Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00664)

At 02:41 PM 12/26/96 +0000, John Straughn <JTarn@envirolink.org> wrote:

>Michael writes:

>>Yes, I quite agree being subject to collective Karma

Collective karma relates to individual karma in the same way that the
results of a coin flip relate to the probability of the coin flip.
Collective karma tends to eventually even out for all individuals.


>>- but I wonder whether such a thing as a personal law of retribution exists
>>for one's own deeds.

I like how Annie Besant emphasized how karma affects one's character more
than she emphasized how it affects one's circumstances in her little book
about karma.


>Just a hypothesis, a new, unresearched or thought-out idea:  Perhaps each one
>of us has a "karmic meter" within us which reacts somewhat directly with the
>karmic pool.  I.e. if your "karmic meter" leans toward the negative, then you
>would be more likely to attract negative karma.  If it leaned toward the
>positive, etc.

That karma deals in probabilities and tendencies like this strikes me as
much more likely than that it ties particular cirumstances to particular acts.


>The higher self (Atman/Buddhi/Manas?) may
>punish you for your "sins".  Surely the higher self would know how karma does
>it's work, and perhaps it can manipulate itself so that karma (good or bad)
>would be attracted to it's manifestation - us.

I have never understood why the "higher self" is referred to as both being a
part of the individual and as acting on the individual.  If it knows
something that I do not know, then it is not me.


>it is my understanding that there
>are such involutors who, eventually, severe(sp?) their atmic tie with the
>Absolute, and become lost souls.  (G. de Purucker)

I do not see how it is possible for anything to be separate from something
that is all-encompassing.


>being self-conscious, we can choose to"descend" into matter, eventually
ending up in
>what the "masters" call the eighth sphere.  "Avichi Nirvana".  Those who have
>reached A.N. lose their atmic link and become lost souls.  "Lost", defined by
>them as "selfish and materialistic".  Therefore, "universally" evil.

How long do these lost souls stay that way, or are they annihilated without
ever recovering?  I remember a phrase from "The Mahatma Letters" which said
that some souls undergo misery and torment for a manvantara, but I cannot
remember to whom it was referring.