From the very beginning, we have recognized that karma (in its retributive aspect at least) is an action and reaction, equal and opposite. All textbooks in Theosophy teach this; it is a commonplace of Hindu thought.
There are great lessons to be learned merely from this basic concept of karma. The knowledge that whatever we do comes back to us in exact measure:
First, it acts as a deterrent to evil and selfish actions; secondly, offers an explanation for the frustrations and agonies of life, that come to seemingly undeserving people; thirdly, gives a scientific rationale for the teachings of Christ and of all other great religious teachers; and fourth, gives us a sense of moral purpose in the universe – of order and of law.
But we are given additional insight into the matter when we realize through the [Edgar] Cayce readings that karma is a balancing principle, and that it operates only when a certain kind of balance in the universe has been disturbed. Where balance has not been disturbed, the soul proceeds serenely along a straight line, so to speak, upon a beam of light, without alarms or confusions or agonies.
Our understanding is also broadened and deepened by the awareness that balance can be understood in several senses, and that one of the other major senses is that of self-contained symmetry. Each of us must become a unit that is perfectly balanced within itself; every part of us, as in a work of art, must be proportionately developed. There are certain types of experience, then, that might come to us, not in equilibrating retribution, but as a spur and a prod, to force us to grow in an undeveloped area. “Your pain,” writes Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet, ‘‘is but the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” There are some kinds of pain apparently that might be better understood in this light rather than in the light of karma as ordinarily thought of. In this case it is only the absence of a quality that makes a suffering necessary – only an omission rather than a commission.
This knowledge provides us with a clue for self-analysis, the analysis of others, and the analysis of destiny; but more than mere analysis, it provides us with an instrument of change. And the change can help us avoid the karma that might otherwise have come to us. We have prophylactic (preventive) toothbrushes; surely we should also be able to have a prophylactic ethics and mode of conduct.
Let us review here some of the ways in which Cayce shows us that balance is important, and see how they lead directly to changed thinking and changed modes of conduct.
For one thing, we will remember that assimilations and eliminations in the body should be equal so that there may be health and youth and freedom from toxins. But this law is undoubtedly transferable to psychological levels also. If that is so, we will realize that we can receive no kindness without soon thereafter passing on a comparable kindness to someone – whether to the original giver of the kindness or to another, it may not much matter. We will receive no material thing, or buy no new object, without passing on some material thing to another person. We will receive no new knowledge without passing that knowledge on to another – either as knowledge or as its equivalent in usage. In short, we will permit no thing to accumulate within us and thus create an imbalance to be rectified later by pain. We will sense ourselves to be channels, to use one of Cayce’s favorite expressions – ‘‘channels of blessings” and “channels of Christ” – channels, in any case, through which things flow; we will think of ourselves as energy distributors and transformers, rather than energy accumulators.
For another thing, we will learn to appraise ourselves critically with regard to our proportional distribution of energies. One excellent method of doing so would be to analyze, every night, the activities of the day by the criterion of balance. We will ask ourselves the questions: How have I exercised my will today? My love? My intelligence? How have I developed my body, my mind, and my soul? Have I had recreation and play as well as work? If we do this daily, we will soon see where our imbalances lie, and we will be able to correct them before they become too deeply entrenched.
For another thing, the corrective action of karma can take place more than once, repetitiously, in a kind of diminishing pendulum action, until a lesson is fully learned; and this recollection can lead us to several important awarenesses. It can make us realize that whatever gift or endowment we have – beauty, height, eloquence, talent, wealth, fame – we have it only in custody, as it were, until such time as we have completely proved our worth to possess it always. All our gifts must become “incorruptible,” so to speak. The awareness that we are on trial with whatever good fortune or bad fortune we now experience can alter our perspective upon our situation considerably, and enable us to handle it much more cleanly and dispassionately.
We learn to realize also that the soul’s evolution is a long, slow growth. In India, it is traditionally thought that every soul reincarnates 840,000 times. The figure may well be too high; but on the other hand, in view of the infinite variety of human faculties and the long time it takes to perfect any single talent (such as playing the flute or the piano), to say nothing of the perfecting of all the many virtues of character, it would seem that many people, in thinking about this matter, tend to put the number of incarnations far too low.
Growth is not merely a question of learning new virtues or talents – learning them on a clean slate or a blank sheet of paper, so to speak. It is frequently a question of erasing a bad mode of action or a distorted habit of thinking and feeling. To “erase,” as an analogy, is appropriate enough, but it falls far short of conveying the actual difficulties involved. A way of thinking or acting is probably an energy pattern – a characteristic mode of vibration, with its own dynamic will to live and its own centrifugal power.
To bring a halt to these energy patterns and then change them is undoubtedly a task of great magnitude and one that must take a great deal of time. Anyone who has ever tried to break any deep-seated habit knows the practical difficulties involved. The nerve paths are so deeply channelized that it takes tremendous will power and the uplifting impact of some tremendous new idea to make possible a change in channelization.
