Theos-Talk Archives (August 1995 Message tl00167)

Liesel: <I take it the answer you wrote to Fred includes me in.
Even though you didn't have the courtesy to address me, you
covered the questions I asked you.>

I am afraid that I don't know what you are talking about here.
Did you write me a question too? If so, I guess I missed it. I
recall that you did ask several questions on physics awhile ago,
but I have already answered those (did you get my message?
Answers to your questions were after several to keith, I
believe).

Liesel: <I see where you're coming from, & I see why I didn't
understand. Your idea is that one's Karma is somehow consumed &
burnt up when one attains the state of Moksha.>

Thanks for giving me the credit for this idea, but it is not
mine. It is the teaching of several India gurus including Swami
Ramakrishna and his disciple, Swami Vivekananda. It is also
taught in Tibetan Buddhism. My point was that this important
teaching was pretty much ignored by HPB, who neither agreed nor
disagreed with it, that I know of.

Liesel: < ...Karma consists of vibes & that your makeup consists
also of vibes, and that Karmic vibes affect you because they
resonate with your own. So when you've attained Moksha, there
are no more vibes in your make up to respond to unwonted karmic
vibes, which then glance off.>

This sounds good to me. There are lots of ways of looking at
this sort of thing (reminds me of the many "explanations"
physicists have given us for quantum theory!).

Liesel: < Maybe Karma is somehow influenced by strange
attractors>

Well, we certainly are. I think that the strange attractors
that we encounter throughout our lives (sickness, disease,
friendships, likes and dislikes, and so on) are themselves
karmic.

Martin: <The missing factor is Free Will, the ability to make
conscious choices.>

Right. What we are having here is a semantics problem. Free
will is the result of the chaos factor, and without chaos there
could be no free will (several leading chaos theorists have
already gone on record saying this). Now, obviously I am not
referring to chaos in the normal sense of confusion, ruination,
and incoherence. I recall Eldon some time ago pointing out that
the term chaos is now used in the technical sense of
unpredictibility, rather than the more popular sense. Anyway, I
use the term chaos in its technical sense. The very fact that
events can be unpredictible implies the existence of free will
(if all future events were predictible, free will would go right
out the window).

Martin: <You mean _relatively_ karma-less, i.e. on the physical
planes? Otherwise it doesn't make sense to me. Karma extends
also to the spiritual planes as I understand the Theosophical
notion.>

Karma IS causality. What plane you are on is immaterial. Karma
works on the inner planes only because causality works there
too. At least to some degree. Now this idea brings in the
rather weird idea proposed by HPB that the planes are divided up
by a causal and an effective, in series one after the other.
So, our physical plane is causal and we make karma on it. The
astral is largely effective, and we obtain our karmic effects
there, and so on. HPB is pretty much the only one I have ever
heard to describe the planes in this way. As far as I know, all
four lower planes, (those below the Abyss which contain the 7
Globes A through G) have karma that we can act or react to,
because all are under the law of karma/causality.

Moksha, or liberation, is said to actually consume one's karma.
 However, my own view is that we reach a point or spiritual
condition in which our past karma simply no longer has any
effect over us. In a way, these two views are saying much the
same thing.

>Jerry:
>This notion of liberation while living can
>be found in both Hinduism and <..> Buddhism
>
>Martin:
>And in Theosophy as well..

Could you find a few quotes for me? HPB does mention the
jivamukti a few times, but only in the context of a very high
mahatma, and she never really describes it that I know of.

Martin: <Why not use the term 'free will'?>

I prefer chaos because chaos is more basic - free will exists
only as a result of chaos (unpredictibility or as you say "blind
chance"). BTW, free will itself is karmic, because whatever we
freely or consciously choose will have karmic consequences.
Chaos is not karmic (within limits). Of course, it is our
karmic burden, or karmic propensities, that will guide us in our
actions after any chaotic episodes.

Martin: <However, when karma is seen at the background of
quasi-infinite correlations of actions of all beings, it becomes
a *dynamic* thing.>

Yes. Then it becomes group or collective karma, which is a
different ball game. Liberation from collective karma is
only possible in the sense of a Buddha, one who enters
nirvana and is no longer here to help others.

 Jerry S.