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Francis
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« on: September 02, 2008, 12:16:05 PM » |
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Karma the Law of Causation, of Justice, and the Adjustment of Effects
by Annie Besant
Karma is simply a Sanskrit word meaning action, and is used in our philosophy to cover all action of every description in the Kosmos and in Man; action as cause, action as effect, so that it becomes the general expression of a sequence in Nature. The word is one which expresses continual inviolable sequence, the unbroken chain of cause and effect, each cause giving rise to an effect, which effect in turn becomes the cause of new effects, so that all thought, of life, all action, depends on the link that precedes it out of which no link can drop, for law is inviolable, subject neither to breach nor change. And the reason why this is so easy enough to grasp. What is the Universe in the widest extent of the phrase? The universe is but the form in which the divine thought expresses itself. It is but the manifested thought of the divine, but the necessary outcome of the divine nature; and inasmuch as the divine thought is primary and the form in which it expresses itself is secondary, therefore form must follow thought, and be the inevitable expression of the creative thought that originates divine ideation, which is the first manifestation of the deity. The universe and everything in it is but the gradual expression in the form of ideation that has preceded. Here is the sphere of causes. Here everything has its root.Out of the divine thought grow all possibilities of action, and so thought becomes the primary study, and Karma is but thought worked out in a manifested universe ...
It is from the meditation of the divine that all form proceeds, and so in its measure from human thought, from human meditation, all action springs, and every manifest thought is precipitated as action. It is the realm of thought that, as Dante phrased it, " In that realm where power and will are one," it is there, whether in the divine, in the Kosmos, or the divine in Man, that we must look for the root of action and the cause of all effect. Where the will has operated, the action is inevitable. That is Karma in a phrase. The will is the energizing force, the action is the mere crystallization of the will; and so, when this will has operated, there come forth into the world of manifestation acts which we perform, social systems amid which we life, physical environment that limits our energy, the very mold in which our life is cast ...
We have been making for ourselves by the creative force of our will, certain causes sent out from the realm of mind into the realm of matter; and it is in the realm of matter that are to be found the acts which from day to day we commit. Thought has made the action inevitable. The thought form must work out in the material world, so that day by day we are living in the result that we have created, and are surrounded from the cradle to the grave by these forms that are the offspring of our own mind. Hence we are born into the world time after time with the general mold, as it were, of our life cast in the preceding incarnations. We, and no one else, are responsible for the tendencies that we bring in. We, and no one else, are responsible for the environment which surrounds us, to work out year after year the lessons of our previous thinking, fettered by the fetters that our own hands have forged, hindered by the obstacles that our own hands have piled. But then, it may be said, if that be so, are you not teaching fatalism that will be destructive to human effort? Are you not proclaiming a destiny that will make all energy impossible, all spontaneous action removed from the possibility of Man? No, for the will that created yesterday those cause which to day are worked out in the very midst of the environment it has created and must enter, is the same creative potency making new causes for the morrow that shall work out in changed environment, in altered conditions improving or retrograding as life proceeds. It is true that wehave to live in that which we have made for our dwelling but it is also true that, working from within those limitation we have created, we can break one by one the fetters we have forged, and step out again free men into the world which we have made for ourselves ...
And so out of knowledge grows strength, so out of understanding grows peace; for all the pain, the real pain of life, grows not out of that which comes to us from without, but from the inner rebellion that is not able to accept, to understand what Karma means; to understand it as the expression of the divine nature, to realize that all that is worthy in life is to become one with the divine law, united with the divine will, and you will welcome pain which offers the possibility of union, and you will rejoice in the very fires of your agony, for they will purify you and give you gold and melt away the dross.
Thus is Karma the law of readjustment. I have spoken of the law of the Kosmos as the expression of the divine will. But we have human wills differentiated from the divine. One with it in essence, opposed to it for the while in practice. Why this possibility of conflict in the universe of law? Why should it be that in a Kosmos which is to be the expression of the divine thought there should be the possibility of any will in conflict with the one will, any volition of Man that can hold its own against he Supreme volition? It is because in the evolution of the soul there is something higher then mere automatic obedience to the law compulsorily impressed upon matter; because, the universe existing for the evolution of soul, that the soul is to become in every truth divine, self-consciously at its beginning. But if there is to be human will at all, that must include the possibility of rebellion. If the will can say, "I will obey," it must be able to also say, "I will not obey, I will go my own way, and carry out my own desire." And in order that the universe may not sound a monotone but a harmonious chord, not the one note ringing ever, but one key note with countless undertones giving richness and melody and all possibility of infinite harmony and beauty; so that while the key note is divine the harmonies of the human wills which gradually are trained into unity, and the work of the universe, are the evolution of the harmony, the conscious and willing harmony with the supreme will.