And so to find that there can be a certain repetitiousness in the soul’s history should not dismay or discourage us too much. It is not repetitiousness in Nietzsche’s sense of “eternal recurrence”: it is not an exact recurrence, throughout eternity. This would be too horrible to contemplate – and would, moreover, be utterly without meaning. But it is repetitiousness in the sense of the recurrence of the same kind of experience to the same soul provided he did not fully learn the lesson the first time, and until such time as he has completely learned the lesson and altered his consciousness. “So long as our will is the same, our world can be no other than it is,” Schopenhauer remarked, wisely.
Dr. Fred Reinhold has observed this same repetitiousness in his patients who were age-regressed to past lives either through hypnosis or through the use of carbon dioxide. For example, a woman patient of his who had suffered violence from men in the present lifetime seemed to show a pattern of experiencing violence from men in several previous lifetimes also. Whether this was karmic in the strict sense of the term or whether it stemmed from a deep-lying and persistent masochistic need within herself, Dr. Reinhold would not say. But of one thing he was convinced, and that is that the lessons of life are not always learned as quickly and finally as a superficial acquaintance with karma and reincarnation would lead one to believe.
The same conclusion is warranted by a close study of the Cayce readings also, wherein in a given person’s past-life history we see much variety but we also see persistent types of experience in some area peculiar to that particular entity. In the case of one Norfolk girl, for example, the repetitiousness was in the area of stature and of pride. In other cases it was in the area of sex, or of monkish tendencies for seclusion, or of stubbornness, or of violence. Apparently a soul lesson is not learned quickly and easily and once for all time.
That repetition is a law of learning is an axiom of educational psychology. There is no reason why it should not also be an axiom in the educational psychology of the universe.
If we reflect deeply upon this matter, also, we will see how much vanity there may be in thinking, as some people do, “I feel this is my last life on earth. . . .”
This statement must be carefully distinguished from another one, which one hears with almost equal frequency, namely: “I don’t want to come back to earth again.” The desire not to return to earth can arise from a weariness of life, a sense of defeat, or a feeling that the things one suffers in life far outweigh its pleasures. This sentiment is understandable, and forgivable, provided that the individual does not thereby conclude that this proves that he will not return again. Schoolchildren are not allowed to decide for themselves that they will not return to school; they still have too much to learn. Similarly we, in the rudimentary grades of school in which we find ourselves, could hardly be allowed to decide for ourselves that we are not going to come back.
In one respect this statement is comparable, perhaps, to people saying after too much Thanksgiving dinner, “I don’t want to eat again for a week!” or “I’ll never look at turkey again!” Yet six hours later, when someone suggests a midnight snack, these same people have quite forgotten their vow and quite lost their sense of satiety; they eat the turkey sandwiches. Similarly with the satiety of life, perhaps. The love of life burns deep and strong; not even a lifetime of tragedy can fully extinguish it.
However, the statement, “I feel that this is my last life on earth” is in quite a different category. It seems to arise partly from a great vanity, partly from the unawareness of how much discipline, both repetitious and varied, is required to produce a fully perfect soul, and partly from having mistakenly identified the recognition of virtue with the possession thereof.
It is not enough to have read (or even written) a few books on mysticism, meditation, or reincarnation to qualify for Christhood. It is not enough to understand the laws of life, to recognize the principles of right living and right thinking, or to see the law of moral cause and effect.
These understandings and recognitions require a certain degree of maturity, to be sure; but they reside more in the intellective part of us than elsewhere; they must still be translated into flesh. They must be objectified in our bodies and in our lives. And this takes time, and effort, and energy, and attention, and ceaseless devotion, and the tempering action of a great variety of circumstances.
Any artist who has struggled with his medium knows the long and arduous discipline that is required to translate even one idea to his canvas or his stone or his paper. How much more, then, do we all have to struggle to objectify in the living texture which is our body the concepts of reality and rightness which little by little are dawning on our growing awareness!
Life is not to be bought cheap. The attainment of Christhood and the perfection towards which we are all moving is not to be bought cheap either.
“Stand erect or be made erect!” Marcus Aurelius wrote in his journal long ago. There is great wisdom in this line, and it applies to all of us. Aurelius may have had no knowledge of reincarnation, but he phrased nonetheless a very great reincarnationist truth. If we take ourselves in hand and discipline ourselves, we will no longer be subject to the flagellating discipline of outer circumstance.
In short, if balance is the intention of the universe, whether in the sense of equipoise between opposites, or proportional distribution of energies to all parts, or an equivalence of incoming with outgoing, or an exact replacement of displaced energies, then we can more intelligently align ourselves with the universe by consciously striving for balance in all of these areas.
In modern times, perhaps no more terse and profound expression of this wisdom can be found than in the lines of Edward Carpenter from “The Secret of Time and Satan”:
Do not be dismayed because thou art yet a child of chance, and at the mercy greatly both of Nature and fate;
Because if thou were not subject to chance, then wouldst thou be Master of thyself; but since thou art not yet Master of thine own passions and powers, in that degree must thou be at the mercy of some other power.
And if thou choosest to call that power “Chance,” well and good.
It is the angel with whom thou hast to wrestle.
Excerpt from The World Within