualities — will be
answered by the Lords of Karma by the provision of a mould for the etheric
double after which a delicate nervous system can be physically built, and often
by the guiding of it to a family in whose members the special faculty developed
by the Ego has found expression, sometimes for many generations. For the
expression of such a faculty as that of music, for instance, a peculiar physical
body is needed, a delicacy of physical ear and of physical touch, and to such
delicacy an appropriate physical heredity would be most conducive.
The rendering of service to man collectively as by some noble book or speech,
the spreading of elevating ideas by pen or tongue, is again a claim upon the law,
scrupulously discharged by its mighty Agents. Such help given comes back as
help bestowed on the giver, as mental and spiritual assistance which is his by
right.
We
thus may grasp the broad principles of karmic working, the respective parts
played by the Lords of Karma and by the Ego itself in the destiny of the
individual. The Ego supplies all the materials, but the materials are used by the
Lords or by the Ego respectively according to their nature: the latter builds up
the
character, gradually evolves itself; the former [Page 57] build the mould that limits, choose the environment, and generally adapt and
adjust, in order that the Good Law may find its unerring expression despite the
clashing wills of men.
8.
FACING KARMIC RESULTS
Sometimes
people feel, on first recognizing the existence of Karma, that if all be
the working out of Law they are but helpless slaves of Destiny. Ere considering
how the Law may be utilized for the control of Destiny, let us study for a few
moments a typical case, and see how Necessity and Freewill — to use the
accepted terms — are both at work, and at work in harmony.
A
man comes into the world with certain inborn mental faculties, let us say
of an average type, with a passional nature that shows definite characteristics,
some
good, some bad; with an etheric double and physical body fairly well-formed and
healthy, but of no specially splendid character. These are his limitations, clearly
marked out for him, and he finds himself when he reaches manhood with this
mental, passional, astral, physical “stock-in-hand”, and he has to do the best he
can with it. There are many mental heights [Page 58] that he is definitely unable to climb, mental conceptions which his powers do not
permit him to grasp; there are temptations to which his passional nature yields,
though he strives against them; there are triumphs of physical strength and skill
that he cannot achieve; in fact, he finds that he can no more think as a genius
thinks than he can be beautiful as an Apollo, He is within a limiting ring and
cannot pass out of it, long as he may for liberty. Moreover, he cannot avoid
troubles of many kinds; they strike him, and he can only bear his pain; he cannot
escape from it. Now these things are so. The man is limited by his past thoughts,
by his wasted opportunities, by his mistaken choices, by his foolish yieldings;
he is bound by his forgotten desires, enchained by his errors of an earlier day.
And
yet he is not bound, the Real Man. He who made the past that imprisons his
present, can work within the prison-house and create a future of liberty. Nay,
let him know that he himself is free, and the fetters will crumble away from his limbs,
and according to the measure of his knowledge will be the illusoriness of his
bonds. But for the ordinary man to whom the knowledge will come as a spark,
not as a flame, the first step towards freedom will be to accept his limitations
as
self-made and proceed to [Page 59]
enlarge
them. True, he cannot think as a genius, thinks just yet, but he can think to the
very best of his ability, and by-and-by he will become a genius; he
can make power for the future, and he will. True, he cannot get rid of his
passional follies in a moment, but he can fight against them, and when he has
failed he can fight on, certain that presently he will conquer. True, he has
astral and physical weaknesses and uglinesses, but as his thoughts grow strong
and
pure and beautiful, and his work beneficent, he is ensuring for himself more
perfect forms in days to come. He is always himself, the free Soul, in the midst
of his prison house, and he can hew down the walls he himself has built. He
has no gaoler save himself: he can will his freedom, and in willing it he will
achieve.
A trouble meets him; he is bereaved of a friend, he commits a serious fault. Be it
so; he sinned as thinker in the past, he suffers as actor in the present. But
his friend is not lost; he will hold him fast by love and in the future he will
find
him again; meanwhile there are others round him to whom he can give the services
he would have showered on his beloved, and he will not again neglect the duties
that are his and so sow seed for similar loss in future lives. He has committed
an
open wrong and suffers its penalty, but he thought it in the [Page 60] past, else could he not have wrought it now: he will patiently endure the penalty
he purchased by his thought, and will so think today that his morrows shall
be free from shame. Into what was darkness, has come a ray of light, and the light
is
singing to him:
Ho! ye who suffer! know
Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels.
