THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

KARMA

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“Four winged wheels at each corner ... for the four holy ones and their armies (hosts)” ... These are the “four Maharajahs” or great Kings of the Dhyan-Chohans, the Devas who preside, each over one of the four cardinal points. They are the Regents or Angels who rule over the Cosmical Forces of North, South, East and West, Forces having each a distinct occult property. These BEINGS are also connected with Karma, as the latter needs physical and material agents to carry out her decrees. ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p122-3]

For the Kabalist and Occultist there is but one; and neither of them makes any difference between “the Rectors of Light” and the Cosmocratores, or “Rectores tenebrarum harum,” whom the Roman Church imagines and discovers in a “Rector of Light” as soon as he is called by another name than the one she addresses him by. It is not the “Rector” or “Maharajah” who punishes or rewards, with or without “God’s” permission or order, but man himself – his deeds or Karma, attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations sometimes), every kind of evil and calamity. We produce CAUSES, and these awaken the corresponding powers in the sidereal world; which powers are magnetically and irresistibly attracted to – and react upon – those who produced these causes; whether such persons are practically the evil-doers, or simply Thinkers who brood mischief.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p124]

The Lipika (a description of whom is given in the Commentary on Stanza IV. No. 6) are the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own planetary deities. The former belong to the most occult portion of Cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts (even the highest) know this angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees, or only the lower one connected with the records of our world, is something which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would incline rather to the latter supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only is taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma – being its direct Recorders.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p128]

After which only a hint is given about the mystery contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in Book II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution, “they will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the Elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop little by little the full type of humanity.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p188]

They are dual in their character; being composed of (a) the irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (b) the intelligent soul or cosmic consciousness which directs and guides that energy, and which is the Dhyan-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of the Universal mind. This results in a perpetual series of physical manifestations and moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric periods, the whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is not always perfect; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even results very often in evident failures – therefore, neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), nor any of the working powers individually, are proper subjects for divine honours or worship

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p280]

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... the Lipikas and the four Maharajas”, the agents of Karma.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p294fn]

The ONE LIFE is closely related to the one law which governs the World of Being – KARMA. Exoterically, this is simply and literally “action,” or rather an “effect-producing cause.” Esoterically it is quite a different thing in its far-fetching moral effects. It is the unerring LAW OF RETRIBUTION. To say to those ignorant of the real significance, characteristics and awful importance of this eternal immutable law, that no theological definition of a personal deity can give an idea of this impersonal, yet ever present and active Principle, is to speak in vain.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p634]

The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this activity. “The one Cosmic atom becomes seven atoms on the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and the seven creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence... . follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet are in close embrace. What unites them? KARMA.” The atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new centres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their work from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the course of evolution and involution, form in their turn the roots or developing causes of new effects, from worlds and “man-bearing “ globes, down to the genera, species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms (of which we know only four). For “the blessed workers have received the Thyan-kam, in the eternity”.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p635]

Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is – KARMA.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p639]

.........

Whatever those characteristics may be in Hindu Esotericism, Narada – who is called in Cis-Himalayan Occultism Pesh-Hun, the “Messenger,” or the Greek Angelos – is the sole confidant and the executor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi-Budha: a kind of active and ever incarnating logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the beginning to the end of the Kalpa.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p48]

Narada is one of the few prominent characters, save some gods, in the Puranas, who visits the so-called nether or infernal regions, Patala. Whether or not it was from his intercourse with the thousand-headed Sesha, the serpent who bears the seven Patalas and the entire world like a diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of astronomy, that Narada learned all that he knew, certain it is that he surpasses Garga’s Guru in his knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has charge of our progress and national weal or woe. It is he who brings on wars and puts an end to them. In the old Stanzas Pesh-Hun is credited with having calculated and recorded all the astronomical and cosmic cycles to come, and with having taught the Science to the first gazers at the starry vault. And it is Asuramaya, who is said to have based all his astronomical works upon those records, to have determined the duration of all the past geological and cosmical periods, and the length of the all the cycles to come, till the end of this life-cycle, or the end of the seventh Race.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p48]

It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of “Heredity”, its servant.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p178]

Some [early men] superior, others inferior, to suit the Karma of the various reincarnating Monads which could not be all of the same degree of purity in their last births in other worlds. This accounts for the difference of races, the inferiority of the savage, and other human varieties.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p249fn]

The Occultists believe in an inherent law of progressive development.* Charles Darwin never did, and says so himself....
There does not appear much uniform law in such behaviour of Nature; and it looks more like the discriminative action of some Super-Natural selection; perhaps, that aspect of Karma, which Eastern Occultists would call the “Law of Retardation”, may have something to do with it.

Checked and modified, however, by the Law of Retardation, which imposes a restriction on the advance of all species when a Higher Type makes its appearance.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p260 & fn]

Karma is a word of many meanings, and has a special term for almost every one of its aspects. It means, as a synonym of sin, the performance of some action for the attainment of an object of worldly, hence selfish, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful to somebody else. Karman is action, the Cause; and Karma again is “the law of ethical causation”; the effect of an act produced egotistically, when the great law of harmony depends on altruism.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p302fn]

Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of KARMA is inextricably interwoven with that of Re-incarnation.

It is only the knowledge of the constant re-births of one and the same individuality throughout the life-cycle; the assurance that the same MONADS – among whom are many Dhyan-Chohans, or the “Gods” themselves – have to pass through the “Circle of Necessity,” rewarded or punished by such rebirth for the suffering endured or crimes committed in the former life; that those very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless shells, or astral figures of the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who are now amongst us – nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we say, that can explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p303]

Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every reasonable evidence and life-experience, in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law of Retribution. This Law – whether Conscious or Unconscious – predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is ETERNITY itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is ACTION itself. It is not the Wave which drowns a man, but the personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean’s motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects; which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinise its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow-men. KARMA is an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or materialists – till less as fatalists: for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect in its effects in the phenomenal world.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p346]

