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Karma

by

Annie Besant

Published 1905

 

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Annie Besant

(1847 -1933)

 

PREFACE

 

FEW words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the fourth of a series of manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all.

 

Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these manuals are not written for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of

the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face.

 

Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men.

 

CONTENTS

      Preface                                                                   

      

      Introduction                                                             

 

      The Invariability of Law

      The Planes of Nature

      The Generation of Thought

      Activity of Thought Forms

      The Making of Karma in Principle                            

      The Making of Karma in Detail                                 

      The Working out of Karma                                      

      Facing Karmic Results                                               

      Building the Future                                                     

      Moulding Karma                                                         

      The Ceasing of Karma                                           

      Collective Karma                                                        

      Conclusion                                                                

 

Introduction

EVERY thought of man upon being evolved passes into the inner world, and becomes an active entity by associating itself, coalescing we might term it, with an elemental—that is to say, with one of the semi-intelligent forces of the kingdoms. It survives as an active intelligence—a creature of the mind's

begetting—for a longer or shorter period proportionate with the original intensity of the cerebral action which generated it. Thus a good thought is perpetuated as an active, benefi­cent power, an evil one as a maleficent demon.

 

And so man is continually peopling his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and passions; a current which reacts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in proportion to its dynamic intensity. The Buddhist calls it his "Skandha"; the Hindu gives it the name of " Karma". The Adept evolves these

shapes consciously; other men throw them off unconsciously.1

 1 The Occult World, pp. 89, 90, Fourth Edition.

 

No more graphic picture of the essential nature of karma has ever been given than in these words, taken from one of the early letters of Master K. H. If these are clearly understood, with all their implications, the perplexities which surround the subject will for the most part disappear, and the main principle underly­ing karmic action will be grasped. They will therefore be taken as indicating the best line of study, and we shall begin by considering the creative powers of man. All we need as preface is a clear conception of the

invariability of law, and of the great planes in Nature.

 

The Invariability of Law

 

That we live in a realm of law, that we are sur­rounded by laws that we cannot

break, this is a truism. Yet when the fact is recognized in a real -and vital way, and when it is seen to be a fact in the mental and moral world as much as in the physical, a certain sense of helplessness is apt to overpower us, as though we felt ourselves in the grip of some mighty power, that, seizing us, whirls us away whither it will. The very reverse of this is in reality the case,

for the mighty power, when it is understood, will obedi­ently carry us whither we will: all forces in Nature can be used in proportion as they are understood—

 

" Nature is conquered by obedience "—and her resistless energies are at our bidding as soon as we, by knowledge, work with them and not against them. We can choose out of her boundless stores the forces that serve our purpose in momentum, in direction, and so on, and their very invariability becomes the guarantee of our success.

 

On the invariability of law depends the security of scientific experiment, and all power of planning a result and of predicting the future. On this the chemist rests, sure that Nature will ever respond in the same way, if he be precise in putting his questions. A variation in his results is taken by him as implying a change in his procedure, not a change in Nature. And so with all human action;

the more it is based on knowledge, the more secure is it in its forecastings, for all " accident" is the result of ignorance, and is due to the working of

laws whose presence was unknown or overlooked.

 

In the mental and moral worlds, as much as in the physical, results can be foreseen, planned for, calculated on.

 

Nature never betrays us; we are betrayed by our own blindness. In all worlds increasing knowledge means increasing power, and omniscience and omnipotence are one.

 

That law should be as invariable in the mental and moral worlds as in the physical is to be expected, since the universe is the emanation of the ONE, and what we call Law is but the expression of the Divine Nature. As there is one Life emanating all, so there is one Law sustaining all; the worlds rest on this rock of the Divine Nature as on a secure, immutable foundation.

 

The Planes of Nature

 

To study the workings of karma on the line sug­gested by the Master, we must gain a clear conception of the three lower planes, or regions, of the universe,

and of the principles 1 related to them. The names given to them indicate the

state of the consciousness working on them. In this a diagram may help us, showing the planes with the principles related to them, and the vehicles in

which a conscious entity may visit them. In practical occultism the student learns to visit these planes, and by his own investigations to transform theory into knowledge. The lowest vehicle, the gross body, serves the consciousness for its work on the physi­cal plane, and in this the consciousness is limited with­in the capacities of the brain. The term subtle body covers a variety of

astral bodies, respectively suitable to the varying conditions of the very complicated region indicated by the name psychic plane. On the devachanic plane there are two well-defined levels, the form level and the formless level; on the lower, consci­ousness uses an artificial body, the mayavi

rupa, but the term Mind Body seems suitable as indicating that the matter of which it is composed belongs to the plane of manas. On the formless level the causal body must be used. Of the buddhic plane it is needless to speak. Now the matter on these planes is not the same, and speaking generally, the matter of each plane is denser than that of the one above it.

