{"id":152,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=152"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:14","slug":"23-mind-nature-and-law-of-karma-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/23-mind-nature-and-law-of-karma-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-23_Mind Nature and Law of Karma.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nMind
\nNature and Law of Karma<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/h1>\n

\n
\n       
\n<\/span>MAN
\nis not after all in the essence of his manhood or in the inner reality of his
\nsoul a vital and physical being raised to a certain power of mental will and
\nintelligence. If that were so, the creed that makes our existence a
\nmanifestation of a Will to life, a Life Force moved by no other object than its
\nown play, heightening, efficient power, expansion, might have a good chance of
\nbeing the sufficient theory of our universe, and the law of our Karma, the rule
\nof our activities would be in entire consonance with that one purpose and
\nordered by that dominant principle. Certainly in a great part of this world\u2019s
\nouter activities, <\/span>\u2014 or if we, fixing our eye mainly on the vital play of the spirit of the
\nuniverse, consider them as man\u2019s chief business and the main thing that
\nmatters, <\/span>\u2014 there is a
\ncolourable justification for this limited view of the human being. But the more
\nhe looks into himself and the more he goes inward and lives intimately and
\npreeminently in his mind and soul, the more he discovers that he is in his
\nessential nature a mental being encased in body and enmeshed in the life
\nactivities, manu, manomaya purusa. <\/i>He is more than a thinking, willing
\nand feeling result of the mechanism of the physical or an understanding nexus of
\nthe vital forces. There is a mental energy of his being that overtops, pervades
\nand utilises the terrestrial action and his own terrestrial nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n This
\ncharacter of man\u2019s being prevents us from resting satisfied with the
\nvitalistic law of Karma: the lines of the vital energy are interfered with and
\nuplifted and altered for man by the intervention of the awakened mental energy
\nof the spirit that emerges in the material universe and creates here on earth
\nthe form of man for its habitation, his complex nature to be its expressive
\npower, the gamut of its music, and the action of his thought, perception, will,
\nemotions the notation of its harmonies. The apparent inconscience of physical
\nNature, the beautiful and terrible, kindly and cruel, conscious but a-moral Life
\nForce that is the first thing we see before us, are not the whole
\nself-expression<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-190<\/font><\/span><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of
\nthe<\/span> universal Being here and therefore not the whole of Nature. Man
\ncomes into it to express and realise a higher law of Nature and therefore a
\nhigher system of the lines of Karma. The mental energy divides itself and runs
\nin many directions, has an ascending scale of the levels of its action, a great
\nvariety and combination of its dynamic aims and purposes. There are many strands
\nof its weaving and it follows each along its own line and combines manifoldly
\nthe threads of one with the threads of another. There is in it an energy of
\nthought that puts itself out for a return and a constant increase of knowledge,
\nan energy of will that casts itself forth for a return and increase of conscious
\nmastery, fulfilment of the being, execution of will in action, an energy of
\nconscious aesthesis that feels out for a return and an increase of the creation
\nand enjoyment of beauty, an energy of emotion that demands in its action a
\nreturn and a constant increase of the enjoyment and satisfaction of the
\nemotional power of the being. All these energies act in a way for themselves and
\nyet depend upon and are inextricably accompanied and mingled with each other. At
\nthe same time mind has descended into matter and has to act in and through this
\nworld of the vital and physical energy and to consent to and make something of
\nthe lines of the vital and physical Karma.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Man, then, since he is a mental being, a means of the evolution of the
\nmental self-expression of the spirit, cannot confine the rule of his action and
\nnature to an obedience to the vital and physical law and an intelligent
\nutilisation of it for the greater, more ordered, more perfect enjoyment of his
\nvital and physical existence, perpetuation, reproduction, possession, enjoyment,
\nexpansion. There is a higher law of mental being and nature of which he is bound
\nto become aware and to seek to impose it on his life and his action. At first he
\nis very predominantly governed by the life needs and the movement of the life
\nenergies, and it is in applying his mental energy to them and to the world
\naround him that he makes the earliest development of his powers of knowledge and
\nwill and trains the crude impulses that lead him into the path of his emotional,
\naesthetic and moral evolution. But always there is a certain obscure element
\nthat takes pleasure in the action of the mental energies for their own sake and
\nit\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-191<\/font><\/span><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

