KARMA AND REINCARNATION

THE LAW OF REBIRTH

Beyond the fact that there is such a law, we know little and those who know from experience the factual nature of this return reject earnestly the foolish and improbable details, given out as fact by the theosophical and occult bodies. The Law exists; of the details of its working we know as yet nothing. Only a few things can be said with accuracy about it and these few warrant no contradiction:

1.       The Law of Rebirth is a great natural law upon our planet.

2.       It is a process, instituted and carried forward under the Law of Evolution.

3.        It is closely related to and conditioned by the Law of Cause and Effect.

4.        It is a process of progressive development, enabling men to move forward from the grossest forms of unthinking materialism to a spiritual perfection and an intelligent perception which will enable a man to become a member of the Kingdom of God.

5.       It accounts for the differences among men and—in connection with the Law of Cause and Effect (called the Law of Karma in the East)—it accounts for differences in circumstances and attitudes to life.

6.        It is the expression of the will aspect of the soul and is not the result of any form decision; it is the soul in all forms which reincarnates, choosing and building suitable physical, emotional and mental vehicles through which to learn the next needed lessons.

7.        The Law of Rebirth (as far as humanity is concerned) comes into activity upon the soul plane. Incarnation is motivated and directed from the soul level, upon the mental plane.

8.        Souls incarnate in groups, cyclically, under law and in order to achieve right relations with God and with their fellowmen.

9.        Progressive unfoldment, under the Law of Rebirth, is largely conditioned by the mental principle for "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." These few brief words need most careful consideration.

10.    Under the Law of Rebirth, man slowly develops mind, then mind begins to control the feeling, emotional nature, and finally reveals the soul and its nature and environment to man.

11.    At that point in his development, the man begins to tread the Path of Return, and orients himself gradually (after many lives) to the Kingdom of God.

12.    When—through a developed mentality, wisdom, practical service and understanding—a man has learnt to ask nothing for the separated self, he then renounces desire for life in the three worlds and is freed from the Law of Rebirth.

13.    He is now group conscious, is aware of his soul group and of the soul in all forms and has attained—as Christ had requested—a stage of Christlike perfection reaching unto the "Measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ." (Eph. IV.13.)

Beyond this generalisation, no intelligent person will attempt to go. When Christ reappears, our knowledge will become more true and realistic; we shall know that we are eternally related to the souls of all men, and that we have a definite relationship to those who reincarnate with us, who are learning with us the same lessons and who are experiencing and experimenting with us. This proven and accepted knowledge will regenerate the very sources of our human living. We shall know that all our difficulties and all our problems are caused by our failure to recognise this fundamental Law, with its responsibilities and obligations; we shall then gradually learn to govern our activities by its just and restraining power. The Law of Rebirth embodies the practical knowledge which men need today to conduct rightly and correctly their religious, political, economic, communal and private lives and thus establishe right relations with the divine life in all forms. [THE REAPPEARANCE OF CHRIST pp118-119]

Karma.   Physical action.  Metaphysically, the law of retribution; the law of cause and effect, or ethical causation.  There is the karma of merit and the karma of demerit.  It is the power that controls all things, the resultant of moral action, or the moral effect of an act committed for the attainment of something which gratifies a personal desire.

LORDS OF KARMA Besides these main presiding Personalities in the Council Chamber at Shamballa, there is a group, of four Beings, Who are the representatives upon the planet of the four Maharajas, or the four Lords of Karma in the solar system, who are specifically concerned with the evolution at the present time of the human kingdom.  These four are connected with:—

1.       The distribution of karma, or human destiny, as it affects individuals, and through the individuals, the groups.

2.       The care and tabulation of the akashic records.  They are concerned with the Halls of Records, or with the "keeping of the book," as it is called in the Christian Bible; They are known in the Christian world as the recording angels.

3.        The participation in solar councils.  They alone have the right during the world cycle to pass beyond the periphery of the planetary scheme, and participate in the councils of the Solar Logos.  Thus They are literally planetary mediators, representing our Planetary Logos and all that concerns Him in the greater scheme of which He is but a part.

Co-operating with these karmic Lords are the large groups of initiates and devas who occupy themselves with the right adjustment of:—

a)      World karma,

b)       Racial karma,

c)        National karma,

d)      Group karma,

e)       Individual karma,

and who are responsible to the Planetary Logos for the correct manipulation of those forces and building agencies which bring in the right Egos on the different rays at the correct times and seasons.

