{"id":1569,"date":"2013-07-13T01:35:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1569"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:35:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:45","slug":"41-karma-vol-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga\/41-karma-vol-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-41_Karma.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tKarma<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tO<\/font>NE FINDS<\/b> an unanswerable truth in the theory of Karma,
\n\t\t\t\u2014not
\n\t\t\tnecessarily in the form the ancients gave \t\t\tto it, but in the idea at its centre,
\n\t\t\t\u2014which at once strikes the
\n\t\t\tmind and commands the assent of the understanding Nor \t\t\tdoes the austerer reason, distrustful of first impressions and
\n\t\t\tcritical of plausible solutions, find after the severest scrutiny
\n\t\t\tthat the \t\t\tmore superficial understanding, the porter at the gateways of our
\n\t\t\tmentality, has been deceived into admitting a tinsel guest, a false \t\t\tclaimant into our mansion of knowledge There is a solidity at once
\n\t\t\tof philosophic and of practical truth supporting the idea, \t\t\ta bedrock of the deepest universal undeniable verities against which
\n\t\t\tthe human mind must always come up in its fathomings \t\t\tof the fathomless; in this way indeed does the world deal with us,
\n\t\t\tthere is a law here which does so make itself felt and against \t\t\twhich all our egoistic ignorance and self-will and violence dashes
\n\t\t\tup in the end, as the old Greek poet said of the haughty insolence \t\t\tand prosperous pride of man, against the very foundation of the
\n\t\t\tthrone of Zeus, the marble feet of Themis, the adamantine \t\t\tbust of Ananke There is the secret of an eternal factor, the base
\n\t\t\tof the unchanging action of the just and truthful gods,  <\/i>   devā<\/font>nā<\/font>m
\n\t\t\tdhrūvani vratā<\/font>ni<\/i>, in the self-sufficient and impartial \t\t\tlaw of Karma.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis truth of Karma has been always recognised in the
\n\t\t\tEast \t\t\tin one form or else in another; but to the Buddhists belongs the
\n\t\t\tcredit of having given to it the clearest and fullest universal \t\t\tenunciation and the most insistent importance In the West too the
\n\t\t\tidea has constantly recurred, but in external, in fragmentary \t\t\tglimpses, as the recognition of a pragmatic truth of experience, and
\n\t\t\tmostly as an ordered ethical law or fatality set over against \t\t\tthe self-will and strength of man: but it was clouded over by other
\n\t\t\tideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of  
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\n\t\t\tsome superior caprice or of some divine jealousy,
\n\t\t\t\u2014that was a notion
\n\t\t\tof the Greeks, \u2014a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, \t\t\tAnanke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no
\n\t\t\tdoubt an all-wise Providence And all this meant that there \t\t\twas some broken half-glimpse of the working of a force, but the law
\n\t\t\tof its working and the nature of the thing itself escaped \t\t\tthe perception,
\n\t\t\t\u2014as indeed it could hardly fail to do, since the
\n\t\t\tmental eye of the West, absorbed by the passion of life, tried to \t\t\tread the workings of the universe in the light of the single mind
\n\t\t\tand life of man; but those workings are much too vast, ancient, \t\t\tunbrokenly continuous in Time and all-pervading in Space,
\n\t\t\t\u2014not in
\n\t\t\tmaterial infinity alone, but in the eternal time and eternal \t\t\tspace of the soul’s infinity,
\n\t\t\t\u2014to be read by so fragmentary a
\n\t\t\tglimmer Since the Eastern idea and name of the law of Karma \t\t\twas made familiar to the modern mentality, one side of it has
\n\t\t\treceived an increasing recognition, perhaps because latterly that \t\t\tmentality had been prepared by the great discoveries and
\n\t\t\tgeneralisations of Science for a fuller vision of cosmic existence
\n\t\t\tand \t\t\ta more ordered and majestic idea of cosmic Law It may be as well
\n\t\t\tthen to start from the physical base in approaching this \t\t\tquestion of Karma, though we may find at last that it is from the
\n\t\t\tother end of being, from its spiritual summit rather than its \t\t\tmaterial support that we must look in order to catch its whole
\n\t\t\tsignificance \u2014and to fix also the limits of its significance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFundamentally, the meaning of Karma is that all existence is the
\n\t\t\tworking of a universal Energy, a process and an action and \t\t\ta building of things by that action,
\n\t\t\t\u2014an unbuilding too, but as a
\n\t\t\tstep to farther building, \u2014that all is a continuous chain in \t\t\twhich every one link is bound indissolubly to the past infinity of
\n\t\t\tnumberless links, and the whole governed by fixed relations, by a \t\t\tfixed association of cause and effect, present action the result of