Which means again, that our globe is subject to seven periodical entire changes which go pari passu with the races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial pralayas, three occasioned by the change in the inclination of the earth’s axis. It is a law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic law. In Occultism this inexorable law is referred to as “the great ADJUSTER.” Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and such changes in the axial direction, which are always followed by these vicissitudes; nor does it seem so sure of the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared rather to deny the axial phenomena altogether, than admit the intelligent Karmic hand and law which alone could reasonably explain such sudden changes and their results. It has tried to account for them by various more or less fantastic speculations; one of which would be the sudden, and as imaginary, collision of our earth with a comet (De Boucheporn’s hypothesis), as the cause of all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding to our esoteric explanation, since FOHAT is as good as any comet, having, in addition, universal intelligence to guide him.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p329-30]

Such is the course of Nature under the sway of KARMIC LAW: of the ever present and the ever-becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few Occultists:—“THE PRESENT IS THE CHILD OF THE PAST; THE FUTURE, THE BEGOTTEN OF THE PRESENT. AND YET, O PRESENT MOMENT! KNOWEST THOU NOT THAT THOU HAST NO PARENT, NOR CANST THOU HAVE A CHILD; THAT THOU ART EVER BEGETTING BUT THYSELF? BEFORE THOU HAST EVEN BEGUN TO SAY ‘I AM THE PROGENY OF THE DEPARTED MOMENT, THE CHILD OF THE PAST,’ THOU HAST BECOME THAT PAST ITSELF. BEFORE THOU UTTEREST THE LAST SYLLABLE, BEHOLD! THOU ART NO MORE THE PRESENT BUT VERILY THAT FUTURE.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p446]

From the highest Heavenly Man, the upper Adam who is “male female” or Androgyne, down to the Adam of dust, these personified symbols are all connected with sex and procreation. With the Eastern Occultists it is entirely the reverse. The sexual relation they consider as a “Karma” pertaining only to the mundane relation of man, who is dominated by Illusion, a thing to be put aside, the moment that the person becomes “wise.” They considered it a most fortunate circumstance if the Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure life of Brahmacharya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imagery of the sublime correlation of creative Cosmic forces. And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other Mother lands of cults.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p458]

The Sun, Moon, and planets being the never-erring time-measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus the great Ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven domains, or “spheres of action”.*
* The spheres of action of the combined Forces of Evolution and Karma are: (1) the Super-spiritual or noumenal; (2) the Spiritual; (3) the Psychic; (4) the Astro-ethereal; (5) the Sub-astral; (6) the Vital; and (7) the purely physical spheres.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p621 & fn]

... Karma is a mysterious law, and no respecter of persons.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p679]

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... I must all the more remind you that there may well be other spiritual laws, operating on plants and animals as well as on mankind, although, as you do not recognise their action on plants and animals, you may deny their existence.

ENQ. What laws do you mean?

THEO. We call them Karmic laws; but you will not understand the full meaning of the term unless you study Occultism. However, my argument did not rest on the assumption of these laws, but really on the analogy of the plant. Expand the idea, carry it out to a universal application, and you will soon find that in true philosophy every physical action has its moral and everlasting effect.

[The Key to Theosophy, p46-7]

It is ordained by Fate (Fatum or Karma) that every soul, whether with or without understanding, when gone out of the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and moon (Kama-loka).

[The Key to Theosophy, p99]

But we believe firmly in what we call the Law of Retribution, and in the absolute justice and wisdom guiding this Law, or Karma. Hence we positively refuse to accept the cruel and unphilosophical belief in eternal reward or eternal punishment.

[The Key to Theosophy, p110]

The successive appearances upon the earth, or ‘descents into generation,’ of the tanhaically coherent parts (Skandhas) of a certain being, are a succession of personalities. In each birth the PERSONALITY differs from that of a previous or next succeeding birth. Karma, the DEUS EX MACHINA masks (or shall we say reflects?) itself now in the personality of a sage, again as an artisan, and so on throughout the string of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of life along which they are strung, like beads, runs unbroken; it is ever that particular line, never any other. It is therefore individual, an individual vital undulation, which began in Nirvana, or the subjective side of nature, as the light or heat undulation through aether began at its dynamic source; is careering through the objective side of nature under the impulse of Karma and the creative direction of Tanha (the unsatisfied desire for existence); and leads through many cyclic changes back to Nirvana

[The Key to Theosophy, p134fn]

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Neither Atma nor Buddhi are ever reached by Karma, because the former is the highest aspect of Karma, its working agent of ITSELF in one aspect, and the other is unconscious on this plane.

[The Key to Theosophy, p135]

Simply this: crimes and sins committed on a plane of objectivity and in a world of matter, cannot receive punishment in a world of pure subjectivity. We believe in no hell or paradise as localities; in no objective hell-fires and worms that never die, nor in any Jerusalems with streets paved with sapphires and diamonds. What we believe in is a post-mortem state or mental condition, such as we are in during a vivid dream. We believe in an immutable law of absolute Love, Justice, and Mercy. And believing in it, we say: "Whatever the sin and dire results of the original Karmic transgression of the now incarnated Egos8 no man (or the outer material and periodical form of the Spiritual Entity) can be held, with any degree of justice, responsible for the consequences of his birth. He does not ask to be born, nor can he choose the parents that will give him life. In every respect he is a victim to his environment, the child of circumstances over which he has no control; and if each of his transgressions were impartially investigated, there would be found nine out of every ten cases when he was the one sinned against, rather than the sinner.

[The Key to Theosophy, p138-9]

No deed, not even a sinful thought, will go unpunished; the latter more severely even than the former, as a thought is far more potential in creating evil results than even a deed. We believe in an unerring law of Retribution, called KARMA, which asserts itself in a natural concatenation of causes and their unavoidable results.

[The Key to Theosophy, p140]

After allowing the soul, escaped from the pangs of personal life, a sufficient, aye, a hundredfold compensation, Karma, with its army of Skandhas, waits at the threshold of Devachan, whence the Ego re-emerges to assume a new incarnation.

[The Key to Theosophy, p141]

THEO. Karma acts incessantly: we reap in our after-life only the fruit of that which we have ourselves sown in this.

ENQ. But if my Ego can, after the destruction of my body, become plunged in a state of entire unconsciousness, then where can be the punishment for the sins of my past life?

THEO. Our philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation. After death it receives only the reward for the unmerited sufferings endured during its past incarnation.

