Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
Reincarnation: A Study of the Human Soul
By J.A. Anderson
Karma
Karma is the law of cause and effect, acting upon all j^\ planes. It is entirely impersonal in this action; and yet it acts wisely, intelligently and equitably, although the source of this intelligence and wisdom proceeds from the Unknowable. It does not reason, as we understand reasoning, nor is its wisdom accompanied by any mentality conceivable to human minds. Given a cause, and its corresponding effect will follow inevitably. Could this law be violated in but one instance, however trifling, the whole universe would fall into chaos, like a child's castle of cards. Descartes founded his famous system of philosophy upon the postulate, Cogito, ergo sum. How much firmer a basis is afforded for the most profound conceptions of the universe in this law of Karma, that Effect follows Cause. It is a unit of measurement applicable to every conceivable point of space, every atom, every plane of being, every manifestation of consciousness in all this illimitable Cosmos. Taking its source in the Unknowable, yet having its action plainly perceivable upon our planes of life, it is the link which binds the knowable to the Unknowable.
It is the one supreme testimony of unity and design, of intelligence and justice, in nature. Karma is but another name for the great Unknowable, CAUSELESS CAUSE. Effect follows cause in the emergence of Cosmos from chaos; in the struggle for existence among the newly formed bodies of a solar system; in the " process of the suns" as they wing their way around their inconceivably vast orbits; in the aberrations of an Uranus, revealing the presence of a Neptune; in the involution and evolution of humanities; in the birth, life, and death of a man, of a molecule, or of a planetary system; in the racial, national, or social environments of the individual; in the presence of evil and injustice in the world; in the intellectual capacity of men; in their appetites, passions, and desires; in their spiritual aspirations; in their diseases and vices; in short, in every conceivable juxtaposition or combination of thought, act or event, the Law is absolute ; Karma, all-pervading. As far as the most daring generalizations of the human mind can reach, its sway is absolute. No exception can be postulated. Even the CAUSELESS CAUSE, the final goal of all rational philosophies, seems to yield obeisance to this law which proceeds out of its own abysses, for the manifestation of universes would appear to be only links in an Infinite Cycle of Necessity.
Once the universality of the action of Karma is recognized, we have a safe basis for our future explorations. It is an unfailing touchstone, wherewith we can test the truth of any proposition, whether religious, scientific, or philosophical. Its application to the problems of human life to which, indeed, the term is commonly limited constitutes the motive of this chapter. The importance of this phase of its study cannot be overestimated when we recognize that our whole life is but a succession of Nidanas, a chain of causes and effects, of which each ef- fect becomes a cause in its own turn, and so on, in endless progression. No act, however trivial; no thought, however faint; no emotion, however fleeting but is a cause, a bit of woof woven in the warp of our being, and giving it color and texture. An idle word how often it changes a whole life; a thoughtless act, whose effects, or karma, follow us to and even beyond the grave ! For it is a portion of this law that while any act or thought of ours may have its effect either within us, or externally upon others, the reaction, which is this effect become a cause again, must expend itself upon us individually. And it is most difficult to judge of the comparative magnitude of the causes we set in motion. A pebble thrown into the 'ocean seems a trifling cause, yet every separate drop in all the vast expanse of waters has to readjust its relations, as a direct and purely physical effect.
And in addition to this permanent readjustment, the law of reaction, or restored equilibrium, re- quires every iota of force thrown off by the falling pebble to be returned to its source. In other words, the pebble has to receive a shock equal to that which it set in motion. In this simile, the original cause would be the falling pebble; its effect, the readjustment of the waters of the entire ocean; the reaction, or its personal Karma, the impulse of returning pressure, which, in rela- tion to it, has become a cause again. In like manner, every act or thought of a man affects as a cause all other men in some degree, and this effect upon them will be returned to him, as a new cause, modifying his being to the extent of the effects it originally produced. . It will thus be seen how impossible it is for any one to separate his Karma from that of his fellow-men. The interweaving and correlations are necessarily infinite; and naught but infinite wisdom, as embodied in the divine law of Karma, could mete out exact justice to us for all the multiform deeds of a lifetime.