The
Law that seemed to be fetters has become wings, and by it he can rise to regions
of which without it he could only dream.
9.
BUILDING THE FUTURE
The crowds of Souls drift onwards along the sluggish current of Time. As the
earth rolls, it carries them with it; as globe succeeds globe, they too pass on. But
the Wisdom Religion is anew proclaimed to the world that all who choose may
cease to drift, and may learn to outstrip the slow evolution of the worlds.
The
student, when he grasps something of the meaning of the Law, of its absolute
certainty, of its unerring exactitude, begins to take himself in hand and
actively to superintend his own evolution. He scrutinizes his own character,
and then proceeds to manipulate it, deliberately practising mental and moral
qualities, [Page 61] enlarging
capacities, strengthening weaknesses, supplying deficiencies, removing
excrescences. Knowing that he becomes that on which he meditates,
he deliberately and regularly meditates on a noble ideal, for he understands
why the great Christian Initiate Paul bade his disciples “think on” the things that are
true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. Daily he will meditate
on his ideal; daily he will strive to live it; and he will do this persistently
and
calmly,
“without haste, without rest”, for he knows that he is building on a sure
foundation, on the rock of the Eternal Law. He appeals to the Law; he takes
refuge in the Law; for such a man failure exists not; there is no power in
heaven or in earth that can bar his way. During earth-life he gathers his experiences,
utilizing all that comes in his way; during Devachan he assimilates them and
plans out his future buildings.
Herein lies the value of a true theory of life, even while the theory rest on the
testimony of others and not on individual knowledge. When man accepts and
partially understands the working of Karma, he can at once begin this building
of character, setting each stone with deliberate care, knowing that he is building
for
Eternity. There is no longer hasty running up and pulling down, working on one
plan today, [Page 62] on another to-morrow, on none at all the day after; but there is a drafting of a
well-thought-out scheme of character, as it were, and then the building according
to the scheme, for the Soul becomes an architect as well as a builder, and
wastes no more time in abortive beginnings. Hence the speed with which the
later stages of evolution are accomplished, the striking, almost incredible
advances, made by the strong Soul in its manhood.
10.
MOULDING KARMA
The
man who has set himself deliberately to build the future will realize,
as his knowledge increases, that he can do more than mould his own character,
thus
making his future destiny. He begins to understand that he is at the centre
of things in a very real sense, a living, active, self-determining Being, and
that
he can act upon circumstances as well as upon himself. He has long been
accustoming himself to follow the great ethical laws, laid down for the guidance
of humanity by the Divine Teachers, Who have been born from age to age, and
he now grasps the fact that these laws are based on fundamental principles
in Nature, and that morality is science applied to conduct. He sees that in
his [Page 63] daily
life he can neutralize the ill results that would follow from some ill
deed, by bringing to bear upon same point a corresponding force for good. A
man sends against him an evil thought; he might meet it with another of its
own kind,
and
then the two thought-forms, running together like two drops of water, would
be
reinforced, strengthened, each by each; but this one against whom the evil
thought is flying is a knower of Karma, and he meets the malignant form with
the force of compassion and shatters it; the broken form can no longer be ensouled
with elemental life; the life melts back to its own, the form disintegrates;
its
power, for evil is thus destroyed by compassion, and “hatred ceases by love”. Delusive forms of falsehood go forth into the astral world; the man of knowledge
sends against them forms of truth; purity breaks up foulness, and charity
selfish greed. As knowledge increases, this action becomes direct and purposive,
the
thought is aimed with definite intent, winged with potent will. Thus evil
Karma is checked in its very inception, and naught is left to make a karmic
tie between
the
one who shot a shaft of injury and the one who burned it up by pardon. The
Divine Teachers, who spake as men having authority on the duty of overcoming
evil with good, based Their [Page 64]
precepts
on Their knowledge of the law; Their followers, who obey without fully seeing
the scientific foundation of the precept, lessen the heavy Karma that
would be generated if they answered hate with hate. But men of knowledge
deliberately destroy the evil forms, understanding the facts on which the
teaching of the Masters has ever been based, and sterilizing the seed of evil,
they prevent
a future harvest of pain.
