Introduction
Karma, death, and reincarnation are fascinating subjects for many of us. The more we understand them, the richer and more meaningful life becomes. In this post, you’ll read the words of Paramhansa Yogananda, a master of yoga, one who writes not from speculation, but from his inner knowledge of truth.
Table of Contents
What is Karma?
If we accept the principle of cause and effect in Nature, and of action and reaction in physics, how can we not believe that this natural law extends also to human beings? Do not humans, too, belong to the natural order?
This is the law of karma: As you sow, so shall you reap.* (*Footnote:“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)) If you sow evil, you will reap evil in the form of suffering. And if you sow goodness, you will reap goodness in the form of inner joy.
To understand karma, you must realize that thoughts are things. The very universe, in the final analysis, is composed not of matter but of consciousness. Matter responds, far more than most people realize, to the power of thought. For will power directs energy, and energy in turn acts upon matter. Matter, indeed, is energy.
Every action, every thought, reaps its own corresponding rewards.
Human suffering is not a sign of God’s anger with mankind. It is a sign, rather, of man’s ignorance of the divine law.
The law is forever infallible in its workings.
What is a Good Karma?
This life is like a movie, and just like in an exciting movie, there has to be a villain so we will learn to love the hero. If you imitate the villain’s behavior, however, you will receive his punishment. It’s all a dream, but ask yourselves, Why live a bad dream by creating bad karma? With good karma, you get to enjoy the dream.
Good karma also makes you want, in time, to wake up from the dream. Bad karma, on the other hand, darkens the mind and keeps it bound to the dreaming process.
From a mountaintop, one sees clearly the whole countryside, and also the open sky above. From the heights it is natural to want to soar even higher, far above the earth. In the fog-bound valley below, however, the most that one aspires to may be only to climb a bit higher.
What is an Evil Karma?
The Heavenly Father could not possibly send his human children to hell forever because they made some mistakes during their sojourn on earth. Souls, by the misuse of their God-given independence, suffer as a result of their own evil actions, and reward themselves through their own good karma or virtuous deeds.
Those humans who act wrongly create evil tendencies, which remain hidden in the brain ready to pour out fiery suffering at a suitable time. These hidden, misery-making tendencies—or hell-fires—are carried into the astral world at death by a soul with bad karma. Souls in the after-death state have no physical sensations and could not be burned by physical fire. But souls with bad karma can suffer mental agonies worse than fiery burns.
The word “hell” is from the Anglo-Saxon root “helan, to conceal.” The Greek root is “helos, sun or fire.” Therefore, the word “hell-fire” is very appropriate to depict the concealed fire of agony that stored-up tendencies can produce in one’s earthly life or in the astral world. Just as a murderer burns with evil conscience during wakefulness and with subconscious terror during sleep, so he suffers from fiery evils in the sleep state of death.
A benign father could never eternally burn a soul made in His own image for its temporary mistakes on earth. The idea of eternal punishment is illogical. A soul is forever made in the image of God. Even a million years of sin could not change its essential, divine character. Man’s unforgiving wrath against the evil actions of his brethren has created this misconception of eternal hell-fire.
How to Handle Karmic Challenges?
People seldom look for hidden causes behind the occurrences in their lives. They cannot understand why they suffer. Suffering itself draws a thick curtain over their minds, obscuring its origins.
Only through deep, inner communion with higher states of consciousness does it become clear that all deficiencies, whether mental or physical, are the fair consequences of a person’s misbehavior in the past. A wise sage has the inner clarity to perceive the exact cause of every mishap. He can then prescribe actions that will remove that cause as an influence in a person’s life.
One who was born disadvantaged in any way should resist fiercely the temptation to wallow in self-pity. To feel sorry for oneself is but to dilute one’s inner power to overcome. Instead, affirm, “There are no obstacles: There are only opportunities!”
Accuse no one, not even yourself. Blame and accusation won’t erase what has been done; it will affirm, rather, your dependency on circumstances over which, truly, you no longer have control.
Seek God in the inner silence. Reconcile yourself to what is, and to what needs to be done about it. You can re-shape every karma, provided that from today onward you live by soul-consciousness. Repudiate the dictates of your ego. They are forever grounded in delusion.
The closer you come to God, the more surely you will know Him as Divine Love itself: the Nearest of the near, the very Dearest of the dear.
Overcoming Karma
Once upon a time a powerful emperor of a country got drunk. Disguised, he went into a tavern belonging to his estate and in a quarrel broke another man’s leg. The innkeeper took him to a judge who had been appointed to his post by the king. As the judge was about to pass sentence, the king suddenly threw off his disguise and exclaimed, ” I am the king who appointed thee as the judge, and I have the power to throw thee into prison. How darest thou convict me?”
In a similar way, the perfect soul, when it is identified with the body. may commit an evil and be deemed guilty according to the judge—or law of karma. But when that soul can identify its consciousness with God, the Creator of the law of karma, that royal soul cannot be punished by the judging law.
