Karma and so forth…
Whatever one sows that will he also reap
St Paul in Galatians 6:7
The meaning of karma lies in the intention
Bhagavad Gita
Live by the sword and die by the sword
Proverb derived from Matthew 26:52
The next thunderbolt was an explanation of that largely misunderstood word, ‘karma’. The root of the word is the ancient Sanskrit for ‘action’. The principles of the Law of Karma are:
- Every action causes a result.
- Every action causes a reciprocal reaction.
It’s all a question of Cause inevitably leading to Effect: an interesting correlation between Yoga and science.
Newton’s Third Law of Motion claims that whenever one body exerts a force on another, the second body exerts an equal but opposite force on the first body.
Yoga agrees but goes much further by applying the Law of Cause and Effect to things other than simple physical objects. It applies it to things of the Emotions too, claiming that if I do a bad action (perhaps beating up a programme seller at the ballet one evening) the effects of my bad action will be returned to me, sooner or later. It does not necessarily mean that I will one day be beaten up by another ballet programme seller, but that the precise amount of suffering that I inflicted will be returned to me. It may not involve being beaten up at all. But the suffering I caused will eventually come home to roost.
§ ‘Pigeons coming home to roost’ is an old English folk expression, meaning that a bad deed will eventually return to the doer. It is pure karmic theory, as is ‘What goes around, comes around’.
Karma is a curious or even laughable notion to many Westerners (as it was to me when I first read it and didn’t understand it) but the Law of Karma simply extends the Laws of cause-effect and reciprocity into the non-physical realm of human action.
As the universe is clearly a highly ordered entity, operating according to Laws (which must, according to Idealism, have been formed by Mind), it is reasonable to insist that any non-physical entity (like Emotion) must obey certain non-physical Laws. Whether our local culture has succeeded in discovering these Laws yet, is quite another matter. And as already considered, a blinkered Materialistic culture is unlikely to discover anything other than itself until it chooses to remove its blinkers.
So.. the Law of Karma says ‘whack someone and the pain you cause will whack you back one day’.
But the Law of Karma goes deeper than this, because it also includes ‘speech’ in the concept of ‘action’. Thus, not only will bad physical actions rebound upon you, but so will bad speech, as they are essentially the same thing. Victims of abuse often claim that malicious lies and bullying were more harmful to them than any physical smacking they suffered. Children run away, overdose or hang themselves as a result of extended verbal abuse and denigration. The tongue can indeed be mightier than the sword. ‘Action’ need not be physical.
So what we have here is a Law which treats Emotion as a real entity which obeys the law of reciprocity. It goes out and causes an effect; it then comes back and causes precisely that same effect, measured in terms of ‘suffering caused’. ‘Doer’ and ‘Do-ee’ are intimately connected by any action, physical or verbal.
I found this hard to accept, but could not rationally reject it. After all, Idealism itself requires Mind to act on the universe in some sort of creative way: either once and for all, or immanently.
§ Emotion shares much with Mind in that it is non-physical. In fact, it often makes sense to use the word ‘Mind’ to include both ‘Emotion’ and ‘Thought’.
§ Immanently: ‘all-pervasively’. Not to be confused with ‘imminently’, meaning ‘any minute now’.
There’s more: the Law of Karma insists that ‘action’ includes not only physical and verbal action, but also mental: bad thoughts about someone also obey the Law of Out and Return, and thus link Doer and Doee. This was a step too far for me for quite a while. How could a justifiably spiteful thought about the rat who ripped me off after bodging a little job on my car possibly obey any sort of Law, never mind a reciprocal one? But things became clearer later.**
There are further ramifications of the Law of Karma. Firstly, a single action (see ‘a night at the ballet’, above) may have a number of results. Firstly, the physical injury to the programme seller, but what else? How about the emotional distress I caused her by suddenly leaping from my seat and striking her with a large and glistening halibut, smearing her make-up and dislodging her expensively coiffed hair-piece, with no provocation at all? How about the disruption and fright I caused to the hundreds of people who’d paid to see Swan Lake, not Oaf Goes Ape? And what about the cast, many whom were led off in hysterics? And the police and security staff who dragged me away: would they be upset by my random act of cruelty and the stink of fish on their uniforms and down their collars and inside many of their pockets and undergarments? And the hospital staff who treated the victim? Her family? Perhaps they had planned to take her on a well-deserved holiday for her 75th birthday the following day. And so on. It’s clear to see that any single action, no matter how apparently trivial, can have all sorts of knock-on effects that we never normally spare a thought for. Ripples can cross continents, and, for all I know, an entire universe; maybe further.