At a stage which is comparatively advanced in comparison with that of the slowly
drifting, average humanity, a man will not only build his own character and work
with deliberate intent on the thought-forms that come in his way, but he will begin
to see the past and thus more accurately to gauge the present, tracing karmic
causes onwards to their effects. He becomes able to modify the future by
consciously setting forces to work designed to interact with others already in
motion. Knowledge enables him to utilize law with the same certainty with which
scientists utilize it in every department of Nature.
Let
us pause for a moment to consider the laws of motion. A body has been set in
motion, and is moving along a definite line; if another force be brought to
bear
upon it, differing in direction from the one that gave it its initial impulse,
the body
will move [Page 65] along
another line — a line compounded of the two impulses; no energy will be
lost, but part of the force which gave the initial impulse will be used up in partially
counteracting the new, and the resultant direction along which the body will move
will be that neither of the first force nor of the second, but of the interplay
of the two. A physicist can calculate exactly at what angle he must strike
a moving body
in order to cause it to move in a desired direction, and although the body itself
may be beyond his immediate reach, he can send after it a force of calculated
velocity to strike it at a definite angle, thus deflecting it from its previous
course, and impelling it along a new line. In this there is no violation of
law, no
interference with law; only the utilization of law by knowledge, the bending of
natural forces to accomplish the purpose of the human will. If we apply this
principle to the moulding of Karma, we shall readily see — apart from the fact that
law is inviolable — that there is no “ interference with Karma”, when we modify its
action by knowledge. We are using karmic force to affect karmic results,
and once more we conquer Nature by obedience.
Let
us now suppose that the advanced student, glancing backwards over the past,
sees lines of past Karma [Page 66] converging to a point of action of an undesirable kind; he can introduce a new
force among the converging energies, and so modify the event, which must be
the resultant of all the forces concerned in its generation and ripening. For such
action he requires knowledge, not only the power to see the past and to trace
the lines which connect it with the present, but also to calculate exactly
the influence
that the force he introduces will exercise as modifying the resultant, and
further the effects that will flow from this resultant considered as cause.
In this way
he may lessen or destroy the results of evil wrought by himself in the past,
by the
good forces he pours forth into his karmic stream; he cannot undo the past,
he cannot destroy it, but so far as its effects are still in the future he
can modify
them or reverse them, by the new forces he brings to bear as causes taking
part in
their production. In all this he is merely utilizing the law, and he works
with the certainty of the scientist, who balances one force against another
and, unable
to
destroy a unit of energy, can yet make a body move as he will by a calculation
of angles and of movements. Similarly Karma may be accelerated or delayed, and
thus again will undergo modification by the action of the surroundings amid
which it is worked out. [Page 67]
Let
us put the same thing again a little differently, for the conception
is an important and a fruitful one. As knowledge grows, it becomes easier and
easier
to get rid of the Karma of the past. Inasmuch as causes which are working
out to their accomplishment, all come within the sight of the Soul which
is approaching its liberation, as it looks back over past lives, as it glances
down the vista of centuries along which it has been slowly climbing, it is
able
to see
there the way in which its bonds were made, the causes which it set in motion:
it is able to see how many of those causes have worked themselves out
and are
exhausted, how many of those causes are still working themselves out. It
is
able not only to look backwards but also to look forwards and see the effects
these
causes will produce; so that, glancing in front, the effects that
will be produced are seen, and glancing behind, the causes that will bring
about these effects are also visible. There is no difficulty in the supposition that just
as you find in ordinary physical nature that knowledge of certain laws
enables us to
predict a result, and to see the law that brings that result about, so we
can transfer this idea on to a higher plane, and can imagine a condition of
the
developed soul, in which it is able to see the karmic causes that it
has set
going behind [Page 68] it, and also the karmic effects through which it has to work in the future.
