Theos-Talk Archives (November 1993 Message tl00005)

When we talk about karma, it is usually *individual karma* that we are
referring to.  There is occasional mention of group karma, but it is
never made clear what that means.

There is no sentient being that functions as a group, to which a
collection of beings belong.  There is no being that is the United
States, nor one for California, Los Angeles, a swarm of bees, nor any
grouping or collection of beings.  A group does not sometimes have
clearcut boundaries, and the groups that we belong to overlap in a
multitude of ways.

One person, for instance, could be a woman, American, vegetarian,
Mason, mother, resident of San Diego, and member of a particular
subrace of the Fifth Root Race.  We could mention group after group to
which she belongs.  None of these groups are individual beings.  There
is not a being which is archetypal womanhood, nor another which is the
essential nature of a resident of the city of San Diego.

Although there is not an individual being, of which a group consists,
that does not mean that there is nothing to the group.  There *is*
something, an unique *effect* from some being or beings.  The group
consists of the range or extent of an *influence*, spreading out in
life to touch everyone of a kindred spirit.  Like the reach of waves
in a pond resulting from the toss of a rock, the effect of a
particular influence reaches to touch the lives of individuals to the
extent that they are attune to it.

This is the meaning of group karma.  Because of the interconnected
nature of life, when we give forth in life an impersonal effort, not
focusing on a particular individiual, we touch others in a general
sense.  Others are changed to the extent that they have the
corresponding quality in themselves.  They do not experience the
quality as specifically coming from us, and we do not specifically
sense the effects of our action going to certain particular people.
The interaction between us and the rest of life is at an impersonal
level, and we are not making individual karma.

The purest form of impersonal action is essentially the sort of
experience that is to be had on the formless planes, where we act on
the world without having to have forms to represent ourselves, where
we act directly on the surrounding environment.

Our effects, though, however impersonal, do not have the scope, the
reach, the power that can touch and change the lives of millions of
people.  What we usually call groups and their large-scale behavior
are the effects of the Dhyani-Chohans, acting on the elementals,
creating achetypal parterns and molds of thought and action in akasha
and then the astral light, from which our personalities and the lives
that we live are formed.

When we participate in group karma, we are living out karmic bonds
between ourselves and other, often higher beings, beings that we may
never see or know directly, but only indirectly through the effects of
their impersonal actions.  As we perfect ourselves spiritually, we too
are learning to become impersonal forces for good in the world, where
our actions can touch and uplift the lives of others without creating
personal bonds.

Group karma is produced due to impersonal action.  There is not a
self-awareness of a connection between the individual responsible for
the influence on the world that causes the group, and an individual
that is affected and thereby belongs to the group.  Despite the lack
of this awareness lack of awareness, there is a personal link, there
is a connection between the two, between the group-creater and the
group participant.

Group karma is a form of individual karma, in the final analysis,
since everyone and everything is interconnected.  Our very being is
composed of the connections between ourselves and the rest of life.
And when we do an impersonal work in the world, we reach out and touch
many more people that we might realize, we uplift the whole world, be
it but slightly.  And looking about us, we see the far-reaching
affects of the actions of a multitude of wonderous divinities, a world
of overlapping beauty after beauty, all reaching out and touching us
and brightening our lives!

                                  Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com