The Logic of Karma, Part 3
Just Cause
The dictionary definition of justice is as follows: “The quality of being just; fairness.”
I think this pretty much says it. If a person, circumstance or payment is just – this means that fairness has been achieved and all parties have nothing to complain about.
Now let us look at the standard religious view of the world. Is there justice or fairness?
Not hardly. In fact the common phrase being thrown about these days by laymen and preachers alike is “life is not fair.”
The truth is that if life is not fair then life is not just and this would mean that God is not just.
In fact, if there is only one life it would indeed be true that life is not fair.
It would not be fair or just to have some little innocent children starving to death and others well taken care of by loving families.
It would not be just for some to be stricken with incurable diseases and others who do not take particularly good care of their bodies to have good health into old age.
It would not be just for some to be born poor and others rich.
It would not be just for some to be born free and others slaves.
Taking these things into consideration it becomes a stretch of obscene proportions to believe that that there is more justice, or fairness, in one life than there would be in hundreds of lifetimes where all experience abundance and poverty, health and disease, love and hate etc.
Actually the epitome of justice and fairness is expressed in the biblical words expressing the law of karma: “as ye sow so shall ye reap.”
This is the law of cause and effect with measures out justice with exactness.
Comment: I do not see any validity to the notion that someone, sometime, MUST kill that husband to “fulfill the demands of karma and justice.”
You should argue with what I do say, not with what I do not say.”
I did not say that she had to kill her husband for we always have out free agency. But when he killed her in a previous life he set up a cause that would produce effects for lifetimes to come. Justice and fairness demands that he reap as he has sowed. If the payment does not come from his wife it will come from some other source, perhaps even through service on his part.
Comment: If making one whole is NOT a part of “justice” than what is? If someone destroys my reputation, making me “whole” is defined as bringing one back to the state and condition prior to the damaging event.
At least half the time when a wrong is committed against a person, such as destroying a reputation, it is an unknowing act of justice because this person in a previous life did a similar harm to someone else. When this happens justice is served. He, of course, will be born with a fresh opportunity to establish a good reputation in his next life, but in having his reputation tarnished in one life as he did unto another in a previous one sets up a classroom where he learns a valuable and “just” lesson. When he who was destroyed by him in a previous life views this lesson from the Spirit world he will feel that justice was served.
There are times when a wrong is committed toward an individual that was not deserved by anything he did in his past. When this happens the person will in some future time have a similar right or good event happen to him which will compensate, thus serving the demands of justice.
Comment: If Tom owed me a great debt that he could not pay, and I honestly and sincerely forgave him, there would no longer be any debt. Could the same concept apply to other wrong doings? If Tom destroyed my reputation, yet I totally forgave him, might we say that (to me) there was no more need of “justice”? If so, where does that leave Tom? The answer to THAT question is one place where karma gets hung up.
JJ: You say that Karma gets “hung up” when there is no hang up and no problem.
Karma is simply cause and effect and cause and effect never gets frustrated, broken or hung up.
Jesus said: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Again this is a good Biblical interpretation of Karma.
If you forgive Tom you are making good karma for yourself so you will meet people like you in your future who will forgive your wrongs.
Does forgiving someone his debt erase karma? No. It only alters the way that the karma is worked out.
Many who forgive debts sense this and will say something like, “Don’t worry about paying me back. Just help someone else down the road and we’ll call it even.”
Many of us have had people say this to us when we have been helped by a stranger when we have had car trouble.
If Tom owes you $1000 and you forgive the debt all the effects of borrowing the $1000 are still in play. Your forgiveness has merely added a new cause that changes the circumstances.
Tom will eventually learn the principle of forgiveness and will pay the $1000 back by forgiving a similar debt from someone else in the future or a similar gesture of value.
All eternal laws are built on the principle of cause and effect or karma.
There is no learning or any other effect without cause. There is no exception to this.
On the lighter side I can clearly remember my lesson in learning about hot stoves. I was just a couple years old when my mother and brother clearly told me to not touch the stove when it was hot. One day I was looking at the red hot stove thinking about what was said and noticed that it was losing it’s redness and getting cool. I assumed that when it was no longer red that I could now touch it and did so. To my surprise I learned that a burner can be pretty hot even when it is not red. My lesson in this cause and effect was fully registered.
We must remember that the core principle through which karma operates is cause and effect.