With all these groups we have little concern, for they are contacted only by initiates of the third initiation, and by those of even more exalted rank. [INITIATION, HUMAN AND SOLAR pp40-41]

"The Lords of Karma on our system are under the rule of a greater Lord of Karma on Sirius. We are governed by the Sirian Lord of Karma." [ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY p660]

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TIPES OF KARMA

d. Four devas who are the plane representatives of the four Maharajahs (the Lords of Karma) and are the focal points for karmic influence in connection with man.  The four Maharajahs are the dispensers of karma to the Heavenly Men, and thus to the cells, centres, and organs of His body necessarily; but the whole system works through graded representatives; the same laws govern these agents of plane karma as govern the systemic and cosmic, and during plane manifestation they are, for instance, the only unit in form permitted to pass beyond the plane ring-pass-not.  All other units in manifestation on a plane have to discard the vehicle through which they function before they can pass on to subtler levels.

c. Types of Karma.  We might here enumerate the different types of KARMA, even though we have not the time to enlarge upon the subject.  A book by itself of vast proportions could not contain all that might be said.  We should bear in mind that KARMA is imposed upon the ensouling entity through the medium of matter or of substance itself (which is coloured by it) and that this matter or substance is intelligent material composed of deva essence.         

Cosmic Karma—Imposed upon the solar Logos from outside of the system.

Systemic Karma—The working out by the Logos of effects set in motion in previous Kalpas, and which influence His present type of Body.

Planetary Karma—The individual karma of a Heavenly Man, which is just as different from that of another Heavenly Man, as is the karma of the different members of the human family.

The Karma of a chain, which is bound up in the life experience of that entity who ensouls a chain, and is a centre in the body of a Heavenly Man, in the same sense as a Heavenly Man within His scheme is a centre in the body of the solar Logos.

Globe Karma—The individual destiny of the entity who is a centre in the body of the ensouling Life of a chain.

These five existences above enumerated, who are worked upon by karma, are all cosmic and solar Lords of Light, Who achieved intelligence, and passed through the human kingdom many kalpas ago.

Plane Karma—This is inextricably mixed up with the karma of the planetary Logos and of the Raja-Lord, and is dependent upon the interplay between these two opposite poles,—the masculine and feminine aspect of the Divine Hermaphrodite.

The Karma of a subplane, or the destiny of certain lesser entities who manifest through these planes.

In these two types of karma, we have what one might term the "Karma of the Hierarchies" as it has been brought about since the manifesting of the solar system.  It is the result of the past of this system, and not so much the working out of effects originating in previous solar systems.

The Karma of the kingdoms of nature as we know them on our planet:

a)            The mineral kingdom.

b)            The vegetable kingdom.

c)            The animal kingdom.

This is necessarily the karma of the different lunar Lords who ensoul these kingdoms, and who are working out their purposes through them.  We must note that we have touched therefore upon cosmic, solar, and lunar karma.  In the latter is hid the great mystery of the Moon, and her place in the planetary scheme.

The Karma of the Human Hierarchy [54,55,56] in its seven groups, and of the individual Monads.  This in itself is a vast and intricate subject and—during the particular cycle of the Earth globe—can be divided into:

a)            World karma.  (The seven root-races.)

b)            Racial karma, or the destiny and purpose of each root-race.

c)            Subrace karma, for each subrace has its own destiny to work out.

d)            National karma.

e)            Family karma.

f)             Individual karma.

All these different types of karma are intermingled and bound up in a manner inconceivable and inextricable to man; even the adepts cannot untangle the mystery beyond that of the groups affiliated with them, while the Chohans of the higher degrees work with the karma of the larger groups (which are the aggregates of the lesser groups).

All the lesser grades of devas, "The Army of the Voice," on each plane, the lesser builders and elementals in their myriads, work unconsciously, being guided and directed by words and sound.  In this way vibrations are set up in the essence of the planes by the conscious Builders. [A TREATISE ON COSMIC FIRE pp468-472]

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ALICE A. BAILEY The third teaching which I came across and which pulled me up short for a long time was the dual belief in the law of re-birth and the law of cause and effect, called Karma and Reincarnation by Theosophists who, so often, like to sound learned.  Personally, I believe that all this most necessary teaching would have made far more rapid progress if Theosophists had not been so overcome and glamored by the Sanskrit terms.  If they had taught about the law of re-birth instead of the doctrine of reincarnation and if they had presented the Law of Cause and Effect instead of the Law of Karma, we might have had a more general recognition of the truth.  I say this in no critical spirit, because I succumbed to the same glamour.  Looking back now to my early classes and lectures, I laugh with amusement at my ponderous use of technical phrases of Sanskrit words and of the detailed significances of the Ageless Wisdom.  I find that I get simpler as I get older and may be a little wiser.

With the discovery that there was a law of re-birth I found many of my problems, personal and individual, were capable of solution.  Many who come to a study of the Ageless Wisdom find it difficult at first to accept the fact of the Law of Re-birth.  It seems so revolutionary; it is apt to evoke a spirit of weariness and of spiritual fatigue.  One life seems hard enough without contemplating many lives, both behind us and before us.  Yet, if one studies the alternatives to the theory, it seems possibly the best and the most tenable.  There are only two other theories which really warrant attention.  One is the "mechanical" alternative, which considers man is purely material, soulless and ephemeral so that (when he dies) he dissolves again into the dust from which he came; thought, under this theory, is simply a secretion of the brain and its activity, just as other organs produce their peculiar phenomenal secretion and there is, therefore, no purpose or reason for man's existence at all.  This I could not accept, nor is it widely accepted anywhere.