[The Key to Theosophy, p160-1]

Furthermore, they believed that there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will upon our actions. They rejected fatalism, for fatalism implies a blind course of some still blinder power. But they believed in destiny or Karma, which from birth to death every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided by that presence termed by some the guardian angel, or our more intimate astral inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the man of flesh or the personality. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable law of compensation and retribution steps in and takes its course, following faithfully the fluctuating of the conflict. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or like a feather carries him away in a whirlwind raised by his own actions.

[The Key to Theosophy, p182]

For the Materialist, who calls the law of periodicity which regulates the marshalling of the several bodies, and all the other laws in nature, blind forces and mechanical laws, no doubt Karma would be a law of chance and no more. For us, no adjective or qualification could describe that which is impersonal and no entity, but a universal operative law. If you question me about the causative intelligence in it, I must answer you I do not know. But if you ask me to define its effects and tell you what these are in our belief, I may say that the experience of thousands of ages has shown us that they are absolute and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma in its effects is an unfailing redresser of human injustice, and of all the failures of nature; a stern adjuster of wrongs; a retributive law which rewards and punishes with equal impartiality. It is, in the strictest sense, "no respecter of persons," though, on the other hand, it can neither be propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer. This is a belief common to Hindus and Buddhists, who both believe in Karma.

[The Key to Theosophy, p198]

And we believe neither in vicarious atonement, nor in the possibility of the remission of the smallest sin by any god, not even by a "personal Absolute" or "Infinite," if such a thing could have any existence. What we believe in, is strict and impartial justice. Our idea of the unknown Universal Deity, represented by Karma, is that it is a Power which cannot fail, and can, therefore, have neither wrath nor mercy, only absolute Equity, which leaves every cause, great or small, to work out its inevitable effects. The saying of Jesus: "With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again" (Matt. vii., 2), neither by expression nor implication points to any hope of future mercy or salvation by proxy. This is why, recognising as we do in our philosophy the justice of this statement, we cannot recommend too strongly mercy, charity, and forgiveness of mutual offences. Resist not evil, and render good for evil, are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached in view of the implacability of Karmic law. For man to take the law into his own hands is anyhow a sacrilegious presumption.

[The Key to Theosophy, p199-200]

ENQ. But what is Karma?

THEO. As I have said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the source, origin and fount of all other laws which exist throughout Nature. Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical, mental and spiritual planes of being. As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. Though itself unknowable, its action is perceivable.

ENQ. Then it is the "Absolute," the "Unknowable" again, and is not of much value as an explanation of the problems of life?

THEO. On the contrary. For, though we do not know what Karma is per se, and in its essence, we do know how it works, and we can define and describe its mode of action with accuracy. We only do not know its ultimate Cause, just as modern philosophy universally admits that the ultimate Cause of anything is "unknowable".

ENQ. And what has Theosophy to say in regard to the solution of the more practical needs of humanity? What is the explanation which it offers in reference to the awful suffering and dire necessity prevalent among the so-called "lower classes".

THEO. To be pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils, the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labour – all are due to what we tersely but truly denominate KARMA.

ENQ. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat indiscriminately are not actual merited and INDIVIDUAL Karma?

THEO. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which the individual generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic law. Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the sum total of National Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human inter¬dependence that the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.

ENQ. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an individual law?

THEO. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the balance of power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question of collective suffering and its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there is no such thing as "Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.

ENQ. And are there no means by which the distributive or national Karma might be concentred or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and legitimate fulfilment without all this protracted suffering?

THEO. As a general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to which we belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its fulfilment. But of this I am certain, the point of possibility in either of these directions has never yet been touched.

[The Key to Theosophy, p201-3]

We describe Karma as that Law of readjustment which ever tends to restore disturbed equilibrium in the physical and broken harmony in the moral world. We say the Karma does not act in this or that particular way always; but that it always does act so as to restore Harmony and preserve the balance of equilibrium, in virtue of which the Universe exists.

[The Key to Theosophy, p205-6]

Europeans have got so much into the ingrained habit of considering right and wrong, good and evil, as matters of an arbitrary code of law laid down either by men, or imposed upon them by a Personal God. We Theosophists, however, say that "Good" and "Harmony," and "Evil" and "Dis-harmony," are synonymous. Further we maintain that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony, and that the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some form or another. Hence Karma gives back to every man the actual consequences of his own actions, without any regard to their moral character; but since he receives his due for all, it is obvious that he will be made to atone for all sufferings which he has caused, just as he will reap in joy and gladness the fruits of all the happiness and harmony he had helped to produce.

[The Key to Theosophy, p206-7]

It is this very law of Karma which gives strength to all that I have said. The individual cannot separate himself from the race, nor the race from the individual. The law of Karma applies equally to all, although all are not equally developed. In helping on the development of others, the Theosophist believes that he is not only helping them to fulfil their Karma, but that he is also, in the strictest sense, fulfilling his own. It is the development of humanity, of which both he and they are integral parts, that he has always in view, and he knows that any failure on his part to respond to the highest within him retards not only himself but all, in their progressive march. By his actions, he can make it either more difficult or more easy for humanity to attain the next higher plane of being.

[The Key to Theosophy, p236]

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Now every individuality will be followed on its ascending arc by the Law of retribution – Karma and death accordingly. The perfect man or the entity which reached full perfection, (each of his seven principles being matured) will not be reborn here. His local terrestrial cycle is completed and he has to either proceed onward or – be annihilated as an individuality. (The incomplete entities have to be reborn or reincarnated).

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 44, Chronological Edition or Letter 123, Barker Numbering.]

Is there any essential spiritual difference between a man and a woman, or is sex a mere accident of each birth – the ultimate future of the individual furnishing the same opportunities?

A mere accident – as you say. Generally a chance work yet guided by individual Karma – moral aptitudes, characteristics and deeds of the previous birth

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 61, Chronological Edition or Letter 157, Barker Numbering.]

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Nor has wealth nor poverty, high or low birth any influence upon it, for this is all a result of their Karma. Neither has – what you call – civilization much to do with the progress. It is the inner man, the spirituality, the illumination of the physical brain by the light of the spiritual or divine intelligence that is the test

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 62, Chronological Edition or Letter 160, Barker Numbering.]

