Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00633)

Triaist wrote:
>It was my point that even though you may give yourself totally to humanity,
>you are still subject to the same chance that bad/good things will happen to
>you.  Everyone's cumulative actions influence Karma.  One person's action,
>good or bad, gets thrown into a "karma pool" and is "diluted" within it.  The
>more bad that gets thrown in, the more bad exists in the karmic pool.
>Therefore, more "bad" karma is manifested.

Yes, I quite agree being subject to collective Karma - if you can call it so
- but I wonder whether such a thing as a personal law of retribution exists
for one's own deeds. Karma as a law of cause and effect for the individual
is a typical reflection of the way of thinking in the second half of the
past century,  to assume that physical laws also apply to laws of behaviour.

I have not seen any proof in the lives of people that there is any form of
equal reward or punishment for one's acts. Of course I cannot oversee a
chain of reincarnations of a particular person, but that is a subject for
another debate.

>I'm not sure, but your understanding of karma seems much like my own.  You
>seemed to disagree with it, and I'm grateful for your opinion, but after
>reading your post, I'm still not quite sure about what aspect of it you
>disagree with...

see above: the reward/retribution aspect.
I wonder is whether there is such a thing as retribution that Karma is
usually associated with, or that there is an  outside agency or law which
passes judgement, punishing one for one's deeds.
For example the person who causes misery to other beings will punish himself
ultimately.. The person doing so will first of all steep and chain himself
further to a level in which he will attract like-minded souls and suffer at
one point or another from their behaviour (although he will often not
realize the quality of his and their lives then).
Secondly,  if he (or she!) wants to pull himself as a Baron von Muenchausen
by his hairs out of his pit he will find that he can only cut himself loose
by (non-physical) dying on that level in order to move upward (By the same
reasoning:  there must be pleasure in sinking - involution).
To die during one's life on one level in order to start functioning  on
another implies a  battle with  one's own inert nature, and/or to seek
spiritual interference, for instance by means of prayer.

It connects with what Kym wrote:
> Yet, again, I am aware that, according to most doctrine, a
>sign you are on the "up-swing" is when you disentangle yourself from earthly
>beings and things - concentrating on the inward, on perfecting yourself, on
>becoming undisturbed.

that disentanglement causes hardship - falling over and picking oneself up
again. The harder, the more one has become part of a way of life and delight
in it..

Kym also wrote:
>I guess the "Gods" did hanker for suffering since we hankered for the
>"material" which is apparently the reason we got our "spirit/soul" dragged
>"down here" in the first place.

With "Gods" I meant actually "we". I do not know what came first hankering
for a an unknown experience of delight versus suffering in a material
mechanical world yet to be created, or a craving for sinking into the
material world: involution. One implies the other.

Michael
Michael
Amsterdam, Netherlands
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/index.html