is
\nthis, however imperfect at first in self-consciousness and intelligence, that
\nrepresents the characteristic intention of Nature in him and makes his mental
\nand eventually his spiritual evolution inevitable. The insistence of the
\nexternal world around him and the need of utilising its opportunities and of
\nmeeting its siege and dangers causes his mind to be much obsessed by life and
\nexternal action and the utility of thought and will and perception for his
\ndealings with the physical and life forces, and to this preoccupation the finer
\nmore disinterested action and subtler cast of motive of the mind nature
\ndemanding its own inner development, seeking for knowledge, mastery, beauty, a
\npurer emotional delight for their own sake, and the pursuits which are
\ncharacteristic of this higher energy of the mental nature, appear almost as
\nby-products and, at any rate, things secondary that can always be postponed and
\nmade subordinate to the needs and demands of the mentalised vital and physical
\nbeing. But the finer and more developed mind in humanity has always turned
\ntowards an opposite self-seeing, inclined to regard this as the most
\ncharacteristic and valuable element of our being and been ready to sacrifice
\nmuch and sometimes all to its calls or its imperative mandate. Then life itself
\nwould be in reality for man only a field of action for the evolution, the
\nopportunity of new experience, the condition of difficult effort and mastery of
\nthe mental and spiritual being. What then will be the lines of this mental
\nenergy and how will they affect and be affected by the lines of the vital and
\nphysical Karma?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Three movements of the mental energy of man projecting itself along the
\nlines of life, successive movements that yet overlap and enter into each other,
\nhave created a triple strand of the law of his Karma. The first is that,
\nprimary, obvious, universal, predominant in his beginnings, in which his mind
\nsubjects and assimilates itself to the law of life in Matter in order to make
\nthe most of the terrestrial existence for its own pleasure and profit, artha,
\nk<\/i><\/span>\u00e3ma, <\/span><\/i>without any other modification or correction of its pre-existing lines
\nthan is involved in the very impact of the human intelligence, will, emotion,
\naesthesis. These indeed are forces that lift up and greatly enlarge and
\ninfinitely rarefy and subtilise by a consciously regulated and more and more
\nskilful<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-192<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

and
\ncurious use the first crude, narrow and essentially animal aims and movements
\ncommon to all living creatures. And this element of the mentalised vital
\nexistence, these lines of its movement making the main grey solid stuff of the
\nlife of the average economic, political, social, domestic man may take on a
\ngreat amplitude and an imposing brilliance, but they remain always in their
\ndistinctive, their original and still persistent character the lines of
\nmovement, the way of Karma of the thinking, willing, feeling, refining human
\nanimal,<\/span> \u2014 not to be despised or excluded from our total way of being when we climb
\nto a higher plane of conception and action, but still only a small part of human
\npossibility and, if regarded as the main preoccupation or most imperative law of
\nthe human being, then limiting and degrading it; for, empowered up to a certain
\npoint to enlarge and dynamise and enrich, but not raise to a veritable
\nself-exceeding, they are useful for ascension only when themselves uplifted and
\ntransformed by a greater law and a nobler motive. The momentum of this energy
\nmay be a very powerful mental action, may involve much output of intelligence
\nand will power and aesthetic perception and expenditure of emotional force, but
\nthe return it seeks is vital success and enjoyment and possession and
\nsatisfaction. The mind no doubt feeds its powers on the effort and its fulness
\non the prize, but it is tethered to its pasture. It is a mixed movement, mental
\nin its means, predominantly vital in its returns; its standard of the values of
\nthe return are measured by an outward success and failure, an externalised or
\nexternally caused pleasure and suffering, good fortune and evil fortune, the
\nfate of the life and the body. It is this powerful vital preoccupation which has
\ngiven us one element of the current notion of law of Karma, its idea of an award
\nof vital happiness and suffering as the measure of cosmic justice.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The second movement of mind running on the lines of life comes into
\nprominent action when man evolves out of his experience the idea of a mental
\nrule, standard, ideal, a concretised abstraction which is suggested at first by
\nlife experience, but goes beyond, transcends the actual needs and demands of the
\nvital energy and returns upon it to impose some ideal mental rule, some canon
\nembodying a generalised conception of Right on the<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-193<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

