Theos-Talk Archives (September 1997 Message tl00162)

>But I think it's going beyond the spirit of HPB's words to blindly say
that
>motive alone makes the difference.  Some Muslims on Jihad kill people in
all
>sincerity.  Their karmic penalty is probably mitigated by their motives,
but
>they still cause misery and invoke karma.  If an Islamic "Thou shalt not
kill"
>stopped them until they could develop compassion, I think it saves them
karma
>and does real good.

As usual, Titus, you are very perceptive. But I don't see how your
comments above mitigate my premise restated in your first line.
Anyone who kills another out of ignorance produces no more 
karma than an lion or bear would. I agree that they still cause
karma and misery, but this goes into the collective pool rather
than their personal burden. A lot of misery going on today is
because of our collective karma (just one example, what the
white man did to the red man will have to be karmically balanced
someday, and the whole white race will pay a collective price).
When I speak of motive causing karma, I am speaking only of
personal karma (along with motive, guilt, and other emotions
also have a part to play as does memory).

>Christians, Muslims and Hindus who kill in all sincerity must have a lot
>of good karma.

The interesting thing about this is that a good Christian, who honestly
believed he was helping the Heathen by killing them (before they
did even more sins) probably did get good karma from it--at least
until his conscience caught up to him, likely during the after-death
life review. But when you talk about whole groups of people like
this, you are talking collective karma, not personal karma, and the
two work somewhat differently.

Jerry S.
Member, TI