The Law of Karma By Richard Kieninger Introduction In our Western Civilization we have developed the notions of fate and predestination; however, there is no such thing. Everything that a human being has happen to him, he has instituted in a prior time, either in this incarnation or a former incarnation. It’s carryover from something he or she has either done here recently or sometime in the past. “Karma” strictly refers to the carryover of either credits or debits from past actions from one lifetime to another lifetime. In a practical sense, we also talk about karmic accountancy, or the accumulating of “treasures in heaven”, which is the Christian way of speaking of karma. When you have done things which are hurtful to another person, then you have debits in your karmic accountancy. It’s a case of cause and effect; “that which you do, so shall ye reap.” As the scientists would say, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Karma has certain laws, certain action-reaction situations that are always the same—the net effect. is always equal. This accountancy is maintained automatically on the second plane of existence, on the Etheric Plane. It’s part of, as Christians call it, the “book of God’s Remembrances.” This is an automatic system of maintaining a record of all the things that you do and think. It’s self-executing. Nobody has to govern it in any way. It works whether you want it to or not and for everyone equally. Three Categories Whatever you do which is hurtful to another person has to come back to you in an equal hurt. When you do something which is good and beneficial for other people, then exactly the same thing is going to come back to you. There are three different categories in which this cause-and-effect interplay is recorded. One is economic karma: if you steal something from somebody, something is going to be stolen from you which is of equal value. It may not be in this lifetime, or perhaps 50 years may go by before that equals out, but it will happen. Another is physical karma which would have to do with causing a bodily injury to another person. if you carelessly close a door on somebody’s hand and break a couple of bones in their fingers, which is painful for weeks afterwards, then you can expect that you’re going to suffer equivalent pain somewhere along the line. It might not come back exactly to the hand, but some part of your body will be used to deliver the same amount of pain and inconvenience back to you. The third category is emotional karma: the kinds of things that you might do which would be hurtful to the sensitivities of another person. Also, the bringing of joy to many people means that there will be many people who bring joy to you. The Purpose of Karma The whole subject of karma is twofold. One is to maintain absolute justice throughout the Universe and time, and the other is to teach people through example that doing anything which is dishonest comes back to you. If you don’t like things which are painful to happen to you, be sure you do not initiate them by doing them to somebody else first. What matters is the end result of the action that you have initiated. You may have purposely decided to do some harm to somebody; but if the net result of what you started didn’t work out to be actually harmful to that person, then there is no negative karma. However, the kinds of thinking that you went through the negative imaging and hateful thoughts that you entertained—those have an effect on your character, and you carry that with you. But that has nothing to do strictly with karma. Karmic Retribution The whole universe is totally benign. There is nothing intended to be harmful about it by our Creators. We have to institute anything which is harmful. But instead of somebody else being the agency to carry out the return of that debit, it is possible for the universe to do it in a sort of neutral, automatic way. Which is really the best way for karmas to be paid off. Although automatic, it can be moderated in some way by Higher Intelligences: mostly Adepts within the Brotherhoods who are known as the Lords of Karma. They can assist you yet you’re not aware of it, at least not in your waking consciousness. But they can assist you in making your karmic lessons be highly beneficial by making sure they occur at a most opportune time. A corollary to the karmic concept is that there is no such thing as an accident when it comes to human interactions. There are no accidents so far as human beings are concerned. There are, however, chance occurrences that happen to animals and plants. Christ’s Intervention Christ did remove the accumulated sins of the world at the time that He was here, just before He began His ministry. The 40 days He spent in the wilderness He was doing something, not just meditating and fighting off the temptations of Evil. He didn’t remove individual karmas from people—that was something they had to work out by themselves. But what He did remove was the accumulation of what the Bible refers to as the sins of the fathers which can be visited unto 7 generations. (They didn’t use the term karma.) Christ was unable to eliminate the world’s karmic indebtedness; it’s being held in abeyance by the Archangelic Host, and it is intended to be returned to mankind at the turn of the century. In fact, there has been a cushioning effect that has been existent since Christ was here 2,000 years ago, which allows more time for us to compensate for things of our own volition rather than having undiminished karmic retribution fall upon us. If a person does harm to somebody, he can compensate for that by doing an equivalent good; and, therefore, of his own volition and control can neutralize the harm he or she would have had coming. Christ saved the world by removing its heavy karmic burden which was keeping people from moving forward. They were constantly being crushed by the overwhelming indebtedness that was coming due all the time. They couldn’t get ahead. Pestilence, disease, famines, war, enmities of all kinds; these things were keeping mankind up to its nose in water and just barely able to survive. It seems very likely that we would have just submerged into bestial times if it were not for Christ’s intervention. At the time Christ was here, the so-called civilized persons were nobody that we would care to have any association with today. Group Karma and Individual Karma Christ arrived in time to defer a mass of karmic indebtedness that was due to fall upon various nations and races as a result of things that they had done as a group; as a race or as a corporate entity. Those kinds of karmas Christ could remove, and it literally did save