law
\nof life. For its essence is the discovery or belier of the mind that in all
\nthings there is a right rule, a right standard, a right way of thought, will,
\nfeeling, perception, action other than that of the intuition of vital nature,
\nother than that of the first dealings of mind seeking only to profit by the
\nvital nature with a mainly vital motive, <\/span>\u2014 for
\nit has discovered a way of the reason, a rule of the self-governing
\nintelligence. This brings into the seeking of vital pleasure and profit, artha,
\nk<\/i><\/span>\u00e3ma, <\/span><\/i>the power of the conception of a mental truth, justice, right, the
\nconception of Dharma. The greater practical part of the Dharma is ethical, it is
\nthe idea of the moral law. The first mind movement is non-moral or not at all
\ncharacteristically moral, has only, if at all, the conception of a standard of
\naction justified by custom, the received rule of life and therefore right, or a
\nmorality indistinguishable from expediency, accepted and enforced because it was
\nfound necessary or helpful to efficiency, power, success, to victory, honour,
\napproval, good fortune. The idea of Dharma is, on the contrary, predominantly
\nmoral in its essence. Dharma on its heights holds up the moral law in its own
\nright and for its own sake to human acceptance and observance. The larger idea
\nof Dharma is indeed a conception of the true law of all energies and includes a
\ncon- science, a rectitude in all things, a right law of thought and knowledge,
\nof aesthesis, of all other human activities and not only of our ethical action.
\nBut yet in the notion of Dharma the ethical element has tended always to
\npredominate and even to monopolise the concept of Right which man creates,<\/span>
\n\u2014 because <\/span>ethics
\nis concerned with action of life and his dealing with his vital being and with
\nhis fellow-men and that is always his first preoccupation and his most tangible
\ndifficulty, and because here first and most pressingly the desires, interests,
\ninstincts of the vital being find themselves cast into a sharp and very
\nsuccessful conflict with the ideal of Right and the demand of the higher law.
\nRight ethical action comes therefore to seem to man at this state the one thing
\nbinding upon him among the many standards raised by the mind, the moral claim
\nthe one categorical imperative, the moral law the whole of his Dharma.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>At first, however, the moral conceptions of man and the direction and
\noutput and the demand of return of the ethical<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-194<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

energy
\nin him get themselves inextricably mixed with his vital conceptions and demands
\nand even afterwards lean on them very <\/span>commonly
\nand very considerably for a support and incentive.<\/span> Human morality first takes up an enormous mass of customary rules of
\naction, a conventional and traditional practice much of which is of a very
\ndoubtful moral value, gives to it an imperative sanction of right and slips into
\nthe crude mass or superimposes on it, but still as a part of one common and
\nequal code, the true things of the ethical ideal. It appeals to the vital being,
\nhis desires, hopes and fears, incites man to virtue by the hope of rewards and
\nthe dread of punishment, imitating in this device the method of his crude and
\nfumbling social practice: for that, finding its law and rule which, good or bad,
\nit wishes to make imperative as supposing it to be at least the best calculated
\nfor the order and efficiency of the community, opposed by man\u2019s vital being,
\nbribes and terrifies as well as influences, educates and persuades him to
\nacceptance. Morality tells man, accommodating itself to his imperfection, mostly
\nthrough the mouth of religion, that the moral law is imperative in itself, but
\nalso that it is very expedient for him personally to follow it, righteousness in
\nthe end the safest policy, virtue the best paymaster in the long run,<\/span> \u2014
\nfor this is a world of Law or a world
\nruled by a just and virtuous or at least virtue-loving God. He is assured that
\nthe righteous man shall prosper and the wicked perish and that the paths of
\nvirtue lie through pleasant places. Or, if this will not serve, since it is
\npalpably false in experience and even man cannot always deceive himself, it
\noffers him a security of vital rewards<\/span> denied
\nhere but conceded in some hereafter. Heaven and hell, <\/span>happiness
\nand suffering in other lives are put before him as the bribe and the menace. He
\nis told, the better to satisfy his easily satisfied intellect, that the world is
\ngoverned by an ethical law which determines the measure of his earthly fortunes,
\nthat a justice reigns and this is justice, that every action has its exact
\nrebound and his good shall bring him good and his evil evil. It is these
\nnotions, this idea of the moral law, of righteousness and justice as a thing in
\nitself imperative, but still needing to be enforced by bribe and menace on our
\nhuman nature,<\/span> \u2014 which would
\nseem to show that at least for that nature they are not alto-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-195<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