Isolation is a chimera. A Crusoe, on a desert island, will reach out to and affect the whole mass of humanity; for the pictures of his acts and thoughts, reflected in the astral light, will be re-reflect- ed upon the physical plane, and influence to some degree the thought of the world. No man can think a good thought without the whole of humanity being somewhat the better for it ; no man can sin against his higher nature without lowering the moral standard of the whole world to some extent. This inevitable and necessary interblending of all our Karmas forms a true and scientific basis for the Theosophic conception of universal brotherhood; a reason, logical and necessary, for the practice of altruism. It also affords an occasion for the separation of karmic adjustments into classes, according as these relate to the in- dividual himself or to his immediate or remote environments. Thus that aspect which views the Karma of all the units as one great whole would be termed world Karma; that which relates one to his race, his nation, his community, and his family, would be respectively, race, national, social, and family Karma; while the comparatively minute portion remaining would constitute his own, or his individual Karma.
Yet this almost infinitesimal portion, this drop in the sea, is that with which we principally concern ourselves, as the very apotheosis of selfish- ness. Our hopes, our purification, our progress, seem, to our blinded eyes, of paramount importance; so subtle do vanity and self-esteem become when transmuted to higher planes. Bereft of intelligence, and depending upon brute force alone, of how much avail would be the strength of one man against the united sinews of his race, his nation, or even against his community ? In exact proportion is the ratio of his Karma to that of his community, his nation, or his race. It is lost in the great whole; it is of account only before that tribunal which " numbers the hairs upon our heads." Let him who would attain per- sonal " salvation," who would separate his Karma from that of a wicked, sinful race by retiring to the jungle, or within the recesses of his own selfish heart, and there practicing the most austere virtues, go out and push against the side of a mountain, in the hope of retarding the revolution of the earth from West to East, for the one effort will be of as much avail as the other.
Are there not thousands of men, whose personal Karma would entitle them to be born under conditions as delightful and just as any ever depicted by a Bellamy, whose moral natures quiver under the outrageous ethics of our social system every hour of their lives, yet who are compelled by the national Karma which overwhelms them to do the very acts they loathe; to live by taking the very interest, profit, or rent which they abhor? Are there not tens of thousands, whose sincere efforts in other lives to attain to truth would have entitled them as units to its revelation, who are nevertheless born in Christian or pagan lands where the racial Karma offers only crude dogmas or childish creeds ? But has the justice of Karma failed, then, because of this seeming injustice? Not so; the efforts of these, even in the direction of truth and purity, have been selfish; they have striven egotistically, not altruistically; have worked for their personal salvation, not to save others. They have created good personal Karma, and Karma repays them to the uttermost farthing, but they have done nothing to lighten the race or national Karma, and they are engulfed in its floods. It was no chance thought, no accidental insertion of a "glittering generality," which declared the first object of the Theosophic Society to be the formation of a nucleus for an Universal Brotherhood. It evidences a wisdom and knowledge of the working of the law of Karma far transcending our petty conceptions. Altruistic effort is the law of spiritual progress because of the commingling of our Karmas; and even in selfish self-preservation, if from no higher motive, we ought to practice it.
We recognize the injustice, the falsity, the hollowness of the social, ethical and religious customs of our time, yet we accept them and raise no protesting voice, because the whole world is against us, or we fancy it is. Can we charge it to the injustice of this divine law, then, if our next incarnation find us the son of a money-changer, with the lust of gold tainting our very mothers' milk? If the world is too hard for us now, will it not be so then ? Let us exercise a little common sense in our study of Karma; let us remember that it is simply " cause and effect," and cannot but be just. There is too much of the Christian idea of the entire separation of earthly from heavenly concerns abroad in the land. If we find this world in a bad state morally and ethically, we must logically expect to find it in a similar one when we reincarnate, especially if we did nothing towards lightening the world Karma. Cause precedes effect, on all planes. Our first duty, to be sure, is to make ourselves personally pure, because this is always at hand, and always practicable; our next, to strive for the elevation of our community, then our state, our nation, our race; each member of which ascending series includes all below it, so that in working for humanity we are purifying our race, our nation, our community, and ourselves. And the effect of the causes we set up, of the Karma we generate, is the greater as we ascend the series in motive. It is this which gives the thought and the act force. Thought is creative, and that which aims at the elevation of the race will prove incomparably more potent a factor for good than that directed towards petty or selfish aims.