 

This is accord­ing to the analogy of Nature, for evolution in its downward course is from rare to dense, from subtle to gross. Further, vast hierarchies of beings inhabit these planes,

ranging from the lofty intelligences of the spiritual region to the lowest sub-conscious elementals of the physical world. On every plane spirit and matter

are conjoined in every particle—-every particle having matter as its body, spirit as its life—and all independent aggregations of particles, all separated forms of every kind, of every type, are ensouled by these living beings, varying

in their grades according to the grade of the form.

 

No form exists which is not thus ensouled, but the informing entity may be the loftiest intelligence, the

lowest elemental, or any of the countless hosts that range between. The entities

 

      ATMA

      

      

      Sushuptic Buddhi

      

       Vehicles

      Spiritual Body

      Devachanic Manas

       Vehicle

      Mind Body

      Causal Body

      Psychic or AstralHigher PsychicKama-Manas

      KamaVehicle

      Suble Body

      Lower Psychic

      Physical Linga Sharira

      Sthula ShariraVehicle

      Etheric Double

      Gross Body

 

 

 

with which we shall presently be concerned are chiefly those of the psychic plane, for these give to man his body of desire (kama rupa)—his body of

sensation, as it is often called—-are indeed built into its astral matrix and vivify his astral senses.

 

They are, to use the technical name, the form

elementals (rupa devatas) of the animal world, and are the agents of the changes which transmute vibrations into sensations. The most salient characteristic of the kamic ele­mentals is sensation, the power of not only answering to vibrations but of feeling them; and the psychic plane is crowded with these entities, of varying degrees of consciousness, who receive impacts of every kind

and combine them into sensations. Any being who possesses, then, a body into which these elementals are built, is capable of feeling, and man feels through such a body.

 

A man is not conscious in the particles of his body or even in its cells; they have a consciousness of their own, and by this carry on the various

processes of his vegetative life; but the man whose body they form does not share their consciousness, does not consciously help or hinder them as they

select, assimilate, secrete, build up, and could not at any moment so put his consciousness into rapport with the consciousness of a cell in his heart as to say exactly what it was doing. His consciousness functions nor­mally on the psychic plane; and even in the higher psychic regions, where mind is working, it is mind intermingled with kama, pure mind not functioning on this astral plane.

 

The astral plane is thronged with elementals similar to those which enter into the desire body of man, and which also form the simpler desire body of the lower animal. By this department of his nature man comes into immediate relations with

these elementals, and by them he forms links with all the objects around him that are either attractive or repulsive to him.

 

By his will, by his emotions, by his desires, he influences these countless beings, which sensitively respond to all the thrills of feeling that he sends out in every direction.

 

His own desire body acts as the apparatus, and just as it combines the vibrations that come from without into feelings, so does it dissociate the feelings that arise within into vibrations.

 

The Generation of Thought-Forms

 

We are now in a position to more clearly understand the Master's words. The mind, working in its own region, in the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, generates images, thought-forms. Imagination has very accurately been called the

creative faculty of the mind, and it is so in a more literal sense than many may suppose who use the phrase. This image-making capacity is the characteristic power of the mind, and a word is only a clumsy attempt to partially represent a

mental picture. An idea, a mental image, is a complicated thing, and needs perhaps a whole sentence to describe it accurately, so a salient incident in it is seized, and the word naming this incident imperfectly represents the whole;

we say "triangle", and the word calls up in the hearer's mind a picture, which would need a long description if fully conveyed in words; we do our best thinking in symbols, and then laboriously and imperfectly summarize our symbols into words.

 

In regions where mind speaks to mind there is perfect expression, far beyond anything words may convey; even in thought transference of a limited

kind it is not words that are sent, but ideas. A speaker puts into words such part of his mental pictures as he can, and these words call up in the hearer's mind pictures corresponding to those in the mind of the speaker; the mind deals with the pictures, the images, not with the words, and half the controversies and misunderstandings that arise come about because people attach different images to the same words, or use different words to

represent the same images.

 

A thought-form, then, is a mental image, created-—• or moulded—by the mind out of the subtle matter of the higher psychic plane, in which, as above said, it works. This form, composed of the rapidly vibrating atoms of the matter of that region, sets up vibrations all around it; these vibrations will give rise to sensa­tions of sound and colour in any entities adapted to translate them thus, and as the thought-form passes outward—or sinks downward, whichever expression may be preferred to express the transition—into the denser matter of the lower

psychic regions, these vibra­tions thrill out as a singing-colour in every direction, and call to the thought form whence they proceed the elementals

belonging to that colour.

