These are extraordinary insights into the experiences of our daily lives! Sadguru Murali Krishna addresses us with a degree of intimacy and compassion that does not fail to profoundly move the recipient, “Every individual has the freedom to discriminate between good and evil. Do not jump to the conclusion that somebody is God by hearsay. You need to validate that fact through your own experience based on what you have seen and sensed. God is wisdom. So check whether such wisdom exists.”
All that we are today, explains Swamiji, is a result of what we have done in the past, “But God successfully provided us with human birth, and humans have the capacity to discriminate. Many devotees complain to me that they have not wronged anybody in this life. When I tell them that the hardships they have to endure are a result of our ancestors, everyone is happy! But none realize that what we go through is due to our own karma. We should lose the ego in ourselves. Only pain can lead us to God.”
“It is always better,” said Vimalananda, the Aghori Master, “to live with reality, because otherwise, without fail, reality will come to live with you.”
This is effectively what the law of Karma means: it is the Law of cause and effect, very similar to Isaac Newton’s third law of motion which states that for every action there is an equal or opposite reaction.
As Vimalananda expressed it: “Cause is effect concealed and effect is cause revealed.” The Brihadranyaka Upanishad, for example, declares, “Verily, one becomes good by good action and bad by bad action.” Or, as Lord Krishna succinctly proclaimed in the Srimad Bhagavatam, “Karma is the Guru; nay, it is the Supreme Lord.”
The collective actions of each individual constitute that individual’s experience. This perhaps explains why Mata
Amritanandamayi, the divine mother, describes ‘experience’ as the primary Guru because it is experience that causes us to learn from our mistakes.
Mistakes we commit make us appreciate the meaning of shraddha (faith), viveka (discrimination) and vairagya (dispassion).
Accordingly, we can rest assured that whatever happens, is for the good, because the law of Karma is not a punishment for our actions but it is a punishment by our actions.
This means that the Supreme Being does not interfere in worldly engagements as the latter is an exclusive result of our actions in the past. None can escape the effect of actions committed in the past. They return to us compounded with the same intensity.
It is from the thinking mind that the ten senses (of perception and action) are developed including hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell on the one hand, and speech, creative action, locomotion, reproduction and elimination on the other.
While sattva represents the internalising ‘I’ or subjective consciousness, rajas represents the externalizing ‘I’ searching for an entity to self identify and tamas is the objectifying ‘I’ which eventually produce the pancha mahabhutas (five elements including space, fire, water, air and earth).
The article has been taken from the book The Global Mission of Sadguru Sri Sharavana Baba