"The
Law of Karma is today a great and incontrovertible fact in the
consciousness of humanity everywhere. They may not call it by
that name, but they are well aware that in all today's events
the nations are reaping what they sowed. This great law - at one
time a theory - is now a proven fact and a recognised factor in
human thinking."
When
the Master Djwhal Khul dictated these words to Alice Bailey for
Esoteric Healing nearly half a century ago, the popular perception
- and misperception - of 'karma' that has to come to permeate
popular culture today was mainly limited to spiritual and esoteric
groups. Subconsciously, however, many people even then were wrestling
with the Law of Karma as they struggled to discover the causes
underlying the happenings of a troubled world and to gain a measure
of control over the future. "The question 'Why?'," wrote DK, "brings
in the factor of cause and effect with constant inevitability.
The
concepts of heredity and of environment ... qualities, racial
characteristics, national temperaments and ideals ... historical
conditions, the relationships between nations, social taboos,
religious convictions and tendencies ... things of beauty and
of horror, modes of living and civilisation and culture, prejudices
and likings, scientific attainment and artistic expression ...
are aspects of effects, initiated somewhere, on some level at
some time, by human beings, both individual and en masse. Karma
is therefore that which Man - the Heavenly Man in whom we live,
humanity as a whole, mankind in groups as nations, and individual
man - has instituted, carried forward, endorsed, omitted to do
or has done right through the ages until the present moment."
(Esoteric Healing, p262-3.)
Oversimplification
Since
Djwhal Khul so succinctly defined karma and provided, for those
who had ears to hear, the most essential clue to understanding
the realm of causes, thinking people around the world have developed
a conscious interest in the concept of karma as a way of answering
their otherwise unanswerable questions. Along with the popularization
of the idea, however, has come a tendency to oversimplify, to
adapt wholesale from Eastern traditions half-understood versions
of what karma is and how it operates, and to adjust the concept
to the personality need to justify and rationalize one's own actions.
As a result, there are many misunderstandings of karma which need
to be corrected if we are to work with, rather than in spite of
this most important universal law.
Three
of these deserve particular attention. First, the common and rather
resigned perception of karma as immutable predestination: "I don't
really see what I can do about it. It's just my karma." This is
the "sin and retribution" version which in the West probably flows
from historical religious beliefs in a wrathful, vengeful God
and the "original sin" theory of Calvinism and Puritanism. In
effect it denies the possibility of free will and tends to rationalize
passivity and inaction in dealing with life's problems. The misunderstanding
here, says the Master DK, is in confusing the Law of Karma with
the Law of Retribution which is merely one of its aspects. Actually,
it is more accurate to think of karma in terms of the comprehensive
law of which karma is itself but an element - the Law of Cause
and Effect. This law, comments DK, "is not to be understood as
we now interpret it.
There
is, to illustrate, a law called the Law of Gravitation, which
has long imposed itself on the minds of men; such a law exists,
but it is only an aspect of a greater law, and its power can be,
as we know, relatively offset, for each time that we see an aeroplane
soaring overhead, we see a demonstration of the offsetting of
this law by mechanical means, symbolising the ease with which
it can be surmounted by human beings." (Esoteric Healing, p20-21.)
'Bad' karma
We
can, in other words, offset the limitations imposed by law - if
we understand the law and use our wisdom, intelligence and will
properly. It is true, of course, that through past action we have
indeed created what we call "bad" karma - largely, DK tells us,
"owing to humanity's ignorance and low stage of development."
What our ignorance and want of evolution has produced in the past,
our personalities will experience in the present, and the more
highly developed our minds, the greater will be our suffering
from this experience. At the same time, however, our increasingly
sophisticated minds grant us the capacity to offset negative karma
by intervening intentionally, through choice. As Maitreya taught
in Volume I of Leaves of Morya's Garden many years ago, "Karma
is of great importance, but of greater gravity is the choice.
Karma is but the condition of the choice."
Right choice, says DK, "is determined every time by that which
is right for the whole and not so much by that which is right
for the part." Thus, the offsetting of karma by the imposition
of willed choice requires a certain detachment from self-interest
and the capacity to focus on the well-being of humanity as a whole.
Under these circumstances, DK continues, "what man has made he
can unmake. This is oft forgotten. Karma is not a hard and fast
rule. It is changeable, according to man's attitude and desire."
(Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p225.)
Alibi
A
related misinterpretation of karma is described and corrected
by DK without equivocation: "There are many people today who find
an alibi for themselves in the present world situation, and a
consequent release from definite action and responsibility by
saying that what is today happening is simply karma or the working
out of cause and effect, and that there is nothing, therefore,
that they can do about it; they take the position that it is not
their affair, and that in due course of time the process will
be worked out and everything will be all right again. The slate
will then be cleaner and incidentally they will not have been
embroiled, but will have safely (even if uncomfortably) looked
on." If they have the capacity to analyze world events in this
way, such people of course also have the mental capacity to utilize
some degree of free will and, says DK, it is only through the
compassionate use of that free will that the world's evils and
havoc will be transmuted into good. "Therefore," he concludes,
"those who are looking on at the tragic sufferings of humanity
and who refuse to be implicated, and thus succeed in evading responsibility
as an integral part of the human family, are definitely storing
up for themselves much evil karma."
The
struggle against such human suffering is the struggle for freedom,
and "those who refuse to share in that struggle for freedom will
be left out of the gains of freedom, even if it only means within
their own home limits, in their life habits and in their private
circumstances." (Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p253.)
The
karmic process, then, if rightly engaged with, is transformative,
constantly alchemizing evil into good, materiality into spirituality,
pain and suffering into joy and happiness. From the most esoteric
point of view, karma is synonymous with opportunity and constitutes
a beneficient means for earning one's way back to God. This perspective
sharply contrasts with the third pervasive misunderstanding of
karma, namely that all karma is negative: to say "that's my karma"
is the same as "that's the curse I must live with."Karma from
this perspective is a painful exacting of repayment for transgressions
long since forgotten and controlled by some vague agency not easily
understood, a kind of 'cosmic' retribution. The good we experience
is, therefore, not karmically created and lies outside the stern
and unforgiving
Law
of Karma.
Perhaps
it is because, as DK tells us, humanity is capable of taking on
its own negative karma and is doing so - painfully but positively
- that we are so inclined to believe - and quite illogically -
that the Law of Cause and Effect is really the law of negative
causes and negative effects. "Today," says DK, " the karma of
humanity is descending upon it," a fact of life in the period
during which he was dictating material to Alice Bailey and which
has colored the attitudes of both those who lived through that
period and their children. Even in such dark times, however, we
should not forget that there is another side to the Law of Karma:
"I would remind you ... that the continuous emphasis laid upon
the malevolent aspects of karma conveys a wrong impression and
negates the full grasp of the truth. There is as much good karma
as there is bad... The good karma emanating from the soul of humanity
balances the evil which comes from the material aspect and is
continuously over-emphasised." 'Bad' karma, then, is best understood
as "the rhythm of matter in contradistinction to the rhythm of
the soul." (Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p117.)
Karma
of Reward
There
is, in fact, a "Karma of Reward... This is the type of karma oft
forgotten, but one which will become better known in the coming
world cycle. Humanity has worked off much evil karma, and the
karma based on causes later to be initiated will not generate
such dire effects as that of the past." Already one can perceive
the prophetic wisdom of these words as the world enters the Age
of Maitreya, an age of divine intervention and the externalization
of the Hierarchy only made possible by the use of human free will
to offset its karmic liabilities.
Similarly,
more and more individuals are experiencing an increased capacity
to generate 'good' karma and gradually become conscious actors
in their evolutionary dramas. "In time to come," DK said in the
1940's, "man will develop that mental attitude which will consider
causes of greater importance than effects; he will then learn
to consider with care the first steps taken in initiating any
line of action, pondering upon and deducing the probable effects
before committing himself to any specific deed." (Externalisation
of the Hierarchy, p117.)
Surely
the presence worldwide of the New Group of World Servers is further
evidence that many thousands of people are already sufficiently
free of the need to spend most of their time struggling with past
negative karma and can reap, as their reward for past and present
efforts, a great reward: the right and capacity to serve. Perhaps
we are in fact on the verge of a period when, as DK taught, the
difficult karma of the past "will be changed into the good karma
which is the true destiny of humanity and will usher in the new
era of joy and of peace and spiritual synthesis - that synthesis
which we call brotherhood." (Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
p256.)
Reprinted
with the kind permission of Share International Magazine.
