The law of Karma! How does it relate to you and your happiness?
THE LAW OF KARMA : HOW DOES IT RELATE TO YOU AND YOUR HAPPINESS?
Much has been propagated in various religions about this law. This is also known by various names. The law of cause and effect, as you sow so shall you reap, what goes out comes back and things like that. There are many who staunchly believe in it and there are many detractors as well. The purpose of this article is to get a greater insight into how this law basically works and understand how it might relate to our happiness, which is what we are all after isn’t it?
In trying to explain this law, I shall exactly quote some of my mentor’s words as they explain it in a fantastic way. Lastly I shall also tell all of you what I have observed in my life.
If you have read about the law of attraction or delved into metaphysics even in a perfunctory way you would have known that the world and everything in it, at its most basic form is energy. Everything that you can see and you CANNOT see. This is important because most people tend to dismiss as what they cannot perceive with their five senses as unreal and unbelievable. Then what about incidences of extra sensory perception that defy logical explanation, what about things like infra red and ultra violet colors that we cannot see, what about sounds that bats emit that we cannot hear, to name a few?
This fact is important because unless we can open our minds to certain things, it’s difficult to look behind the scenes and understand some truths. Here is an excerpt from the book ” a happy pocket full of money by david Cameron” .
“Dr. J. S. Bell, a physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research
(CERN) in Switzerland, came up with mathematical proof in 1964 that showed
that all the ’separate’ parts of the universe are all connected in an immediate and
close way. Many experiments now show that particles separated by space and
time somehow know exactly what the other is doing at the exact time the other is
doing that particular thing. In other words, they do not communicate.
Communication takes time and requires a message. This is different. They know
without having to communicate. They act simultaneously as if they are intimately
connected somehow across space and time, in a way that does not get affected
by the separation in space and time between them.
The other profound thing that Bell’s mathematical constructs shows is that
the action of a sub-atomic particle is dependent on something happening
somewhere else to another sub -atomic particle. In other words, all sub -atomic
events are effects of others, and causes of others. This brings the law of cause
and effect, of karma, of reaping and sowing, to a completely new light! The law of
cause and effect, karma, is not only spiritual but also scientific.”
The argument most people get into is this. What is the criterion by which this law operates? Meaning if I murder someone, will it mean that I also will get murdered? If I cheat someone of a huge amount will I also get cheated of the same amount? Why is it that I see someone perpetrating atrocity after atrocity but apparently nothing happens to him? He seems to be always rolling in wealth and prosperity! Why is it I see someone suffering so much for no fault of his?
To answer all these questions I am afraid, I must delve into another topic.
In one of the issues of a very popular newspaper daily in India, there was a story of a girl just around 4 years of age (if I remember right) who was very scared of flowers and the reason she gave was that in her last birth she could feel the heat of the funeral pyre when they were cremating her and she somehow associated the smell of flowers with the heat (in India you are covered with flowers before cremating).
In another article there was a young child just a few years old who could identify people who were her parents in the last birth. When authorities went to that particular place, her words were confirmed indeed. These two articles totally changed my outlook.
When I ask some people who pooh pooh this concept away, why some people are born blind, why some undergo horrendous suffering right from birth, they say it must be because of their past, then I ask them what it means and they say ” well, you know, it could be anything, not really sure”. Think of the following. If one keeps asking the question WHY many times over, he would ultimately come to a point where logic and rationale stop. Ok, here goes.
X has cancer that is in its last stage. WHY him? He was a chain smoker. WHY him? He was initiated into it from school days. WHY him? He was foolish enough to succumb to the pressure. WHY him? His parents had no time for him, so he looked for other forms of entertainment. WHY him?
You get the point. When you exhaust all worldly reasons you come to a conclusion that something deeper is at work here that happens to selected people and not to all.
In Hinduism, there is a concept of rebirths. What you do in this birth will unfailingly come back to you in your subsequent ones. There is always an account settling mechanism in place. Meaning you just cannot cause suffering and get away with it. Now how this comes back to you, in what form, is always something that would be very arcane to understand and grasp. How that account settling mechanism combines all your acts, good and bad and sends it back to you is a question that will fascinate us for some time to come, but the fact is that it does.
How can one say for sure? Well some things can be understood by looking at the effects. We live in a universe that is cause and effect driven, if there is an effect we see, there must be a cause. Now that cause could be visible or invisible as the case may be. It follows that a person reveling in joy has a cause and a person undergoing untold suffering has a cause.