 

All elementals, like all things else in the universe, belong to one or other of the seven primary Rays, the seven primeval Sons of Light. The white light breaks forth from the Third LOGOS, the manifested Divine Mind, in the seven Rays, the "

Seven Spirits that are before the Throne," and each of these Rays has its seven sub-rays, and so onwards in sequential sub-divisions. Hence, amid the endless differentia­tions that make up a universe, there are elementals belonging to the various sub-divisions, and they are communicated with in a colour-language, grounded on the colour to which they belong. This is why the real knowledge of sounds and colours and numbers —number underlying both sound and colour—has ever been so carefully guarded, for the will speaks to the elementals by these, and knowledge gives power to control.

 

Master K.H. speaks very plainly on this colour language. He says:How could you make yourself understood, command in fact, those semi-intelligent Forces, whose means of communi­cating with us are not through spoken words, but

through sounds and colours, in correlations between the vibrations of the two?

 

For sound, light and colour are the main factors in forming those grades of intelligences, those beings of whose very existence you have no conception, nor are you allowed to believe in them—Atheists and Christians, Materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing forward their respective arguments against such a belief-—Science objecting stronger than either of these to such a degrading

superstition.1

1 The Occult World, p. 100.

 

Students of the past may remember obscure allu­sions now and again made to a language of colours; they may recall the fact that in ancient Egypt sacred manuscripts were written in colours, and that mis­takes made in the copying were

punished with death. But I must not run down this fascinating byway.

 

We are only concerned with the fact that elementals are addressed by colours, and that

colour-words are as intelligible to them as spoken words are to men.

 

The hue of the singing-colour depends on the nature of the motive inspiring the generator of the thought-form. If the motive be pure, loving, beneficent in its character, the colour produced will summon to the thought-form an elemental,

which will take on the characteristics impressed on the form by the motive, and act along the line thus traced; this elemental enters into the thought-form,

playing to it the part of a soul, and thus an independent entity is made in the astral world, an entity of a beneficent character.

 

If the motive, on the other hand, be impure, revenge­ful, maleficent in its character, the colour produced will summon to the thought-form an elemental which will equally take on the

characteristics impressed on the form by the motive and act along the line thus traced; in this case also the elemental enters into the thought-form, playing to it the part of a soul, and thus making an independent entity in the astral

world, an entity of a maleficent character. For example, an angry thought will cause a

flash of red, the thought-form vibrating so as to produce red; that flash of red is a summons to the elementals and they sweep in the direction of the summoner, and one of them enters into the thought-form, which gives it an inde­pendent

activity of a destructive, disintegrating type.

 

Men are continually talking in this colour-language quite unconsciously, and thus calling round them these swarms of elementals, who take up their abodes in the various thought-forms provided; thus it is that a man peoples his current in space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses and passions.

 

Angels and demons of our own creating throng round us on every side, makers of weal and woe to others, bringers of weal and woe to ourselves—verily, a karmic host.

 

Clairvoyants can see flashes of colour, constantly changing, in the aura that surrounds every person: each thought, each feeling, thus translating itself in

the astral world, visible to the astral sight.. Persons some­what more developed than the ordinary clairvoyant can also see the thought-forms, and can see the effects produced by the flashes of colour among the hordes of elementals.

 

Activity of Thought-Forms

 

The life-period of these ensouled thought-forms depends first on their initial intensity, on the energy bestowed upon them by their human progenitor; and secondly on the nutriment supplied to them after their generation, by the repetition of the thought either by him or by others. Their life may be continually rein­forced by this repetition, and a thought which is brooded over, which forms the subject of repeated meditation, acquires great stability of form on the psychic plane. So again thought-forms of a similar character are

attracted to each other and mutually strengthen each other, making a. form of great energy and intensity, active in this astral world.

 

Thought-forms are connected with their progenitor by what—for want of a better phrase—we must call a magnetic tie; they react upon him, producing an im­pression which leads to their reproduction, and in the case mentioned above, where a thought-form is rein­forced by repetition, a very definite habit of thought may be set up, a mould may be formed into which thought will readily

flow—helpful if it be of a very lofty character, as a noble ideal, but for the most part cramping and a hindrance to mental growth.

