I remember when I first learnt about the existence of karma, I pictured it as a higher causality. What, indeed it is … but I also had the idea that karma works the following way: for all actions you reap what you saw. If you do bad, it comes back to you, if you do good, it comes back to you.
In the mean time, I gained some progress in my studies, and because I noticed and assume that there are many out there who also have the above thoughts, I will share what I have found.
The above karma idea is not what really happens. This is just the way human mind is able to picture it in the beginning. Today’s human mind only percieves the physical world, and through our process of growing up, what we do, is that we grow into this world. Thus, our thinking is permeated by what we percieve through our senses, what is a long built in conditioning.
This is so strong that we always try to understand things based on it.
We witness in the physical world, the law of action and reaction, and our minds also work this way. Thus, the idea of eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, what comes from the judean tradition (the nation, or group whose task were the development of strong intellectual faculties - and only those who are biased do not admit that they indeed succeeded), is very familiar, and it influences our world culture in a manner we often do not realize. For example, did you notice that materialist minded people often acknowledge that there is truth in the Old Covenant, but how they state in the same time that the New Covenant is nonsense ? This is because the grim and harsh world of the Old Covenant, that of the commandments alos describes to great extent how many times they were broken, and in great detail. Revenge, murder, incest, adultery, you find there every crime one can think of … and this is what we understand because … we are not much better.
I used this example, to show, that the idea of karma is usually imagined to explain divine justice as if this " eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth " would work through the existence of reincarnation. Because we know from our worldy experience that not every criminal is caught, and not always are crimes, errors “punished” as it would seem normal from this eye for an eye perspective, we must imagine that justice is done somehow. So we say, the criminal will reincarnate, and also his victim, they change roles, and this is how justice will be done. (I willingly avoid now the christian theology of sin and punishemnt, because it does not even try to make a case from an intellectual point of view)
Fortunately, the world is guided by greater wisdom than this.
What really happens, that we can only say: all the bad things what did happen to me in this life, are indeed caused by my former actions, in this, or in some former life. This is true, but this does not follow the eye for an eye rule. It follows the rule of compensation. What does this mean ?
The punishment for a bad deed, and error, starts after our death, almost immediatly. In what it consists this punishment ? Imagine, that when one dies, one’s focus from inside the body, looking out into the great big world, shifts. Now, after death, our consciousness is reversed, and we expereince the life we just passed from, form an outer point of view, as if it we are the whole world, and we look into this single point what is the human being living in a physical body we just left.
Indeed, in thetime after death, after the first few days, we spend roughly the time we spent by sleeping during our incarnation, about a third of our lifetime that is, re-living our life in a different order, begining with our death, and ending it with our birth. In this changed consciousness, our emotions will change too. This time, we will not feel what we have felt while living, but what the beings around us, including human ones, have felt, expereinced. Thus, if we hurt someone in any way, we will have the same expereince. Because of this, we cannot expect that in our next life we will be put into a situation what makes us feel what our “victim” felt. That would be pointless, and there would be no evolution at all. Just imagine that if there would be justice, without forgivness, the human kind for long had been ceased to exist.
So what happens than ? What happens is that in our afterlife, we share all the wisdom of the universe. We are merged into this great ocean of spiritual reality, where without a physical organism to prevent this great panorama to enfold, we are overrun by the power and wisdom of the whole. And in that context, we instantly realize what our purpose has been on Earth, and what we were supposed to achieve, and how well did we perform. In this state, we will be genunely pained by not only the sufferings we caused, but rather, that we missed opportunities, and hindered others in their evolution. And from this, a strong desire is born in our souls, that we must come back to Earth, and make right what we have done wrong, and to help those whom we hindered.
Thus, karma is not blind justice, but an accepted duty, coming from the earnest and deepest desire of our soul. This can be a comforting thought when we face difficulties in life … because these are the very things we came back for ! Let’s take an example: we hurt someone, and we are reborn and we meet that person again. What happens is not that whom we hurt, now hurts us back, not at all. Rather, we will feel a great sympathy towards that person, and we will be drawn to help him/her; on his/her term, he/she had for long forgiven us, and now he/she will be indifferent towards us. And this indifference indeed might be painful, but the pain we will feel is not directly caused by our actions in a former life, but indirectly, through a higher justice I just described.
And what happens with our good deeds ?
To think, that the good things we recieve in life, is our work, our payment for being good, is not true. If it was, that would mean that all deeds born from the selfish desire to secure our own future happiness would also be good. But selfishness is never good, in fact it is the base of all evil.
What really happens, is that our selfless deeds, done for the sake of others without any agenda, without the hope of being rewarded in the afterlife, or in a next life, these deeds will help others, and make the world better, but we are not directly repayed for these. All strenght, power, knowledge what we accumulate for our salvation, our enlightment, our freedom, are useless form the point of view of the whole. They only have any meaning, if they are used to advance the world and other people.
I did not mention the higher powers, beings, what inhabit the spiritual world we enter after death, but we must know that whatever good we expereience or benefit in our lives, is not our doing, but their gift. The nature of divinity is not only justice, but also, love.
In this order, we must accept the bad things in our lives as the things we wanted and desired for, what we strived to face so we can make ourselves and the world better, and to help those we have hindered, this is one important thought, and the other is to give thanks for all the good we have been graced with. This way, we transcend our egoistic thoughts about revenge, and gain, and substitute them with that of gladly accepted duty, and humble gratitude.