Karma, Harm and Harmlessness

The law of karma is inexorable and found in all traditions, and not just Hinduism and Buddhism, from which the notion of karma arose. The well-known saying, "As you sow, so shall you reap," which we read in the New Testament at Galatians 6:7, is clearly an expression of the universal law of karma.

"Every sin must be paid for, (and) all karmic debt must be paid," points out the late Unity minister, Eric Butterworth. "However," he notes, "the choice is ours whether we work it out in the cycle of retribution, through profound suffering in the 'furnace of affliction,' or whether our payment of debt is through the discipline of rising above the consciousness from which the act was committed into the freedom of spiritual understanding where we go forth and 'sin no more.'"

[Butterworth, "Discover the Power Within You:," p. 137.]

Addressing the corrosive effects of bad kharma (or action), the great sage, Patanjali observed:

"The obstacles to yoga - such as acts of violence and untruth - may be created or indirectly caused or approved, they may be motivated by greed, anger or self-interest, they may be small, moderate or great, but they never cease to result in pain and ignorance. One should overcome disturbing thoughts by remembering this." (Yoga Sutra II:34)

"Everything we do, say, or think, or even indirectly cause or passively sanction," writes Swami Prabhavananda, "Will inevitably produce consequences - good, bad, or composite - and these consequences will react in some measure upon ourselves."

"Our most secret ill-wishes towards others," he continues, "our remotest permission of evil done to others, can only end by hurting us, by increasing our own ignorance and pain. This is an absolute law of Nature. If we could remember it always, we should learn to control our tongues and our thoughts."

Again, Patanjali observes:

"When a man becomes steadfast in his abstention from harming others, then all living creatures will cease to feel enmity in his presence."

 Elaborating upon this concept of ahimsa (or, harmlessness), the inevitable corollary of karma, Swami Prabhavananda notes that we have become so used to using the word "harmless" in a deprecating and even "derogatory sense" that "it has become almost synonymous with ineffectual." "Yet," Prabhavananda points out, "the perfected harmlessness of the saint is by no means ineffectual, it is a positive psychological force of tremendous power."

"When a man has truly and entirely renounced violence in his own thoughts and in his dealings with others," Prabhavnanda remarks, "he begins to create an atmosphere around himself within which violence and enmity must cease to exist because they find no reciprocation."

[Prabhavananda and Isherwood, "How to Know God," pp. 146-148.]

Thus, what we sow with our thoughts and in our consciousness has the potential for either harm or good, and "as we sow, so shall we reap." It is not just what we say or do that brings about "bad karma," but rather who we are in our inner Being.

Awakening from Paranoia to Metanoia: Part One

A Course in Miracles teaches that we are always doing one of two things: We either project Fear, or we extend Love.

Fear and Love represent two very different states of being, or levels of our consciousness. We project fear from our egos - from the sense of individuality, separateness and "anxious apartness" we feel and project to the world outside when we attach to the restless stream of undisciplined thoughts that can continuously course of their own volition through our minds - from this false, egoic sense of 'self' that we mistake as being our identity, that we take as being who we are. Love, on the other hand, is a different, deeper state of consciousness, a psychic state of quiet and stillness of mind in which the restless stream of thought stops moving, if only for a moment. All then seems and feels to be "well with the world."

Fear is a learned, habitual way of thinking into which we are conditioned or trained, if you like, by our interactions with others, our culture and the perceived, sensory 'world'. Love is our natural state of being - like the love a child and a mother, a mother and a child. It is Providence, provided from within, but which is grown "out of" as we are conditioned by parents, educators, our culture and our own sense perceptions of a world which is "out there" and not "within".

All wisdom traditions and religions speak to this dual aspect of humanity. "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways" (James 1:8) ; and, as such, a double-minded person is liable to act or react in any manner depending upon the state of being which is manifested within. From the state of Fear, or paranoia - a state in which one is separated in thought from clear consciousness (from the Greek, 'para' meaning 'with', and 'nous', the 'mind') - one projects Fear. From the state of Love, or metanoia - a state in which one is above ordinary, restless thought and thus beyond any separation in consciousness ( from the Greek, 'meta' meaning 'above', and 'nous', the 'mind') one extends Love.

Religious experience (from the Latin, 're' meaning 'again', and 'ligare', 'to tie' or 'unite'), transcendence of 'self' and spiritual experience, or spiritual awakening, all speak of the shift from the state of habitual, conditioned consciousness to the state of natural, unconditioned, unitive consciousness 'beyond' the mentations of the mind. Spiritual awakening is, thus, the journey or restoration from paranoia to metanoia.

The study of Yoga, which means religion in the East, is the practice of disciplining the thought- waves of the mind, according to the Hindu yogi master and expositor, Patanjali - the practice of going to that state of being 'above' thought. Commentators have said that this is the full teaching of Yoga, and the rest of Patanjali's 200-odd aphorisms are explanations of this one central truth. In Bhuddist terms, this is the exposition of the dharma.

"Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you. . . . Purify your hearts, you double-minded," James, the brother of Jesus, taught (James 4:8). In his epistle, James clearly intended that in purifying one's heart, one had to take courage - from the Latin cour - which means the "heart". Spiritual awakening is this journey from the restless, fearful thought-waves of the undisciplined, self-absorbed mind, from paranoia and the projection of Fear, to the still, disciplined abiding in the heart, above thought - to metanoia and the extension of Love. All wisdom traditions speak of this journey from egoic paranoia to selfless metanoia.