 

We may pause for a moment on this formation of habit, as it shows in miniature, in a very helpful way, the working of karma.   Let us suppose we could take ready-made a mind, with no past activity behind it— an impossible thing, of

course, but the supposition will bring out the special point needed.  Such a mind might be imagined to work with perfect freedom and sponta­neity, and to produce a thought-form; it proceeds to repeat this many times, until a habit of

thought is made, a definite habit, so that the mind will uncon­sciously slip into that thought, its energies will flow into it without any consciously

selective action of the will.    Let us further suppose that the mind comes to disapprove this habit of thought, and finds it a clog on its progress;  

originally due to the spontaneous action of the  mind, and  facilitating  the  outpouring of mental energy by providing for it a ready-made channel,  it has now become a limitation; but if it is to be gotten rid of, it can only be by the renewed spontaneous    action   of  the   mind,   directed  

to   the exhaustion and final destruction of this living fetter.

 

Here we have a little ideal karmic cycle, rapidly run through;  the free mind makes a habit,

and is then obliged to work within that limitation: but it retains its freedom within the limitation and can work against it from within till it wears it out.

 

Of course, we never find ourselves initially

free, for we come into the world encumbered with these fetters of our own past making; but the process as regards each separate fetter runs the above round—the mind forges it, wears it, and while wearing it can file it through.

 

Thought-forms may also be directed by their pro­genitor towards particular persons, who may be helped or injured by them, according to the nature of the ensouling elemental; it is no mere poetic fancy that good wishes, prayers, and loving thoughts are of value to those to whom they are sent; they form a protective host encircling the beloved, and ward off many an evil influence and

danger.

 

Not only does a man generate and send forth his own thought-forms, but he also serves as a magnet to draw towards himself the thought-forms of others from the astral plane around him, of the classes to which his own ensouled thought-forms

belong. He may thus attract to himself large reinforcements of energy from outside, and it lies within himself whether these forces that he draws into his own being from the external world shall be of a good or of an evil kind.

 

If a man's thoughts are pure and noble, he will attract around him hosts of beneficent entities,

and may sometimes wonder whence comes to him the power for achievement that seems—and truly seems—to be so much beyond his own. Similarly a man of foul and base thoughts attracts to himself hosts of maleficent entities, and by this added energy for evil commits crimes that astonish him in the retrospect. " Some devil must have tempted me," he will cry; and truly these demoniac forces,

called to him by his own evil, add strength to it from without.

 

The elementals ensouling thought-forms, whether these be good or bad, link themselves to the

elementals in the man's desire body and to those ensouling his own thought form, and thus work in him, though coming from without. But for this they must find entities of their own kind with which to link them­selves, else can they exercise no power.

 

And further, elementals in an opposite kind of thought-form will repel them, and the good man will drive back by his very atmosphere, his

aura, all that is foul and cruel. It surrounds him as a protective wall and keeps evil away from him.

 

There is another form of elemental activity, that brings about widespread results, and cannot therefore be excluded from this preliminary survey of the forces that go to make up karma. Like those just dealt with, this is included in the statement that these thought-forms  people the current

which reacts upon any sensitive or nervous organization which comes in contact with it, in pro­portion to its dynamic intensity.   

 

To some extent it must affect almost everyone,   though the more sensitive the organization 

the greater the effect. Elementals have a tendency to be attracted towards others of a similar kind—aggregating together in classes, being, in a sense,

gregarious on their own account—and when a man sends out a thought-form it not only keeps up a magnetic link with him, but is drawn towards other thought-forms of a similar type, and these congregating together on the astral plane form a

good or evil force, as the case may be, embodied in a kind of collective entity.

 

To these aggregations of similar thought-forms are due the characteristics, often strongly marked, of family, local and national opinion; they form a kind of astral atmosphere  through which  everything is seen, and which colours that to which the gaze is directed, and   they react on the desire bodies of the   persons included in the group concerned, setting up in them responsive

vibrations.   

 

Such family, local or national karmic surroundings  largely modify the individual's activity, and limit to a very great extent his power of expressing the capacities he may possess.   

 

Suppose an idea should be presented to him, he can only see it through this atmosphere that

surrounds him, which must colour it and may seriously distort. Here, then, are karmic limitations of a far-reaching kind, that will need further consideration.

 

The influence of these congregated elementals is not confined to that which they exercise over men through their desire bodies. When this collective entity, as I have called it, is made up of thought-forms of a destructive type, the elementals ensouling these act as a disruptive energy and they often work much havoc on the physical plane.

 

A vortex of disintegrating energies, they are the

fruitful sources of " accidents ", of natural convulsions, of storms, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods. These karmic results will also need some further consideration.

 

The Making of Karma in Principle

 

Having thus realized the relation between man and the elemental kingdom, and the moulding energies of the mind—-verily, creative energies, in that they call into being these living forms that have been described —we are in a position to at least partially understand something of the generation and working out of karma during a single life-period. A " life-period", I say, rather than a " life ", because a life means too little if it be used in

the ordinary sense of a single incarnation, and it means too much if it be used for the whole life, made up of many stages in the physical body, and of many stages without it. By life-period I mean a little cycle of human existence, with its physical, astral and devachanic experiences, including its return to the threshold of the physical— the four distinct stages through which the soul passes, in order to complete its cycle.