With
such a knowledge of causes, and a vision of their working out, it is possible
to introduce fresh causes to neutralize these effects, and by utilizing
the law,
and by relying absolutely on its unchanging and unvarying character,
and by a careful calculation of the force set going, to make the effects in
the future
those which we desire. That is a mere matter of calculation. Suppose
vibrations of hatred have been set going in the past, we can deliberately set
to work
to quench these vibrations, and to prevent their working out into the present
and future, by setting up against them vibrations of love. Just in the
same way as we can take a wave of sound, and then a second wave, and setting
the two
going one slightly after the other, so that the vibrations of the denser
part of
the one shall correspond to the rarer part of the other, and thus out
of sounds we can
make silence by interference, so in the higher regions it is possible by
love and hate vibrations, used by knowledge and controlled by will, to bring
karmic
causes to an ending and so to reach equilibrium, which is another word
for liberation. That knowledge is beyond the reach of the enormous majority. What
the majority can do is this, if they [Page 69]
choose
to utilize the Science of the Soul, they may take the evidence of experts
on this subject, they may take the moral percepts of the great religious
Teachers of the world, and by obedience to these precepts — to which their intuition
responds although they may not understand the method of their working — they
may effect in the doing that which also may be effected by distinct and deliberate
knowledge. So devotion and obedience to a Teacher may work towards liberation
as knowledge might otherwise do.
Applying
these principles in every direction the student will begin to realize
how man is handicapped by ignorance, and how great is the part played by
knowledge in human evolution. Men drift because they do not know; they are
helpless because they are blind; the man who would finish his course more
rapidly than will the common mass of men, who would leave the slothful crowd
behind “as the racer leaves the hack”, he needs wisdom as well as love,
knowledge as well as devotion. There is no need for him to wear out slowly
the links of chains forged long ago; he can file them swiftly through, and
be rid
of them as effectively as though they slowly rusted away to set him free. [Page 70]
11. THE CLEASING OF KARMA
Karma brings us ever back to rebirth, binds us to the wheel of births and deaths.
Good Karma drags us back as relentlessly as bad, and the chain which is
wrought out of our virtues holds as firmly and as closely as that forged from our
vices. How then shall the weaving of the chain be put an end to, since man must
think and feel as long as he lives, and thoughts and feelings are ever generating
Karma? The answer to this is the great lesson of the Bhagavad Gita, the lesson
taught to the warrior prince. Neither to hermit nor to student was that lesson
given, but to the warrior striving for victory, the prince immersed in the duties of
his state.
Not
in action but in desire, not in action but in attachment to its fruit, lies
the binding force of action. An action is performed with desire to enjoy its
fruit, a
course is adopted with desire to obtain its results; the Soul is expectant and
Nature must reply to it, it has demanded and Nature must award. To every cause
is bound its effect, to every action its fruit, and desire is the cord that links
them together, the thread that runs between. If this could be burned up the
connexion
would cease, and when all the bonds of the heart [Page 71] are broken the Soul is free. Karma can then no longer hold it; Karma can then no
longer bind it; the wheel of cause and effect may continue to turn, but the soul
has become the Liberated Life.
Without attachment, constantly perform action which is duty, for performing
action without attachment, man verily reacheth the Supreme.[Bhagavad Gita, iii,
19]
To
perform this Karma-Yoga — Yoga of action — as it is called, man must perform
every action merely as duty, doing all in harmony with the Law. Seeking to
conform to the Law on any plane of being on which, he is busied, he aims at
becoming a force working with the Divine Will for evolution, and yields a perfect
obedience in every phase of his activity. Thus all his actions partake of the nature
of sacrifice, and are offered for the turning of the Wheel of the Law, not for
any fruit that they may bring; the action is performed as duty, the fruit is
joyfully given
for the helping of men; he has no concern with it, it belongs to the Law, and to
the Law he leaves it for distribution.
And so we read:
Whose
works are all free from the moulding of desire, whose actions are burned
up by the fire of wisdom, he is called a Sage by the spiritually wise. [Page 72]
Having abandoned all attachment to the fruit of action, always content, seeking
refuge in none, although doing actions, he is not doing anything.
Free from desire, his thoughts controlled by the SELF, having abandoned all
attachment, performing action by the body alone, he doth not commit sin.
