Transcription
Eddie, uh, you give great importance to the concept of karma as kind of a fundamental way that reality works. How do you relate consciousness and karma? Karma is the activity of consciousness whenever there is a disturbance to the system. And I'll explain that the word karma comes from the Sanskrit word which just means to do, to make action. Now, science provides very helpful similes. Newton's, uh, law of action and reaction is about the most simplistic way of—very much—um. A more helpful, um, scientific analogy is Le Chatelier's principle in chemistry, where any dynamic system that is disturbed by an external force will take on a new position of equilibrium, and it will either give out heat or take in heat. That's the chemical. So karma is not retribution; it's not punishment. It's the natural readjustment of a system to any disturbance.
Now, for the human being, there are four kinds of karma: citta karma, which is the totality of your karma encompassing all your lives; there is prarabdha karma, the karma for your particular life; there is kriyamana karma, the karma of immediate action; and there's agami, the karma which is sent on. Now you can understand prarabdha, the karma for your life. Um, if you tried to do in a weekend a lifetime's work, it'd be a bit difficult. So you are allotted a certain amount of karma for a lifetime. And, um, depending on all sorts of, um, intricacies and complexities, what you will take on, what is your download, and what is held off depends on individual factors. But a very important point is this, and it's very important: the more an individual sincerely aspires to a spiritual life, the more will be the karmic download. It's not punishment; it's a cleansing process. So if you sincerely aspire to spiritual life, whatever you like to call it, you are invoking the divine witness to shine a floodlight into you, and it will search out all your dark corners and cobwebs, which in normal life, well, you know, they can be left alone. So this is why people experience great health and other issues, uh, when they are on the path, so to speak.
So karma is the general. Skandhas are the soldiers who follow the general. The skandhas are personality traits that, um, accumulate and constitute the personality of the next incarnation under karma, the general. And then, how, how does the, um, actual consciousness that we have interact with karma? Karma is a principle; it's not a substance, right? It is a principle, but thought is vital. It is thought that creates our problems and solves our problems. What we set our minds on will determine how we talk, how we behave, and the consequences we shall reap. But karma is also collective. And this is the point: if I throw my rubbish out of my flat, uh, it's not just my garden; I've polluted the neighborhood. So karma is also, um, has to be—what has to be factored in—is not only the individual karma but the karma of the nation and the karma of the race. So it's a huge subject, but I would sincerely wish that scientists would take it seriously, because you cannot experiment on animals and do everything that you're doing without trying to understand what you're doing. It is not just, I want to do this and forget the results in cosmic terms. The great Newton alluded to karma when he said, well, the planets and the comets go about their orbits until the system needs an adjustment. So karma has also been referred to as the divine adjuster.