Theosophy; The New Rock ‘n
Roll
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky
1831
-1891
Theosophy
Megastar
______________________
What is Karma?
By
H P Blavatsky
From the Key To theosophy P201 -215
Q. But what is
Karma?
A. As I have
said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the source, origin,
and fount of all other laws which exist throughout Nature. Karma is the
unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental, and
spiritual planes of being. As no cause remains without its due effect from
greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand,
and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts
wisely, intelligently, and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the
latter back to
its producer. Though itself unknowable,its action is perceivable.
Q. Then it is
the "Absolute," the "Unknowable" again, and is not of much
value
as an
explanation of the problems of life?
A. On the
contrary. For, though we do not know what Karma is per se, and in its essence,
we do know how it works, and we can define and describe its mode of action with
accuracy. We only do notknow its ultimate Cause, just as modern
philosophy
universally admits that the ultimate Cause of anything is
"unknowable."
Q. And what
has Theosophy to say in regard to the solution of the more practical needs of
humanity? What is the explanation which it offers in reference to the awful
suffering and dire necessity prevalent among the so-called "lower
classes."
A. To be
pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils, the
distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the
unequal distribution of capital and of labor-all are due to what we tersely but
truly denominate Karma.
Q. But,
surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat
indiscriminately
are not actual merited and individual Karma?
A. No, they
cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual
environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds
himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual
generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the fact that every
atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it
belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law.
Do you not
perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to
which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National
Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the
individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is
upon this broad line of Human interdependence that the law of Karma finds its
legitimate and equable issue.
Q. Do I, then,
understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?
A. That is
just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of
power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line
of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of
Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law
which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and
its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his
individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of
which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the
effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as
"Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which
the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.
Q. And are there
no means by which the distributive or national Karma might be
concentrated
or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and legitimate
fulfillment without all this protracted suffering?
A. As a
general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to which we
belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its fulfillment.
But of this I
am certain, the point of possibility in either of these directions has never
yet been touched. Listen to the following recital of one phase of national
suffering, and then ask yourself whether, admitting the working power of
individual, relative, and distributive Karma, these evils are not capable of
extensive modification and general relief. What I am about to read to you is
from the pen of a National Savior, one who, having overcome Self, and being
free to choose, has elected to serve Humanity, in bearing at least as much as a
woman's
shoulders can possibly bear of National Karma. This is what she says:
Yes, Nature
always does speak, don't you think? only sometimes we make so much noise that
we drown her voice. That is why it is so restful to go out of the town and
nestle awhile in the Mother's arms. I am thinking of the evening on Hampstead Heath
when we watched the sun go down; but oh! upon what suffering and misery that
sun had set! A lady brought me yesterday a big hamper of wild flowers. I
thought some of my East-end family had a better right to it than I, and so I
took it down to a very poor school in Whitechapel this morning.
You should
have seen the pallid little faces brighten! Thence I went to pay for some
dinners at a little cookshop for some children. It was in a back street,
narrow, full of jostling people; stench indescribable, from fish, meat, and
other food, all reeking in a sun that, in Whitechapel, festers instead of
purifying.
The cookshop
was the quintessence of all the smells. Indescribable meat-pies at 1d.,
loathsome lumps of 'food' and swarms of flies, a very altar of Beelzebub! All
about, babies on the prowl for scraps, one, with the face of an angel,
gathering up cherrystones as a light and nutritious form of diet. I came
westward with every nerve shuddering and jarred, wondering whether anything can
be done with some parts of London save swallowing them up in an earthquake and
starting their inhabitants afresh, after a plunge into some purifying Lethe,
out of which not a memory might emerge! And then I thought of Hampstead Heath,
and-pondered.
If by any
sacrifice one could win the power to save these people, the cost would not be
worth counting; but, you see,they must be changed-and how can that be wrought?
In the condition they now are, they would not profit by any environment in
which they might be placed; and yet, in their present surroundings they must
continue to putrefy.