gether
\nimperative,<\/span> \u2014 this insistence
\non reward and punishment because morality struggling with our first unregenerate
\nbeing has to figure very largely as a mass of restraints and prohibitions and
\nthese cannot be enforced without some fact or appearance of it compelling or
\ninducing outward sanction, this diplomatic compromise or effort at equivalence
\nbetween the impersonal ethical and the personal egoistic demand, this marriage
\nof convenience between right and vital utility, virtue and desire,<\/span> \u2014 it
\nis these accommodations that are embodied in the current notions of the law of
\nKarma.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>What real truth is there behind the current notions of Karma in the
\nactual facts or the fundamental powers of the life of man here or the visible
\nworking of the law of the energies of the cosmos? There is evidently a
\nsubstantial truth, but it is a part only of the whole; its reign or predominance
\nbelongs to a certain element only, to the emphasis of one line among many of a
\ntransitional movement between the law of the vital energy and a greater and
\nhigher law of the mind and spirit. A mixture of any two kinds of energy sets up
\na mixed and complex action of the output of the energy and the return, and a too
\nsharp-cut rule affixing vital returns to a mental and moral output of force is
\nopen to much exception and it cannot be the whole inner truth of the matter. But
\nstill where the demand is for the vital return, for success, an outer happiness,
\ngood, fortune, that is a sign of the dominant intention in the energy and points
\nto a balance of forces weighing in the indicated direction. At first sight, if
\nsuccess is the desideratum, it is not clear what morality has to say in the
\naffair, since we see in most things that it is a right understanding and
\nintelligent or intuitive practice of the means and conditions and an insistent
\npower of the will, a settled drive of the force of the being of which success is
\nthe natural consequence. Mail may impose by a system of punishments a check on
\nthe egoistic will and intelligence in pursuit of its vital ends, may create a
\nnumber of moral conditions for the world\u2019s prizes, but this might appear, as
\nis indeed contended in certain vitalistic theories, an artificial imposition on
\nNature and a dulling and impoverishment of the free and powerful play of the
\nmind force and the life force in their alliance. But in truth the greatest force
\nfor success is a<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-196<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

right
\nconcentration of energy, tapasy<\/i><\/span>\u00e3,
\n<\/span><\/i>and there is an inevitable moral element in Tapasya.<\/span><\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Man is a mental being seeking to establish a control over the life forces
\nhe embodies or uses, and one, condition of that mastery is a necessary
\nself-control, a restraint, an order, a discipline imposed on his mental, vital
\nand physical being. The animal life is automatically subjected to certain
\nmeasures; it is the field of an instinctive vital-dharma. Man, liberated from
\nthese automatic checks by the free play of his mind, has to replace them by
\nwilled and intelligent restraints, an understanding measure, a voluntary
\ndiscipline. Not only a powerful expenditure and free play of his energies, but
\nalso a right measure, restraint and control of them is the condition of his
\nlife\u2019s success and soundness. The moral is not the sole element: it is not
\nentirely true that the moral right always prevails or that where there is the
\ndharma, on that side is the victory. The immediate success often goes to other
\npowers, even an ultimate conquest of the Right comes usually by an association
\nwith some form of Might. But still there is always a moral element among the
\nmany factors of individual and collective or national success and a disregard of
\nacknowledged right has at some time or other disastrous or fatal reactions.
\nMoreover, man in the use of his energies has to take account of his fellows and
\nthe aid and opposition of their energies, and his relations with them impose on
\nhim checks, demands and conditions which have or evolve a moral significance.
\nThere is laid on him almost from the first a number of obligations even in the
\npursuit of vital success and satisfaction which become a first empirical basis
\nof an ethical order.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>And there are cosmic as well as human forces that respond to this balance
\nof the mental and moral and the vital order. First there is something subtle,
\ninscrutable and formidable that meets us in our paths, a Force of which the
\nancient Greeks took much notice, a Power that is on the watch for man in his
\neffort at enlargement, possession and enjoyments and seems hostile and opposite.
\nThe Greeks figured it as the jealousy of the gods or as Doom, Necessity, Ate.
\nThe egoistic force in man may proceed far in its victory and triumph, but it has
\nto be wary or it will find this power there on the watch for any flaw in his
\nstrength<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-197<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