§ By comparison, every single electron (one of the smallest known particles in the universe) is surrounded by, or emanates, a force field, which technically speaking, ‘ripples’ infinitely in every direction. Atoms, and most of the rest of the particles that pack the universe, have similar fields. Every one of these particles is literally ‘in touch’ with every other part. And that’s Official Science, not a wacky foreign philosophy. Why, in principle, should thoughts be any different? This smacks of possibly being some sort of theoretical basis for telepathy, doesn’t it?**
This ripple effect must be taken into account when calculating the ‘suffering caused’ by any ill-considered action. Maybe I had harmed more people than I thought I had on that fateful night in Covent Garden.
It’s not all bad news of course. Karma works the other way round too. Give a tramp a sandwich, and this gets chalked up to your credit. One day someone will help you out of a dark corner, maybe literally with a sandwich, or maybe with the offer of a new job.
§ I’ve seen examples of the reciprocal effect of helping people on the television show The Secret Millionaire. After giving away tens of thousands of pounds, millionaires turn to camera with tears of joy in their eyes and say ‘I feel wonderful…’
One shouldn’t get emotionally involved with Laws of the Universe, but I couldn’t help thinking ‘Gosh… isn’t the Law of Karma fair?’ So refreshing in what so often feels like an unfair world. The Desert Religion/s tell us to ‘be nice, or else..’, but Yoga assures that there is parity at play here. Big crime, big penalty: little lapse, minor penalty. Good act… a future return guaranteed. ‘Invest wisely’, if you like.
But the real key to Life is to do willingly and joyfully what is clearly rational (to treat others as yourself, as we are all ultimately ‘one’, as we all derive from the same ‘Ultimate Mind’) rather than to ‘do the right thing’ just because it will bring reward. Buddhists call living by the principle of joyful impartial kindness ‘acting dispassionately’. A dull term for an exhilarating idea.
Could I accept this Law of Karma? Well, as ever, it was either true or it was not true. Keep thinking…
I’m sure you will have thought of one immediate flaw in this parity-of-karma business. If he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, where did that leave murderous inadequates like Hitler, Mao and Stalin? Only one of them died a suitably barbarous death, and that by his own hand. Between them they caused some 140 million murders. So by the Law they should have been unpleasantly murdered some 45 million times each which history tells us didn’t happen.
***
This brings us to the second element of the Law of Karma: Reincarnation. I had previously considered this to be an invention of the lunatic fringe, but the Yogi had been making his points so rationally that I withheld my scepticism and read on.
I’m afraid this means a brief detour into what Yogis claim is the Meaning of Life. I wasn’t looking for this, but I knew I should explore it as a hope for explaining ‘spooks and ghoulies’. I hope you will see how as we progress. It all ties up in the end, honest.
It’s all about what we think of as ‘this life’. To a Westerner ‘this life’ happens between birth and burial, but to a Yogi, Hindu or Buddhist, this is a short-sighted view of Reality.
§ Hinduism is a vast complex of overlapping systems of Belief, Understanding, and Knowing, ranging from the basest superstition to the loftiest philosophy (as per Yoga). Buddhism is the reformed branch of Hinduism, concerned mainly with Understanding and Knowing (Direct Knowledge) and deriving from the ancient Hindu holy texts called Vedas (‘Veda’ meaning ‘knowledge’).
