Theos-Talk Archives (February 1995 Message tl00138)

Taking Keith Price's piece as a springboard:
Keith, not all this is aimed at you personally!

> When talking about sychronicity being acausal to the senses, but
> caual on the occult planes, we begin to speculate or claim to
> have knowledge or at least an intuition of something
> supernatural.

It doesn't take us out of our realm of ordinary experience to
suggest that there can be non-physical causes to things.  Our
physical actions - typing on a keyboard, the painting of a
picture, etc - usually originate in non-physical levels of the
human system.  They are all examples of intentionality expressed
in action.

Embodiment of insight, feeling, thought - the whole thing we've
been talking about on this list - the production of symbols to
encapsulate and communicate something; there's an unmistakeable
causality to these processes.

The thoughts in Ken O'Neill's piece of three days ago are a
synthesising balance to the analysis of karma and causality.
They point to a more transcendent view:

> First, simple causality was replaced by the notion of
> interdependence.  Secondly, ...Seeing all attempts to make
> reality into independently and separately existing things,
> emphasis was put on the emptiness or transparency of reality.

At the same time, however, we CAN identify causal sequences or
segments within the great dance, where the energy and states of A
flow predominantly on to and affect B, while others in turn
precede A.  It's a little like stooping to inspect the pieces of
cord in a fishing net; they aren't separate yet they're distinct
pieces.

Causality differs from the fishing net, though, in having
directionality.  A bud can grow into a flower, but I haven't seen
a flower grow into a bud excepting through the longer cycle of
death, composting and absorption into another living plant.  As
Thich Nyat Hanh (sp?) said one day at Krotona, we are about
turning garbage into roses and roses into garbage.

As with everything else in the universe, these causal segments,
like the bud to flower sequence, are fuzzy concepts, ie they
don't have a separate shut-off existence, and they have chaotic
processes working alongside them, but this doesn't mean we can't
identify them and strive to understand them.

It would be like saying we shouldn't identify and analyse a wave
on the ocean because it's a contiguous part of the great ocean of
water and it has an evanescent, illusory existence.  No, we can
raise and lower our "magnification" or the scale of things we're
looking at, and look at fuzzy objects.  In fact there's no such
thing as an object that isn't fuzzy! It's a constant feature in
the great fractal that the universe is.

> Original sin, may not stand up to close scrutiny, but it does
> provide motivation for seeking "salvation".

Pain, and the desire to grow, are two great motivators!

> Karma appears fair, and just and reasonable and even scientific,
> but a little cold.

I think:
Karma is as cold or as warm as we are.
The karma of love is love.
We ride to our salvation on our karma.
The doorways that open on our path _are_ our karma.
Karma, like everything else, is not separative; another's love
can save us.

Karma has been called a law of love because its effect is always
toward growth and restoring wholeness.

A practical example of this would be where somebody did something
for which the karma was cancer.  (Simplistic, but just for
illustration.) If all the karma descended on them in the same
lifetime, they could end up with nothing but negative results
like bitterness, incomprehension, self-pity etc.  If it's delayed
till the person has more insight, love and resourcefulness, they
could transmute much of the experience into positive qualities.

Having seen my first wife die of cancer, I could see beauties and
strengths being forged amidst the otherwise miserable situation.
It seemed thoroughly consistent with the idea of karma, including
its timing, being an expression of love.

But just to balance that, it could just as well have been that
the disease was not an expression of some big karmic impulse, but
a choice taken by the soul for the purpose of doing a certain
work, or even maybe an accident! Whatever, I could see some real
beaut roses being made out of the garbage.

Murray Stentiford
murray@sss.co.nz