It breaks my
heart, this endless, hopeless misery, and the brutish degradation that is at
once its outgrowth and its root. It is like the banyan tree; every branch roots
itself and sends out new shoots. What a difference between these feelings and
the peaceful scene at Hampstead! and yet we, who are the brothers and sisters
of these poor creatures, have only a right to use Hampstead Heaths to gain
strength to save Whitechapels.
Q. That is a
sad but beautiful letter, and I think it presents with painful conspicuity the
terrible workings of what you have called "Relative and Distributive
Karma." But alas! there seems no immediate hope of any relief short of an
earthquake, or some such general engulfment!
A. What right
have we to think so while one-half of humanity is in a position to effect an
immediate relief of the privations which are suffered by their fellows? When
every individual has contributed to the general good what he can of money, of labor,
and of ennobling thought, then, and only then, will the balance of National
Karma be struck, and until then we have no right nor any reasons for saying
that there is more life on the earth than Nature can support.
It is reserved
for the heroic souls, the Saviors of our Race and Nation, to find out the cause
of this unequal pressure of retributive Karma, and by a supreme effort to
readjust the balance of power, and save the people from a moral engulfment a
thousand times more disastrous and more permanently evil than the like physical
catastrophe, in which you seem to see the only possible outlet for this
accumulated misery.
Q. Well, then,
tell me generally how you describe this law of Karma?
A. We describe
Karma as that Law of readjustment which ever tends to restore
disturbed
equilibrium in the physical, and broken harmony in the moral world. We say that
Karma does not act in this or that particular way always; but that it always
does act so as to restore Harmony and preserve the balance of equilibrium, in
virtue of which the Universe exists.
Q. Give me an
illustration.
A. Later on I
will give you a full illustration. Think now of a pond. A stone falls into the
water and creates disturbing waves.
These waves
oscillate backwards and forwards till at last, owing to the operation of what
physicists call the law of the dissipation of energy, they are brought to rest,
and the water returns to its condition of calm tranquility.
Similarly all
action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balancedharmony of the
Universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to roll backwards and
forwards, if its area is limited, till equilibrium is restored. But since each
such disturbance starts from some particular point, it is clear that
equilibrium and harmony can only be restored by the reconverging to that same
point of all the forces which were set in motion from it. And here you have
proof that the consequences of a man's deeds, thoughts, etc. must all react
upon himself with the same force with which they were set in motion.
Q. But I see
nothing of a moral character about this law. It looks to me like the simple
physical law that action and reaction are equal and opposite.
A. I am not surprised
to hear you say that. Europeans have got so much into the ingrained habit of
considering right and wrong, good and evil, as matters of an arbitrary code of
law laid down either by men, or imposed upon them by a Personal God. We
Theosophists, however, say that "Good" and "Harmony," and
"Evil" and "Dis-harmony," are synonymous. Further we
maintain that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony, and that
the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in
some form or another.
Hence Karma
gives back to every man the actual consequences of his own actions, without any
regard to their moral character; but since he receives his due for all, it is
obvious that he will be made to atone for all sufferings which he has
caused, just
as he will reap in joy and gladness the fruits of all the happiness and harmony
he had helped to produce. I can do no better than quote for your benefit
certain passages from books and articles written by our Theosophists-those who
have a correct idea of Karma.
Q. I wish you
would, as your literature seers to be very sparing on this subject?
A. Because it
is themost difficult of all our tenets. Some short time ago there appeared the
following objection from a Christian pen:
Granting that the
teaching in regard to Theosophy is correct, and that "man must be his own
savior, must overcome self and conquer the evil that is in his dual nature, to
obtain the emancipation of his soul," what is man to do after he has been
awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness? How is he
to get emancipation, or pardon, or the blotting out of the evil or wickedness
he has already done?
To this Mr.
J.H. Conelly replies very pertinently that no one can hope to "make the
theosophical engine run on the theological track." As he has it:
The
possibility of shirking individual responsibility is not among the concepts of
Theosophy. In this faith there is no such thing as pardoning, or "blotting
out of evil or wickedness already done," otherwise than by the adequate
punishment therefore of the wrong-doer and the restoration of the harmony in
the universe that had been disturbed by his wrongful act. The evil has been his
own, and while others must suffer its consequences, atonement can be made by nobody
but himself.