Yoga sees Life as a sort of multi-levelled kindergarten-school-college in which Units of Consciousness (my term, not theirs) like you and me strive to develop ourselves from animals to gods (again my terms, not theirs). At the animal end of the dipstick we have people who live only for selfish animal sensations, and quite often, excesses. At the god end of the scale we have people for whom spirituality is the only thing that matters in their life.
§ ‘Spirituality’? What does this mean? Hard to define, but I suggest that a ‘spiritual’ person is someone who knows or feels or is persuaded (ie via Direct Knowledge, Belief or Understanding,) that Man is not Pig, and that there is a moral dimension to his life, which is of supreme importance. Hence his/her constant respect for others, and not falling down pissed as a rat on Saturday nights (respect for self). One might also add ‘someone who tries to find out more about the superior power he aims to emulate’.
The fact that we are aware that our animal side is not our best side is proved by our coyness over displaying our genitalia.
To a Yogi (or Buddhist) ‘this life’ (meaning twixt birth and burial) is just a part of ‘Life’. You are born; you live your life, striving as you go to improve your own character (ie to develop selflessness/kindness); you die. Now here’s the interesting bit: You die… but no, you don’t die. Instead, you shift into the Other World, lock, stock, and both smoking barrels. You do not immediately become ‘perfect’. You are still very much yourself, good points and bad. This Other World has certain qualities that make it as ‘real’ for you there, as This World is for you now. The only absolute difference in it is that you don’t have a normal physical body, but one more suited to the new ‘climate’. After a period in this Other world, you are re-born into This world, sometimes as a male, sometimes as a female, to carry on with the job of self-development from Pig (or Frog) to Prince, picking up precisely where you left off in the previous life.
§ There are several theories of rebirth, from metempsychosis (the notion that you may be reborn as a human, animal or a rock, depending upon your degree of sinfulness/bad behaviour) to immediate reincarnation upon the moment of death. The Reincarnation the Yogi suggests is a measured process, based upon individual needs (not ‘immediate’), and progresses always upwards (not back into a frog, for example) as everybody makes some progress in a lifetime, even if it is not apparent to the people s/he offended. This version would seem to be more rational than the others.
Also, you are not judged and tormented by a big fierce god after you ‘die’. Rather, you take stock of your own behaviour via a re-run of your life, seen as an all-embracing movie in which all ‘forgotten’ details are played back to you. You are your own judge and jury, aided if necessary by other kindly beings who have all ‘Been there; done that; bought the hair shirt’.
I’ve seen various objections to reincarnation, but I’m not impressed by them, I must say. A common one was put forward by Irenaeus, one of the Church fathers in the second century, who claimed that reincarnation must be wrong because we can not remember our previous lives. This is not an adequate argument, not least because most of us can’t remember our first three years of this life. Personally, I have trouble remembering the day before yesterday. This does not prove that I was not alive then.
You may not always need to physically reincarnate, even if you have been a thoroughly bad lot in your recent life. As long as you realise, post-mortem, that what you have done is wrong, and choose to make amends, then it may be possible for you to pay off your karmic ‘debts’ via services to humanity in and via the higher realms. (Please note: ‘debt’ is not the strictly correct word here, but space is short. It’ll do for now.)
This seems to be a rational proposition, and those karmic ‘debts’ always need repaying somehow.
Reincarnation repeats until you have no more lessons to learn, and have ‘paid off’ all the bad karma built up in your previous lifetimes. Eventually, you will become a perfect Wo/Man/Being and will lift off this mortal coil and enter into a quite different world: a nonphysical Reality called Nirvana.
§ Shakespeare’s image seems to have been more prescient than mere fancy words. Think of many births and deaths, improving as you go, and the shape of a coil: better still, the shape of a conical spiral.
Thus, to a Hindu/Yogi/Buddhist ‘Life’ means a very long series of ‘lives’, moving between This world and the Other via the process of reincarnation, with self-development in mind, and determination to resist the physical temptations of the animal world we are to be birthed into again. Food for thought here, it struck me, as the Bible and Koran are keen on Satan being ‘the Tempter’, against which we must test our mettle. ‘This World’ is definitely a world of temptation. Every day we face moral challenges: to do the right thing or the wrong; to be generous or mean; to grab or to share? To support or to denigrate? We make a hundred ethical choices every day.