or action, any sufficient opportunity for his defeat and downfall. It
\ndogs his endeavour with obstacle and reverse and takes advantage of his
\nimperfections, often dallying with him, giving him a long rope, delaying and
\nabiding its time, <\/span>\u2014 and not
\nonly of his moral shortcomings but of his errors of will and intelligence, his
\nexcesses and deficiencies of strength and prudence, all defects of his nature.
\nIt seems overcome by his energies of Tapasya, but it waits its season. It
\novershadows unbroken or extreme prosperity and often surprises it with a sudden
\nturn to ruin. It induces a security, a self-forgetfulness, a pride and insolence
\nof success and victory and leads on its victim to dash himself against the
\nhidden seat of justice or the wall of an invisible measure. It is as fatal to a
\nblind self-righteousness and the arrogations of an egoistic virtue as to vicious
\nexcess and selfish violence. It appears<\/span> to
\ndemand of man and of individual men and nations that they <\/span>shall
\nkeep within a limit and a measure, while all beyond that brings danger; and
\ntherefore the Greeks held moderation in all things to be the greatest part of
\nvirtue.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>There is here something in the life forces obscure to us, considered by
\nour partial feelings sinister because it crosses our desires, but obedient to
\nsome law and intention of the universal mind, the universal reason or Logos
\nwhich the ancients perceived at work in the cosmos. Its presence, when felt by
\nthe cruder kind of religious mind, generates the idea of calamity as a
\npunishment for sin, <\/span>\u2014 not
\nobserving that it has a punishment too for ignorance, for error, stupidity,
\nweakness, defect of will and Tapasya. This is really a resistance of the
\nInfinite acting through life against the claim of the imperfect ego of man to
\nenlarge itself, possess, enjoy and have, while remaining imperfect, a perfect
\nand enduring happiness and complete felicity of its world-experience. The claim
\nis, we may say, immoral, and the Force that resists it and returns, however
\nuncertainly and late to our eyes, suffering and failure as a reply to our
\nimperfections, may be considered a moral Force, an agent of a just Karma, though
\nnot solely in the narrowly ethical sense of Karma. The law it represents is that
\nour imperfections shall have their passing or their fatal consequences, that a
\nflaw in our output of energy may be mended or counterbalanced and reduced in
\nconsequence, but if persisted<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-198<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

in
\nshall react even in excess of its apparent merits, that an error may seem to
\ndestroy all the result of the Tapasya, because it springs from a radical
\nunsoundness in the intention of the will, the heart, the ethical sense or the
\nreason. This is the first line of the transitional law of Karma.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>A second line of Karmic response of the cosmic forces to our action puts
\non also an appearance which tempts us to give it a moral character. For there
\ncan be distinguished in Nature a certain element of the law of the talion or<\/span>
\n\u2014 perhaps a more appropriate figure,
\nsince this action seems rather mechanical than rational and deliberate<\/span>
\n\u2014 a boomerang movement of energy <\/span>returning
\nupon its transmitter. The stone we throw is flung back by some hidden force in
\nthe world life upon ourselves, the action we put out upon others recoils, not
\nalways by a direct reaction, but often by devious and unconnected routes, on our
\nown lives and sometimes, though that is by no means a common rule, in its own
\nexact figure or measure. This is a phenomenon so striking to our imagination and
\nimpressive to our moral sense and vital feelings that it has received some kind
\nof solemn form and utterance in the thought of all cultures,<\/span> \u2014 \u201cWhat
\nthou hast done, thou must suffer\u201d, \u201cHe that uses the sword shall perish by
\nthe sword;\u201d \u201cThou hast sown the wind and thou shalt reap the whirlwind;\u201d<\/span>
\n\u2014 and we are tempted to erect it into
\na universal rule and accept it as sufficient evidence of a moral order. But the
\ncareful thinker will pause long before he hastens to subscribe to any such
\nconclusion, for there is much that militates against it and this kind of
\ndefinite reaction is rather exceptional than an ordinary rule of human life. If
\nit were a regular feature, men would soon learn the code of the draconic
\nimpersonal legislator and know what to avoid and the list of life’s prohibitions
\nand vetoes. But there is no such clear penal legislation of Nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The mathematical precision of physical Nature’s action and reaction
\ncannot indeed be expected from mental and vital Nature. For not only does
\neverything become infinitely more subtle, complex and variable as we rise in the
\nscale so that in our life action there is an extraordinary intertwining of
\nforces and mixture of many values, but, even, the psychological and moral value
\nof the same action differs in different cases, according to<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-199<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