 

These stages are retrodden over and over again during the journey of the eternal pilgrim through our present humanity, and however much the experiences in each such period may vary, both as to quantity and quality, the period will include these four stages for the average human being, and none others.

 

It is important to realize that the residence outside the physical body is far more prolonged than the residence in it; and the workings of karmic law will be but poorly understood unless the activity of the soul in the non-physical condition be studied. Let us recall the words of a Master, pointing out that the life out of the body is the real one.

 

The Vedantins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious exist­ence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses.

 

Our life in the spiritual spheres must be thought an actuality, because it is there that lives our endless, never-chang­ing, immortal I, the Sutratma, . . . This is why we call the posthumous life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, includ­ing the personality itself, only imaginary.1

 

1 Lucifer, October 1892, art. " Life and Death."

* See Chapter: THE GENERATION OF THOUGHT FORMS.

 

During earth life, the activity of the soul is most directly manifested in the creation of the thought-forms already described. But in order to follow out with any approach to exactitude the workings of karma, we must now analyse further the term " thought-form", and add some considerations neces­sarily omitted in the general conception first presented. The soul, working as mind, creates a

mental image, the primary " thought-form " 2; let us take the term mental image to mean exclusively this immediate creation of the mind, and henceforth restrict this term to this initial stage of what is generally and broadly spoken of as a

thought-form.

 

This mental image remains attached to its creator, part of the content of his consciousness: it is a living, vibrating form of subtle matter, the Word thought but not yet spoken, conceived but not yet made flesh. Let the reader concentrate his mind

for a few moments on this mental image, and obtain a distinct notion of it, isolated from all else, apart from all the results it is going to produce on

other planes than its own. It forms, as just said, part of the content of the con­sciousness of its creator, part of his inalienable property; it cannot be separated from him; he carries it with him during his earthly life, carries it with him through the gateway of death, carries it with him in the regions beyond death; and if, during his upward travelling through those regions, he himself

passes into air too rarefied for it to endure, he leaves behind the denser matter built into it, carrying on the mental matrix, the essential form; on his return to the grosser region the matter of that plane is again built into the mental matrix, and the appropriate denser form is reproduced.

 

This mental image may remain sleeping, as it were, for long periods, but it may be re-awakened and

revivified, every fresh impulse—from its creator, from its progeny (dealt with below), from entities of the same type as its progeny—increases its life-energy, and modifies its form.

 

It evolves, as we  shall see, according to definite laws, and the aggregation of these mental images

makes the character; the outer mirrors the inner, and as cells aggregate into the tissues of the body and are often much modified in the process, so do these mental images aggregate into the

characteristics of the mind, and often undergo

much modification.

 

The study of the working out of karma will throw much light on these changes. Many materials may enter into the making of these mental images by the crea­tive powers of the soul; it may be stimulated into activity by desire (kama), and may shape the image according to the prompting of passion

or of appetite; it may be Self-motivated to a noble ideal, and mould the image accordingly; it may be led by purely in­tellectual concepts, and form the image thereafter. But lofty or base, intellectual or passional, serviceable or mischievous, divine or bestial, it is always in man a mental image, the product of the creative soul, and on its existence individual karma depends.

 

Without this mental image there can be no individual karma linking life-period to life-period: the manasic quality must be present to afford the permanent element in which individual karma can inhere. The non-presence of manas in the mineral,

vegetable, and animal king­doms has as its corollary the non-generation of in­dividual karma, stretching through death to rebirth.

 

Let us now consider the primary thought-form in relation to the secondary thought-form, the thought-form pure and simple in relation to the ensouled thought-form, the mental image in relation to the astro-mental image, or the

thought-form in the lower astral plane. How is this produced and what is it?

 

To use the symbol employed above, it is produced by the Word-thought becoming the Word-outspoken; the soul breathes out the thought, and the sound makes form in astral matter; as the Ideas in the Universal Mind become the manifested universe when they are outbreathed, so do these mental images in the human mind, when

outbreathed, become the manifested uni­verse of their creator. He peoples his current in space with a world of his own. The vibrations of the mental image set up similar vibrations in the denser astral matter, and these cause the secondary thought-form, what I have called the astro-mental image; the mental image itself remains, as has been already said, in the consciousness of its creator, but its vibra­tions passing outside that consciousness reproduce its form in the denser

matter of the lower astral plane. This is the form that affords the casing for a portion of elemental energy, specializing it for the time that the form

persists, since the manasic element in the form gives a touch of individuality to that which ensouls it. [How marvellous and how illuminating are the correspondences in Nature!] This is the active

entity, spoken of in the Master's description, and it is this astro-mental image that ranges over the astral plane, keeping up with its progenitor * the magnetic tie spoken of, reacting on its parent, the mental image, and acting also on others.

