Theosophy; The
New Rock ‘n Roll
Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky
1831
-1891
Theosophy
Megastar
______________________
What is Karma?
By
H P Blavatsky
This
is an extract from the Key to Theosophy by H P Blavatsky. The book is in the
form of a dialogue with an enquirer.
The
Key to Theosophy is very readable and broken down into specific topics –
recommended for beginners
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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