the
\ncircumstance, the conditions, the motive and mind of the doer. The law of the
\ntalion is no just or ethical rule when applied by man to men and, applied by
\nsuperhuman dispenser of justice or impersonal law with a rude rule of thumb to
\nthe delicate and intricate tangle of man’s life action and life motives, it
\nwould be no better. And it is evident too that the slow, long and subtle
\npurposes of the universal Power working in the human race would be defeated
\nrather than served by any universality of this too precise and summary
\nprocedure. Accordingly we find that its working is occasional and intermittent
\nrather than regular, variable and to our minds capricous rather than automatic
\nand plainly intelligible.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>At times in the individual\u2019s life the rebound of this kind of Karma is
\ndecisively, often terribly clear and penal justice is done, although it may come
\nto him in an unexpected fashion, long delayed and from strange quarters; but,
\nhowever satisfactory to our dramatic sense, this is not the common method of
\nretributive Nature. Her ways are more tortuous, subtle, unobtrusive and
\nindecipherable. Often it is a nation that pays in this way for past crimes and
\nmistakes and the sign manual of the law of the talion is there to point the
\nlesson, but individually it is the innocent who suffer. A commercially minded
\nking of Belgium is moved to make a good thing of the nation’s rubber estate and
\nhuman cattle farm in Africa and his agents murder and mutilate and immolate
\nthousands of cheap negro lives to hasten the yield and swell his coffers. This
\nable monarch dies in the splendour of riches and the sacred odour of good
\nfortune, his agents in no way suffer: but here of a sudden comes Germany
\ntrampling her armed way towards a dream of military and commercial empire
\nthrough prosperous Belgium and massacred men and women and mutilated children
\nstartingly remind us of Karma and illustrate some obscure and capricious law of
\nthe talion. Here at least the nation in its corporate being was guilty of
\ncomplicity, but at other times neither guilty individual nor nation is the
\npayer, but~ perhaps some well-meaning virtuous blunderer gets the account of
\nevil recompense that should have been paid in of rights by the strong despots
\nbefore him who went on their way to the end rejoicing in power and splendour and
\npleasure.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-200<\/font><\/span><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

It is evident that we cannot make much of a force that works out in so
\nstrange a fashion, however occasionally striking and dramatic its pointing at
\ncause and consequence. It is too uncertain in its infliction of penalty to serve
\nthe end which the human mind expects from a system of penal justice, too
\ninscrutably variable in its incidence to act as an indicator to that element in
\nthe human temperament which waits upon expediency and regulates its steps by a
\nprudential eye to consequence. Men and nations continue to act always in the
\nsame fashion regardless of this occasional breaking out of the lightnings of a
\nretaliatory doom, these occasional precisions of Karmic justic amidst the
\nuncertainties of the complex measures of the universe. It works really not on
\nthe mind and will of man <\/span>\u2014
\nexcept to some degree in a subtle and imperfect fashion on the subconscient mind
\n<\/span>\u2014 but outside him as a partial
\ncheck and regulator helping to maintain the balance of the returns of energy and
\nthe life purposes of the world-spirit. Its action is like that of the first line
\nof transitional Karma intended to prevent the success of the vital egoism of man
\nand serves as an interim compression and compulsion until he can discover and
\nsucceed in spite of his vital self in obeying a higher law of his being and a
\npurer dynamism of motive in his directing mind and governing Spirit. It serves
\ntherefore a certain moral purpose in the will in the universe, but is not
\nitself, even in combination with the other, sufficient to be the law of a moral
\norder.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>A third possible and less outwardly mechanical line of Karma is suggested
\nby the dictum that like creates like and in accordance with that law good must
\ncreate good and evil must create evil. In the terms of a moral return or rather
\nrepayment to moral energies this would mean that by putting forth love we get a
\nreturn of love and by putting forth hatred a return of hatred, that if we are
\nmerciful or just to others, others also will be to us just or merciful and that
\ngenerally good done by us to our fellowmen will return in a recompense of good
\ndone by them in kind and posted back to our address duly registered in the moral
\npost office of the administrative government of the universe. Do unto others as
\nyou would be done by, because then they will indeed so do to you, seems to be
\nthe formula of this moral device. If this<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-201<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

