A
discussion of the Laws of Karma and Rebirth and the need for right
relationship in order for humans to move their lives forward in
the cycle of evolution. Reprinted with the kind permission of
Share International Magazine.
I
suppose in the world, today, there are really three approaches
to the idea of reincarnation. A two-fold one in the West, where
the idea itself is almost non-existent, either a belief in the
transmigration of souls - that you could be a human being in one
life and an animal in the next, and therefore that there is great
danger in swiping flies and treading on ants because it could
be your grandmother, or simply an interest in past lives. That
is almost the sole interest in the concept of rebirth in the West.
In
the East, broadly speaking, people do believe in reincarnation
and, correctly, in relation to the Law of Karma. Unfortunately,
even in the East, the Law of Karma is seen from an erroneous point
of view. Of course, here and there, both in East and West, there
is a correct interpretation and approach to the idea of rebirth,
and its close connection with the Law of Action and Reaction,
Cause and Effect.
In
the Orient, most people believing in the Law of Karma accept that
they are who and where they are because of their actions in a
previous life, which is true; but, unfortunately, they think they
can do nothing about changing their particular situation, which
is not true.
In
the West, we tend to think that we are totally in control of our
destiny, which we are to some extent, but that there is no greater
law governing our destiny, which is not true. The Westerner tends
to reject the idea of a future life. It is an idea which is only
just beginning to engage people's minds. If he thinks about it
at all, he really thinks about it in terms of: If I have a future
life, I must have had a past life; and if I had a past life it
is interesting to know who I was.
The
popular literature in the West about reincarnation is almost exclusively
about previous existences. There are now many techniques, authentic
or otherwise, advertised and used to take people back into an
experience of their past lives: hypnosis, rebirthing, and so on.
Of course, there is also much serious research on the subject
going on in several countries. The work of Professor Ian Stevenson
and others is adding much evidence pointing to the likelihood
of the fact of reincarnation.
The
Danger of Knowing our Past Lives
Is it of value to know our past lives? After a certain point:
yes. Before that point, not only is it not of major value, it
can actually be dangerous.
There
is a little-known law that when we become truly aware of our past
life we enter into the karma of that time. Most of us have a heavy
enough load of karma to deal with in this life without an unnecessary
load from some previous one, which happily we are not yet called
upon to resolve. And it is irresponsible for so-called clairvoyants
to tell people about their past lives; even if they are correct.
Particularly if they are correct! If they are wrong, people will
still create thoughtforms around that incorrect image of themselves.
That makes for glamour, illusion. If they are right, the people
involved become subject to the karma for which they may not yet
be prepared.
There
are occasions, in certain illnesses of a mental nature, which
cannot be handled in any other way, in which it may be useful
to go back to a previous life. These are relatively few, and the
way is through hypnosis. The whole subject is fraught with danger
and complexity. When our past lives enter spontaneously into our
consciousness, they will do so under law. The more important thing
is to know that every moment we are making karma, we are creating
our next life right now.
Needless
to say, you will always find clairvoyants, channels and sensitives
who are only too happy, for a price, to look into your past and
to tell you about your previous lives. But how do you know if
they are right or wrong? In what possible way can you verify what
they may tell you? It is better for you to keep your money. If
you are told that in a previous life you were important and powerful
(it is usually some king, queen, priestess), a priestess in Egypt,
say, how can you prove this? And are you, today, at least the
equivalent in importance, influence and power in the world, contributing
something original and creative to life?
Memories
are Not Infallible
It is also the easiest thing in the world to be mistaken in our
own memories. Let me illustrate with an instance from my own experience
which rose in my consciousness during a profound meditation lasting
about five hours. I saw myself (it did not look like me now, but
I recognized myself nevertheless) as a minister of religion during
religious persecutions somewhere in Europe around the 1650s.
My
church looked on to a square. I stood on the steps outside the
church listening to the shrieks and cries of pain and terror.
I knew what it meant: the Protestants were being set upon by the
soldiery and put to the sword. From a road at one corner of the
square the people came running, screaming, chased by the soldiers.
Diagonally across the square and into the church they ran, seeking
sanctuary. I stood in the church entrance, a very tall, broad
figure in a long black cassock, urging the terrified people into
the church.
The
soldiers came up the steps, stabbing and laying about them with
their swords. I was not at all afraid, but held my arms out sideways
to block their passage. I said, "This is my holy place." To my
surprise, they were not the least impressed, and one ran me through
with his sword. I can see it vividly now: this tall, broadly built
man and the sword through his chest. I fell and can still clearly
feel the sensation of the hard, cold stone on my cheek as I lay
dying on the steps of my church.
For
years I believed I had remembered in total clarity, like a film,
my last minutes of a previous life, and it was not until about
ten years ago that I learned from my Master that the experience
was real, had happened, but not to me. It was nothing to do with
me; I had never lived near that town or been the minister in the
black cassock. It was a clairvoyant experience of the death of
someone closely related to me on the soul plane. So how do you
know what you are picking up? How can you be sure?