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As it is no fault of the former, if born a “savage” with an instinct to kill – though it caused the death of many an innocent animal – why, if with it all, he was a loving father, son, husband, why should he not also enjoy his share of reward? The case would be quite different if the same cruel acts had been done by an educated and civilized person, from a mere love of sport. The savage in being reborn would simply take a low place in the scale, by reason of his imperfect moral development; while the Karma of the other would be tainted with moral delinquency... .

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 68, Chronological Edition or Letter 192, Barker Numbering.]

The Karma for these recollections of evil deeds and thought will reach the Ego when it changes its personality in the following world of causes. The Monad, or the “Spiritual Individuality,” remains untainted in all cases. “No sorrow or Pain for those born there (in the Rupa-Loka of Devachan); for this is the Pure-land. All the regions in Space possess such lands (Sakwala), but this land of Bliss is the most pure.”

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 68, Chronological Edition or Letter 194, Barker Numbering.]

Does this state of spiritual beatitude [Devachan] endure for years? for decades? for centuries?

... For years, decades, centuries and milleniums, oftentimes-multiplied by something more. It all depends upon the duration of Karma. Fill with oil Den’s little cup, and a city reservoir of water, and lighting both see which burns the longer. The Ego is the wick and Karma the oil, the difference in the quantity of the latter (in the cup and the reservoir) suggesting to you the great difference in the duration of various Karmas. Every effect must be proportionate to the cause. And, as man’s terms of incarnate existence bear but a small proportion to his periods of inter-natal existence in the manvantaric cycle, so the good thoughts, words, and deeds of any one of these “lives” on a globe are causative of effects, the working out of which requires far more time than the evolution of the causes occupied.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 68, Chronological Edition or Letter 195, Barker Numbering.]

Now, the causes producing the “new being” and determining the nature of Karma are, as already said – Trishna (or “Tanha”) – thirst, desire for sentient existence and Upadana – which is the realization or consummation of Trishna or that desire. And both of these the medium helps to awaken and to develop nec plus ultra in an Elementary, be he a suicide or a victim.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 68, Chronological Edition or Letter 200, Barker Numbering.]

... in cases of accidental death the higher and the lower groups mutually attract each other. In cases of good and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus – either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or, sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little reflection, and an eye to eternal justice and fitness of things, you will see why. The victim whether good or bad is irresponsible for his death, even if his death were due to some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth; was an act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still, it was not the direct result of an act deliberately committed by the personal Ego of that life during which he happened to be killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually: and even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his maker (the previous Ego) is free from the blows of retributive justice. The Dhyan Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before it is matured and made fit and ready for it. We tell you what we know, for we are made to learn it through personal experience.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 70-C, Chronological Edition or Letter 212-3, Barker Numbering.]

The social status of a being is, of course, a result of Karma; the law being that “like attracts like”. The renascent being is drawn into the gestative current with which the preponderating attractions coming over from the last birth make him assimilate.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 104, Chronological Edition or Letter 362, Barker Numbering.]

And so man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions, a current which reacts upon any sensitive or and nervous organization which comes in contact with it in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls this his "Skandha," the Hindu gives it the name of "Karma"; the Adept evolves these shapes consciously, other men throw them off unconsciously.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter App.1, Chronological Edition or Letter 473, Barker Numbering.]

Teach the people to see that life on this earth even the happiest is but a burden and an illusion, that it is but our own Karma, the cause producing the effect, that is our own judge, our Saviour in future lives, and the great struggle for life will soon lose its intensity.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, App.II, Chronological Edition or Letter 479, Barker Numbering.]

Man in his present existence only retains certain predispositions from his past existences.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter App.1, Chronological Edition or Letter 502, Barker Numbering.]

---

It is not the absolute that creates Karma, but the finite and sentient being evoluted out of it, or the visible projection of a finite portion of this absolute. In other words, it is man, or matter in its highest state of perfection on earth – matter plus Brahm or the absolute. If we are wrong we hope some learned Pandit will kindly correct us. Half-learned are not required.

[C.W.IV, p194-5]

We firmly believe, in the actuality, and the philosophical necessity of “Karma”, i.e., in that law of unavoidable retribution, the not-to-be diverted effect of every cause produced by us, reward as punishment in strict conformity with our actions;...

[C.W.IV, p499]

Nor, from the occult standpoint, do such rites benefit in the least the departed soul. The correct comprehension of the law of Karma is entirely opposed to the idea [of rites and ceremonies after death]. As no person’s karma can be either lightened or overburdened with the good or bad actions of the next of kin of the departed one, every man having his karma independent and distinct from that of his neighbour - no more can the departed soul be made responsible for the doings of those it left behind.

[C.W.IV, p506-7]

Even the physiologists divide the physical personality into stages of seven, and show man changing atoms to the last, every seven years. The same with the inner man. The fifth principle of the sensual, highly depraved man, may well and will perish, while the Karma of his youth, though not strong and complete enough to secure for him a bliss in Devachan and union with his higher principle – is yet sufficiently outlined to allow the monad a grasp on it for the next rebirth. On the other hand we are taught that it so happens sometimes that the Karma of a personality is not fully worked out in the birth that follows. Life is made up of accidents, and the personality that becomes, may be hindered by circumstances from receiving the full due its Karma is entitled to, whether for good or for bad. But the Law of Retribution will never allow itself to be cheated by blind chance. There is then a provision to be made, and the accounts that could not be settled in one birth will be squared in the succeeding one. The portion of the sum total which could not be summed up on one column is carried forward to the following. For verily the many lives of an individual monad were well compared in the Fragments to the pages of an account book – THE BOOK OF LIFE or – Lives. ...

