Theos-Talk Archives (October 1999 Message tl00285)

I have finally found the reference by Geshe
Kalsang Gyatso I talked about earlier on
collective karma:

"As with all other things, this world came into
being in dependence upon causes. Had there been
no causes, there would be no world. The main cause
of this world was the collective karma of the
beings who inhabit it. Since karma originates
in the mind, it follows that this world was
produced principally by mind...It can only have
been produced by the collective karma of the
beings inhabiting this world. There is no valid
reason for saying that it was created by Brahma,
or any other god. The entire world arose due to
karma, and karma arises from mind; therefore
the actual creator of this world is mind."
 OCEAN OF NECTURE, p. 168

Here Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist, uses the
term collective karma directly.

There are two seemingly large differences
between this Buddhist view and that given
by Blavatsky in her SD. One is that she
has a hierarchy of creator-gods, and the
second is her idea that karma is universal
and somehow transcends mind.

My own personal take on this is to see her
Manus and Cosmocrators and so on as
personifications of collective karmic
forces, and I have never thought that her
"universal" law of karma was all that
universal, but rather applicable only to
our 7-plane solar system and thus relative
only to samsara and nirvana (i.e., there
is no karma in paranirvana).

Jerry S.