 

The life-period of an astro-mental image may be long or short, according to circumstances, and its perishing does not affect the persistence of its

parent; any fresh impulse given to the latter will cause it to generate afresh its astral counterpart as each repetition of a word produces a new form.

 

The vibrations of the mental image do not only pass downwards to the lower astral plane, but they pass upwards also into the spiritual plane above it.2 And as the vibrations cause a denser form on the lower plane, so do they generate a far subtler form—dare I call it form ? it is no form to us —on the higher, in the akasha, the world-stuff emanated from the LOGOS Itself. The akasha is the

storehouse of all forms, the treasure house

 

1 See Chapter: THE GENERATION OF THOUGHT FORMS, and also diagram, p. 6.

2 These words downwards and upwards are very misleading; the planes of course interpenetrate each other.

 

whereinto are poured—from the infinite wealth of the Universal Mind—the rich stores of all the Ideas that are to be bodied forth in a given cosmos; thereinto also enter the vibrations from the cosmos—from all the thoughts of all intelligences, from all the desires of all kamic entities, from all the actions performed on every plane by all forms. All these make their respective impressions, the to us formless, but to lofty spiritual intelligences the

formed, images of all hap­penings, and these akashic images—as we will hence­forth call them—abide for evermore, and are the true karmic records, the Book of the Lipika,1 that may be read by any who possess the " opened eye of Dangma." 2 It is the reflection of these akashic images that may be thrown upon the screen of astral matter by the action of the trained attention— as a picture

may be thrown on a screen from a slide in a magic-lantern—so that a scene from the past may be reproduced in all its living reality, correct in every detail of its far-off happening; for in the akashic records it exists, imprinted there once for all, and a fleeting living picture of any page of these records can be made at pleasure, dramatized on the astral

 

1 The Secret Doctrine, i, 157-159.

1 Ibid., stanza i, of the Book of Dzyan, and see Conclusion.

 

plane, and lived in by the trained Seer. If this imperfect description be followed by the reader, he will be able to form for himself some faint idea of

karma in its aspect as cause. In the akasha will be pictured the mental image created by a soul, in­separable from it; then the astro-mental image produced by it, the active ensouled creature, ranging the astral plane and producing

innumerable effects, all accurately pictured in connection with it, and, there­fore, traceable to it and through it to its parent, each such thread—spun as it were out of its own substance by the astro-mental image, as a spider spins its web— being recognizable by its own shade of colour; and however many such threads may be woven into an effect, each thread is distinguishable and is

traceable to its original forth-giver, the soul that generated the mental image.

 

Thus, for our clumsy earth-bound intelligences, in miserably inadequate language, we may figure forth the way in which individual responsi­bility is

seen at a glance by the great Lords of karma, the administrators of karmic law; the full responsibility of the soul for the mental image it creates, and the partial responsibility for its far-reaching effects, greater or less as each effect has other karmic threads entering into its causation. Thus also may we understand why motive plays a part so predominant in the working out of karma, and why actions are so relatively sub­ordinate in their generative energy; why karma works out

on each plane according to its constituents, and yet links the planes together by the continuity of its thread.

 

When the illuminating concepts of the wisdom-religion shed their flood of light over the world, dispersing its obscurity and revealing the absolute justice which is working under all the apparent in­congruities, inequalities and accidents of life, is it any wonder that our hearts should go out in gratitude unspeakable to the Great Ones-—blessed be they!—• who hold up the torch of truth in the murky darkness, and free us from the tension that was straining us to breaking point, the helpless agony of witnessing wrongs that seemed

irremediable, the hopelessness of justice, the despair of love ?

 

Ye are not bound! the Soul of Things is sweet,

The Heart of Being is celestial rest; Stronger than Woe is will: that which was Good Doth pass to Better—Best.

 

Such is the Law which moves to righteousness, Which none at last can turn aside or stay;

 

The heart of it is Love, the end of it

Is Peace and Consummation sweet.    Obey.

 

We may perhaps gain in clearness if we tabulate the threefold results of the activity of the Soul that go to the making up of karma as cause, regarded in

principle rather than in detail. Thus we have during a life-period:

     

Man creates on Plane

 

      Spiritual

      Psychic

      Material

      Akasha

 

      Result

      Akashic Images forming Karmic Record

 

      Higher Astral

      Lower Astral

      Mental Images remaining in creator’s

     consciousness

      

Astro-mental Images, active entities on psychic plane

 

The results of these will be tendencies, capacities, activities, opportunities, environment, etc., chiefly in future life-periods, worked out in accordance with definite laws.