Out of these impressions, then, which constitute the Karma of the youth, is evolved the new personality. Our botanical friends may know that the croton plant evolves out of itself another plant, when the one already evolved dies out or withers away. Nature must always progress, and each fresh attempt is more successful than the previous one. This fresh evolution is due to the latent potentiality of life it has within itself. In the same manner, although one particular personality may be so depraved as to be entirely dissociated from the spiritual monad and go into the eighth sphere, where annihilation is its lot, yet the impressions of the previous personalities upon the higher Ego have in them potentiality enough to evolve a new physical Ego, like the croton plant. The connection between a man’s spiritual monad and the succession of physical Egos with which it is temporarily associated, has been, somewhere in these columns, compared to the retrospective glance of a man on some past period of his earthly existence. While reviewing in his memory his work day by day—those days on which he did nothing of any importance and passed idly away, having left no impression on his mind, must be, and are to him, like a perfect blank. No consciousness that he had passed such days remains there. In the same manner, the Ego when at the end of its long pilgrimage will regain consciousness of those personalities only which have made a sufficiently strong spiritual, hence indelible, mark on the monad, while the memory of the conscious acts of the particular depraved personality which goes to the eighth sphere will be entirely obliterated.

[C.W.IV, p572-3]

The Mahatmas are the servants, not the arbiters of the Law of Karma.

[C.W.IV, p611]

The Occultists do not accept the doctrine of “guardian angels,” for reasons heretofore fully explained, in these pages. They do, however, believe most firmly in the personal, divine spirit in man, the source of his inspiration and his all-sufficient “angel” and “guardian.” Only adepts can choose their reincarnations, and even they are strictly limited in their choice by their responsibility to the inexorable law of Karma. According to his Karma-phala, or the aggregate consequences of his actions, is every man’s rebirth and final escape, or emancipation, from the necessity for rebirth determined.

[C.W.V, p106]

Our philosophy goes so far as to say that, if the Penal Code of most countries punishes attempts at suicide, it ought, if at all consistent with itself, to doubly punish foeticide as an attempt to double suicide. For, indeed, when even successful and the mother does not die just then, it still shortens her life on earth to prolong it with dreary percentage in Kamaloka, the intermediate sphere between the earth and the region of rest, a place which is no “St. Patrick’s purgatory,” but a fact, and a necessary halting place in the evolution of the degree of life. The crime committed lies precisely in the willful and sinful destruction of life, and interference with the operations of nature, hence – with KARMA – that of the mother and the would-be future human being. The sin is not regarded by the occultists as one of a religious character,—for, indeed, there is no more of spirit and soul, for the matter of that, in a foetus or even in a child before it arrives at self-consciousness, than there is in any other small animal,—for we deny the absence of soul in either mineral, plant or beast, and believe but in the difference of degree. But foeticide is a crime against nature.

[C.W.V, p107-8]

Not only European Sanskritists but also exoteric Yogis, fall into the grievous mistake of supposing that, in the opinion of our sacred writers, a human being can escape the operation of the law of Karma by adopting a condition of masterly inactivity, entirely losing sight of the fact that even a rigid abstinence from physical acts does not produce inactivity on the higher astral and spiritual planes. Sri Sankara has very conclusively proved, in his Commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, such a supposition is nothing short of a delusion. The great teacher shows there that forcibly repressing the physical body from working does not free one from vasana or vritti – the inherent inclination of the mind to work. There is a tendency, in every department of nature, of an act to repeat itself; so the Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is always trying to forge fresh links in the chain and thereby lead to continued material existence; and that this tendency can only be counteracted by unselfishly performing all the duties appertaining to the sphere in which a person is born – that alone can produce chitta suddhi, without which the capacity of perceiving spiritual truths can never be acquired.

[C.W.V, p338]

It is generally supposed that animals are not under the operation of the law of Karma, as applied to human beings. If so, how can we explain the difference between the position of an animal exposed to all the torments that can afflict sentient beings, whipped almost to death, starved out of existence, and that of another, enjoying all the luxuries of the material world, fed with the best of food and treated with extreme kindness? How again can the cases of animals born blind be explained? We do not actually mean to invest them with as much responsibility as human beings, but can they not be supposed to possess it in a far less degree? A solution from you on this point will go much toward elucidating our ideas on the subject.
GYANENDRA N. CHAKRAVARTY, (of Cawnpore) Professor, Physical Science.

Note:– The error often committed, is to mistake the general law of cause and effect for the law of merit and demerit. If we ask, why has one animal an easy life to lead and another a hard one, we might ask also, why is one tree cut down before it is grown up, while another tree is allowed to die of old age? Why is one pair of shoes made to adorn the feet of a lady in a ball room, and another pair to be dragged through the mud by a boor? No one will maintain that minerals and plants have any moral responsibility. Neither have animals, children, idiots or the insane any such moral responsibility.

[C.W.VI, p236]

We hold that the science of Astrology only determines the nature of effects, by a knowledge of the law of magnetic affinities and attractions of the Planetary bodies, but that it is the Karma of the individual himself, which places him in that particular magnetic relation.

[C.W.VI, p327]

The man who all his life acted hypocritically and passed for a good man, but had been in sober reality watching like a bird of prey his chance to pounce upon his fellow-creatures, and had deprived them of their property, will be sentenced by Karma to bear the punishment for hypocrisy and covetousness in a future life. What will it be? Since every human unit has ultimately to progress in its evolution, and since that “man” will be reborn at some future time as a good, sincere, well-meaning man, his sentence to be re-incarnated as a hawk may simply mean that he will then be regarded metaphorically as such. That, notwithstanding his real, good, intrinsic qualities, he will, perhaps during a long life, be unjustly and falsely charged with and suspected of greed and hypocrisy and of secret exactions, all of which will make him suffer more than he can bear. The law of retribution can never err, and yet how many such innocent victims of false appearance and human malice do we not meet in this world of incessant illusion, of mistake and deliberate wickedness. We see them every day, and they may be found within the personal experience of each of us.

[C.W.VII, p112]

For the latter [Karma] is the very corner-stone of Esoteric philosophy AND eASTERN RELIGIONS; it is the grand and one pillar on which hangs the whole philosophy of rebirths, and once the latter is denied, the whole doctrine of Karma falls into meaningless verbiage.

[C.W.VII, p177]

The reader must bear in mind that the esoteric teaching maintains that save in cases of wickedness when man’s nature attains the acme of Evil, and human terrestrial sin reaches Satanic universal character, so to say, as some Sorcerers do – there is no punishment for the majority of mankind after death. The law of retribution as Karma, waits man at the threshold of his new incarnation. Man is at best a wretched tool of evil, unceasingly forming new causes and circumstances. He is not always (if ever) responsible. Hence a period of rest and bliss in Devachan, with an utter temporary oblivion of all the miseries and sorrows of life.

