The Law of Karma
by Paramhansa YoganandaFrom: Karma and Reincarnation
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What Is Karma?
If we accept the principle of cause and effect in Nature, and of action and reaction in physics, how can we not believe that this natural law extends also to human beings? Once consciousness is understood as basic to everything the question begs to be asked: Do not humans, too, belong to the natural order?
Such is the law of karma: As you sow, so shall you reap.* If you sow evil, you will reap evil in the form of suffering. And if you sow goodness, you will reap goodness in the form of inner joy.
To understand karma, you must realize that thoughts are things. The very universe, in the final analysis, is composed not of matter but of consciousness. Matter responds, far more than most people realize, to the power of thought. For will power directs energy, and energy in turn acts upon matter. Matter, indeed, is energy.
Every action, every thought, reaps its own corresponding rewards.
Human suffering is not a sign of God's, or Nature's, anger with mankind. It is a sign, rather, of man's ignorance of the divine law.
The law is forever infallible in its workings.
The Soul Is Free
Souls are "made" in the image of God. Even the greatest of all sinners cannot be damned forever. A finite cause cannot have an infinite effect. Due to the misuse of his free will, a person might imagine himself to be evil, but within he is a son of God. A king's son might, under the influence of liquor or of a bad dream, think himself poor, but as soon as he recovers from his state of intoxication, or as soon as he awakens, he forgets that delusion. The perfect soul, ever sinless, eventually wakes up in God when it remembers its real, eternally good, nature.
Man, being made in the image of God, is deluded only temporarily. This temporary delusion leads him to think of himself as mortal. So long as he identifies with mortality he must suffer.
A soul's delusion of mortality may extend to many incarnations. Through self-effort, however, always influenced by the law of God, the Prodigal Son develops discrimination, remembers his home in God, and attains wisdom. With illumination the prodigal soul remembers its eternal image of God, and is reunited with cosmic consciousness. His Father then serves him "the fatted calf" of eternal bliss and wisdom, liberating him forever.
Delusion is Temporary
Man may misuse his free will for a time, considering himself mortal, but that temporary delusion can never erase from within him the mark of immortality and God's image of perfection. A baby's premature death cannot possibly have permitted him the use of free will to be either virtuous or vicious. Nature must bring that soul back to earth to give it a chance to use its free will to work out also the past karma which caused it to die so young, and to perform the good actions that lead to liberation.
If an immortal soul has not worked out in one lifetime of school those delusions which bind him, he needs more lifetimes of schooling to bring him the understanding of his innate immortality. Only then can he return to the state of cosmic consciousness. Ordinary souls therefore reincarnate, compelled by their earth-bound desires. Great souls, on the other hand, come on earth only partly to work out their karma, but principally to act as noble sons of God to show lost children the way to their heavenly Father's home.
Attracting a Bodily Home
When good parents unite in physical union, they produce a pure astral light as the positive and negative currents at the base of their spines and in their sex organs, unite. This light is a signal to good souls with compatible vibrations in the astral world to be physically conceived in the union of the sperm and ovum cells. When the soul enters, the embryo is formed, and the body is gradually made ready to be born. Souls with bad karma have to enter into the body of evil mothers. When evil parents come into physical union, they form a dim, impure light at the base of the spine, signaling an invitation to souls with evil karma.
Like attracts like. Souls with evil karma are born into evil families; souls with good karma are born into good families. Evil families and good families attract souls according to the magnetism of their inner likings. That is, evil families attract souls with bad karma. Good families attract good souls. The attraction is based on mutual likes and dislikes. Evil entities have an affinity for evil families, whereas the affinity of good souls is for good families.
People with more opportunity in life, owing to their good karma, should help those with lesser opportunity, otherwise they'll develop bad karma. Selfishness is spiritually degrading and ultimately makes one unfortunate. God is not a divine autocrat passing judgment on people for their actions. The judgments of cosmic law are based on karmic cause and effect, and are just.
The divine law of harmony creates a natural equilibrium. When any soul acts against this equilibrium, he hurts himself. For example, if you dip your hand in cool water you enjoy a soothing sensation, but if you approach fire, the very heat of it warns you that your hand may get burnt. The fire has no will to give you pain, nor does cool water produce a pleasant sensation out of choice. The responsibility for getting burnt by fire is his who puts his hand into it. And the responsibility for feeling pleasure from cool water is, again, his who inserts his hand into the water. Fire and water, heat and coolness, are part of the overall state of the universe with which our duty is to live in harmony.
We Punish Ourselves
By wrong living one can create a physical and mental hell even worse than the fiery hell that vengeful people imagine for others after death. By good living one can create within himself a place even sweeter than the heaven people imagine for themselves in the after-death state.
Man, influenced by delusion, ascribes to the all-loving God a vindictive spirit that creates hells and purgatories. God, in his infinite love, is calling the soul continuously to come back to His eternal kingdom of Bliss. But souls, when they misuse their God-given independence, wander away from God and wallow in the mire of suffering, punishing themselves by the effects of their own errors.
The idea of an eternal heaven is true, though most people's ideas of heaven are very limited. We are made in the image of God and, at the end of the long trail of incarnations, our wandering actuated by material desires, we will find the blissful heavenly Father waiting to receive us, His prodigal children, and to entertain us with everlasting, ever-new joy. But the idea of eternal damnation for souls made in the image of God is untenable and should be exploded and banished as a superstition from the minds of men.
