THEORY OF KARMA

 

The consciousness of mortal man is seen by spiritual masters to be identified with the three lower centers/chakras of the spine – coccygeal/muladhar, sacral/swadhisthan and lumber/Manipur, which operate under karmic law; whereas the liberated man rises above these lower centers and penetrates to the dorsal/anahata, cervical/vishuddha and Christ consciousness – agya centres. When the yogi’s consciousness reaches the Christ center of wisdom, the seat of universal Intelligence, he beholds his soul as a true reflection of the perfect Spirit, beyond all reach of ignorance and its companionate law of karma.

Each one of us are apportioned a specific number of breaths e.g. 56 million 850 thousand. Within these 56 million breaths are contained the Unresolved forces of our soul, which we call our prarabdha karma.

According to the scriptures, there are four kinds of actions and effects thereof:

1. Purushakara – present actions initiated by the power of free will, uninfluenced by compulsions of past karma.

2. Prarabdha – actions or results arising from the influence of past actions. These influences are antagonistic to man’s free will; they serve in large measure to shape his physical and mental development and to determine his environmental opportunities (family, nationality, success ration). There are two kinds of prarabdha karma:

(a) fruits of past actions that are now operative in one’s life; e.g., the present body(result of past karma),

(b) accruing fruits of actions, seeds not sprouting at present in the individual, but ready to sprout at any moment in the present lifetime under the encouragement of suitable circumstances. It is this type of prarabdha karma that is operative when a man suddenly finds some unexpected change in his life – from good to evil or from evil to good, or some surprising enhancement of either good or evil – according to the nature of the past karma that has just found some available channel for outward expression.

3. Pararabdha – unsprouted seeds of past karma that are reserved for outward manifestation in some future embodiment; also, those actions yet unaccomplished but already subtly set in motion by the sanskaras (impressions) of past habits, and which will come to growth either in one’s present life or in a future incarnation. In constant succession, every action begets a new action, legacy of its offspring impression. Often repeated, these sanskaras form habits that automatically impel the thinking and behaviour of their captive.

Thus are the past and future intertwined and inescapable as woven by the above three forms of action and their karmic effects.

4. Prahadara – actions accomplished after the yogi has ignited the fire of wisdom, thus destroying the seeds of past karma and roasting any potential seeds of present and future actions, causing them to fall away in ashes. As roasted seeds do not germinate, so a burnt rope may appear to bind, but falls away in ashes.

The liberated man becomes free from the effects of all four forms of action. He acts only by the guidance of his intuition-turned free will, finding that the stored-up seeds of all good and bad past karma are consumed in the fire of wisdom. The results of past action do not touch him, even as dewdrops slide off the lotus leaf. In other words, the yogi does not perform his present actions through the influence of stored-up fruits of past actions as does the deluded man. The yogi reigns his life into God’s hands with full trust that He will make a better job of it than he himself has ever been able to do! Thus he becomes free from the results of all actions connected with the past, present, or future.

The yogi realizes his body to be a result of sprouting prarabdha (results of past actions); he is determined to rise above the necessity for future predetermined embodiments. He beholds his own body as nothing more than a motion picture cast on the screen of his consciousness by the Cosmic Beam. Discovering this secret, well-hidden truth about the body, the yogi laughs at the discomfited magician, Maya. He has seen through her “laws” of karma – nothing but brazen-faced tricks!