Content with whatsoever he receiveth, free from the pairs of opposites, without
envy, balanced in success and failure though he hath acted he is not bound;
For
with attachment dead, harmonious, his thoughts established in wisdom, his works,
sacrifices, all his actions melt away.[Bhagavad Gita, iv 19-23]
Body and mind work out their full activities; with the body all bodily action is
performed, with the mind all mental; but the SELF remains serene, untroubled,
lending not of its eternal essence to forge the chains of time. Right action is
never neglected, but is faithfully performed to the limit of the available power,
renunciation of attachment to the fruit not implying any sloth or carelessness in
acting:
As
the ignorant act from attachment to action, O Bhãrata, so should the wise act
without attachment, desiring the maintenance of mankind.
Let
no wise man unsettle the mind of ignorant people attached to action: but acting
in harmony (with Me) let him render all action attractive. [Ibid., iii, 25-26]
The
man who reaches this state of inaction in action”, has learned the secret of
the ceasing of Karma: lie destroys by knowledge the action he has generated [Page 73] in
the past, he burns up the action of the present by devotion. Then it is that
he attains the state spoken of by “John the divine” in Revelation, in which the man
goeth no more out of the Temple. For the Soul goes out of the Temple many and
many a time into the plains of life, but the time arrives when he becomes a pillar, “a pillar in the Temple of my God”; that Temple is the universe of liberated
Souls, and only those who are bound to nothing for themselves can be bound to
everyone in the name of the One Life.
These
bonds of desire then, of personal desire, nay of individual desire, must
be broken. We can see how the breaking will begin; and here comes in a mistake
which many young students are apt to fall into, a mistake so natural and easy
that it is constantly occurring. We do not break the “bonds of the heart” by trying
to kill the heart. We do not break the bonds of desire by trying to turn ourselves
into stones or pieces of metal unable to feel. The disciple becomes more
sensitive, and not less so, as he nears his liberation, he becomes more tender
and not more hard; for the perfect “disciple who is as the Master” is the one who
answers to every thrill in the outside universe, who is touched by and responds
to everything, who feels and answers to everything, who just because he desires [Page 74] nothing for himself is able to give everything to all, Such a one cannot be held
by Karma, he forges no bonds to bind the Soul. As the disciple becomes more and
more a channel of Divine Life to the world, he asks nothing save to be a
channel, with wider and wider bed along which the great Life may flow: his only
wish is that he may become a larger vessel, with less of obstacle in himself
to hinder the outward pouring of the Life; working for nothing save to be of
service, that is the life of discipleship, in which the bonds that bind are broken.
But
there is one bond that breaks not ever, the bond of that real unity which
is no bond, for it cannot be distinguished as separate, that which unites the
One to the
All, the disciple to the Master, the Master to His disciple; the Divine Life
which
draws us ever onwards and upwards, but binds us not to the wheel of birth and
death. We are drawn back to earth — first by desire for what we enjoy there, then
by higher and higher desires which still have earth for their region of fulfilment — for spiritual knowledge, spiritual growth, spiritual devotion. What is it, when
all is accomplished, that still binds the Masters to the world of men ? Not anything
that
the world can offer Them. There is no knowledge on earth They have not; there
is no power [Page 75] on
earth that They wield not; there is no further experience that might enrich
Their lives; there is nothing that the world can give Them, that can draw Them
back to birth. And yet They come, because a divine compulsion that is from
within and from without sends Them to the earth — which otherwise They might
leave for ever — to help Their brethren, to labour century after century, millennium
after millennium, for the joy and service that make Their love and peace ineffable
with nothing that the earth can give Them, save the joy of seeing other Souls
growing into Their likeness, beginning to share with them the conscious life
of God.