\n\t\t\tpast action as future action will be the result of present action,
\n\t\t\tall \t\t\tcause a working of energy and all effect too a working of energy
\n\t\t\tThe moral significance is that all our existence is a putting out of \t\t\tan energy which is in us and by which we are made and as is the
\n\t\t\tnature of the energy which is put forth as cause, so shall be that \t\t\tof the energy which returns as effect, that this is the universal  
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\n\t\t\tlaw and nothing in the world can, being of and in our world, escape
\n\t\t\tfrom its governing incidence That is the philosophical \t\t\treality of the theory of Karma, and that too is the way of seeing
\n\t\t\twhich has been developed by physical Science But its seeing has \t\t\tbeen handicapped in the progress to the full largeness of its own
\n\t\t\ttruth by two persistent errors, first, the strenuous paradoxical \t\t\tattempt
\n\t\t\t\u2014inevitable and useful no doubt as one experiment of the
\n\t\t\thuman reason which had to have its opportunity, but \t\t\tforedoomed to failure
\n\t\t\t\u2014to explain supraphysical things by a physical
\n\t\t\tformula, and a darkening second error of setting behind \t\t\tthe universal rule of law and as its cause and efficient the quite
\n\t\t\topposite idea of the cosmic reign of Chance The old notion of an \t\t\tunintelligible supreme caprice,
\n\t\t\t\u2014unintelligible it must naturally be
\n\t\t\tsince it is the working of an unintelligent Force, \u2014thus prolonged its reign and got admission side by side with the scientific
\n\t\t\tvision of the fixities and chained successions of the universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBeing is no doubt one, and Law too may be one; but it is perilous to
\n\t\t\tfix from the beginning on one type of phenomena with \t\t\ta predetermined will to deduce from that all other phenomenon
\n\t\t\thowever different in its significance and nature In that way we \t\t\tare bound to distort truth into the mould of our own prepossession
\n\t\t\tIntermediately at least we have rather to recognise the \t\t\told harmonious truth of Veda
\n\t\t\t\u2014which also came by this way in its
\n\t\t\tend, its Vedanta, to the conception of the unity of Being, \u2014that there are different planes of cosmic existence and therefore
\n\t\t\ttoo of our own existence and in each of them the same powers, \t\t\tenergies or laws must act in a different type and in another sense
\n\t\t\tand light of their effectuality First, then, we see that if Karma \t\t\tbe a universal truth or the universal truth of being, it must be
\n\t\t\tequally true of the inly-born mental and moral worlds of our \t\t\taction as in our outward relations with the physical universe It is
\n\t\t\tthe mental energy that we put forth which determines the \t\t\tmental effect,
\n\t\t\t\u2014but subject to all the impact of past, present and
\n\t\t\tfuture surrounding circumstance, because we are not isolated \t\t\tpowers in the world, but rather our energy a subordinate strain and
\n\t\t\tthread of the universal energy The moral energy of our \t\t\taction determines similarly the nature and effect of the moral  
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\n\t\t\tconsequence, but subject too
\n\t\t\t\u2014though to this element the rigid
\n\t\t\tmoralist does not give sufficient consideration, \u2014to the same \t\t\tincidence of past, present and future surrounding circumstance That
\n\t\t\tthis is true of the output of physical energy, needs no saying \t\t\tnor any demonstration We must recognise these different types and
\n\t\t\tvariously formulated motions of the one universal Force, \t\t\tand it will not do to say from the beginning that the measure and
\n\t\t\tquality of my inner being is some result of the output of \t\t\ta physical energy translated into mental and moral energies,
\n\t\t\t\u2014for
\n\t\t\tinstance, that my doing a good or a bad action or yielding to \t\t\tgood or to bad affections and motives is at the mercy of my liver,
\n\t\t\tor contained in the physical germ of my birth, or is the effect of \t\t\tmy chemical elements or determined essentially and ultimately by the
\n\t\t\tdisposition of the constituent electrons of my brain and \t\t\tnervous system Whatever drafts my mental and moral being may make
\n\t\t\ton the corporeal for its supporting physical energy \t\t\tand however it may be affected by its borrowings, yet it is very
\n\t\t\tevident that it uses them for other and larger purposes, has a \t\t\tsupraphysical method, evolves much greater motives and
\n\t\t\tsignificances The moral energy is in itself a distinct power, has
\n\t\t\tits \t\t\town plane of karma, moves me even, and that characteristically, to
\n\t\t\toverride my vital and physical nature Forms of one universal \t\t\tForce at bottom
\n\t\t\t\u2014or at top \u2014these may be, but in practice they are
\n\t\t\tdifferent energies and have to be so dealt with \u2014until we \t\t\tcan find what that universal Force may be in its highest purest
