Karma-Karmafal: The cause and the effect
Your role in your life:
Each individual soul is passing through its own journey of literally millions and millions of lifetimes, slowly changing bodies, evolving today you have reached at the current state of your consciousness. Even after you drop this body, that eternal journey will continue.
Only human beings have this fantastic opportunity of experiencing, exploring their own divinity within themselves. No others animal has that matured a system; neurological system, nervous system, cardiovascular system. All these beautiful systems of the body are matured enough for a soul to experience its own divinity. That opportunity is available only to human beings and that is why I feel understanding your own role in this whole game of life is very important. And designing your life accordingly becomes so much more important.
Types of Pleasures:
I'm saying, the outer world pleasures; tamasik pleasures, the pleasures from people, situations or things; no matter how much ever you gather, it's not going to be able to give you anything and that's why it's called illusion- Maya.
The five sensory pleasures; the Rajasik pleasures, from 5 senses; look how limited the pleasure connected with them is! You watch through the eyes, smell through the nose, listen through the ears, taste through the tongue and touch through the skin.The five sensory pleasures are very, very limited and as soon as the threshold is reached it starts draining your energy. That is how the design of rajasik sukh is.
Now third - The Satvik pleasures- Ananda we can call it. Initially you will have to put an effort, you will have to discipline yourself and then there is this humongous amount of energy and bliss. Cultivating yourself in that happens through Sadhana Satsang Seva and Swadhyay. Having understood this phenomenon, having understood this technical design of life, lets discuss what is karma? What is punya karna? What is paap karma? What is the merit and what is the demerit. I'm saying very simple understanding of karma is the influence of the past experiences.
There are two sections to the karma:
In the first section, whatever experiences your soul would have gone through for millions and millions of lifetimes and those experiences would have left a lot of impressions on the mind of your soul and whatever impressions repetitively got bombarded, created their own tendencies, their own habits, all that influence of the past which has stayed on, which is not released becomes karma; some impressions come along, they get collected but in a little while as the time passes, the impressions get released also. So the impressions which are not yet released is the first section of the karma of your soul. Whatever your soul has gathered as impressions is the karma of your soul.
The second section of karma. Even more interesting is that, about your soul the impressions that are accumulated in the minds of people around you is also your karma. That is the second section of the, the karma.
So what I am saying is, “the impressions collected in the mind of your soul and the impressions collected in the minds of other souls about your soul is the karma of your soul.” Now, once you understand these dynamics, you will also understand the other part of it.
The flavor of karma; The cause and the effect:
The flavor of karma; the flavor of impression that is generated creates exactly the same flavor of karmafal, the fruit of that particular karma. If the karma, the impression the influence of the past is pleasant, happy and in the positive mode, it creates that kind of karmaful- the fruit, it creates pleasant and positive karma; whereas if because of your action, some unpleasantness has got generated in somebody's mind, it will bring back unpleasant fruit too. That's the point. My point here is, look at your own life, if somebody is unhappy about you and if you remember them, you cannot feel happy. You will always feel unpleasant. If you are unhappy about someone and you remember them, you don't feel happy when you remember them.
My point is this, in all these three sections of manasa-vacha-karmana; being speaking and doing, whatever flavor got generated in somebody's mind became your karma and the same flavor of karmaful the fruit of the karma will also come along. That is what is called the cause and the effect.
The karma that got generated in other soul brings the same flavor of karmafal in your soul also. The karma got generated about your soul in somebody else's mind will also bring the same flavor of karmafal, the fruit. That is precisely why in any spiritual journey, in any spiritual path you will see these common guidelines- don't make anybody unhappy, don't be the cause of misery for anybody. Why? Because if due to you, if somebody isn't happy, troubled, disturbed, upset, angry, frustrated; that unhappy karma will always bring unhappy karma fal in your life. That becomes the cause to create the effect in your life.
Beautiful way of life
So in India there is this beautiful way of life in Jain dharma. They have a very beautiful guideline every year on one occasion, one day, on a specifically decided day, they go and apologize to people saying “ through my being, speaking or doing, knowingly or unknowingly if I have been the cause of creating unpleasantness in your life and unhappiness for your life, please please forgive me. That is called Michami dukadam; very, very beautiful concept.
So that if somebody is unhappy about you because of some or the other reason, you may not even know it but if you go and apologise to them and go and seek forgiveness; you will see, as soon as somebody asks for forgiveness, even if you would have a little tightness in your mind about them, that tightness releases immediately. You feel, oh, they have asked for forgiveness. Now let us drop it. If somebody defends themselves all the time and they don't acknowledge their mistakes, they are not sincere enough to ask for forgiveness or say sorry, you feel even more tight with them, even more angry with them. So those who are not courageous enough to ask for forgiveness, they missed this beautiful point of finishing off a karma. I'm saying life is so beautiful. If the karma can bring unnecessary fruit to your life, if that karma has got developed; take responsibility, go behind it, finish it off. In Gujarati language, there is a very beautiful proverb. They say “the spiritual path, the path of full blossoming is the path of a courageous person.”Those who are weak are not able to ask for forgiveness.