There is far more to it than this, of course, but it seemed to me that the double doctrine of Karma + Reincarnation would at a stroke explain (or ‘offer a possible solution for’) several of the odder phenomena we observe in the world:
- How will Hitler, Mao, and Stalin get their just desserts?
- Why are some people born rich and others into poverty?
- Why are some apparently born as geniuses, like Mozart, while most of us are not?
- Why do some of us have artistic/sporting/mathematical inclinations, seemingly from birth, while others don’t?
- Why do some people have irrational fears of, say, mice, or water?
- And why do some have an inexplicable love of the sea, or the desert?
- Why are some people from good homes irresistibly drawn to the seedy side of life?
- Why does bad stuff happen to good people?
- Why do the good so often die young?
- Why do children from the same family, even identical twins, have quite different leanings and personalities?
- Why are some people unaccountably drawn towards other countries and cultures?
- Why do some people, like Hitler and Churchill, feel they have a mission?**
- Why do some people become more easily addicted than others?
- Why do some have feelings of déjà vu when visiting a house or a locale they’ve never seen before?
- Why do ‘the wicked seem to prosper’ and so many people appear to ‘get away with murder’, sometimes literally?
- Why do some people appear to be ‘accident-prone’?
- Why do there still seem to be so many bad eggs about, despite centuries of civilisation?
- Why do we sometimes take an immediate like/dislike to a stranger?
- Why does ‘love at first sight’ actually happen, now and then?
- Why do some people feel they were born in the wrong sex?
- Why do some feel they need to cross-dress?
- And, perhaps the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever come across, why do some people feel they ‘ought to be’ crippled, and even go to the extent of having a limb surgically amputated, after which process they feel ‘complete’?
I didn’t believe this when I first read about it, either. But it is a medically recognised condition, called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID).
We might add ‘Could the operation of Free Will, plus Karma, plus Reincarnation help to explain the problem of evil, especially in children who are ‘born evil’?’ Ie, if you are born into your next life in exactly the same condition as you left the previous one? (More on ‘evil’ in Chapter 26.) And might it make sense of the altruism that causes a mother to give up her own life for her child, or one soldier to give his life for another? Altruism goes absolutely against the grain of the ‘selfish gene’ school of thought, and of all Materialist thinking. But seen as a karmic debt repaid, or a chosen act of selflessness, it makes perfect sense.
And then there’s ‘remorse’; Materialism can have no explanation for remorse, but it fits perfectly within the Law of Karma.
§ The best Materialist attempt I have heard to try to explain altruism goes thus: ‘If I am nice to my baby now, perhaps my baby will be nice to me later’. Try asking a mother what she thinks of this; and then try asking a ‘selfish’ chemical-gene how it gets to be so clever as to plan ahead, and deviously at that.
§ In 2009 the Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh discovered that girls are born with a fear of spiders, while boys aren’t. This too runs counter to the tabula rasa idea (that we are all born as ‘blank pages’), as does the opinion of the godfather of psycholinguistics, Noam Chomsky, that we are all born ‘pre-programmed’ towards learning language.
Reincarnation might suggest a resolution for the list above; and if you have a karmic relationship with a group of people then it makes sense that you might choose to reincarnate together. This, say the Yogis, does indeed happen. Might this help to explain why some people seem determined to stick with an ‘unsuitable’ partner?
If you fancy a challenge, you can have a bit of fun trying to devise rational and/or convincing Materialist explanations for the items in the bulleted list above. Try it!
There are two major ways to pay off a karmic debt: by suffering the precise equivalent of the harm you once did to another, not forgetting the ripple effect; and by doing enough good stuff to precisely wipe out the bad stuff you did. Either way, you need to rebalance the scales.
§ Egyptian tomb paintings show the soul of a man being weighed on scales against a feather, whose weight represents purity and non-harmfulness.
The Book of Enoch: 41:1 ‘And after that I saw all the secrets of the heavens, and how the kingdom is divided, and how the actions of men are weighed in the balance.’