[C.W.VII, p180fn]

All that bundle of Egotism, that apparent and evanescent “I,” disappears after death, as the costume of the part he played disappears from the actor’s body, after he leaves the theatre and goes to bed. That actor re-becomes at once the same “John Smith” or Gray, he was from his birth and is no longer the Othello or Hamlet that he had represented for a few hours. Nothing remains now of that “bundle” to go to the next incarnation, except the seed for future Karma that Manas may have united to its immortal group, to form with it – the disembodied Higher Self in “Devachan.

[C.W.VII, p186]

Theosophists see in the priest of any religion a useless if not a pernicious being. They preach against every dogmatic and infallible religion and recognize no other deity, which dispenses suffering and recompense, than Karma, an arbiter created by their own actions. The only God which they worship is TRUTH; the only devil which they recognize and which they fight against with unabated fury is the Satan of egotism and human passions.

[C.W.VIII, p80]

The amount of Kinetic energy to be expended during life by one particular set of physiological cells is allotted by Karma – another aspect of the Universal Principle – consequently when this is expended the conscious activity of man or animal is no longer manifested on the plane of those cells, and the chemical forces which they represent are disengaged and left free to act in the physical plane of their manifestation.

[C.W.IX, p76fn]

Student. – Are there any causes, other than the spread of Theosophy, which may operate to reverse the present drift towards materialism?

Sage. – The spread of the knowledge of the laws of Karma and Reincarnation and of a belief in the absolute spiritual unity of all beings will alone prevent this drift. The cycle must, however, run its course, and until that is ended all beneficial causes will of necessity act slowly and not to the extent they would in a brighter age. As each student lives a better life and by his example imprints upon the astral light the picture of a higher aspiration acted in the world, he thus aids souls of advanced development to descend from other spheres where the cycles are so dark that they can no longer stay there.

[C.W.IX, p103-4]

Student. – Is there not some connection between the Karma of man and elementals?

Sage. – A very important one. The elemental world has become a strong factor in the Karma of the human race. Being unconscious, automatic, and photographic, it assumes the complexion of the human family itself. In the earlier ages, when we may postulate that man had not yet begun to make bad Karma, the elemental world was more friendly to man because it had not received unfriendly impressions. But so soon as man began to become ignorant, unfriendly to himself and the rest of creation, the elemental world began to take on exactly the same complexion and return to humanity the exact pay, so to speak, due for the actions of humanity. Or, like a donkey, which, when he is pushed against, will push against you. Or, as a human being, when anger or insult is offered, feels inclined to return the same. So the elemental world, being unconscious force, returns or reacts upon humanity exactly as humanity acted towards it, whether the actions of men were done with the knowledge of these laws or not. So in these times it has come to be that the elemental world has the complexion and action which is the exact result of all the actions and thoughts and desires of men from the earliest times. And, being unconscious and only acting according to the natural laws of its being, the elemental world is a powerful factor in the workings of Karma. And so long as mankind does not cultivate brotherly feeling and charity towards the whole of creation, just so long will the elementals be without the impulse to act for our benefit. But so soon and wherever man or men begin to cultivate brotherly feeling and love for the whole of creation, there and then the elementals begin to take on the new condition.

[C.W.IX, p110-1]

Abhinna – the six transcendent faculties obtained by the Yogis or Arhats, after which come the Iddhi, the supernatural powers.

[in reference to a writer’s statement that the Devachanic state “... is purely a state of bliss, in which man receives compensation for the undeserved misery of his past life.”]

Quite correct; but it is not the injustice or mistakes of Karma which are the causes of such “undeserved misery,” but other causes, independent of the past Karma of either the producer or the innocent victim of their effects, new actions generated by the wickedness of men and circumstances; and which arouse Karmic law to fresh activity, i.e., the punishment of those who caused these new Nidanas (or causal connections), and the reward of him who suffered from them undeservedly.

[C.W.X, p47]

KARMA, TANHA and SKANDHAS, are the almighty trinity in one, and the cause of our re-birth. The illustration of painting our own present likeness at death and that likeness becoming the future personality is very poetical and graphic, but we claim it as an occult teaching.

[C.W.X, p176]

The third [body]is the true Ego, called in the East, by a name meaning “causal body” but which in the trans-Himalayan schools is always called the “Karmic body,” which is the same. For Karma or action is the cause which produces incessant rebirths or “reincarnations.” It is not the Monad, nor is it Manas proper; but is, in a way, indissolubly connected with, and a compound of the Monad and Manas in Devachan.

[C.W.X, p219]

H.P.B. The first and most important step in occultism is to learn how to adapt your thoughts and ideas to your plastic potency.

M.C. Why is this so important?

H.P.B. Because otherwise you are creating things by which you may be making bad Karma. No one should go into occultism or even touch it before he is perfectly acquainted with his own powers, and that he knows how to commensurate it with his actions. And this he can do only by deeply studying the philosophy of Occultism before entering upon the practical training. Otherwise, as sure as fate – HE WILL FALL INTO BLACK MAGIC.

[C.W.X, p226]

Q. What part does Karma play in dreams? In India they say that every man receives the reward or punishment of all his acts, both in the waking and the dream state.

A. If they say so, it is because they have preserved in all their purity and remembered the traditions of their forefathers. They know that the Self is the real Ego, and that it lives and acts, though on a different plane. The external life is a “dream” to this Ego, while the inner life, or the life on what we call the dream plane, is the real life for it. And so the Hindus (the profane, of course) say that Karma is generous, and rewards the real man in dreams as well as it does the false personality in physical life.

Q. What is the difference, “karmically,” between the two?

A. The physical animal man is as little responsible as a dog or a mouse. For the bodily form all is over with the death of the body. But the real SELF, that which emanated its own shadow, or the lower thinking personality, that enacted and pulled the wires during the life of the physical automaton, will have to suffer conjointly with its factotum and alter ego in its next incarnation.