 

The Making of Karma in Detail

 

The soul in man, the ego, the maker of karma, must be recognized by the student as a growing entity, a living individual, who increases in wisdom and in mental stature as he treads the path of his aeonian evolution; and the fundamental identity of the higher and lower manas must be constantly kept in mind.

 

For convenience sake we distinguish between them, but the difference is a difference of functioning activity and not of nature: the higher manas is manas working on the spiritual plane, in possession of its full conscious­ness of its own past; the lower manas is manas work­ing, on the psychic or astral plane, veiled in astral matter, vehicled in kama, and with all its activities intermingled with and coloured by the desire nature; it is to a great extent blinded by the astral matter that veils it, and is in possession only of a portion of the total manasic consciousness, this portion consisting—• for the vast majority—of a limited selection from the more striking experiences of the one incarnation then in progress. For the practical purpose of life as seen by most people, the lower manas is the " I " and is what we term the Personal-Ego; the voice of consci­ence, vaguely and confusedly regarded as supernatural, as the voice of God, is for them the only manifestation of the higher manas on the psychic plane, and they quite rightly regard it as authoritative, however

mistaken they may be as to its nature.

 

But the student must realize that the lower manas is one with the higher, as the ray is one with its sun; the sun-manas shines ever in the heaven of the spiritual plane, the ray-manas penetrates the psychic plane; but if they be regarded as two, otherwise than for convenience in distinguishing

their functioning, hopeless confusion will arise.

The ego then is a growing entity, an increasing quantity. The ray sent down is like a hand plunged into water to seize some object and then

withdrawn, holding the object in its grasp.

 

The increase in the Ego depends on the value of the

objects gathered by its outstretched hand, and the importance of all its work when the ray is withdrawn is limited and condi­tioned by the experiences gathered while that ray has been functioning on the psychic plane.

 

It is as though a labourer went out into a field, toiling in rain and in sunshine, in cold and in heat, returning home at night; but the labourer is also the proprietor, and all the results of his labour fill his own granaries and enrich his own store. Each Personal-Ego is the immediately effective part of the continuing or Individual-Ego, re­presenting it in the lower world, and necessarily more or less developed according to the stage at which the Ego, as a totality or an individual, has arrived. If this be clearly understood the sense of injustice to the

Personal-Ego in its succession to its karmic inheritance -—often felt as a difficulty by the young student of Theosophy—will disappear; for it will be realized that the Ego that made the karma reaps the karma, the labourer that sowed the seed gathers in the harvest, though the clothes in which he worked as sower may have worn out during the interval between the sowing and the reaping;

the Ego's astral garments have also fallen to pieces between seed time and harvest, and he reaps in a new suit of clothes; but it is " he " who sowed and

who reaps, and if he sowed but little seed or seed badly chosen, it is he who will find but a poor harvest when as reaper he goeth forth.

 

In the early stages of the Ego's growth his progress will be extremely slow,1 for he will be led hither and thither by desire, following attractions on the

physical plane; the mental images he generates will be mostly of the passional class, and hence the astro-mental images will be violent and short-lived rather than strong and far-reaching. According as manasic ele­ments enter into the composition of the mental image will be the endurance of the astro-mental.

 

Steady, sustained thought will form clearly defined mental images, and correspondingly strong and enduring

 

1 See Birth and Evolution of the Soul.

 

astro-mental images, and there will be a distinct purpose in the life, a clearly recognized ideal to which the mind is constantly recurring and on which it continually dwells: this mental image will become a dominating influence in the mental life, and the ener­gies of the soul will be largely directed by it.

 

Let us now study the making of karma by way of the mental image. During a man's life he forms an innumerable assemblage of mental images; some are strong, clear, continually reinforced by repeated mental impulses; others are weak,

vague, just formed and then as it were forsaken by the mind; at death the soul finds itself possessed of myriads of these mental images, and they vary in

character as well as in strength and definiteness.

 

Some are of spiritual aspirations, longings to be of service, gropings after knowledge, vows of

self-dedication to the higher life; some are purely intellectual, clear gems of thought, receptacles of the results of deep study; some are emotional and

passional, breathing love, compassion, tenderness, devotion, anger, ambition, pride, greed; some are from bodily appetites, stimu­lated by uncurbed desire, and represent thoughts of gluttony, drunkenness, sensuality.

 

Each soul has its own consciousness, crowded with these mental images, the outcome of its mental life; not one thought, however fleeting, but is there

represented; the astro-mental images may in many cases long have perished, may have had strength enough to endure but for a few hours, but the mental images remain among the possessions of the soul, not one is lacking.