12. COLLECTIVE KARMA
The
gathering together of Souls into groups, forming families, castes, nations,
races, introduces a new element of perplexity into karmic results, and it is
here that room is found for what are called “accidents”, as well as for the adjustments
continually being made by the Lords of Karma. It appears that while nothing can
befall a man that is not “in his Karma” as an individual, advantage may be taken
of, say, a national or a seismic catastrophe to enable him to work off a piece
of bad Karma which would not normally have fallen
into the life-span through which he is passing; it appears — I can only
speak hereon speculatively, not having definite knowledge on this point — as
though sudden death could not strike off a man's body unless he owed such a
death to the Law, no matter into what whirl of catastrophic disaster he may be
hurled; he would be what is called “miraculously preserved” amid the death and
ruin that swept away his neighbours, and emerge unharmed from tempest or
fiery outbreak. But if he owed a life, and were drawn by his national or family
Karma within the area of such a disturbance, then, although such sudden death
had not been woven into his etheric double for that special life, no active
interference might be made for his preservation; special care would be taken
of him afterwards that he might not suffer unduly from his sudden; snatching
out
of earth-life, but he would be allowed to pay his debt on the arising of such
an opportunity, brought within his reach by the wider sweep of the Law, by the
collective Karma that involves him.
Similarly, benefits may accrue to him by this indirect action of the Law, as when
he belongs to a nation that is enjoying the fruit of some good national Karma;
and he may thus receive some debt owed to him by Nature, payment of which
would
not have fallen within [Page 77] his present lot had only his individual Karma been concerned.
A
man's birth in a particular nation is influenced by certain general principles
of evolution as well as by his immediate characteristics. The Soul in its
slow development has not only to pass through the seven Root Races of a globe
(I
deal with the normal evolution of humanity), but also through the sub-races.
This necessity imposes certain conditions, to which the individual Karma must
adapt
itself, and a nation belonging to the sub-race through which the Soul has to
pass will offer the area within which the more special conditions needed must
be
found. Where long series of incarnations have been followed, it has been found
that some individuals progress from sub-race to sub-race very regularly, whereas
others are more erratic, taking repeated incarnations perhaps in one sub-race.
Within the limits of the sub-race, the individual characteristics of the man
will draw him towards one nation or another, and we may notice dominant national
characteristics re-emerging on the stage of history en bloc after the normal
interval of fifteen hundred years; thus crowds of Romans reincarnate as
Englishmen, the enterprising, colonizing, conquering, imperial instincts
reappearing as national attributes. A man in whom such national [Page 78] characteristics were strongly marked, and whose time for rebirth had come,
would be drafted into the English nation by his Karma and would then share the
national destiny for good or for evil, so far as that destiny affected the fate
of an
individual.
The
family tie is naturally of a more personal character than is the national,
and those who weave bonds of close affection in one life tend to be
drawn together again as members of the same family. Sometimes these ties
recur very persistently life after life, and the destinies of two individuals
are very intimately interwoven in successive incarnations. Sometimes, in consequence
of the different lengths of the Devachans necessitated by differences of
intellectual and spiritual activity during the earth-lives spent together — members
of a family may be scattered and may not meet again until after several
incarnations. Speaking generally, the more close the tie in the higher regions
of life, the greater the likelihood of rebirth in a family group. Here again
the Karma
of the individual is affected by the inter-linked Karmas of his family, and
he may enjoy or suffer through these in a way not inherent in his own life-Karma,
and so receive or pay karmic debts, out-of-date, as we may say. So far
as the personality is concerned, this seems to bring with it a [Page 79] certain
balancing up or compensation in Kãma-Loka and Devachan, in order that
complete justice may be done even to the fleeting personality.
The working out in detail of collective Karma would carry us far beyond the limits
of such an elementary work as the present and far beyond the knowledge of the
writer; only these fragmentary hints can at present be offered to the student.
For precise understanding a long study of individual cases would be necessary,
traced through many thousands of years. Speculation on these matters is idle; it
is patient observation that is needed.