Then there is the "one creation" theory of the orthodox Christian, which I had held without any speculation as to its truth.  This posits an inscrutable God Who sends human souls into incarnation for one life and, according to their actions and their thinking in that one life so will be their eternal future.  It endows man with no past, only an important present and an endless future—a future dependent upon the decisions of one life.  What governs God's decisions as to a man's place and background and equipment remains unknown.  There seems no reason for what He does under this "one creation" plan.  I had worried so over the apparent unfairness of God.  Why should I have been born in such good circumstances with money, good looks, opportunity, and all the many interesting experiences which life had brought me?  Why should there have been people like that wretched little soldier from whom Miss Sandes had rescued me, who was born with no equipment, with obviously no background, with no money and with no capacity in this life for success of any kind?  I knew now why I could leave him to God; that both he and I in our separate places would go on climbing the ladder of evolution, life after life, until some day for each of us it would be equally true, "As He is, so are we in this world."

It seemed reasonable to me that, "As a man soweth so shall he also reap," and it was a joy to me to discover that I could call in St. Paul and Christ, Himself, to substantiate these teachings.  Clear light was being thrown on the old theology.  I was discovering that the only thing that was wrong was man-made interpretations of the truth and it dawned on me how silly it was just because some learned preacher or scholar said that God meant this or that that we should accept it.  He might be right and if so, intuitively one would know it; but the intuition does not work unless the mind is developed and that has been a lot of the trouble.  The mass of the people do not think and the orthodox theologian, no matter what he says, can always get a following.  With the best intentions in the world he exploits the unthinking.  It dawned on me, too, that there was really no reason because a priest or teacher six hundred years ago interpreted the Bible in one way (probably suitable for his time and age) that it should be acceptable now in a different time and age, under a different civilisation and with widely different problems.  If God's truth is truth then it will be expansive and inclusive, and not reactionary and exclusive.  If God is God, then His divinity will adapt itself to the emerging divinity of the sons of God, and a son of God today may be a very different expression of divinity from a son of God five thousand years ago.

You will see, therefore, how my whole spiritual horizon was opening up.  There was light in the heavens and I was no longer an isolated, deserted, struggling disciple, sure of nothing and with nothing to do as far as I could see.  It was slowly dawning on me that I was one of a great company of brothers.  It was becoming clear to me that I could co-operate with the Plan if I wanted to, find those who in other lives had worked with me, see to it that what I sowed was good and find my place in Christ's work.  I could endeavour to approach a little closer to that spiritual Hierarchy which I had always subconsciously known existed, and which seemed to need workers. [THE UNFINISHED AUTOGIOGRAPHY. Pp140-143]

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The essential truth lies elsewhere. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap" is the truth which needs re-emphasizing. In these words, St. Paul phrases for us the ancient and true teaching of the Law of Cause and Effect called in the Orient, the Law of Karma. To that, he adds in another place the injunction to "work out your own salvation" and—as that contradicts the theological teaching and above all else is not possible to do in any one life—he implicitly endorses the Law of Rebirth, and makes the school of life a constantly recurring experience until man has fulfilled the command of the Christ (and this refers to every man) "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect". Through recognition of the results of action—good or bad—and through constant reliving upon the earth, man eventually attains "unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ". [PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY p143]

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SATURN/SATAN

Saturn "falls" in Aries. This has two meanings, for this is a dual sign. First: Saturn is the Lord of Karma, the imposer of retribution and the one who demands full payment of all debts and who therefore condemns us to the struggle for existence, both from the form side and from the soul side. Saturn, therefore, "fell" when man fell into generation. He "followed the sons of men down into their low place." Second: Saturn's power is completely ended and his work accomplished when man (the spiritual man) has freed himself from Karma and from the power of the two Crosses—the Common and the Fixed. Esoterically, Saturn cannot follow man on to the Cardinal Cross. [ESOTERIC ASTYROLOGY-p105]

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The doctrine or theory of reincarnation strikes the orthodox Christian with horror; yet if one asks him the question which the disciples asked Christ about the blind man, "Master, did this man sin or his fathers that he was born blind?" (John IX.2), they refuse the implications; or they express amusement or dismay as the case may be. The presentation to the world of the thought by the average occult or theosophical exponent has been, on the whole, deplorable. It has been deplorable because it has been so unintelligently presented. The best that can be said is that they have familiarised the general public with the theory; had it, however, been more intelligently presented, it might have been more generally accepted in the West. [THE REAPPEARANCE OF THE CHRIST-p116]

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