were
\ntrue, human life might indeed settle down into a very symmetrical system of a
\nharmoniously moral egoism and a mercantile traffic in goodness that might seem
\nfair and beautiful enough to those who are afflicted with that kind of moral
\naesthesis. Happily for the upward progress of the human soul, the rule breaks
\ndown in practice, the world-spirit having greater ends be- fore it and a greater
\nlaw to realise. The rule is true to a certain extent in tendency and works
\nsometimes well enough and the prudential intelligence of man takes some account
\nof it in action, but it is not true all the way and all the time. It is evident
\nenough that hatred, violence, injustice are likely to create an answering
\nhatred, violence and injustice and that I can only indulge these propensities
\nwith impunity if I am sufficiently powerful to defy resistance or so long as I
\nam at once strong enough and prudent enough to provide against their natural
\nreactions. It is true also that by doing good and kindness I create a certain
\ngood-will in others and can rely under ordinary or favourable circumstances not
\nso much on gratitude and return in kind as on their support and favour. But this
\ngood and this evil are both of them movements of the ego and on the mixed egoism
\nof’ human nature there can be no safe or positive reliance. An egoistic selfish
\nstrength, if it knows what to do and where to stop, even a certain measure of
\nviolence and injustice, if it is strong and skilful, cunning, fraud, many kinds
\nof evil, do actually pay in man’s dealing with man hardly less than in the
\nanimal’s with the animal, and on the other hand the doer of good who counts on a
\nreturn or reward finds himself as often as not disappointed of his bargained
\nrecompense. The weakness of human nature worships the power that tramples on it,
\ndoes homage to successful strength, can return to every kind of strong or
\nskilful imposition, belief, acceptance, obedience: it can crouch and fawn and
\nadmire even amidst movements of hatred and terror; it has singular loyalties and
\nunreasoning instincts. And its disloyalties too are as unreasoning or light and
\nfickle: it takes just dealing and beneficence as its right and forgets or cares
\nnot to repay. And there is worse; for justice, mercy, beneficence, kindness are
\noften enough rewarded by their opposites and ill-will an answer to good-will is
\na brutally common experience. If something<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-202<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

in
\nthe world and in man returns good for good and evil for evil, it as often
\nreturns evil for good and, with or without a conscious moral intention, good for
\nevil. And even an unegoistic virtue or a divine good and love entering the world
\nawakens hostile reactions. Attila and Jenghiz on the throne to the end, Christ
\non the cross and Socrates drinking his portion of hemlock are no very clear
\nevidence for any optimistic notion of a law of moral return in the world of
\nhuman nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>There is little more sign of its sure existence in the world measures.
\nActually in the cosmic dispensation evil comes out of good and good out of evil
\nand there seems to be no exact correspondence between the moral and the vital
\nmeasures. All that we can say is that good done tends to increase the sum and
\ntotal power of good in the world and the greater this grows the greater is
\nlikely to be the sum of human happiness and that evil done tends to increase the
\nsum and total power of evil in the world and the greater this grows, the greater
\nis likely to be the sum of human suffering and, eventually, man or nation doing
\nevil has in some way to pay for it, but not often in any intelligibly graded or
\napportioned measure and not always in clearly translating terms of vital good
\nfortune and ill fortune.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>In short, what we may call the transitional lines of Karma exist and have
\nto be taken into account in our view of the action of the world forces. But they
\nare not and cannot be the whole law of Karma. And they cannot be that because
\nthey are transitional, because good and evil are moral and not vital values and
\nhave a clear right only to a moral and not a vital return, because reward and
\npunishment put forward as the conditions of good doing and evil doing do not
\nconstitute and cannot create a really moral order, the principle itself,
\nwhatever temporary end it serves, being fundamentally immoral from the higher
\npoint of view of a true and pure ethics and because there are other forces that
\ncount and have their right, <\/span>\u2014
\nknowledge, power and many others. The correspondence of moral and vital good is
\na demand of the human ego and like many others of its demands answers to certain
\ntendencies in the world mind, but is not its whole law of highest purpose. A
\nmoral order there can be, but it is in ourselves and for its own sake that we
\nhave to create it and, only<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-203<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

when
\nwe have so created it and found its right relation to other powers or life, can
\nwe hope to make it count at its full value in the right ordering of man\u2019s
\nvital existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-204<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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