This discourse is on the law of karma and it comes with its twin brother REINCARNATION. This is because it is impracticable to discuss the law of karma without one of its attendant consequences. This is regarded as reincarnation. In view of the controversial nature of the subject of reincarnation, it is deemed appropriate to take them separately although they are intertwined.
I am discussing karma ahead of reincarnation because without karma there wouldn't be anything as reincarnation. In effect, reincarnation takes its root and essentially depends on karma. To begin with, what is this karma that we want to talk about?.
Karma is a Sanskrit word which means the law of nature which requires that every doer shall receive the exact result, reward or amount of his action. In this simple analysis, karma is nothing more than the well known law of cause and effect. This same law is known in physics as the law of compensation, balance or equilibrium.
In jurisprudence, it is the law of justice at which, its pillar carries a pair of scale and never a cornucopia. All the known courts of the civilized world give official recognition to the law of karma, anytime they mete out rewards or punishment to offenders.
In ethics, as in civil and criminal law, it is the basis of recompense and penalizing, the decisive principle of right and wrong conduct. Right actions are those which create good karma and in contra-distiction, wrong actions of course produce bad karma.
This is the simplest possible solution or explanation to many questions of right and wrong. In the ethics teachings of Jesus, karma was reduced to the basic idea of receiving what one has earned or reaping what one has sown. In the law of Moses, karma is brusquely put as an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
In employment law of labour, it is the principle of fair wages. In barter and exchange, it is the basis of the square deal. In the matter of legal transactions, the same law is known as consideration for exchange and the term quid pro quo was coined to mean something must be given to what is received. In mysticism or spiritual science, this law of compensation is known as retribution, but it is still the same karmic law.
The underlying principle behind this law is that every act performed by anybody, must be followed by its natural and legitimate result or reaction. The law of karma is so universal that it is amazing why all men and women have not grasped its general significance and applied it in ethics, the same as applies in mechanics.
Without karma there would be no science and neither could we have orderliness in the world, as it will imply no accounting. In other words, we wouldn't have to be responsible or made accountable for anything we do especially the negative ones. Hence, karma is also recognised in social life.
All the world over, everybody recognises that he must pay for what he gets, that is why if we are not on window shopping, one doesn't enter a shop and tries to take something away from the shelves, without the readiness to give something in return to the shopowner. That would be crass kleptocracy. It is only a fool who tries to get something for nothing. Even the man who imagines himself that he has succeeded in getting something for nothing (as with the case with stealing) has according to Emerson only run in, his own debt.
Meanwhile, karma is very easily discernible in the lives of we mortals. In fact, almost everything is intrinsically woven with the fiber of karma. If we could pick up a book on physics, we will discover the working of this same law in every problem scientists have found solution to.
As an example, a car is moving along the road at a speed which bears a definite ratio to its weight and the amount of power applied. If we wish to increase the speed, we must either reduce the weight or increase the power. In every case, the law of compensation is the chief factor. It is a fixed law of the universe and there can be no deviation or exception.
Cognizant of the law of karma all Mystics construct their ethics around it, just as definitely the building engineer is guided by this same principle of corresponding force in buildings, in construction of dams, bridges, cranes and all mechanical contrivances.
The world will be a better place if everyone could bear it in mind that every living being, every creature, from primordial protoplasm to human brain, from amoeba to archangel, from mind and soul to the Creator of the Three Worlds, being the physical, astral and causal planes; indeed everything created, must receive the exact balance of accounts, the precise compensation for each and every act carried out. This is why the law of karma is said to be inviolable.
Writing on the law of karma requires a voluminous book yet, such book wouldn't contain all the details. Thus, one can only offer abridged information herein. It is therefore crucial that one makes the following points unambiguous:
It is instructive that according to the karmic law, we are constantly creating karma every moment, incurring karmic debts and all of these debts must be paid for sooner or later. The exact day, time and hour may not be known to us, but irrespective of our ignorance we must pay.