[C.W.X, p253-4]

DO MASTERS PUNISH?
“Now I’m not going to tell you all about this. They are just; They embody the Law and Compassion. Do not for an instant imagine that Masters are going to come down on you for your failures and wrongs, if any. Karma looks out for this. Masters’ ethics are the highest.
From the standpoint of your question They do not punish. Have I not told you that, much as detractors have cast mud at Them, never will the Masters impose punishment. I cannot see why such a question comes up. Karma will do all the punishing that is necessary.”

[C.W.X, p270-1]

Evidently Miss Clark has not reflected that “prominent theosophists” use medicine because of some bearings of Karma upon their lives and on account of its occult properties; nor has she, apparently, thought of what is called “delayed Karma”; nor that, perhaps, through too much attention to her body she is reaping a temporary enjoyment now, for which, in subsequent lives, she will have to pay; nor that again, by using her mind so strangely to cure her body she may have removed her infirmities from the plane of matter to that of the mind; the first effects of which we can trace dimly in her strictures on “Christian Science,” as she has acquired a slant, as it were, against the latter and in favour of her own, and a tone of lofty superiority with the Theosophists....

The acceptance of Truth and the practice of virtue cannot avert Karma waiting from other lives, but can produce good effects in lives to come, and what the extreme practice of mental curing does is to stave off for a time an amount of Karma which will, later on, reach us. We prefer to let it work out naturally through the material part of us and to expel it quickly if we may with even mineral remedies. But for all that we have no quarrel with mental healing at all, but leave each one to his or her own judgment.

[C.W.X, p287-8]

And here is the explanation of the curious fact according to the Vedantin assertion that each plant has its Karma and that its growth is the result of Karma. This Karma proceeds from the lower Dhyan-Chohans who trace out and plan the growth of the tree.

[C.W.X, p363]

... that which is desire, instinctive impulse in the lower [mind], becomes thought in the Higher. The former finds expression in acts, the latter in words. Esoterically, thought is more responsible and punishable than act. But exoterically it is the reverse. Therefore, in ordinary human law, an assault is more severely punished than the thought or intention, i.e., the threat, whereas Karmically it is the contrary.

[C.W.X, p399]

A short analysis of the Karmic effects that would be produced by the exercise of such powers [psychologically] may prove interesting to theosophists.

Even on the terrestrial, purely physical plane, moral irresponsibility ensures impunity. Parents are answerable for their children, tutors and guardians for their pupils and wards, and even the Supreme Courts have admitted extenuating circumstances for criminals who are proved to have been led to crime by a will or influences stronger than their own. How much more forcibly this law of simple retributive justice must act on the psychic plane; and what, therefore, may be the responsibility incurred by using such psychological powers, in the face of Karma and its punitive laws, may be easily inferred. Is it not evident that, if even human justice recognizes the impossibility of punishing an irrational idiot, a child, a minor, etc., taking into account even hereditary causes and bad family influences – that the divine Law of Retribution, which we call KARMA, must visit with hundredfold severity one who deprives reasonable, thinking men of their free will and powers of ratiocination? From the occult standpoint, the charge is simply one of black magic, of envoûtement. Alone a Dugpa, with “Avitchi” yawning at the further end of his life cycle, could risk such a thing. Have those so prompt to hurl the charge at the head of persons in their way, ever understood the whole terrible meaning implied in the accusation? We doubt it. No occultist, no intelligent student of the mysterious laws of the “night side of Nature,” no one who knows anything of Karma, would ever suggest such an explanation. What adept or even a moderately-informed chela would ever risk an endless future by interfering with, and therefore taking upon himself, the Karmic debit of all those whom he would so psychologize as to make of them merely the tools of his own sweet will!

[C.W.XI, p55-6]

Woe to him, then, in that ceaseless, dreary series of terrestrial Avichis; in that interminable aeon of torture, suffering, and despair, during which, like the squirrel doomed to turn the wheel at every motion, he will launch from one life of misery into another, only to awake each time with a fresh burden of other people’s Karma, which he will have drawn upon himself!

[C.W.XI, p57]

Do they know anything of the laws of Karma – the great Law of Retribution, that mysterious, yet – in its effects – quite evident and palpable action in Nature, which, sooner or later, brings back every good or bad deed of ours to rebound on us, as the elastic ball, thrown against a wall, rebounds back on the one who throws it? They do not.

[C.W.XI, p143]

Karma thus, is simply action, a concatenation of causes and effects. That which adjusts each effect to its direct cause; that which guides invisibly and as unerringly these effects to choose, as the field of their operation, the right person in the right place, is what we call Karmic Law. What is it? Shall we call it the hand of providence? We cannot do so ... because the term has been connected with, and interpreted theologically as, the foresight and personal design of a personal god; and because in the active laws of Karma - absolute Equity - based on the Universal Harmony, there is neither foresight nor desire; and because again, it is our own actions, thoughts, and deeds which guide that law, instead of being guided by it. “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. Vi, 7).... Suffice it to say that Karma leads to rebirth, and that rebirth generates new Karma while working off the old, Sanchita Karma. Both are indissolubly bound up, one in the other. Let us get rid of Karma, if we would get rid of the miseries of rebirths or – REINCARNATION.

[C.W.XI, p144-5]

But Karma will reconcile all our differences of opinion. A strict account of our actual work will be taken, and the “wages” earned will be recorded to our credit. But as strict an account will be taken of the work which anyone, by indulging in personal grievances, may have hindered his neighbours from doing. Think you it is a light thing to hinder the force of the Theosophical Society, as represented in the person of any of its leaders, from doing its appointed work? So surely as there is a Karmic power behind the Society will that power exact the account for its hindrance, and he is a rash and ignorant man who opposes his puny self to it in the execution of its appointed task.

[C.W.XI, p166]

“Let not the fruit of good Karma be your motive; for your Karma, good or bad, being one and common property of all mankind, nothing good or bad can happen to you that is not shared by many others. Hence your motive, being selfish, can only generate a double effect, good and bad, and will either nullify your good action, or turn it to another man’s profit.” ... “There is no happiness for one who is ever thinking of self and forgetting all other Selves.”

“The Universe groans under the weight of such action (Karma), and none other than self-sacrificial Karma relieves it ...

