T H E   L A W   O F   K A R M A

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PART 3
FREE WILL
"Negative karma that has not manifested yet can and must be avoided." (Patanjali, chap. 2, sutra 16)

Every human being must bear the consequences of actions done with his thought, word or body. Spreading his doctrine in the whole of India, Buddha himself used to say that "all creatures are what they are as a consequence of the karma resulted from the actions of their past and present lives."

Thus, we create the auspicious and adverse conditions and circumstances of our lives and we are also responsible for our present suffering or satisfaction. All these are generated by the chain of causes and effects determined by actions from our past and present life.

RESPONSIBILITY - THE WORD OF DESTINY
Our present actions, thoughts, ideas or tendencies are precisely determined by factors we are responsible for, essentially, these factors can be divided into the following types of determinations:

1. The determination generated by our past-lives actions

2. The determination generated by biological conditionings

3. The determination caused by our present life actions

4. The determination caused by our habits

5. The determination caused by the exterior influences of nature

6. The determination caused by the present social rules during our life

7. The determination related to the nature of our samskaras (the subtle engravings from our subconscious), whose restricting and limiting role is decisive.

Here we can add two major types of determination:
1. The determination that facilitates our spiritual evolution. This type of determination is influenced by the super conscious, and by the divine light cast by the Supreme Self (Atman) on our mental level and subtle bodies. We can associate this type of determination with man’s superior nature.

2. The determination that stops our spiritual evolution. It is an appeal to all that is inferior, illusionary, ephemeral, and not related to our true essence. This type of determination drags the human being towards the inferior levels of manifestation.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU LOVE
All these aspects of determination, which are again and again made actual by new desires and actions, make up a person’s karma.

The word karma also designates the action and its consequence, in occult literature; karma represents all the consequences of an action done in a past and the present life.

The doctrine of karma represents, in fact, a justified “extension” of the law of cause and effect, consisting of the physical, psychic and subtle nature of all the actions done by a human being.

The law of karma can be limited to the following general statement: “All causes generate an effect.” This truth was expressed in the following proverb: “Man harvests what he has sown.”

Karma is always generated by actions, thoughts, feelings inspired by desire, by ignorance, but this law always acts perfectly, objectively and in an inexorable way.

Thus, an egoistic and bad action will cause future suffering that will “punish” that bad action according to its seriousness.

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