We are but as drops in the great ocean of life. Our very souls are tainted by the saltness and bitterness of the floods about us. The bitterness of the whole ocean can only be removed, and its waters made pleasant and sweet, by the sweetening and purification of each separate drop. No one can do this for another, and yet each can only purify himself by unselfish work for others. Howbeautifully grand is the LAW! What a magnificent stride above and beyond the brute kingdom, where the Buchners, Tyndalls, Darwins, and Huxleys would perforce relegate us! The law of the animal kingdom is egotism; the survival of the fittest; the cruel struggle for existence. The law of Karma on the human plane is altruism and selflessness, and we must recognize it or perish. For cause and effect are at work in higher states of matter, employing subtle and unperceived forces. The childhood of our race has passed. We are fast reaching our majority, where we must take control of our own destinies, for weal or woe. No longer the created, borne helplessly yet safely along the mighty stream of evolution, we have be- come creators, and are karmically responsible for that which we create. Our mouths have learned to voice the WORD. Every thought and act is potent for good or evil; the finer, " unscientific" forces of nature yield obedience and obeisance whether we are aware of it or not. It is not enough that we recognize the universal presence of cause and effect, the omnipotence and omniscience of Karma; we must realize that we are free to change and direct this divine law, to our preservation or our destruction.
This is a most important aspect of Karma, which must not be lost sight of. As the whole Cosmos is the thought of the Absolute, reflected in matter, so we, as a part and portion of that Absolute, exercise and employ creative potencies every hour of our lives. Shall we continue to do this ignorantly and aimlessly, or shall we take a firm hold upon our destinies and guide our souls into the haven of immortality? Certain it is that we must make the decision soon, for we are pilgrims in the cycle of necessity ; we must go forward either to safety or destruction. And this is not predicated upon the emotionalism of some wailing Jeremiah of ancient, or Buchanan of modern, times; but simply and entirely for the reason that EFFECT follows CAUSE. One is the upper, the other the nether mill-stone of fate, and we are inextricably caught between them. It will be at once evident that, holding as it does to the absolute sway of cause and effect upon every plane of the universe, physical, mental and spiritual, Theosophy stands in irreconcilable antagonism to the Christian dogma of vicarious atonement.
And herein is the chief reason why most Theosophists refuse to ally themselves, even under the name of Christian Theosophists, with the churches of to-day. They recognize fully that Christianity is an hu- mane and altruistic effort to improve the condition of mankind morally and spiritually; but this error of the di- vinity of Christ and his vicarious atonement is too basic in its nature, too far-reaching in its karmic results, to be passed over in a silence which might be construed into acquiescence. Each time that a repentant sinner is as- sured that the effects of causes he himself set in operation can be nullified by forgiveness from any source, he is being taught an untruth which can not but imperil the fut- ure development of his soul. Each time a priest pro- nounces absolution over some terrified wretch whom the shadow of the gallows, perhaps, has frightened into " re- pentance" after a long life of selfishness and crime, he assumes an authority and a power which is absolutely at variance with the law to which he owes his own existence. The marked contrast between the philosophical doctrine of Karma and the dogma of vicarious atonement has been well set forth by a recent writer.* He says: "There is a wide gulf between the Buddhist doctrine of Karma and the Christian teaching regarding the dispensing of reward and punishment.
In proportion to that difference the moral control exer- cised on human actions must differ in a corresponding degree. Karma, according to Buddhism and other Eastern schools of philosophy, is an inviolable, natural law, which controls the lives of all sentient beings in the Universe, and which in its turn is not gov- erned by any superior force or being. As long as thoughts and actions last so long will their results, or Karma, prevail. The least thing moved in space has a certain effect on the particles floating thereon ; the slightest motion in water gives rise to ripple after ripple until the force thereof is expended ; the gentlest sound sends forth vibrations producing change somewhere ; and the very smallest thought has also its tendency to disturb either the thinker or the object thought of. The further such research is extended, the more will the application of the karmic law to human actions prove to be as true and natural as are the laws of attraction and gravitation. Then, when it is known by man that all his thoughts and actions have certain tangible and perceptible effects, and that these effects have a rebounding tendency, or that they remain registered in his manas skandha, to cleave to him in whatever condition he may be hereafter, a lasting and powerful impression of awe and veneration must be the natural result created in his mind.
He who is morally convinced of the inevitable effect and danger of certain thoughts and actions, and of the reward which awaits him through certain others, must be more deeply impressed in mind than another who entertains no such belief. The Christian doctrine of the absolution of sins is a total cancellation of the past whether there be crimes of the blackest type or not by an act of momentary repentance, which places the wretched moral leper on a par with the most exalted saint. It is apparent from this fact that the votaries of Christianity must rely more upon supernatural magic to ease themselves of a life burden of ugly sins than upon an uncheckered course of pure, moral life. If this extraordinary feat could be scientifically or otherwise demonstrated, there are many in these glowing Eastern climes who would readily embrace Christianity." The writer also shrewdly draws attention to the fact, emphasized in the first portion of this chapter in regard to the separation by Christians of earthly from heavenly concerns, that we do not apply the doctrine of the re- mission of sins in our treatment of criminals to any very demoralizing extent, and that the effect of such an application of the laws of heaven to earthly conditions would be to immeasurably increase lawlessness and crime.