Fatalism
is Not the Correct Approach
Fatalistic Eastern people have a different point of view. They
are not so worried about who they were in their past life. They
believe that if they are poor, hungry, miserable, indebted to
the landlord, with hardly enough to feed their family, they were
someone really terrible before. They believe it is the Law of
Karma because they were so bad, nasty, horrible, such low-grade
human beings in their past life, they deserve the misery they
are in now. They believe that; it is the teaching. And they believe,
because it is the Law of Karma, that there is nothing they can
do about it. They accept it totally, fatalistically, as their
due according to the law. And they also believe that if they accept
their lot meekly and try to be good they will be rewarded with
a life of higher status next time around.
If there is anything which has kept the Orient down, in terms
of its living standards, its social happiness, social democracy
and equality, it is the acceptance of the Law of Karma on that
basis. There is nothing to prevent the untouchables of India from
transforming their lives except the acceptance that their untouchability
is due to their misdeeds in former lives. So, some kind of balance
has to be reached, both from the Eastern and the Western viewpoints,
in the approach to these two great laws: the Law of Karma, Cause
and Effect, and the Law of Rebirth, its corollary.
The
Law of Cause and Effect, Karma
This
is the basic law governing our existence in this solar system
and is the outcome of the action of the energy of the alter ego
of our solar system, the constellation Sirius. Just as our personalities
are acting out, more or less well, the intentions of ourselves
as souls, so this solar system acts under the intentions of Sirius
as its soul. To put it more succinctly, the relationship between
Sirius and this solar system is the same as the relationship between
our soul and its reflection, the personality.
Every
thought, every action that we have and make sets into motion a
cause. These causes have their effects. These effects make our
lives, for good or ill. We are now, have been, and will go on,
making our lives from moment to moment. Sooner or later, the causes
set into motion by our thoughts and actions will produce effects
which will rebound on us; and we will experience that as good
karma or bad karma. When it is uncomfortable we call it bad karma.
And when it is good karma, when life is comfortable, easy, we
do not notice it. We take it as our right, our due, because that
is what we expect life to be like. People really only talk about
karma when they mean bad karma. It is important to realize and
remember that we have more good karma than bad karma.
Lords
of Karma
Like all laws, the Law of Karma is under the control, the jurisdiction,
of certain entities, in this case, the Lords of Karma. The Lords
of Karma are like cosmic judges. They look at this action and
reaction of causes and effects which we set in motion, and they
regulate this according to our needs as evolving souls. It is
always the soul which incarnates, in every entity, human or sub-human.
Our
souls incarnate in a personality with a given structure of energies,
rays, which relate to the karma and the possibilities of that
particular incarnation. The souls cooperate with the Lords of
Karma to decide what pain or pleasure we will suffer in any particular
life. That, of course, is precisely the wrong way to describe
what happens. The soul is not at all interested, nor are the Lords
of Karma, in our pleasure or our suffering. These are simply psychological
reactions to events. What they are interested in is the working
out of the Law, the cosmic Law of Cause and Effect.
Also, the soul has its own purposes for every given incarnation.
It provides itself with a vehicle, the personality, with mental,
emotional and physical bodies which will provide the possibility
for its intentions being achieved in that particular life. That
purpose might not be achieved, but the soul provides the possibility.
The soul lives ever in hope! The ultimate aim is to live life
in such a way that we make no personal karma. We can do that either
by being perfect or being dead. Since being perfect is much more
interesting than being dead, most people accept the premise of
trying, more or less, to achieve the soul's purpose and staying
to the last possible moment to do so. Thus, we work with this
burden which we have ourselves created in the present and in past
lives. We try, consciously or unconsciously, to become perfect.
We have no control over the events of life. The only thing we
can control is our reaction to these events.
So
the aim is to achieve such a measure of detachment from events
that we can control ourselves. In this way we cope with the burden
of karma in any given incarnation. This is not a case of sitting
in a catatonic stupor, so that we do nothing and therefore create
no karma. What we can do, in every event, in every situation,
is distance ourselves from that event, looking at the event as
out there, and us here, and not react. In this way we gradually
create an impersonality in relation to life, a detachment in relation
to events, where we become indifferent to whether our karma is
good or bad.
Renunciation
Leads to Self-Mastery
Correctly seen, evolutionary life is a gradual renunciation of
the lower for the sake of the higher. As a soul in incarnation,
a high level of divinity has incarnated at a lower level of divinity,
and the journey to perfection, the evolutionary goal, is the gradual
renunciation of these lower levels, by embodying, at these lower
levels, the higher; becoming more and more what one essentially
is as a soul. The soul makes its journey into incarnation over
aeons of time, and then back, out of the need to incarnate at
all. The path of return for the soul is the gradual release of
itself from the limitations of the physical, astral and mental
planes.
This
is done by infusing its vehicles -- physical, emotional and mental
-- with its energies and qualities. Two things are going on at
the same time in this process. One is the gradual spiritualizing
of the vehicle by the soul. The other is the burdening of the
vehicle, intentionally, by the soul, to burn up ancient karma.
As the soul progresses in its incarnational experience, so its
reflection, the man or woman in incarnation, receives a heavier
and heavier burden of karma until, in the last incarnation of
all, in which the person will be a fourth-degree initiate, the
burden is at its heaviest.