One can escape the law of karma by identifying himself with God. Once he is able to do that, he should forgive his brothers who sin against him. But if that soul, who found divine forgiveness from his own karma by meditation, is unforgiving toward his sinning brothers, then he again identifies with human life and becomes governed by the inscrutable laws of limiting karma. Every soul, therefore, should remain divine by continuously forgiving and loving as God does.
According to the laws of a country, a judge may sentence a young criminal to three years in a reformatory school. But the judge also has the privilege to pardon the young offender if he repents and promises good behavior. So, according to the law of karma, a person who acts evilly must reap the consequences of his actions. But if that evil-doer appeals to God for pardon by intense prayer and meditation, then God, being the Maker of the law of karma, can grant him amnesty from punishment.
Once upon a time a powerful emperor of a country got drunk. Disguised, he went into a tavern belonging to his estate and in a quarrel broke another man’s leg. The innkeeper took him to a judge who had been appointed to his post by the king. As the judge was about to pass sentence, the king suddenly threw off his disguise and exclaimed, ” I am the king who appointed thee as the judge, and I have the power to throw thee into prison. How darest thou convict me?”
In a similar way, the perfect soul, when it is identified with the body. may commit an evil and be deemed guilty according to the judge—or law of karma. But when that soul can identify its consciousness with God, the Creator of the law of karma, that royal soul cannot be punished by the judging law.
One can escape the law of karma by identifying himself with God. Once he is able to do that, he should forgive his brothers who sin against him. But if that soul, who found divine forgiveness from his own karma by meditation, is unforgiving toward his sinning brothers, then he again identifies with human life and becomes governed by the inscrutable laws of limiting karma. Every soul, therefore, should remain divine by continuously forgiving and loving as God does.
According to the laws of a country, a judge may sentence a young criminal to three years in a reformatory school. But the judge also has the privilege to pardon the young offender if he repents and promises good behavior. So, according to the law of karma, a person who acts evilly must reap the consequences of his actions. But if that evil-doer appeals to God for pardon by intense prayer and meditation, then God, being the Maker of the law of karma, can grant him amnesty from punishment.
Kriya Yoga and Freedom from Karma
“Kriya Yoga is an instrument through which human evolution can be quickened.” Sri Yukteswar explained to his students. . . .* (FOOTNOTE: *More information on Kriya Yoga and Sri Yukteswar can be found in Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda.)
The life of an advanced Kriya Yogi is influenced, not by effects of past actions, but solely by directions from the soul. The devotee thus avoids the slow, evolutionary monitors of egoistic actions, good and bad, of common life, cumbrous and snail-like to the eagle hearts. . . .
Identifying himself with a shallow ego, man takes for granted that it is he who thinks, wills, feels, digests meals, and keeps himself alive, never admitting through reflection (only a little would suffice!) that in his ordinary life he is naught but a puppet of past actions (karma) and of nature or environment. Each man’s intellectual reactions, feelings, moods, and habits are circumscribed by effects of past causes, whether of this or a prior life. Lofty above such influences, however, is his regal soul. . . .
The advanced yogi, withholding all his mind, will, and feeling from false identification with bodily desires, uniting his mind with superconscious forces in the spinal shrines, thus lives in this world as God hath planned, not impelled by impulses from the past nor by new witlessnesses of fresh human motivations. Such a yogi receives fulfillment of his Supreme Desire, safe in the final haven of inexhaustibly blissful Spirit.
What Happens at Death?
When the ordinary person approaches death, usually his whole body becomes paralyzed, just as a part of your body sometimes “goes to sleep.” When your foot goes to sleep, you see it and you know that it is yours, but you cannot move or use it. So, at the approach of death, most people feel an entire paralysis, or a going-to-sleep state of the entire body—limbs, muscles, and even internal organs, including heart, lungs, and diaphragm.
In the beginning, the dying man is conscious of the slowly falling asleep of the muscles and limbs. When the heart begins to grow numb, there is a sense of suffocation, because without heart action the lungs cannot operate. This sense of suffocation is a little painful for about one to three seconds, and causes a great fear of death. Because souls reincarnate many times, and necessarily have to experience death in passing from an old body into the body of a little child, they retain the memory of this feeling of suffocation and pain at death. This memory of pain causes fear of death.
Spiritual Resurrection
Life is glorious; life is beautiful, if you will only find God beneath the debris of matter. You must not be hypnotized by this changing picture of life and death, but behold immortality. It is the most joyous thing that you can experience. God is hidden behind the moon and the sun and the stars. Your very conscience is the voice of God. And there is no other way to uncover God except by real devotion and meditation.
Every day, resurrect yourself in meditation. Compare your state before and after meditation. Meditate deeply if you would know God. Let your evil habits, indifference, and restlessness die daily.
Resurrection means relaxation, to relax your awareness from your body and mind in meditation. Then you become free: your soul knows that you can live without the body though living in the body; it is separate.
Human life may be beautiful, but it is like a bird in a cage. You open the bird’s cage, but it does not want to fly away. It is afraid—and we, also, in meditation, say, “Will I slip into the Infinite and never come back?” We are afraid of the skies. We have lived too long identified with the body, and so we are afraid of our own infinite omnipresence, afraid to resurrect our omnipotence, our omniscience.
