The law of Karma is perhaps the most fundamental law to describe this impermanent world we live in. It has many aspects, but is fundamentally quite simple.
Karma is a Sanskrit word that means “action” – which automatically suggests “reaction”. In other words, Karma is nothing other than the law of cause and effect. It concerns everything in existence in our world, for everything is the result, in various ways, of a multiplicity of causes-effects relationships. Another way, just as accurate, to understand this is the very real fact that nothing in this temporal and impermanent world exists by itself, outside of any form of causality. What could perhaps be referred to as the (almost meaningless) concept of “self-existence” has to do with existences that aren't part of this world, outside of the reach of our time-space-bound conceptual intelligence. I'll write a few words about this in a later post.
Consciousness is bound to this world for a variety of reasons, one of which being “attachment”. As I have written elsewhere, consciousness (or Soul), is something that naturally seeks to expand its scope of consciousness. It seeks to expand what it is. To do that, in those realms, plans or dimensions that are, in a sense, “below” its own, the Soul needs a vehicle that belongs, or that is made of the matter belonging to these realms. This is the basic idea of incarnation. There is absolutely no other way the Soul can become increasingly conscious of anything going on in those realms : its energies are fundamentally different. The nature of the Soul is ever free from Karma – that is, earthly, temporal, samsaric Karma, precisely because it contains nothing that belongs to this world. BUT, by incarnating, by seeking to expand its consciousness, cyclically, in our realm of impermanence, relativity and time, the Soul becomes bound to this world, “attached” to its psychical matter, until its expansion is sufficient to impose its own energies on those of matter. Before that has been accomplished, the Soul in incarnation is dominated by the energies of matter – whose forms are, at all times and in all circumstances, the result of karmic links. Being dominated by matter, it (completely) loses sight of its own nature, and falls under the illusion of being matter. Again, the Soul's nature never changes; only the temporary karmic circumstances the incarnated consciousness is forced to experience do.
Why is it forced? Because karma is a law, and cannot be avoided. In incarnation, all circumstances exist as the result of this law of causality. Not only observable, physical circumstances, but also psychical ones. Where we are born, who are the souls who are our parents, siblings and surroundings, of what quality are our physical and psychical bodies, etc... all this is karmic. All this is the result of various, multi-directional chains of causality the incarnated consciousness has initiated, or has taken part in, and therefore has attached itself to, at some point, in its long history of earthly incarnations. The law is cause and effect : not luck or bad luck, not existential lottery, not reward and punishment. There is no special obligatory destiny outside of the law of Karma.
This may sometimes be hard to accept, especially if someone's life circumstances are very difficult, cruel, apparently unfair. But rare are the people who have an accurate knowledge of the very, very long, sometimes very dark history of their consciousness. No consciousness is new. No consciousness incarnates in this world outside of the Law. Yet, no consciousness is irretrievably bound to any particular earthly karma – it is so only circumstantially. And those circumstances are all impermanent. Choices are made every moment by the incarnated consciousness, even if the choice is merely the next thought one chooses to entertain. And all thoughts are also karmic (or causal) by nature and thus necessarily impact what may or may not be possible right away or much later.
More on this in my next post !