Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00126)

Fred: <Krishna tells Arjuna that each individual should fulfill
their dharma to the best of their ability. This includes the
warrier, who is to kill...>

I think that this is quite different. I think that Krishna is
telling Arjuna that it is OK for warriors to kill other warriors
in war situations where everyone understands the rules and takes
their chances. Killing innocents is NOT recommended by Krishna.

Fred: <Following this chain of ideas, it is easy to take the next
step, and say, therefore: There are individual monads that must
reap the harvest of incarnation in a fetus that is about to be
aborted, and that their interlude in the between is necessary for
their further progression. Likewise, it is easy to conclude that
we must all be abortionists at some point in our journey.>

>From my point of view, your argument is terribly flawed. This
is nothing personal, but rather a commentary on human logic,
which can lead us all into such aweful conclusions. I have
read from several "authorities" (NOT theosophist) that the law of
karma requires us to undergo every possible experience that Earth
has to offer before we can move on to another world. I have
never accepted this, and consider it to be a rather monstrous
notion. These silly ideas all stem from accepting the exoteric
teachings of karma and reincarnation as gospel and then drawing
logical conclusions. However, the exoteric teachings are not the
esoteric teachings, and such conclusions are misguided (IMHO).

Fred: <abortion is wrong in the eyes of creation>

In the sense in which HPB wrote this, I have to agree with her.
However, there is another sense in which the "wrongness" can be
mitigated. I am thinking here about the way in which the
American Indian killed animals for food, shelter, or clothing.
They did it with regret and with sympathy and gratitude. With
these in your heart, karma could be mitigated. But I agree with
HPB that murder with personal gain as motive is "wrong in the
eyes of creation."

Patrick <If something is not repeatable nor measurable then it is
random and randomness is not a sufficient cause for its own
existence but is simply a function of our temporary ignorance.>

Agreed. This is why Jung came up with synchronicity as an
"acausal" connecting principle. He found psychological events
that were random or chaotic happening. According to Jung, this
is not the result of ignorance, but rather the fact that
causality does not and can not explain everything that happens in
our lives. With reference to theosophy, karma IS causality.
Thus Jung is saying that karma cannot explain everything that
happens in our lives. As both a Jungian and a theosophist, I
rather agree with this conclusion. Anyway, my point here was to
show that Jung, a supporter and believer in astrology, failed to
find any statistical significance in his own test. If you, or
anyone else can do such a test, and show significant
correlations, you will probably be famous, and could write a best
seller.

Jerry S.

Side Note: It seems to me that the exoteric view of karma and
reincarnation (where karma IS causality) is a trap in which we
must cycle through manvantara after manvantara forever and only
gradually spiritualize our thinking over countless millions of
lifetimes. If we really began at the beginning, and if we really
must work off every bit of karma that we incurred along the way,
then we will be here working it off forever - because for every
one of our actions today, we must undergo equal and opposite
actions in the future, and so on. There are many theosophists
who believe and who teach this. Yet, it flies in the face of
many Eastern mystics and yogis of both Hindu and Buddhist
persuasion, who teach in some form of satori, or enlightenment,
or mukti (liberation). The ONLY way that liberation (which is
defined as the elimination of our karma, usually via a metaphor
of it burning up into a pile of ashes) can come about, is if the
exoteric story doesn't tell us the whole truth. I feel sure that
this is the case - that there is an esoteric side to karma and
reincarnation in which causality is only one law, working in
tandem with another law which is completely acausal (and thus is
chaotic in the sense that it is rather unpredictible). Modern
theosophists not only have no word for such a law, they don't
even know that it exists, probably because HPB never gave it out,
at least publically. As far as I am concerned, synchronicity is
as good a word as any.