The condition
contemplated … in which a man shall have been "awakened and converted to a
certain extent from evil or wickedness," is that in which a man shall have
realized that his deeds are evil and deserving of punishment. In that realization
a sense of personal responsibility is inevitable, and just in proportion to the
extent of his awakening or "converting" must be the sense of that
awful responsibility. While it is strong upon him is the time when he is urged
to accept the doctrine of vicarious atonement.
He is told
that he must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is an amiable
weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the evil we have
done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered from it
ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the feeling would
show us that thing which we regret is rather the necessity that seemed to
require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends than the evil
itself.
Attractive as
this prospect of casting our burden of sins "at the foot of the
cross" may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the
Theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the sinner by attaining knowledge
of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out of his past
wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle him to a
suspension in his favor of the universal law of relation between cause and
effect.
The results of
his evil deeds continue to exist; the suffering caused to others by his
wickedness is not blotted out. The Theosophical student takes the result of
wickedness upon the innocent into his problem. He considers not only the guilty
person, but his victims.
Evil is an
infraction of the laws of harmony governing the universe, and the penalty
thereof must fall upon the violator of that law himself. Christ uttered the
warning, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee," and
This is the
principle of the law of Karma which is taught by Theosophy. Sinnett, in his
Esoteric Buddhism,rendered Karma as "the law of ethical causation."
"The law of retribution," as Mme. Blavatsky translates its meaning,
is better. It is the power which Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring
through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment.
But it is
more. It rewards merit as unerringly and amply as it punishes demerit.
It is the
outcome of every act, of thought, word, and deed, and by it men mold
themselves, their lives and happenings. Eastern philosophy rejects the idea of
a newly created soul for every baby born. It believes in a limited number of
monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation
of many successive personalities. Those personalities are the product of Karma
and it is by Karma and reincarnation that the human monad in time returns to
its source-absolute deity.
E.D. Walker,
in his Reincarnation, offers the following explanation:Briefly, the doctrine of
Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former actions, and are
building our future eternity by present actions. There is no destiny but what
we ourselves determine.
There is no
salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about … Because it
offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness,
it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious
atonement, intercession, forgiveness, and deathbed conversions … In the domain
of eternal justice the offense and the punishment are inseparably connected as
the same event, because there is no real distinction between the action and its
outcome …
It is Karma,
or our old acts, that draws us back into earthly life.
The spirit's
abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any long
continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action
is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of
that action be manifested in physical rebirths. Only the perfectly selfless man
can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is
the goal of mankind.
And then the
writer quotes from The Secret Doctrine:
Those who
believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every
man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider does his cobweb,
and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible
prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is
but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man.
Both these
lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very
beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation
steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the
last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own
doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made
destiny …
An Occultist
or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but,
identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that, nevertheless, it guards
the good and watches over them in this as in future lives; and that it punishes
the evil-doer-aye, even to his seventh rebirth-so long, in short, as the effect
of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the infinite
world of harmony has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of
Karma-an eternal and immutable decree-is absolute harmony in the world of
matter as it is in the world of spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards
or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves according to whether
we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that
harmony depends, or-break them. 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 … 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 of our lives, not a misshapen
day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this
or in another life … The law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of
reincarnation … It is only this doctrine that can explain to us the mysterious
problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent
injustice of life.
Nothing but
such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one
unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the
inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees
honor paid to fools and wastrels, on whom fortune has heaped her favors by mere
privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbor, with all his intellect and
noble virtues-far more
deserving in
every way-perishing for want and for lack of sympathy-when one sees all this
and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears
ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him-that blessed
knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men as well as
their supposed Creator … This law, whether conscious or unconscious,
predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity truly, for it is
eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coequal with eternity, it
cannot be said to act, for it is action itself. It is not the wave which drowns
the man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places
himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean's motion.