Yogis say you always have free choice, and that you even choose where you will be born in order to give yourself the best chance of paying off a debt, by either the Emotional route or the Mental, depending upon your level of development, and the effort you are likely to put in (ie, how strongly your Will is developed). For example, if you had a problem with greed last time round, you might now choose to be born into a rich family so you could resist the temptations surrounding you; or you might choose to be born into surroundings where you could easily fall prey to the temptation to defraud and embezzle. Either way, you might choose to back up this resistance with generosity towards others.
‘Always,’ the Yogi says, ‘whatever the circumstances, you should use your free will to choose to fight the temptations to greed and selfishness, and to thus strengthen the ‘I’s control over the Mind, Emotions, and the Body’. And always, you should accept what Life throws at you. There are no accidents. Karma is precise. What should concern you is not what Life/Karma brings to you, but how you choose to deal with it.
Some people ‘see the light’ quickly and choose to adopt a happier, more fulfilling life by always being kind: remembering birthdays, donating the occasional kidney, not dropping litter, etc. This is the superior, Mental, path. Others choose not to do these things and continue to live selfish brutish lives, thus accepting the cost of paying off bad karma via the path of equivalent suffering. This is the inferior, Emotional, path. Both paths bring results. The ‘superior’ one is quicker and less painful. We may all choose which one to adopt, and should remember that the Law of Conservation applies to Karma as it does to Energy. You can’t dodge it.
§ Yogi R is something of a shadowy figure whose books were at least ghosted by an American journalist. Whatever the details, it’s the contents that matters. You could waste several journeys round this mortal coil proving that Bacon, Lettes, or Tom Artaud wrote ‘Shakespeare’ and never find the time to enjoy the plays themselves.
***
Now I was getting somewhere in my search for what spooks were. The Yogic analysis may or may not be true, but it was self-consistent and did not contradict anything else I’d come to accept as logical and reasonable via SPIT. The only things it did contradict were Materialism and Churchy dogmatism (often seen as ‘scientism’ and ‘religiosity’).
Here, I thought, was a system which might rationally allow not just ‘normal’ death-rebirth, but might also allow some extra sort of disjointed access from the Other to This world. And ghost reports do tend to have something of the ‘disjointed’ or ‘not quite right’ about them. Happy ghosts seem to be very thin on the ground. Was this an almost-breakthrough?
§ I’d always been puzzled by Christians’ insistence that ‘Jesus died for me’. How could he die in the past for me in the future? Reincarnation would begin to offer a glimmer of sense here. But there was still the question of ‘Why did he want to die for me?’ Again, karmic debt would seem to offer a crumb of sense. Might it be that karmic debts from previous lives might somehow be occasionally paid off by Higher beings?
Did Jesus take upon himself all of humanity’s karmic debt in order to clear the slate so Man could progress from barely-human to almost-human-with-options?
I don’t know. But at least there would be an element of logic in this suggestion, given the apparent rationality of Yogic theory.
Here are a few possibly supportive quotes (among many similar) from the Bible. What do you think?
‘For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.’ I Peter 3:18
‘..and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross.’ I Peter 2:24
‘..so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many.’ Hebrews 9:28
§ The Law of Karma is the Law of Conservation of Energy writ large, assuming that Mind can be called an energy, of course. And if it’s not an energy the Law seems to apply to it anyway. Interesting.
Exo and Eso
As soon as you make a sect, you protest against universal brotherhood
Swami Vivekananda
God has no religion
Mahatma Gandhi
I was about to re-read Genesis when I discovered a book called Discourses in Oxfam, written by a man called Meher Baba. I flipped through the pages and found that he was talking about the same things as Yogi Ramacharaka, and in an equally readable manner. Karma and reincarnation were explored in great detail. If Yogi R and Mr B had met, they would have found they had 95% of their philosophy in common. So what? Put two vicars together and you’ll get the same result: vague pieties by the schoonerful. Yes, but the difference here is that the Yogi is a Hindu, and Meher Baba is a Muslim.
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