How can there be a flaw (as some maintain) in the principle stating that when there is a cause there is an equal effect according to the energy behind the initiated cause? How can there be a flaw in the scripture which says, “as ye sow so shall ye reap?”
I could not find a flaw in this principle if I researched it a thousand years.
Comment: “However, those ideas are a far cry from the exactness implied in the “opposite and equal reaction” formula. Let’s say I act out on my anger, and throw a rock at someone’s car window. The “opposite and equal” formula (which you say is “so absolute, so definite, so real, and so inevitable”) says that INEVITABLY a rock will be thrown at my car window. That is the part that does not make sense. That is one part of the concept of karma that is flawed.”
JJ: When the rock is thrown it is moved through the air by the application of a certain amount of energy.
By the time the rock comes to a standstill it has (by Newtonian physics and the law of cause and effect) been met with exactly the same amount of energy which originally propelled it. If it had not been met with an equal energy it would have remained in motion forever.
The first resistance was the friction of the air through which it sailed. The second was gravity pulling it downward. The third was the window and the fourth and final was the car seat upon which it landed and became stationary. The combination of these four sources of resistance exactly equals the original force which propelled the rock.
This is an example of cause and effect working out with exactness on the physical plane.
BUT…
Cause and effect does not end on the physical plane. To understand Karma one must look at the effects of cause as they manifest on the emotional and mental planes.
If the car was in a junk yard and no one cared much what happened to it then the cause and effect in the higher planes would be minimal. It would be similar to throwing a rock in a lake. There is a physical effect, but because there is little if any destruction of value the cause and effect beyond the physical is miniscule.
The only danger from karma may be that someday you might own a worthless car that someone throws a rock at. If this does not bother you then go ahead and throw the rock.
But, if the car is your new prized Porsche and some harmful person throws a rock through the window we have a totally different set of effects on the astral (emotional) and mental planes.
If you know this is a malicious act of destruction it may produce extreme anger, despair and feelings of vengeance within you. Beyond this you feel a sense of loss over the damage which has been done.
Just like pressing on your accelerator can propel a heavy object (your car) with much more force that that exerted by your foot because of other energies at play, even so the damaged done by the rock in this second case goes far beyond the physical energies.
Now if the damage was the result of an innocent accident you would still feel a sense of loss, but your emotions would not be so negatively effected. Because the emotional damage is not so intense, in the case of an accident the karma generated is not as great. But even in the case of accidents we do have responsibility for our carelessness and a certain amount of restoration will be necessary.
Now in the case of malicious cause the emotional effect can be great. Let us deal with three of the emotional effects of the victim.
(1) Anger. He feels anger and sends it toward the perpetrator with just as real of a hurl as the throwing of a rock.
(2) He feels a desire to obtain vengeance and considers hunting the criminal down and giving him some Texas justice.
(3) He feels sorrow over a sense of loss and thinks to himself that one person would not do this to another if they understood these feelings.
These negative feelings send a rock of energy through the ethers and they circulate there until circumstances are right for them to land on the doorstep of the initiating criminal. When this happens, however, it does not mean that he will own a Porsche and have a rock thrown at it.
What does it mean then?
It means that the emotional energy and feelings he initiated in another will return to him. Equivalent feelings may be generated in him by someone throwing a rock at his dog, a hit and run, a dentist pulling the wrong tooth or a number of things. The purpose of this emotional energy is not to generate an exact repeat of the initiating physical event, but an exact repeat of the emotions of the victim so the initiating rock thrower understands the harm he created and not do it again.
Now let us suppose that the guy who owns the Porsche is a saint and when he sees the damage he does not allow himself to become angry not seek for vengeance. He doesn’t feel an sense of loss because he is just as happy to drive his Yugo. He can loose all he owns and still be at peace.
Is any karma then generated? Does this mean we can rob and plunder the righteous and will have no fear of retribution?
Not quite. The bad guys will not get off so easy. The saints may be forgiving and will not be sending out negative emotional energies of retribution, but they will assess the problem on the plane of the mind and this judgment will send out a projectile of mental energy which will descend to the emotional and physical plane to bring the needed lesson to the wrongdoer.
The advantage of the victim in transcending the emotional plane is that he will cease to initiate new harmful cause which will come back to haunt him. Instead, the karma fulfills its purpose and is thereafter neutralized.
It is indeed true that the energy we deal with in karma plays out in the three worlds of form.
Copyright By J J Dewey
March 26, 2002
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