Merit and Demerit:
Let us understand the karma karmafal and then go for even deeper truth, deeper layer of the truth where we segregate the karma in two sections. Punya Karma and paap karma. Punya karma is what we call merit. Paap karma is the demerit, or we call it sin. Karma is an impression gathered in your consciousness or gathered in the consciousness of somebody else about you. If a karma is generated which can bring you reciprocative fruits that are harmful for your life, which will reduce your joy, which will take away your beauty, take away your purity, which can create disaster for your life as a fruit, it's called paap karma- demerit, sin. Karma that can bring benevolence to your life, karma that can bring very, very beneficial fruits is called punya karma. From that perspective, if you look at your own life, you will see a very simple understanding in our ancient scriptures, the rishis, I call them spiritual scientists have so methodically defined all the papa karmas, demerit actions.
What did they call them? Shadripu - the six enemies of your consciousness. Kaam Krodh Lobh Moh Madh Matsar. Kaam is lust, krodh is anger, lobh is greed, moh is infatuations and attachments, madh is a series of flavors of ego and matsar is the jealousy. These are the karmas, these are the actions, these are the trigger points which will always bring extremely dangerous fruit to your life, detrimental effect in your life. If these are the causes, the effects are going to be disastrous for sure. And that list is being given to us by spiritual masters, the rishis for us to be free from them. There is a beautiful technique which will give you how to be free from these six enemies of your consciousness. You can experience the technique through the link: https://youtu.be/ZSsbQoE1teU
2 steps for blossoming:
You will see these six are your enemies, the paap karma, the demerit actions that you should be free from them. I call this step, negative to neutral in the blossoming of an individual soul. There are two steps. One is negative to neutral, being free from harmful tendencies and 2nd step is from neutral to positive; Invoking life beautifying flavours in your consciousness. You will see that the activities of sadhana satsang seva and swadhyay will blossom you. Your consciousness blossoms with these beautiful flavours. You are able to create such beauty around you in the minds of people around you.
When you experience singing and chanting, the blast of energy that happens creates such fantastic effect in your life and through your seva, through your service; when you are able to blossom somebody's consciousness, somebody gets uplifted through your actions; through that benevolence the karma that generates will create such fantastic results in your life that will open doors for your own complete blossoming. My point is the karma- karmafal, the cause and the effect, this is the game of life. I'm saying the effect of the past is karma, the tendencies that have been generated in your consciousness, the flavors of ego that have got accumulated in your consciousness is your karma.
Manifest benevolence in your life:
There are two sections of Karma. The impressions gathered by a particular soul in its own consciousness is the karma of that particular soul. The impressions gathered by other souls about your particular soul is also a karma of your soul; the kind of karma that gets created the same kind of karmafal, the fruit of the karma that comes along. So this subject of spirituality I would say is, take responsibility of keeping your mind free from any unpleasantness about anybody. If some unpleasantness, some negativity gets accumulated, be courageous and drop it. Also take responsibility that if somebody else has got a little unpleasant about you, unhappy about you, please go and complete that relationship with them. Don't let it linger on. Don't let that negative emotion stay along in their mind for long. Don't let it ferment. Take that responsibility also and remember the path of Dharma, the path of full blossoming is the path for courageous people.
Let’s learn what to drop at will, what to invoke at will. Let me give you one more beautiful truth of life. For each individual soul, all those inner powers, inner abilities, siddhis that are necessary for you to blossom your consciousness completely and fully are already given to you by the nature. Each one of us has! What are these inner powers? You will see number one, you already have the ability to invoke any emotion, any power, any flavor that you want to invoke. If you want to invoke enthusiasm any moment you can invoke it, if you want to invoke love and belongingness; any moment you can invoke it and you will start experiencing that full consciousness. I'm saying each individual is already given this inner power by the nature. The second power, second ability everyone of us has is to be able to drop anything at will. If you're angry about somebody, you have the choice to drop at any moment provided your mind is not colored and grasped by your victim ego. If that ego is prevalent, it does not allow you the freedom to drop anything at will.
Ability to Invoke
My point is, you already have the ability to invoke any flavor at will, to be able to drop any flavor at will. The third ability, one more fantastic power of human mind is whatever flavor invokes regularly in your consciousness very soon your consciousness creates the habit for it. The autopilot starts taking over. So my point is even in the most difficult sounding situations, something that is very difficult for you to invoke if you invoke that flavor for a little while very soon your consciousness gets habituated to it. That fantastic power is with each one of us. Fourth, if you have been indulging in negative emotions regularly and it has become your tendency. If you keep dropping that emotion very soon, that tendency will lift away and make you free and go away.
My point is those beautiful flavors you keep invoking and start creating their tendencies. Those negative flavors you keep dropping and start being free from those negative tendencies too. That ability each one of us has. And then the 5th one I'm saying, look at your own life wherever and whenever; whichever subject of your life you have given enough attention to, you have learned that subject, isn't it? With that learning consciousness that you already have, if you gives your focus to any subject of your life and your mind, your intelligence learns that subject. I'm saying, let us learn this most benevolent skill of beautifying our own inner world. Let us learn this most beneficial skill of expanding your consciousness and create your own life the way you want.
Lots and lots of love.
- Rishi Nityapragya