Good Karma
This life is like a movie, and just like in an exciting movie, there has to be a villain so we will learn to love the hero. If you imitate the villain's behavior, however, you will receive his punishment. It's all a dream, but ask yourselves, Why live a bad dream by creating bad karma? With good karma, you get to enjoy the dream. Good karma also makes you want, in time, to wake up from the dream. Bad karma, on the other hand, darkens the mind and keeps it bound to the dreaming process.
From a mountaintop, one sees clearly the whole countryside, and also the open sky above. From the heights it is natural to want to soar even higher, far above the earth. In the fog-bound valley below, however, the most that one aspires to may be only to climb a little bit higher.
Evil Karma and "Hell-fire"
The Heavenly Father could not possibly send his human children to hell forever for making mistakes during their brief sojourn on earth. When they misuse their God-given independence, they must suffer the material consequences of their own evil actions, and reward themselves through their own good karma or virtuous deeds.
Those humans who act wrongly create evil tendencies, which remain hidden in the brain ready to pour out fiery suffering at a suitable time. These hidden, misery-making tendencies"or hell-fires"are carried into the astral world at death by a soul with bad karma. Souls in the after-death state have no physical sensations and could not be burned by physical fire. But souls with bad karma can suffer mental agonies worse than fiery burns.
The word "hell" is from the Anglo-Saxon root "helan, to conceal." The Greek root is "helios, sun or fire." Therefore, the word "hell-fire" is very appropriate to depict the concealed fire of agony that stored-up tendencies can produce in one's earthly life or in the astral world. Just as a murderer burns with evil conscience during wakefulness and with subconscious terror during sleep, so he suffers from fiery evils in the sleep state of death.
A benign father could never eternally burn a soul made in His own image for its temporary mistakes on earth. The idea of eternal punishment is illogical. A soul is forever made in the image of God. Even a million years of sin could not change its essential, divine character. Man's unforgiving wrath against the evil actions of his brethren has created this misconception of eternal hell-fire.
My Experience with an Orthodox Believer in Hell-fire
Once I met an old man who lived near Seattle. I had been sitting near the sea, much inspired by the vastness of divinity. After that inspiration subsided I felt hungry, and went to the farmhouse of this man, seeking to buy some cherries. The rosy-cheeked man looked very happy, and showed me kind hospitality. A divine impulse then came over me, and I said to him, "Friend, you look happy, but there is a hidden suffering in your life." He asked, "Are you a fortune-teller?" I answered, "No, but I tell people how to improve their fortunes."
He then said, "We are all sinners, and the Lord will burn our souls in hell-fire and brimstone."
I replied, "How could a man, losing his body at death and becoming an invisible soul, be burned by fire created by material brimstones?" He surprised me by repeating angrily, "We will certainly burn in hell-fire." I said, "Did you get a telegram about this from God, that He will burn us in hellfire?" At this the old man became even more agitated.
To mollify him, I changed the subject and said, "What about your unhappiness over your wicked son?" He was surprised at my words and acknowledged that he was helpless to correct his son, whom he deemed incorrigible. This sorrow remained as a burning fire at the back of his mind. I said, "I have a remedy that will absolutely cure this situation." The old man's eyes gleamed with joy as he smiled. I, then, with a mysterious attitude as if about to reveal the grand solution, whispered to him, "Have you got a very big oven with a broiler?"
"Why, yes," he said. Then, suspiciously he asked, "Just what are you getting at?"
"Don't worry," I said reassuringly. "What I'm proposing will end all your sorrows."
Somewhat mollified, he said, "Go on."
"Now then," I continued, "Heat that oven, with the broiler, to red-hot temperature. Do you have some strong rope and two trusted friends who would not repeat anything against you?" Again he said, "Why, yes." Then I said, "Call your son here. With the help of your friends, bind him hand and foot, and slip him into the red-hot oven."
The old man was furious! Shaking his fist at me, he shouted, "You blackguard! Who ever heard of a father burning his son, no matter how wicked?"
I then spoke soothingly, "That is exactly what I wanted to tell you. Where did you, who are human, get this instinct of love except from the Divine Father? Even a human father cannot stand the cruel thought of roasting his own son alive to put him, or himself, out of misery. How could you think the Divine Father, who has infinitely greater love than you, and who created parental love, would burn His own children with hell-fire and brimstone?"
The old man's eyes filled with tears of repentance as he said, "I understand now that the Heavenly Father is a God of love!"
We punish ourselves by our own evil actions, and reward ourselves by our own good deeds.
Sin cannot change the soul. We, who are made in the image of God, can be lost in the jungles of an evil environment for a while, but no amount of sin can change our eternal, divine nature. Sin is a crust which hides the perfect soul, made eternally in the image of God. When that crust is dissolved by meditation, the perfection of the soul is revealed at last.
God Wants to Help Us
When God sees that a soul, by the misuse of free will and bad company, has lost itself in the forest of egotism, He becomes very concerned for him, and sends him spiritual aid to bring him back into His fold of divine, virtuous living. He helps souls to reincarnate in places where they can work out their karmas and liberate their souls by meditation and wisdom. All souls on earth belong to the fold of God; the Invisible Shepherd ever looks after them.
* "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." (Galatians 6:7)
