What is Karma?
The word “Karma” is no longer only heard from the lips of wise bespectacled Lamas and bearded Hindu yogis. Nowadays, everyone seems to be talking about it – from rap stars to comedians, from sportsmen to page three models. But how many people can explain what “Karma” really means?
Karma is a natural, all-pervasive, Divine Law. Every thought and every action of everyone and everything in the whole of creation has a Karmic reaction. Put in the simplest possible terms, if you do something good, the reaction is good, and if you do something bad, the reaction is bad. This is not reward and punishment decided by a whimsical all-powerful overlord; it is a completely impersonal, completely just, mechanism (for want of a better word) that creates perfect balance.
To go deeper into this fascinating subject, I’d like to examine the explanations of three great occultists who really knew what they were talking about.
Karma, as taught by the Lord Buddha, is the Divine Law that:
And, as taught by the Master Jesus, is the simple fact that:
And as explained by the modern metaphysician, the late Dr George King:
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(1) This, perhaps the most famous description of Karma, sounds more like something out of a modern physics textbook than an ancient spiritual teaching, and there is little doubt that it was intended to appeal to the rational minds of the intelligentsia of the time. But, unlike a “scientific” axiom, it is not restricted to the physical world of basic forms of energy and matter; it applies to everything in existence – to thoughts and inspiration, just as much as to bricks and mortar.
Every action, and every thought (since thought is nothing more than mental action) must be balanced by the cosmic scales of justice. It is as though, if any action were to go “unbalanced”, the whole of creation would be unbalanced, would be incomplete, which any logical mind can easily deduce would be an absurdity. It’s like trying to neutralize an acid – to create a completely neutral solution. You need exactly the same amount and same strength of an alkali – the opposite of an acid. So, to take an example of Karma in its negative phase, if someone were to kill someone, that action would attract an opposite and equal reaction, which would either mean that the killer himself, in this life or some future life, had to go through the experience of being killed (i.e. being the victim of the crime as opposed to the perpetrator of the crime), or would require the killer to save one or more people from death, thereby neutralizing the negative Karma incurred by the base act of murder with an opposite and equal benevolent act which carries with it positive Karma.
(2) This line from the Bible is little understood by the Christian Church today; its full implications, realizable only through meditation, would make certain church leaders very uncomfortable indeed. Like the Lord Buddha’s aphorism, it is far more all-inclusive than many would like to admit. “As you sow, so SHALL you reap.” Not: “As you sow, so may you reap.”
Whatever you do, you are, as it were, “sowing seeds”, and it is impossible to do absolutely nothing at all. It is as though you are casting seeds to a changeable wind twenty-four hours a day; the seeds may land behind us, unseen, but that doesn’t mean they won’t grow.
If you cast seeds of unselfish spiritual action, even though the ploughing of the furrows may be extremely hard, you will reap a beautiful harvest. But if you sow the seeds of selfishness and lethargy, you will reap a meagre crop of hard-to-swallow grain. In addition, the more good grain you harvest, the more seeds you can sow the following year, and, of course, the reverse, creating either a spiral of success or failure.
Notice also that you cannot rely on anyone to sow spiritual seeds for you while you idle your time away sowing rotten seeds: “As YOU sow, so shall YOU reap.” Not: “As Mr X sows, so shall Mr Y reap.” Thus, within this aphorism, there is a powerful message highlighting the importance of personal responsibility.
(3) Aphorisms one and two describe what Karma is, but don’t go very far into explaining why it is. Aphorism number three solves this mystery and, in doing so, almost gives us a glimpse into the mind of the Creator Itself. This, perhaps, better than any other sentence ever spoken, provides the answer to the strangely-worded question: “What is the Meaning of Life?”
The word “conformity” here means working with Karma, functioning with a full understanding of every aspect of it and obeying it ceaselessly, to your full potential, to the point where you actually become a conscious part of it, rather than just being subject to it. People on Earth today are, of course, many lives away from such an elevated state of being, but it is something to aspire to, something everyone can, and should, try to come that little bit closer to.
The “pressure” is the lessons Karma gives us the opportunity to learn (whether we do, in fact, learn them or not is up to us). A simple analogy would be a strict teacher telling a child off for breaking school rules until the child finally realises that the most sensible thing to do is to obey the rules, and only when the child has learnt this lesson can it progress into the next class and eventually become a teacher itself.
Millions of words have been written about Karma, but the only way to really understand it is to live by it. To devote one’s whole life selflessly to serving others. Only when we do this can we really claim to becoming closer to that magical day centuries away when we will truly be able to live up to the words of the great Master who made the following statement:
“You came not to be a slave of the basic Karmic wheel, but to be master of its every revolution. Evolution is borne from Karmic revolution.”
For a highly accessible and enjoyable introduction to Karma, I would strongly recommend Dr Richard Lawrence’s ‘Little Book of Karma’ published by Thorsons priced £4.99.
Winter 2004