 

All these mental images the soul carries away with it, when it passes through death into the astral world.

 

The kama loka, or place of desire, is divided into many strata as it were, and the soul just after death is encumbered with its complete body of desire, or

kama rupa, and all the mental images formed by kama-manas that are of a gross and animal nature are powerful on the lowest levels of this astral world.

 

A poorly developed soul will dwell on these images and act them out, thus preparing itself to repeat them again physically in its next life; a man who has dwelt on sensual thoughts and made such mental images will not only be drawn to

earth scenes connected with sensual gratifications, but will constantly be repeating them as actions in his mind, and so setting up in his nature stronger

and stronger impulses towards the future commission of similar offences. So with other mental images formed from material supplied by the desire-nature, that belong to other levels in kama loka.

 

As the soul rises from the lower levels to the higher, the mental images built from the materials of the lower levels lose these elements, thus becoming latent in consciousness, or what H. P. Blavatsky used to call " privations of matter ", capable of existing but out of material manifestation. The kama-rupic vesture is purified of its grosser elements as the Lower Ego is drawn upwards, or inwards, towards the deva-chanic region, each cast-off " shell " disintegrating in due course, until the last is doffed and the ray is completely withdrawn, free from all astral encase­ment. On the return of the Ego towards earth-life, these latent images will be thrown outwards and will attract to themselves the appropriate kamic materials, which make them capable of

manifestation on the astral plane, and they will become the appetites, passions and lower emotions of his desire-body for his new incarnation.

 

We may remark in passing that some of the mental images encircling the newly arrived soul are the source of much trouble during the earlier stages ot the post­mortem life; superstitious beliefs presenting themselves as mental images torture the soul with pictures of horrors that have no place in its real surroundings.1

 

1 See The Astral Plane, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 45, 46.

 

All the mental images formed from the passions and appetites are subjected to the process above described, to be remanifested by the ego on its return to earth-life, and as the writer of the Astral Plane says:The LIPIKA, the great Karmic deities of the Kosmos, weigh the deeds of each personality when the final separation of its prin­ciples takes place in Kama Loka, and give as it were the mould of the Etheric Double exactly suitable to

its Karma for the man's next birth.1

 

1 See The Astral Plane, C. W. Leadbeater, p. 86.

 

Freed for the time from these lower elements, the soul passes on into devachan, where it spends a time proportionate to the wealth or poverty of its mental images pure enough to be carried into that region. Here it finds again every one of its loftier efforts, however brief it may have been, however fleeting, and here it works upon them, building out of these materials powers for its coming lives.

 

The devachanic life is one of assimilation; the experiences collected on earth have to be worked into the texture of the soul, and it is by these that the ego grows; its development depends on the number and variety of the mental images it

has formed during its earth-life, and transmuted into their appropriate and more permanent types. Gathering together all the mental images of a special class, it extracts from them their essence;  by meditation it creates a mental organ and   pours   into it as faculty the essence it has extracted. For  instance: a man has formed many mental  images out of aspirations for knowledge and efforts to

understand subtle and lofty reasonings; he casts off his body, his mental powers being of only average  kind; in his devachan he works on all these mental  

images, and evolves them into capacity,  so that   his soul returns to earth with a higher mental apparatus  than  it  before  possessed,  with  much 

in­creased intellectual powers, able to achieve tasks for which before it was utterly inadequate.

 

This is the trans­formation  of the mental images, by which as mental images   they   cease to exist; if in later lives the soul would seek to see again these as they were, it must seek them  in  the   karmic records, where they remain for ever   as akashic images.   

 

By this transformation they cease to be mental images created and worked on by the soul,  and become powers of the soul, part of its very nature.   

 

If then a man desires to possess higher mental faculties than he at present enjoys, he can ensure their development by deliberately willing to acquire them, persistently keeping their

acquirement in view, for desire and aspiration in one life become faculty in another, and the will to perform becomes the capacity to achieve. But it must be remembered that the faculty thus built is strictly limited by the materials supplied to the architect; there is no creation out of nothing, and if the soul on earth fails to exercise its powers by sowing the seed of aspiration and desire, the soul in devachan will have but scanty harvest.

 

Mental images which have been constantly repeated, but are not of the aspiring character, of the longing to achieve more than the feeble powers of the soul permit, become tendencies of thought, grooves into which mental energy runs easily and readily. Hence the importance of not letting the mind drift aimlessly among insignificant objects, idly creating trivial mental images, and letting

them dwell in the mind.

 

These will persist and form channels for future

outpourings of mental force which will thus be led to meander about on low levels running