The law of Karma, too, being impersonal in its action, solves two of the greatest puzzles over which Christianity has pondered in vain. These are the presence of evil in a world created by an all-wise and all-powerful Creator, and free will consistent with omniscient fore-knowledge. No Christian theology has ever satisfactorily explained why an omnipotent God did not devise some means whereby he might save from the eternal flames lost souls which his omniscient knowledge informed him would eventually be eternally lost. And if God, from all eternity, knew a thing would happen, then it had to happen; and just how this could be reconciled with human free will was another of those conundrums whose dis- tinguishing peculiarity is that they have no answer. The Presbyterian branch, of all the protesting churches, recognizes the logical necessity which follows postulating both omnipotence and omniscience of a personal deity, and boldly avows its belief in predestination, or fatalism. As quoted from J. H. Connelly, in the Key to Theosophy^ their Confession of Faith declares : " By the decree of God and for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated ^fcnto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. ' '
These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished As God hath appointed the elect to glory, neither are any other re- deemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, and sanctified and saved, but the Elect only. '"The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin to the praise of his glorious justice !" This is not the ravings of some hypochondriacal, half- insane prophet; it is a part of the PRESBYTERIAN CONFESSION OF FAITH, and is accepted to-day by a very large class of intelligent, educated, and refined gentlemen and loving, lovable women, who would no more do that which they declare their God does, daily and hourly, than they would transform themselves into fiends. It is the inevi- table and logical outcome of a belief whose very foundations are laid in error. Is Presbyterianism alone in its attributing injustice to God which it would deem barbarous and unfeeling in man ?
By no means. No human bar of justice, imperfect as is the attribute in our breasts in its present stage of development, would ever doom any one to the pangs of ETERNAL perdition and suffering for any act, however dreadful or cruel. But all Christian sects, without exception, send comparatively innocent souls to this eternal damnation for simply being unable to believe in and ac- cept this awful Jehovah whom they have set up for worship. In his profession as a physician, the writer has, time and again, known little infants, which some unfore- seen accident deprived of life before receiving baptism, refused burial in " sanctified" ground by the great Catholic Church and condemned to the woes of eternal torment on account of this omission a little water sprinkled on an unconscious infant deciding its eternal destiny ! What a conception of the philosophy of exist- ence the believers in such dogmas must have ! African fetich worship is more reasonable. But how can any system of. faith or philosophy arrive at reasonable or logical conclusions whose very base is founded in untruth and error ? Like a mariner whose compass is untrue, and who, therefore, only deviates the more the farther he sails, so Christian creeds, being founded in error, can only hope to increase their separation from truth the farther they pursue any train of explanation or reasoning. Let it be understood, once for all, that by Christianity, throughout this chapter, the writer refers to the modern creeds parading under this falsely assumed title.
The teachings of the Essenes, of whom Christ was one, are eminently Theosophic in many particulars, and both Christ and Paul taught, as we have undoubted reason for believing, pure Theosophy to an inner circle of disciples. Only to the multitude " spake he in parables." Christ was continually referring to the god within him, his " Father," which, by implication at least, he taught his disciples that they also possessed, for " the things that I do shall ye do also, and greater because I go to myFather." But he nowhere refers to himself as the Creator of heaven and earth, as the purely personal egotism of his latter-day followers has led them to assume. There is no place, then, in Theosophy for the vicarious atonement, or the setting aside the law of cause and effect, which is the very soul of the Christian creeds of to-day. Justice is not mocked by an impossible and unphilosophical " forgiveness" whose sole essential is repentance. As well might a dyke repent that it had burst and let in the sea. Repentance itself too often consists of a feeling of fear of the consequence of our act, rather than a real regret for what we have done. AsJ. H. Connelly further remarks: ' '
The sinner is told that he must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is an amiable weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the evil we have done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered from it ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the feeling would show us that which we regret is rather the necessity which seemed to require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends than the evil itself. " Attractive as this prospect of casting our sins at the foot of the Cross may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the student by at- taining knowledge of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out of his past wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle him to a suspension in his favor of the universal law of relation between cause and effect. The results of his evil deeds continue to exist; the suffering caused to others by his wickedness is not blotted out. The Theosophical student takes the result of wickednes upon the innocent into his problem. He considers not only the guilty person, but his victims. "Karma, also, rewards merit as unerringly as it punishes demerit. It is the outcome of every act, thought, word and deed, and by it men mold themselves, their lives and happenings. Eastern philosophy rejects the idea of a newly-created soul for every baby born. It believes in a limited number of monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect through their assimilation of many successive personalities. These personalities are the product of Karma, and it is by Karma and reincarnation that the human monad in time returns to its source absolute Deity." Karma is inextricably interwoven with reincarnation.