[C.W.XI, p168-9]

The EGOS of a Newton, an Aeschylus, or a Shakespeare are, of the same essence and substance as the Egos of a yokel, an ignoramus, a fool, or even an idiot; and the self-assertion of their informing genii depends on the physiological and material construction of the physical man. No Ego differs from another Ego, in its primordial or original essence and nature. That which makes one mortal a great man and another a vulgar, silly person is, as said, the quality and makeup of the physical shell or casing, and the adequacy or inadequacy of brain and body to transmit and give expression to the light of the real, Inner man; and this aptness or inaptness is, in its turn, the result of Karma. Or, to use another simile, physical man is the musical instrument, and the Ego, the performing artist. The potentiality of perfect melody of sound, is in the former – the instrument – and no skill of the latter can awaken a faultless harmony out of a broken or badly made instrument. This harmony depends on the fidelity of transmission, by word or act, to the objective plane, of the unspoken divine thought in the very depths of man’s subjective or inner nature. Physical man may – to follow our simile – be a priceless Stradivarius, or a cheap and cracked fiddle, or again a mediocrity between the two, in the hands of the Paganini who ensouls him.

[C.W.XII, p15]

That which affects one, will act and react on all. The motto of the Headquarters of the T. S. should be – “rigid justice to all.” If it is right to care for the poor and those who suffer, it is as right to care for the rich and all those who will unavoidably be brought to far greater sufferings, unless warned and shown the true cause of all such Karmic sorrows. The poorer a man, the more sad his life, the nearer he is to the end of his punitive Karma; the richer his neighbour, the more is full of pleasures his life, the nearer he is – unless he acts in the right path – [to] his Karmic doom. Help the poor, but pity the ignorant rich.

[C.W.XII, p60-1]

By trying the magic effect of the human will on weaker wills [hypnotism]; by deriding the existence of occult forces in Nature – forces whose name is legion – and yet calling out these, under the pretext that they are no independent forces at all not even psychic in their nature, but “connected with known physical laws” (Binet and Féré), men in authority are virtually responsible for all the dire effects that are and will be following their dangerous public experiments. Verily Karma – the terrible but just Retributive Law – will visit all those who develop the most awful results in the future, generated at those public exhibitions for the amusement of the profane. Let them only think of dangers bred, of new forms of diseases, mental and physical, begotten by such insane handling of psychic will! This is as bad on the moral plane as the artificial introduction of animal matter into the human blood, by the infamous Brown-Sequard method, is on the physical. They laugh at the occult sciences and deride Mesmerism? Yet this century will not have passed away before they have undeniable proofs that the idea of a crime suggested for experiment’s sake is not removed by a reversed current of the will as easily as it is inspired.

[C.W.XII, p226-7]

Thus, in truth, neither the blessings nor the curses of men can influence, let alone alter, the Karma of the nations and men which they have generated in their respective Pasts. But people are blind to this truth. They see the decrees of retributive sentences carried out in the marshalling of public events, but refuse, nevertheless, to comprehend their true causes.

[C.W.XII, p384]

Every transgression in the private life of a mortal, is, according to Occult philosophy, a double-edged sword in the hand of Karma; one for the transgressor, the other for the family, nation, sometimes even for the race, that produced him. If its one sharp edge cuts him badly, its other edge may, at a future day, chop into mincemeat those morally responsible for the sins of their children and citizens. One Cain-nation is made to bite the dust, while its slaughtered Abel-sister resurrects in glory. ...

[C.W.XII, p385]

The divine beings whom Karma led to act in the drama of Manvantaric life, are entities from higher and earlier worlds and planets, whose Karma had not been exhausted when their world went into Pralaya. Such is the teaching; but whether it is so or not, the Higher Egos are – as compared to such forms of transitory, terrestrial mud as ourselves – Divine Beings, Gods, immortal throughout the Mahamanvantara. ...

[C.W.XII, p629]

By the middle of the Seventh Race, says an occult prophecy, the struggle of the two conflicting Powers (Buddhi and Kama-Manas) will have almost died out. Everything that is irredeemably sinful and wicked, cruel and destructive, will have been eliminated, and that which is found to survive will be swept away from being, owing, so to speak, to a Karmic tidal-wave in the shape of scavenger-plagues, geological convulsions and other means of destruction.

[C.W.XIII, p128]

It is quite true that the origin of every religion is based on the dual powers, male and female, of abstract Nature, but these in their turn were the radiations or emanations of the sexless, infinite, absolute Principle, the only One to be worshipped in spirit and not with rites; whose immutable laws no words of prayer or propitiation can change, and whose sunny or shadowy, beneficent or maleficent influence, grace or curse, under the form of Karma, can be determined only by the actions – not by the empty supplications – of the devotee. This was the religion, the One Faith of the whole of primitive humanity, and was that of the “Sons of God,”...

[C.W.XIII, p259]

Desire is an energy which ought to be repressed; when repressed the energy is scattered and goes to the universal energy but is not lost. It is got rid of by the man himself when repressed, but if given effect hangs round his neck like a mill-stone in the form of Karma. After death a man exists in Kama-loka encased in the Kama-rupa or bundle of desires which restrains the higher principles from passing entirely into Devachan. On his return thence man finds the Karma of unrepressed Desire waiting for him at the threshold. Hence the real punishment of Karma arises from the presence of desires which have to be repressed. This is done by the effort of will; which is not infinite and has a beginning and an end. But will is the manifestation of an eternal law which is appreciable only in its effects and in this place it was said that absolute will is not the same as Kosmic Will. Thus Man as the microcosmos is gifted with freewill; but is limited by the action of other free wills under the law of universal harmony which is Karma. The real function of willpower is to produce harmony between the law and man. Thus the Mahatma being without desire is outside of the sphere of action of Karma; His real condition is in harmony with nature and is Karma and its agent and hence is outside its action.

[C.W.XIII, p364-5]

An Avatara is; a Jivanmukta becomes one. If the state of the two is identical, not so are the causes which lead to it. An Avatara is a descent of a God into an illusive form; a Jivanmukta, who may have passed through numberless incarnations and may have accumulated merit in them, certainly does not become a Nirvani because of that merit, but only because of the Karma generated by it, which leads and guides him in the direction of the Guru who will initiate him into the mystery of Nirvana and who alone can help him to reach this abode.

[C.W.XIV, p374]

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