Nature is so generous, it allows man the opportunity to improve and also delay the payment of karmic debts. Because of this, it is human to imagine those with crooked tendencies are escaping punishment, while the innocents seem to suffer in this world. Failure to understand or accept law of reincarnation gives vent to this perception and this makes it imperative that we discuss REINCARNATION in the next chapter.
As a parting shot, it is important we re-emphasise that the law of karma is inescapable as well as it is unalterable.
Man shall reap exactly what he has sown. This was made unambiguous by the Messiah in Galatians 6 vs 7 to wit;
"Be not be deceived, God is not mocked, you will reap exactly what you sow."
This is a fixed law, though due to our inability to see the whole play at a glance, we tend to believe there is no justice in this world. In our limitations, we seem to notice some sinners apparently escaping unpunished, while the righteous are unrewarded. Justice invariably miscarries daily right before our eyes and there appears to be no hand to right the wrongs.
With this bedufflement, it is particularly befitting that the scheme of karma and reincarnation comes to the rescue and offers a rational explanation. Without the law of karma, life becomes a mumbo jumbo but it is not, as it is explained further:
It may happen as we frequently witness that a man's account may not be fully settled in his current life. We then assume the law of karma has failed to catch up with the crooked. But has he really defeated the law? By no means. The law of karma is fixed and constant. It can never be set aside. Never!
As mentioned earlier, nature is so generous that it gives us plenty of time for payment. This is more for the fact that the death of any individual is not the end of his career or sojourn. It is only the end of one chapter in his long unbroken history.
As long as one owes one farthing to the law of karma, one must return to make payment. By the same token, if there is any karmic association between individuals, that relationship can never be terminated until all karmic accounts are settled between them. And this scenario brings us to the injunction in Matthew 5 vs 25 & 26 on quote:
"Agree with thy adversary quickly while thou art in the way with him less, thy adversary deliver thee to the Judge and the Judge deliver thee to the officer and the officer deliver thee to the prison and thou shall not escape until thou hast paid the utmost farthing."
The above verse clearly removes any ambiguity about the law of karma. It operates in exactitude.
But before rounding up, it is of essence we ask the question; why the law of karma?
The answer to this poser is that the world itself is a school of learning in the evolutionary scale of the soul. If we can do anything and get away without being made to account for it, the world would have run out of control. We wouldn't have learnt anything, nor tried to avoid pitfalls of the past. There will be no control and neither repercussions. We can then imagine how disastrous such a free and uncontrolled world would be.
The conclusion here is that the law of karma is real and it affects everything and binds the world together. The law of karma ensures the continuity of the earthly field. With karmic law in operation, we are now in the world reaping the fruits of the karmic seeds we planted heretofore, and as we are doing this, we are inadvertently planting the seeds of what we will harvest in the morrow, in a manner a planter can not repudiate the fruits of his plantation.
We are encouraged to reflect deeply upon this law of karma. It is only in its understanding that our life would be meaningful. We will then be conscious of everything we do, fully aware of the consequences and we will stop imagining an arbitrary God, inscrutably interfering with the affairs of the world.
Indeed the gods are not to be blamed. Believe it or not, we have caused whatever is happening to us presently, and what will happen to us tomorrow, is a function of the choices we are making today. A reasonable individual will ponder over this and choose rightly for a better harvest tomorrow.
Let it therefore be known that the perfect solution to the world's social and economic disorder and challenges lies in the understanding of the law of karma. The whole world is profit mad. Human energies are devoted to heaping up profits. But the worst feature of the rat race is that people do not care how they get profits, or whether they have to give back for the value received.
If we can have this law of karma deeply rooted in the public consciousness, what a marvelous world would ensue from such understanding. It will earn us a world of social equilibrium that will stand all tests. For now, this ideal situation remains a mirage, for modern business methods are nothing more than a belated survival of the days of lawless plunder, pillage and oppression of the weak.
The law of karma will further be made clearer in the discourse of its twin brother: REINCARNATION