Theos-Talk Archives (November 1999 Message tl00251)

Randy,

Something you said to Alan caught my attention - well, quite a few things
you've been saying have done that ;-)  but I was genuinely delighted to
read how you discovered karma.

I don't think you're the first person to have discovered new or deeper
insights in a spiritual desolation. Not trying to diminish your
non-firstness any further, of course, but to find something by your own
efforts and experience is by far the most effective way to learn it, as you
said so yourself.

A few thoughts in answer to your 3 questions. I stress that these are my
own opinions, of course.

>Why do theosophists believe karma is a law governing this life?

1  First, I don't believe in *believing* things, if that word is taken as a
doggedly-held concept, but I do see everywhere a connectedness of things,
an unfolding stream of consequences of a given impetus or state, and I
often see the same kinds of things resulting from the same kinds of prior
conditions. There are repeated patterns of response.

This is obvious in the physical world - yes, there is simple physical
karma: toaster pops, toast executes parabolic path in the air, falls on
floor etc - but can also be seen somewhat in relationships between people
and their environment (people, etc). There are a couple of problems in
thinking about this kind of thing, though:

a)  Word meanings - people often have different shades of meaning for words
like karma, which is part of the fun of communicating in a place like this.

b)  Speaking of a law is fraught, too. Science has climbed out of this hole
somewhat, but many people don't seem to realise fully that when a human
being speaks of a law of nature, that doesn't make it some inviolable
stand-alone entity. In this sense, a "law" is a mental construct or
abstraction based on a certain amount of repeated experience and an
intuitive sense of cohesion and rightness, whatever that means. As a
trained scientist, I prefer to avoid talking about "the Law of Karma" in
the rather thunderous tone that some people give it :)

And yet, having said that, I sense that the *patterns* we see, and come to
call laws, are in some way an *expression* of a deep connectedness in
reality, a deep geometry in the hardly-fathomed (by me, anyway) spaces
where I intuit that energy and consciousness interact intimately and have a
completely-unfathomed common source. So what we call a law at the human
level, is really a theory that has had good support sofar - and is just as
vulnerable to further discovery as Newton's "laws" of motion were when
relativity and quantum mechanics came along.

It is not so much a question of believing or defending a "law", but rather
of  deepening our vision of the nature of reality, each individually on
their own, at their own time.

>Second, why do they believe it works beyond this life?

2  Why do people believe anything that is in a realm where we are all
feeling our way? I don't know about you, but I've noticed that people often
construct their belief system or world view from a combination of different
sources ranging from revelation in some ancient book through to what
trusted family and friends say, on to personal intuition and inward
experience. And what makes it all so fascinating and hard to converse
about, is that different people adopt different amounts of these
ingredients. Some base all on a book, others forget books and just trust
inner experience. The two extremes are prone to problems, as you are
clearly aware.

I find that in such relatively uncharted waters, it is best to trust all
these different kinds of sources to a degree while holding a certain amount
of questioning and challenge towards them. It's a neat trick. In short, we
all must construct our best-effort model of reality and be prepared to
revise it or even ditch it when something comes along to challenge it,
whether it be new information from our physical senses or some deepening or
lightening of the interior spaces of our awareness.

So from that kind of understanding, I think that theosophists believe that
karma operates beyond this life because of some mixture of indications from
respected writers, sheer reasonableness, best understanding to date, and in
some cases, experience. And it could just be what your parents said, for
those who have never challenged it.

There is also a sense that some principles seen in the physical world also
apply in more subtle realms of being, eg a tendency towards inertia in
balance with the stimulation of energy, the connectedness of things, and
considering the subtle realms to exist within the same ultimate assumed
field of being that physical things do, in an appropriate way.

>Third, who invented it and why?

3  Probably some person - no, let's correct that - a *long sequence* of
people who found themselves in some momentous journey in their
life-awareness, maybe had just escaped from some constricting world-view
and, in the ensuing temporary chaos and apparent spiritual desolation,
formed or found a principle that seemed to connect a whole lot of
experience and deepen the understanding it.

Familiar?  Of course! :)

As for why people "invent" (they don't really) concepts like karma, I guess
it's the ever-human impulse to understand, to make sense of one's universe,
to explore - to become that which we have the potential to be.

Well, that's a not-so-short answer. Thanks for sharing that part of your
story. This is what this discussion list is *really* about - one of the
reasons.

Oh, and as for proof, I'm not sure what you think it is, but to me this is
another word like "law" that does not always serve us well. In a
mathematical sense, I see it as a set of relationships adhering to some
adopted or perceived principle, that connect two things, where we decide to
adopt one if the other is given. If you can find the structure and it is
connected properly, then we may deign to call it a proof. In a scientific
sense, it is obtaining evidence *and* attempting to match that evidence
with the results expected from some theory or understanding. We often try
one theory after another until we get a best fit - to date. That's where
intuition and sheer creativity are so important. Sometimes, the intuitive
leap of insight happens first and supporting evidence is only found well
afterwards, as in some of  Einstein's work.

But asking for proof in theosophy, a field where most human minds are
reaching to their limits, is actually outrageous ;) Far more so than I
suspect you initially realised, for the simple reason that the sensory
apparatus for gathering any evidence in the first place is rudimentary or
downright dormant in most people, and the conceptual base from which to
form an adequate theory is probably just as embryonic! So the request for
proof is, in many cases, to match the non-percievable with the inconceivable!

It's a bit like travelling into a new country, coming across a wide river,
and asking the first explorers who have just returned from the other side
in their boats where the bridge is. "Where is the bridge? You mean there's
no bridge?" :)

I want to find that bridge too and I will, if I have anything to do with
it, but I just think it'll take a little while. And this is just one of
humanity's interesting joint projects.

Best wishes, Randy.

Murray

----- Original Message -----

 Anyway, pretty cool huh.  When I stumbled on theosophy(after recently--a
couple of months ago- having been reawakened by witnessing what psychics
could do) and saw the concept I was pretty irked that you guys stole my idea.
 Actually it is one of the things that really intrigued me causing me to look
further.  Nothing like coming up with ideas on your own to create a higher
level of surety.

  Now you can  convince others by mentioning this gospel of how the great
guru sage Randy discovered karma while in the spiritual desolation between
Bible thumping and theosophy.

My questions are:
Why do theosophists believe karma is a law governing this life?
Second, why do they believe it works beyond this life?
Third, who invented it and why?

Give me the real simple short version and then I'll pursue further that which
is troubling.