Therefore, it is that as the great will sweeps on, the lesser wills that set themselves against it cause friction. therefore pain and misery. And therefore it is that Karma, the expression of the law, works itself out so long as there is evil, by suffering, for only as friction disappears does harmony become possible, and it is the great law of readjustment that exhausts the friction that the human will has made.
And the Karma lying behind us in our immemorial past cannot express itself properly int he limits of one brief human life; and so, going deeper into the subject you will find divisions and sub divisions whereby we express the Karma that can be worked out in the one life for which the apparatus, so to speak, is here ready, while there is other Karma reserved, as it were, lying behind us, which in due time will come to the ripening and work itself out in the act. Not only is this complication one of the difficulties of the understanding of the detailed working, but also we have to recognize the working of Karma, but only individual but also national, but also racial, but also human, for all humanity is one. All these threads of Karma work in on mighty strand, and those who would understand it in its detail, those who would understand its full bearing on human life, must take into consideration all these different states and the fashion of their intertwining; and there comes in the abstruseness that I spoke of, which seems to make the subject lees intelligible as we thus study, that the Karma of one cannot be separated from he Karma of others; that you and I, one nation and another, one race and another, that we are all fundamentally one and have a common Karma that must work itself out in our common life; so that here, at the close of the evening as at the beginning of the morning we come back to the fundamental unity that makes all separation between us impossible, and then you begin to understand what is mean when it is aid of the guardians of our race, of those who have achieved, that it is their strong hands that hold back the Karma of the world, as the Karma is one and indivisible. Just in proportion as we destroy separateness, do we begin to bear the one Karma and share that one Karma come the common bearers of the race, not by vicarious offering but by the unity of our life within, for there is no difference recognized, no "mine" and "thine" to the expression. That has passed away in the merging into the common life, and if you and I, as we tread the path of life together, however obscure, however trivial, however petty it may seem to be day by day, if in the living of that life learn to trample on the lower self, if in the living of that life we learn to think not of self but first of others, and then as one with ourselves, if our daily life is made a daily offering to mankind, if every opportunity be seized upon, which may make us feel our union and makes us unconscious of our separateness, then we have put our feet on the path which makes us one with humanity and gives us the glory of bearing the common burden and using our strength for the common good of Man. Nothing can separate us from Man but our own will. Nothing can make us separate from our brethren save our own desire, our own longing for the lesser self, and the final lesson of Karma is, there is no such thing as separateness to the human soul. There is no such thing as Thee and Me to those who are in the supreme life; and the only reward that Theosophy offers to its followers, the only prize that Theosophy holds out to those who accept it, is that by struggle they shall become one with Man by following self sacrifice, that perfect sacrifice at last shall be their reward, that their fate shall be one with the fate of the world, their future one with the future of humanity, none outcast that is not one with them, none degraded that is not in their heart, whose pain they do not answer to, whose agony they cannot feel. the vilest and the lowest, the most degraded and the foulest, they are ours by right of our common divinity, and none shall come between us and them. That is the final triumph, that is the extreme goal. As was said in ancient Chinese scripture, we will open the door and go in together. For it is not worthwhile to be saved unless everything that breathes is saved along with us; and the one vow that is with the taking, the one vow that every Savior of Man perfects, age after age, is the vow which makes him the lowest in order that he may raise all, and makes him willing to be as the very ground men walk on, in order that, by the force of the spirit within him, he may raise them to the highest and make them one with the divine.
[Excerpts from a speech delivered at the Theosophical Congress held by the Society at the Parliament of Religions, at Chicago Illinois, September 15 — 17 1893. Originally published in the Report of Proceedings. Reprinted here from the December 1986 Theosophical Network Newsletter]
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