Karma creates
nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plants and creates causes, and
Karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act but universal
harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which,
bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigor. If it happen to
dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we
say it is the bough which broke our arm or that our own folly has brought us to
grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty,
like the god invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in
darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize
its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its
intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which
so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is
working for the good of his fellowmen. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in
the world of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as one
Eternal, ever-present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists
or materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable,
of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world.
Another able
Theosophic writer says:
Every
individual is making Karma either good or bad in each action and thought of his
daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life the Karma brought
about by the acts and desires of the last.
When we see
people afflicted by congenital ailments it may be safely assumed that these
ailments are the inevitable results of causes started by themselves in a
previous birth. It may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary,
they can have nothing to do with a past incarnation; but it must be remembered
that the Ego, the real man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the
parentage by which it is reembodied, but it is drawn by the affinities which
its previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries it,
when the time comes for rebirth, to the home best fitted for the development of
those tendencies … This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well
calculated to guide and assist those who realize its truth to a higher and
better mode of life, for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions but
our thoughts also are most assuredly followed by a crowd of circumstances that
will influence for good or for evil our own future, and, what is still more
important, the future of many of our fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and
commission could in any case be only self-regarding, the fact on the sinner's
Karma would be a matter of minor consequence. The effect that every thought and
act through life carries with it for good or evil a corresponding influence on
other members of the human family renders a strict sense of justice, morality,
and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness or progress. A crime once
committed, an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall-no amount of
repentance can wipe out their results in the future. Repentance, if sincere,
will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him or others from the
effects of those already produced, which will most unerringly overtake him
either in this life or in the next rebirth.
Mr. J.H.
Conelly proceeds-
The believers in
a religion based upon such doctrine are willing it should be compared with one
in which man's destiny for eternity is determined by the accidents of a single,
brief earthly existence, during which he is cheered by the promise that
"as the tree falls so shall it lie"; in which his brightest hope,
when he wakes up to a knowledge of his wickedness, is the doctrine of vicarious
atonement, and in which even that is handicapped, according to the Presbyterian
Confession of Faith.
By the decree
of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are
predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting
death.
These angels
and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and
unchangeably
designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either
increased or diminished … As God hath appointed the elect unto glory … Neither
are any other redeemed by Christ effectually called, justified, adopted,
sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.
The rest of
mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will,
whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his
sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor
and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice.
This is what
the able defender says. Nor can we do any better than wind up the subject as he
does, by a quotation from a magnificent poem. As he says:
The exquisite
beauty of Edwin Arnold's exposition of Karma in The Light of
is a portion
of it:
Karma-all that
total of a soul
Which is the
things it did, the thoughts it had,
The
"self" it wove with woof of viewless time
Crossed on the
warp invisible of acts.
Before
beginning and without an end,
As space
eternal and as surety sure,
Is fixed a
Power divine which moves to good,
Only its laws
endure.
It will not be
despised of anyone;
Who thwarts it
loses, and who serves it gains;
The hidden
good it pays with peace and bliss,
The hidden ill
with pains.
It seeth
everywhere and marketh all;
Do right-it
recompenseth! Do one wrong-
The equal
retribution must be made,
Though Dharma
tarry long.
It knows not wrath
nor pardon; utter-true,
Its measures
mete, its faultless balance weighs;
Times are as
naught, tomorrow it will judge
Or after many
days.
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.
And now I
advise you to compare our Theosophic views upon Karma, the law of Retribution,
and say whether they are not both more philosophical and just than this cruel
and idiotic dogma which makes of "God" a senseless fiend; the tenet,
namely, that the "elect only" will be saved, and the rest doomed to
eternal perdition!
Q. Yes, I see
what you mean generally; but I wish you could give some concrete
example of the
action of Karma?
A. That I
cannot do. We can only feel sure, as I said before, that our present lives and
circumstances are the direct results of our own deeds and thoughts in lives
that are past. But we, who are not Seers or Initiates, cannot know anything
about the details of the working of the law of Karma.
Q. Can anyone,
even an Adept or Seer, follow out this Karmic process of readjustment in
detail?
A. Certainly:
"Those who know" can do so by the exercise of powers which are
latent even in
all men.
___________________
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