\n\t\t\ttexture and initial power and whether that discovery can give \t\t\tus in the perplexities of our nature a unifying direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChance,
\n\t\t\tthat vague shadow of an infinite possibility, must be \t\t\tbanished from the dictionary of our perceptions; for of chance we
\n\t\t\tcan make nothing, because it is nothing Chance does not at \t\t\tall exist; it is only a word by which we cover and excuse our own
\n\t\t\tignorance Science excludes it from the actual process of \t\t\tphysical law; everything there is determined by fixed cause and
\n\t\t\trelation But when it comes to ask why these relations exist and \t\t\tnot others, why a particular cause is allied to a particular effect,
\n\t\t\tit finds that it knows nothing whatever about the matter; every actualised possibility supposes a number of other possibilities  
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\n\t\t\tthat have not actualised but conceivably might have, and it is
\n\t\t\tconvenient then to say that Chance or at most a dominant probability determines all actual happening, the chance of evolution,
\n\t\t\tthe stumblings of a groping inconscient energy which somehow \t\t\tfinds out some good enough way and fixes itself into a repetition of
\n\t\t\tthe process If Inconscience can do the works of intelligence, \t\t\tit may not be impossible that chaotic Chance should create a
\n\t\t\tuniverse of law! But this is only a reading of our own ignorance \t\t\tinto the workings of the universe,
\n\t\t\t\u2014just as prescientific
\n\t\t\tman read into the workings of physical law the caprices of the gods
\n\t\t\tor any other name for a sportive Chance whether undivine or dressed
\n\t\t\tin divine glories, whether credited with a pliant flexibility to the
\n\t\t\tprayers and bribes of man or presented with an immutable Sphinx face
\n\t\t\tof stone, \u2014but names only in fact for his own ignorance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd
\n\t\t\tespecially when we come to the pressing needs of our moral and
\n\t\t\tspiritual being, no theory of chance or probability will serve at
\n\t\t\tall Here Science, physical in her basis, does not help except to
\n\t\t\tpoint out to a certain degree the effects of my physicality on my
\n\t\t\tmoral being or of my moral action on my physicality: for anything else of just illumination or useful purpose,
\n\t\t\tshe stumbles and splashes about in the quagmire of her own \t\t\tnescience Earthquake and eclipse she can interpret and predict, but
\n\t\t\tnot my moral and spiritual becoming, but only attempt to \t\t\texplain its phenomena when they have happened by imposing
\n\t\t\tpolysyllables and fearful and wonderful laws of pathology, morbid heredity, eugenics and what not of loose fumbling, which touch
\n\t\t\tonly the draggled skirts of the lowest psycho-physical \t\t\tbeing But here I need guidance more than anywhere else and must
\n\t\t\thave the recognition of a law, the high line of a guiding \t\t\torder To know the law of my moral and spiritual being is at first
\n\t\t\tand last more imperative for me than to learn the ways of \t\t\tsteam and electricity, for without these outward advantages I can
\n\t\t\tgrow in my inner manhood, but not without some notion \t\t\tof moral and spiritual law Action is demanded of me and I need a
\n\t\t\trule for my action: something I am urged inwardly to become \t\t\twhich I am not yet, and I would know what is the way and law,  
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\n\t\t\twhat the central power or many conflicting powers and what the
\n\t\t\theight and possible range and perfection of my becoming That \t\t\tsurely much more than the rule of electrons or the possibilities of
\n\t\t\ta more omnipotent physical machinery and more powerful \t\t\texplosives is the real human question.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Buddhists’ mental and
\n\t\t\tmoral law of Karma comes in at \t\t\tthis difficult point with a clue and an opening As Science fills
\n\t\t\tour mind with the idea of a universal government of Law in the \t\t\tphysical and outward world and in our relations with Nature, though
\n\t\t\tshe leaves behind it all a great unanswered query, an \t\t\tagnosticism, a blank of some other ungrasped Infinite,
\n\t\t\t\u2014here covered
\n\t\t\tby the concept of Chance, \u2014the Buddhist conception \t\t\ttoo fills the spaces of our mental and moral being with the same
\n\t\t\tsense of a government of mental and moral Law: but this too \t\t\terects behind that Law a great unanswered query, an agnosticism, the
\n\t\t\tblank of an ungrasped Infinite But here the covering \t\t\tword is more grandly intangible; it is the mystery of Nirvana This
\n\t\t\tInfinite is figured in both cases by the more insistent and \t\t\tpositive type of mind as an Inconscience,
\n\t\t\t\u2014but material in the one,
\n\t\t\tin the other a spiritual infinite zero, \u2014but by the more \t\t\tprudent or flexible thinkers simply as an unknowable The difference
\n\t\t\tis that the unknown of Science is something mechanical \t\t\tto which mechanically we return by physical dissolution or laya<\/i>,