It
is for this reason that the fourth initiation is called, in the
West, the Crucifixion and, in the East, the Great Renunciation.
In that experience everything, all the lower aspects, are being
renounced in favor of the higher spiritual reality. That is why
the life of the fourth-degree initiate is usually, from the world's
point of view, painful, heavy indeed. People imagine that, as
a man or woman progresses in evolution, they should become freer
and freer of karma. The opposite is true. Not only that, but as
a man or woman becomes a disciple, becomes initiate, a world-server,
they take more and more of the weight of world karma.
They
are the upholders of the world. Their shoulders are, and need
to be, broad. Imagine a bridge over a river, and the river is
the world and its karma, and the disciples and initiates are the
pillars of the bridge, and the spaces between are the masses of
people. Where there are spaces, the water flows easily through.
It is the pillars of the bridge that take the force of the flood,
of the water. In a very real sense, the disciples and initiates
of the world support the world. That is one reason why the life
of a disciple is, from the average man's point of view, a very
difficult life to lead. But, of course, he is governed by the
great Law of Service. Under this law, disciples and initiates
come very frequently into incarnation to serve world need and
to finish off this earth experience as quickly as possible, not
to get it over with, but to serve the better. The more advanced
a person is, the more he can serve, the more useful he can be
to the world.
When
a certain level is reached, that of the third-degree initiate,
the relationship to the Law of Cause and Effect changes. Gradually
the law is manipulated by the person himself. As a conscious divine
soul, working in the world, he becomes really the pilot of his
own plane. He may have a co-pilot, his Master, but he is the pilot.
It is not an automatic thing, but gradually this point is achieved.
He takes an active part in his own evolution, consciously working
with the Law of Karma, under the control of his soul.
Then
it may come to pass that his previous lives will open up before
his inner eye. As this happens, also the karma of that time becomes
open to him on the physical plane, which, of course, increases
the burden of the initiate. The aim is that by the time the person
is ready to take the fifth initiation and become a Master, all
karma will have been resolved, burned up, taken back to the source
from which it came.
Service:
The Best Method for Resolving Karma
How do you get rid of karma; how do you deal with it? Well, you
cannot give it away. It is too heavy, nobody wants it. There is
no sale for excess karma; everyone has enough of their own. So
what do you do, how can you cope with this burden that limits
your activity, your joy and happiness? There is a very simple
method. It is called service. Service is the way par excellence
for getting rid of karma. Of course it does not get rid of it,
but it burns it up. The process is something like this: as you
serve you draw to yourself energy. By giving out energy, you get
energy back; that is the law. Basically, it is the Law of Love,
which governs our nature, without which the universe would not
exist. It is, of course, in another sense, the Law of Cause and
Effect itself. As you give love, you set in motion a cause, the
effect of which is the return of love.
So
the law itself sets in motion its own fulfilment. As we serve,
we demonstrate love. As we demonstrate love, by law, we get love.
That strengthens and potentizes the individual in a way in which
he can deal with his own karma. As the person progresses in love,
in service, he is automatically distancing himself from the effect
of events. The events take place, but they have less and less
effect on his psychology. In the East they say: well, it's my
karma. In France they say: well, c'est la vie. Gradually, we have
to develop an attitude of c'est la vie. If it is good, easy: c'est
la vie. If it is hard, if it is painful, makes us unhappy: c'est
la vie. We really have to live with that attitude.
Right
Relationship Ends the Karmic Cycle
The
Law of Karma is a great binding law, but it is benign. Nobody
receives more karma than their soul, and the Lords of Karma, know
they can usefully handle. Some lives for some people are very
hard, very painful, very limited indeed. From the point of view
of the soul, this is probably intentional and useful, productive.
Because the soul knows that, by the burning in this way of a burden
of karma from the past, greater progress can be made. What holds
us back, what limits us, is our karma. The efforts made in dealing
with the karma pave the way for periods of growth. Our development
proceeds thus in cycles. The Law of Karma is not a mechanical
law of punishment. If you hit somebody on the head, it is not
inevitable that you will be hit on the head. It is not a question
of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is simply the
energetic outcome of previous causes set in motion by ourselves.
All that we do will inevitably come back in some way or other.
However, we can do something about it.
The
untouchables of India can change their lives. They are not bound
by karma to be untouchables. That is a social structure, a class
system, which binds people to particular stations in life. It
is totally artificial and man-made. The poverty, the squalor,
the degradation and the misery of people in the Third World is
not necessary, it is not a result of karma, but of our greed.
And we have the major responsibility to help them change these
conditions and enter true living. People think of karma as always
from the past life, but what about yesterday's karma, or the day
before, last week's, last month's karma? It is this succession
of moments of action and reaction which today we are coping with,
which tomorrow and in our next life we will cope with.
Until
we come into right relationship with each other and with the whole
of which we are a part, we will go on making bad karma. It is
more important, more useful, to realize the benefit of right relationship,
thus handling the Laws of Karma and Rebirth correctly, than to
know our past lives.
