Talk 19 by Prabhuji
Karma is Fair (11 APR 2016)
Today let us contemplate on Karma. What is Karma?
It is an understanding of life that universe or existence is fair! What we do comes back to us! This understanding is called Karma. If we do good, good will come back to us. If we do bad, bad will come back to us. This seems to be a fair understanding of life. In simple, Karma is saying “Life is fair. What I do will come back to me”. Karma also means that ‘I am responsible for my actions’. ‘If something good is happening to me, I have done something good, if something bad is happening to me, oh… I have done something bad’, assuming that God or existence or universe is fair. If God or universe or existence is unfair, there will always be partiality. Anything can happen if the existence is partial. The favoritism can happen and in today’s world in politics in power centers we know there is always favoritism towards their relatives, friends etc.
But the law of karma says “the existence is fair”. It is not partial to anything or anybody. The terms God, existence, karma etc are used interchangeably. God doesn’t favor somebody unnecessarily, neither has he punished somebody unnecessarily. As applied to me, “I am responsible for my actions”, this is the meaning of Karma. Sounds very fair, but we cannot experience that in our life. So far in this lifetime I have not done anything bad, but why is bad happening to me. Why bad things happen to good people? This question always comes.
Theory of karma also has the assumption that life is not a small window from what you see now. Life is a continuous process. You have gone through many lifetimes and come to this stage. So what you have done, what you have not done in your earlier lives can impact this life. So law of Karma doesn’t apply in a narrow window of life. Law of Karma should be seen in the perspective of life itself which actually involves thousands and thousands and millions of life times.
To understand this little bit better we have to understand mind. We have conscious, subconscious mind and also unconscious mind, which is actually below the sub-conscious mind. And below that we have Collective unconscious and cosmic unconscious. So how many layers of mind we are speaking of? Conscious mind, subconscious mind, unconscious mind, collective unconscious mind and cosmic unconscious mind. So these many layers of mind are there, out of which the conscious mind is less than 4 or 5 percent. All our judgment and understanding of life is through this small window called conscious mind. Our sub-conscious mind is many many more times powerful than conscious mind. It remembers all your past experiences in life, right. So these experiences which can be recollected are part of the sub-conscious mind, and they come as impressions. Then there is something called unconscious mind, which you cannot even recollect. What you cannot recollect is what you were as a part of the collective unconsciousness which is something like the animal life. Now go below that which is much deeper called as cosmic unconsciousness where you were mineral, stone, part of the galaxy.
So this is actually the nature of the mind, what is visible to you is only a tip of the iceberg, just a 5% and what is not visible to you is a larger portion. With modern day hypnosis techniques, a hypnotist can go into the subconscious and unconscious or collective and cosmic unconscious level. People can recollect their past lives which are subconscious, and people can recollect their animal lives which is their collective unconscious and their life as minerals which are cosmic unconscious. This much recollection can be done through hypnosis. Whatever we are speaking is not theory, as we go deeper and deeper into your Consciousness through hypnosis some of these memories can be recollected. Now you cannot see the life through a small window of your conscious mind which you see now. It is much larger, in this larger picture things even out. You will do something you will experience good and bad out of it, like that life continues.
Transcription by Atmajyothi Satyavathi
Light of The Self Foundation 