\n\t\t\tbut the unknown of Buddhism is a Permanent beyond the Law to which
\n\t\t\twe return spiritually by an effort of self-suppression, of
\n\t\t\tself-renunciation and, at the latest end, of self-extinction, by a
\n\t\t\tmental dissolution of the Idea which maintains the law of relations
\n\t\t\tand a moral dissolution of the world-desire which keeps up the
\n\t\t\tstream of successions of the universal action This is a rare and an
\n\t\t\taustere metaphysics; but to its discouraging grandeur we are by no
\n\t\t\tmeans compelled to give assent, for it is neither self-evident nor
\n\t\t\tinevitable It is by no means so certain that a high spiritual
\n\t\t\tnegation of what I am is my only possible road to perfection; a high
\n\t\t\tspiritual affirmation and absolute of what I am may be also a
\n\t\t\tfeasible way and gate This nobly glacial or blissfully void idea of
\n\t\t\ta Nirvana, because it is so overwhelmingly a negation, cannot finally satisfy the human spirit, which  
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\n\t\t\tis drawn persistently to some highest positive and affirmation of
\n\t\t\titself and only uses negations by the way the better to rid \t\t\titself of what comes in as an obstacle to its self-finding To the
\n\t\t\teverlasting No the living being may resign itself by an effort, a \t\t\tsorrowful or a superb turning upon itself and existence, but the
\n\t\t\teverlasting Yes is its native attraction: our spiritual orientation, \t\t\tthe magnetism that draws the soul, is to eternal Being and not to
\n\t\t\teternal Non-Being.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNevertheless certain essential and needed clues are there in the
\n\t\t\ttheory of Karma And first, there is this assurance, this firm \t\t\tground on which I can base a sure tread, that in the mental and
\n\t\t\tmoral world as in the physical universe there is no chaos, \t\t\tfortuitous rule of chance or mere probability, but an ordered Energy
\n\t\t\tat work which assures its will by law and fixed relation \t\t\tand steady succession and the links of ascertainable cause and
\n\t\t\teffectuality To be assured that there is an all-pervading mental \t\t\tlaw and an all-pervading moral law, is a great gain, a supporting
\n\t\t\tfoundation That in the mental and moral as in the physical \t\t\tworld what I sow in the proper soil, I shall assuredly reap, is a
\n\t\t\tguarantee of divine government, of equilibrium, of cosmos; it \t\t\tnot only grounds life upon an adamant underbase of law, but by
\n\t\t\tremoving anarchy opens the way to a greater liberty But there is \t\t\tthe possibility that if this Energy is all, I may only be a creation
\n\t\t\tof an imperative Force and all my acts and becomings a chain of \t\t\tdetermination over which I can have no real control or chance of
\n\t\t\tmastery That view would resolve everything into predestination \t\t\tof Karma, and the result might satisfy my intellect but would be
\n\t\t\tdisastrous to the greatness of my spirit I should be a slave and \t\t\tpuppet of Karma and could never dream of being a sovereign of myself
\n\t\t\tand my existence But here there comes in the second \t\t\tstep of the theory of Karma, that it is the Idea which creates all
\n\t\t\trelations All is the expression and expansion of the Idea,    sarvāni
\n\t\t\tvij\u00f1ā<\/font>na-vijrmbhitāni<\/i> Then I can by the will, the energy  of the Idea in me develop the form of what I am and arrive at the \t\t\tharmony of some greater idea than is expressed in my present mould
\n\t\t\tand balance I can aspire to a nobler expansion Still, if the \t\t\tIdea is a thing in itself, without any base but its own spontaneous
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\n\t\t\tpower, none originating it, no knower, no Purusha and Lord, I may be
\n\t\t\tonly a form of the universal Idea and myself, my soul, \t\t\tmay have no independent existence or initiation But there is too
\n\t\t\tthis third step that I am a soul developing and persisting in \t\t\tthe paths of the universal Energy and that in myself is the seed of
\n\t\t\tall my creation What I have become, I have made myself by \t\t\tthe soul’s past idea and action, its inner and outer karma; what I
\n\t\t\twill to be, I can make myself by present and future idea and \t\t\taction And finally, there is this last supreme liberating step that
\n\t\t\tboth the Idea and its Karma may have their origin in the free \t\t\tspirit and by arriving at myself by experience and self-finding I
\n\t\t\tcan exalt my state beyond all bondage of Karma to spiritual \t\t\tfreedom These are the four pillars of the complete theory of Karma
\n\t\t\tThey are also the four truths of the dealings of Self with \t\t\tNature.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Karma   ONE FINDS an unanswerable truth in the theory of Karma, \u2014not necessarily in the form the ancients gave to it, but in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","wpcat-36-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}