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