There is, however, one other aspect of collective Karma on which some word
may fitly be said; the relation between men's thoughts and deeds and the
aspects of external nature. On this obscure subject Mme. Blavatsky has the
following:
Following
Plato, Aristotle explained that the term στοιχεία [elements] was
understood only as meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four
great divisions of our cosmical world, to supervise them. Thus, no more than
Christians do Pagans adore and worship the Elements and the (imaginary)
cardinal points, but the “Gods” that respectively rule over them. For the Church,
there are two kinds of Sidereal Beings, Angels and Devils. For the Kabalist and
Occultist there is one class, and neither Occultist nor Kabalist makes any
difference between the “Rectors of light” and the “Rectores Tenebrarum”, or
Cosmocratores, whom the Roman Church imagines and discovers in the
“Rectors of Light”, as soon as any one of them is called by another name than
the one she addresses him by. It is not the Rector, or Mahãrãjah, who punishes
or rewards, with [Page 80] or
without “God's” permission or order, but man himself — his deeds, or Karma
attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations
sometimes) every kind of evil and calamity. We produce Causes, and these
awaken the corresponding powers in the Sidereal World, which are magnetically
and irresistibly attracted to — and react upon — those who produce such causes;
whether such persons are practically the evil-doers, or, simply “thinkers” who
brood mischief. For thought is matter, we are taught by Modern Science; and “every particle of the existing matter must be a register of all that has happened”, as
Messers. Jevons and Babbage in their Principles of Science tell the profane.
Modern Science is every day drawn more into the maelstrom of Occultism:
unconsciously, no doubt, still very sensibly.
“Thought is matter”: not, of course, however, in the sense of the German
Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that “thought is the movement of matter” — a statement of almost unparalleled absurdity. Mental states and bodily states
are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not affect the position that every
thought, in addition to its physical accompaniment (brain-change), exhibits an
objective — though to us supersensuously objective — aspect on the astral plane.[The Secret Doctrine,Volume 1, Pages 148, 149]
It
seems that when men generate a large number of malignant Thought-forms of a
destructive character, and when these congregate in huge masses on the
Astral Plane, their energy may be, and is, precipitated on the physical plane,
stirring up wars, revolutions, and social disturbances and upheavals of every
kind, falling as collective Karma on their progenitors and effecting widespread
ruin. Thus then, collectively also Man is the master of his destiny, and his world
is
moulded by his creative action. [Page 81]
Epidemics
of crime and disease, cycles of accidents, have a similar explanation. Thought-forms
of anger aid in the perpetration of a murder; these
Elementals are nourished by the crime, and the results of the crime — the
hatred and the revengeful thoughts of those who loved the victim, the
fierce resentment of the criminal, his baffled fury when violently sent out of
the world — still further reinforce their host with many malignant forms; these again
from the astral plane impel an evil man to fresh crime, and again the circle
of new impulses is trodden, and we have an epidemic of violent deeds.
Diseases spread, and the thoughts of fear which follow their progress act directly
as strengtheners of the power of the disease; magnetic disturbances are set
up and propagated, and react on the magnetic spheres of people within the
affected area. In every direction, in endless fashions, do man's evil thoughts
play havoc, as he who should have been a divine co-builder in the Universe
uses his creative power to destroy.
13. CONCLUSION
Such
is an outline of the great Law of Karma and of its workings, by a knowledge
of which a man may [Page 82] accelerate
his evolution, by the utilization of which a man may free himself from bondage,
and become, long ere his race has trodden its course, one of the
Helpers and Saviours of the World. A deep and steady conviction of the truth
of this Law gives to life an immovable serenity and a perfect fearlessness:
nothing
can touch us that we have not wrought, nothing can injure us that we have not
merited. And as everything that we have sown must ripen into harvest in due
season, and must be reaped, it is idle to lament over the reaping when it is
painful; it may as well be done now as at any future time, since it cannot be
evaded, and, once done, it cannot return to trouble us again. Painful Karma may
therefore well be faced with a joyful heart, as a thing to be gladly worked through
and done with; it is better to have it behind us than before us, and every debt
paid leaves us with less to pay. Would that the world knew and could feel the
strength that comes from this resting on the Law. Unfortunately to most in the
Western world it is a mere chimera, and even among Theosophists belief in
Karma is more an intellectual assent than a living and fruitful conviction in
the light of which the life is lived. The strength of a belief, says Professor
Bain,
is measured by its influence on conduct, and [Page 83] belief in Karma ought to make
the life pure, strong, serene and glad. Only our own deeds can hinder us; only
our own will can fetter us. Once let men recognize
this truth, and the hour of their liberation has struck. Nature cannot enslave
the
Soul that by Wisdom has gained Power, and uses both in Love.
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