Q: What is karma?
Today let us contemplate on Karma. What is karma? It is an understanding of life and understanding that the Universe or existence is fair. What we do is what we will get back. This understanding is called karma. If we do something good, good will come back to us. If we do something bad, bad will come back to us. Seems to be a fair understanding of life. In other words, I would say, karma is like saying LIFE is FAIR. What you do will come back to you. Karma also means that I am responsible for my actions. If something good is happening to me, I must have done something good. If something bad is happening to me, oh! I must have done something bad, assuming that God, the Universe, the Existence is fair.
If God or the Universe or Existence is unfair, then there will be always partiality. Anything can happen if the existence is partial. Favouritism can happen. And in today’s world, in politics, in power centres, we know, there is always favoritism, for somebody whom I know, for somebody whose relatives are. Whereas the law of karma says, the Existence is FAIR. It is not partial to somebody. When I say God or existence, all these terminologies I am using interchangeably. God doesn’t favor somebody unnecessarily. Neither punishes somebody unnecessarily. This is the meaning of that.
As applied to me, ok, I am responsible for my actions. This is the meaning of karma. Sounds very fair. But we cannot experience that in our life. So far, in this life, I have not done anything bad, why something bad is happening to me? This question comes. There is always a question, why bad things happen to good people? So, the theory of karma also has an assumption, that life is not a small window of what you see now. Life is a continuous process. You have gone through many, many lifetimes and come to this stage. So, what you have done, what you have not done in your earlier life can impact this life. So, the law of karma doesn’t apply it in a narrow sense of a window of time. The Law of karma is something which you have to see in the perspective of life itself, which actually involves thousands and thousands and millions of lifetimes.
To understand this a litter bit better, you have to understand the mind. We have a conscious mind, we have a subconscious mind, and we have an unconscious mind, which is actually below the subconscious. And below the unconscious mind, there is collective unconscious or cosmic unconscious. So, how many layers of mind we are speaking of? The conscious mind, subconscious mind, unconscious mind, collective unconscious and collective cosmic unconscious. So, these many layers of mind are there. Out of which conscious mind is only less than 5%. All our understanding, judgement about life is through this small window called the conscious mind.
Our subconscious mind is many, many, many times more powerful than the conscious mind. It remembers all your past experiences in life. These experiences which can be recollected are part of the subconscious mind. And they come as impressions. Then, there is something called the unconscious mind, which you cannot even recollect, they are. What you cannot recollect is, what you were, as a part of collective consciousness. Something like animal life and go below that which is much deeper, which you call as cosmic unconscious, where you were a mineral, a stone, or part of star, galaxy, piece. So, this is actually the nature of the mind. What is visible to you is the tip of the iceberg which is about 5%. What is not visible to you comprises a larger portion.
With modern-day hypnosis techniques, a hypnotist can go into the subconscious, unconscious or collective unconscious or cosmic unconscious. People can recollect their lives, past lives, which is part of the subconscious. Their lives as animals, which is actually collective unconscious, and their life as minerals, cosmic unconscious. This much recollection can be done through hypnosis.
Whatever we are speaking of is not theory. So, as you go deeper and deeper into your Consciousness through hypnosis, some of these memories can be recollected.
So, then you cannot look at your life as a small window of what I see now. It is much larger. In this larger picture, things even out. You will do something. You will feel good or bad because of it. Like that life continues.
Pranams
References:
SelfKnowledge Talks_T14_KARMA(1-What is Karma)_11Apr2016