Theos-Talk Archives (October 1993 Message tl00108)

KARMA

Eldon mentioned "the true meaning of karma" as a title for a
discussion.  I especially like this, because I have long felt
that there is a lot more to karma than most people, theosophists
included, know or at least talk about.  Many people have the
notion that karma is a series of rewards and punishments - that
our every action or thought generates a karmic response in kind.
HPB says (somewhere?) that even a failure to act can generate
karma.  But I submit that the idea of karma as an endless Wheel
of cause and effect is, in fact, exoteric.  There is an esoteric
teaching in which individual (not collective) past karma can be
consumed through spiritual insight.

To put in quickly, I see karma as a living balance between
dualities.  All life on our planetary chain is dualistic, and all
life resonates between dualities or polar energies.  Karma is an
evolutionary force that seeks to balance these forces.  However,
life's pendulum usually swings from one side to the other, slowly
and gradually with less force and less travel with each swing,
but with enough energy to keep swinging for many millions of
years.  In this way, karma or what we could call evolutionary
karma, is a lot like entropy.  It is also one face of the goddess
Kundalini.

MORE ON PSYCHISM.

There is essentially two kinds of yoga, and also two kinds of
spiritual paths.  On the one hand we can raise up consciousness
into spiritual realms.  This is what Raja Yoga seeks to do.  On
the other hand we can attempt to bring spiritual forces down into
our physical plane or into our physical body.  This is what
Kundalini Yoga seeks to do.  Both have inherent dangers, but both
promise significant payoffs.

These two paths basically match, or express, the Two Arcs or
Paths around our planetary chain of globes - the downward
evolutionary shadowy Arc, the Arc of Descent, and the upward
involutionary Arc of Ascent.

Bringing spiritual forces down into our body (a basic magical act
called invocation) is well known and well documented in both East
and West.  Annie Besant warned that if enacted too fast,
headaches and worse could result.  Sri Aurobindo tried to invoke
spirit to the point of spiritualizing his physical body (which is
an act that some say Jesus accomplished in the ascension) but
failed.  He wrote that our physical bodies were simply too
material at this point in our evolutionary cycle to spiritualize
them in a single lifetime.  Probably the best documented case of
a modern-day Kundalini awakening is Gopi Krishna's KUNDALINI
(Shambala).

According to Kundalini Yoga, the creative force of Kundalini
rises up through the Central Channel (the Sushumna which resides
in the subtle Body of Light at a point corresponding to the
spinal cord in the physical body) to eventually make contact with
the Thousand-Pedalled Lotus at the top of the head or Crown
Center.  Behind all of the lavish symbolism of Kundalini Yoga,
including the Chakras and Nadis and the goddess herself, several
important ideas can be found.  Number one - we are already
inherently spiritual, Kundalini is within us, but sleeping or
dormant, needing only to re-awaken.  Number two - creative
potential awakens in a serial order, or at least a healthy
awakening is one which is in a serial order.  This being so, it
follows that spiritual awakening (Kundalini rising from the
Muladhara to the Saharasa) necessitates awakening of the psychic
facilities as well; psychism equating to Kundalini passing
through the lower Centers in order to get to the Crown Center.

However, obtaining psychic powers does not mean that you must use
them.  You can obtain them quite naturally, through spiritual
development, but their use will usually generate new karma.  A
case in point here is that of Swami Ramakrishna, the great
Bengali saint of last century, whose desciple, Swami Vivekananda,
brought yoga to the west.  Ramakrishna was trained in the
tantricism of Kali, the black goddess of death (i.e., goddess as
crone - equivalent to the Sephiroth Binah).  However, he refused
to use his powers and spent most of his time in samadhi.  He
never healed, for example, not even for himself (he died of
throat cancer).  I find it very hard to believe that anyone who
desired to consume his or her karma would practice psychism of
any kind.  Better by far to practice altruism and compassion.

                                           Jerry S.