You do not know what joy lies beyond the screen of the subconscious mind. If you do away with the restlessness and sensations of the body and sit quietly and say: “In the Heaven of Silence, O God, be born within me,” then on the altar of silence He will come. The joy of God is indescribable—joy that no changing dream of life and death can ever take away.
The Theory of Reincarnation
There has been a great deal of controversy as to whether reincarnation is true. If there is no truth in the theory of reincarnation, it is useless to believe in any form of religion.
Reincarnation teaches that life continues after so-called death. The body does not last, but the soul lasts forever—the permanent soul in a temporary body. The soul cannot go back to God until it reaches perfection. Hence, when the body perishes, the soul must have another body in order to overcome its imperfections.
The body is the residence and the soul is the resident. The fleshly house is perishable and the soul, being the image of Spirit, is imperishable. Therefore, when the body dies, the soul has to shift somewhere else for shelter. Because of the soul’s intimate contact with the body, it develops physical desires. These imperfect material attachments cling to the disembodied soul and prevent it from returning to the Spirit. Thus, the immortal soul has no other alternative but to come back to the mortal school of life to work out its imperfections.
When a child is sent to school and fails to make the grade, he has to go back again and again until he passes his examinations. So also, souls who fail to preserve their perfection while in the mortal school of education and entertainment have to come back for many incarnations until they completely experience their hidden Spirit nature. The immortal soul must win several prizes in order to maintain Spirit-endurance: self-control, detachment, morality, calmness, and spirituality—and must pass all grades in the earthly school in order to become free.
Immortal soul children are sent to the movie house of Life to make pictures or to watch pictures of Life, both tragedies and comedies, with an unruffled equanimity. When these divine children can go back to God and say, “Father, I enjoyed acting in and watching Thy earthly moving pictures, but I have no more desire for evanescent amusements,” they are no longer forced by their material desires to come back to earth.
God sent perfect souls to earth to behave like immortals—calm, desireless, and happy—and to watch the earthly moving pictures, and to act in them. During the acting and watching of mundane moving pictures, however, souls develop attachments. Unless these desires are cast off before death, the soul must return to another body in the earthly moving picture house in order to work out the desires born there.
If you die with the desire to possess a Rolls Royce, you won’t be able to live forever in heaven where souls glide without vehicles, but you will have to come back to earth, where that particular desire can be fulfilled. Even the highest earthly desire on the part of the soul is limiting when compared to the eternal kingdom of the cosmos, which the soul loses because of concentration upon little things.
How Reincarnation Can Be Prevented
If the perfect soul children of God come on earth and do everything to please God and not to satisfy the craving of the ego, then they will be free from the necessity for reincarnation. Therefore, when you eat, think, “I eat not because of greed, but in order to maintain Thy temple of consciousness and to please Thee, since Thou has given me the urge of hunger.” Or, “I earn money to discharge my heaven-given responsibility to maintain myself and others.” Whatever you are doing, say, “I think, I will, and I am happy to please Thee alone.”
Working for God is very enjoyable and is divinely personal. Working for your own ego is selfishly personal, blinding, and creates misery. Therefore, perform all good deeds not for yourself but for God. In this way, the responsibility of actions and their results do not touch the soul. This mental attitude cuts the cord of attachment that bringssouls back to earth.
When you eat, work, think, play, meditate, and enjoy true earthly happiness just to please God, and not to please yourself, you are ever ready to stay on or to leave the earth without sorrow or attachment, according to God’s pleasure. Then you cannot be forced back to earth.
Actions performed to please God leave no attachment. If you eat strawberry pie or make money with the consciousness of pleasing God, you do not carry the desire with you when you die.
If you act with greed or selfishness, and die with the unfulfilled desire, you will have to come back to earth to fulfill that desire. This does not mean that you must be without ambition. The lazy, negligent person isn’t ambitious to please God by good actions on earth, so he has to come back until he learns to work with the one purpose of pleasing God.
The egotist, who works only to please himself, becomes involved in an endless net of desires, from which he can extricate himself only after many incarnations. Therefore, you must not be idle, absent-minded, or egotistically ambitious, but you should be divinely ambitious to work and play on earth with the right attitude of mind, as the Divine Director wishes you to do.
To leave the world and go to the forest to meditate is one extreme, but your earthly desires can follow you to the forest. To be merged in the world, but not of the world, or better still, to enjoy the world with the pure joy of God, brings lasting happiness.
To renounce the world without conquering desires produces hypocrites; to be in the world without training makes you hard-boiled and worldly. To do everything in the world to please God is the highest ideal, according to the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, whose teachings are compatible with both Western and Eastern life. If we live in the forests and do not live hygienically, we may die from disease; if we live in the world without peace, we may die of mental worry. With God in your heart, let your face smile and your hands ungrudgingly work for Truth alone.
Source – Compiled excerpts from the book “Karma and Reincarnation” by Paramhansa Yogananda