the world, but He did not remove individuals’ karmas. On an individual basis He gave the great news of God’s forgiveness. God blames us about the same way you would a one-and-a-half-year-old child for breaking a dish. You may be angry about it, but you certainly don’t condemn him for his actions. A young child who has been watching shootings on television and later comes across a loaded gun and shoots his brother, would be very upsetting to his parents; but they have to forgive the child, because the child could not know the real consequences of his act. Similarly, mankind in its great ignorance very frequently does things without knowing what they are all about. In ignorance, people usually do things that they feel they have need to do, and then find themselves having to pay off the karmic consequences of what they have done. God says, “Pay the dues. This is what you did, it was dumb, and you have to deal with the consequences. That is all there is to it. But I don’t hate you for it. You have caused a lot of mischief to other people and you’re going to have to work it out. They had it coming otherwise they would not have been susceptible to it, but woe be unto him who is the agency through whom such revenge comes. Because revenge is the Lord’s.” In other words, let Nature work it out. Don’t you get involved in other people’s karma to pay them back, because then you have karma too. It’s self-defeating to perpetuate this kind of thing. It is just like feuds; like the Jews and the Arabs. There’s no sense at all in what they’re doing to one another although they’re quite convinced that it’s the only honorable thing to do. Improving Karma Any time that you help uplift mankind or some individual—to help, to educate, to alleviate pains, to lead to a better understanding of truth—these are ways in which you serve man. And whenever you serve man, you serve the purpose of God. Any time that you are doing things that are helpful and good to others, karmic credits accrue to your account and become your “Treasures in Heaven.” It takes a great deal of discrimination to be aware of what actually is helping and what is not. If you encounter a panhandler on the street (a person who makes his living by begging) you may think, “I hate to see a fellow starving; he just wants a quarter; so I’ll just give him a quarter.” Then you feel good about yourself because you’ve done something for your fellow man. But actually you have prevented him from taking charge of his own life and keeping himself in karmic balance. You have given him something for nothing, so he gets a karmic debit to compensate for it. So you’re not helping him because you have entered into a transaction which has given him negative karma. And you have given yourself half the amount of his debit because of the long-range deleterious effect you have had on his life. If you really want to help this person, you get him a job; that is helping him help himself. “If you give a man a fish, you’ve fed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you’ve fed him for a lifetime.” Education counts for a lot in helping to uplift mankind from his current condition. Karma and Tithing Most of us are unmindful that every day Higher Intelligences provide services for us. They actually do a kind of work. Our planet is protected by Higher Intelligences. The depredations that we wreak on our ecology are balanced by special action taken by our Angelic Host. They may create new kinds of bacteria or new insects in order to compensate for the loss of the things that we destroyed. The Archangelic Host oversees the generation of the energies that come from the Sun (even after Their creation of that star to begin with), and They have to continually sustain and regulate that. That does not go on all by itself. If there is not Archangelic thought continually applied to the holding together of atoms, they cease to exist. They dissolve back into basic energy. We have the opportunity to compensate for that by tithing to something that is of benefit to mankind. If we do not tithe, then it is extracted from us in other ways—we may not know, but things do not come to us that we are working for, and the windfalls that would otherwise have come our way are diminished. So there are hidden ways that one’s lack of tithing is nevertheless compensated for. Karma and Prayer Although Higher Intelligences will answer prayers, one’s attempts at influencing somebody else’s life without their knowledge can amount to sorcery. The individual who is very ill and has a whole group of people praying for him—the sending of positive energies—is certainly beneficial. But to interfere in that person’s life without his knowledge and permission is a karmically dangerous thing to do. Whenever you pray to Higher Beings for somebody else, it is best always to put in the proviso, “if it be for the greatest good of all concerned.” Then it leaves it up to those Higher Beings who would be responsible for carrying out your prayer to divert it to some other useful direction if it did not happen to be beneficial for that individual to be saved from this particular disease. Maybe he incarnated to learn about being an invalid, because maybe his actions towards invalids in the past were not altogether positive, and this is something that he now has to learn about so that he is kinder in future incarnations. So don’t interfere. Never be so cocksure that you know what is right for another person, whatever it is, because you cannot really know all the lessons that a person has come to incarnate to accomplish. Higher Beings know, but they don’t talk to anybody about them. Knowing that the Law of Karma is at work in our lives every moment of every day is cause for hope. Knowing that justice ultimately always prevails gives us the incentive to sincerely apply our ability to discern the outworkings of situations that we set into motion. The fact that the universe is not chaos—but rather is governed by intelligence—gives us the courage to learn the ways to completely control our environment to our liking without damaging or depriving anyone else. Karma and You As an exercise, mentally note at various times during any given day or week how the three different kinds of karma are manifesting in your life. Is your environment completely to your liking in all three areas at all times? Do you keep a record of what you learned (or what has you stumped) about any situations that were not to your liking? Do you congratulate yourself whenever you notice an improvement? Others may have been the agents of that improvement (maybe a hug of appreciation is appropriate) but you were responsible!!
	FAQ on the Law of Karma