Without the latter, it would be impossible to assume, at least in human affairs, that cause is invariably followed by effect. The many murderers who escape detection, the hordes of those who grow rich through robbing the poor, the whole tendency of an age where honesty is not the best policy, if one would win in the mad race for wealth, all show but too plainly that one life is too short for exact justice to be meted out to any one. But, " though the mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small," and there is no more beautiful or more hope-inspiring aspect of Karma than this which shows it capable of biding its time. Its eternal patience must seem awful to him who is waiting his turn at the mill. There is no escape. A wheat kernel has been known to lie thousands of years in the wrappings of a mummy, and then germinate upon being restored to warmth and moisture. This is the key to and the proof of that which we term delayed Karma. Desire is the most potent of all forces, and we may be assured that the attractions for evil things generated by the usurer or murderer will prove causes which will find the conditions for becoming effects in some future birth.
So the evils which we uncomplainingly suffer now will be recompensed to the utmost in some bright and beautiful, though it may be far-off, life. What is time to the heir of eternity? Thus the everlasting patience of Karma assures us that no effort we make can be without its ultimate reward ; that no wrong we inflict can escape final punishment. In closing this brief chapter upon a subject that vol- umes would leave unexhausted, we can do no better than to quote from the Teacher to whom the Western world is indebted for this revival of an almost forgotten truth. In the Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky writes : "Yes ; f our destiny is written in the stars ! ' Only the closer the union between the mortal reflection, MAN, and his celestial PROTOTYPE, the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reincarnations which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of all is it fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, and man is a free agent during his stay on earth Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider does his cob- web ; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man.
Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail ; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray, the stern and implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net- work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made destiny There is no return from the paths Karma cycles over ; yet these paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them. KarmaNemesis is the synonym of PROVIDENCE, minus design, goodness and every other finite attribute or qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or A philosopher will not speak of the goodness nor cruelty of providence, but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches* over them in this, as in future lives ; and that it punishes the evil doer aye, even to his seventh re-birth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the infinite world of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma an eternal and immutable decree is absolute harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma which rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward and punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through, and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or break them. "
Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of these ways which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism, and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause With right knowledge two-thirds of the world's evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the ways of Providence. We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of these ways being so intricate and dark.
We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then we accuse the great Sphynx of devouring us. But, verily, there is not an accident of our lives, nor a mishappen day, nor a misfortune that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or another life. "The law of Karma 'is inextricably interwoven with that of Reincarnation It is only this doctrine that can explain the mysterious problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one acquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities ; when one sees honor paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favors by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbor, with all his intellect and noble virtues far more deserving in every way perishing for want and for lack of sympathy ; when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and one's heart aching with the cries of pain around him, that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men as well as their supposed Creator.
This law, whether conscious or unconscious, predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity truly, for it is eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be co-equal with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is action itself. It is not the wave which drowns the man, but the personal action of the wretch who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plants and creates causes, and karmic law adjusts the effects, which adjustment is not an act but universal harmony tend- ing ever to resume its original position, like a bough which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigor. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the god invented by the monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who unveils, through study and meditation, its intricate paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to their ignor- ance of the labyrinth of life, is working for the good of his fellow- men. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in the world of manifestation ; and as there can only be one absolute, one eternal, ever- present cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists or materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world. ' '
The confusion of Karma with predestination or fatalism can easily be avoided by remembering that our Karma is predestined to the extent that we must experience the effects of causes we have set up in past lives, only. Yet, even while suffering, this effect changes into a new cause, according to our mental attitude towards it. Thus he who has been sent by deeds done in past lives into a diseased body, by his fortitude in bearing this just effect of his own acts can rise on the " stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things"; while, by rebellion and rail- ings against what he is pleased or taught to call " fate," he enacts new causes whose effects can but be unfavorable.
